Chapter 3
Chapter 3
My brother is waiting for us at a table on a stone patio, sitting in the shadow cast by a wooden trellis covered in bright pink bougainvillea; one hand over his eyes, head thrown back in laughter. Across from him is Conor Harkness, still in the middle of narrating whatever is giving Eli all this merriment.
It’s a good thing. That I’m getting this over with now, on minute one of the vacation. Once I’m past the first interaction with Conor, the tone will have been set, and the rest will be smooth sailing. I’m sure it’s what he wants, too: A mutual and tacit agreement to polite indifference. The pretense that our entire relationship is linchpinned by Eli.
“Unbelievable,” Avery says, still in the back of the car.
“What?”
“Hark, wearing something that is not business casual. The apocalypse is being harbinged.” She opens the door and exits. Tiny follows her, trampling over me to run into the arms of the one human for whom he’d bury us all in a ditch. I slip out just in time to watch him tackle my brother with all the unbridled violence of his love.
“It’s been less than forty-eight hours since you last saw him,” I mutter to myself, not quite able to bite back a smile. “Show some dignity, Tiny.”
Then, over the hypnotic buzz of the cicadas, I hear an unfamiliar voice. “— don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect that if my office sends in a CIM, the principal will have their team run processes and put together a deck. Am I wrong, Hark? ” The words rise from a phone set on speaker, face up in the middle of the table.
“Is he talking to…?” Avery whispers at Eli, who manages to nod through Tiny’s vigorous licks.
“He sure is.”
She grins. “Poor Molnar. Is he alive? Should we start digging a hole?”
“Not yet, but I am worried about his mental health.”
“You are wrong,” Conor says, staring at the phone like it’s a feral child taking a piss in his lawn. His expression is a special blend of exhaustion and disgust that only old-money people can successfully pull off. His profile, which once awed me enough to force me to educate myself about the anatomy of the zygomatic bone and its relationship to the maxilla, is identical to when I last saw him. He must have shaved not too long ago. This morning, maybe. “But wrong, Tomas, I can forgive. The issue is how profoundly tedious this has been.”
Eli winces, amused. Avery’s smile widens.
“I’m not going to ask my VPs or my quants to waste a week running ad hoc analyses and throwing together a goddamn macaroni craft project for you to put on your fridge,” Conor continues. “If you want to pretend that you’re playing the capital aggregation game, do it on your time. We know at a glance that the equity check won’t hit our threshold.”
“That’s not how it works, Hark.”
“That’s how we work. Our investing process is rigorous, and we’re not backsolving a PnL so that your daughter’s boyfriend can get a cash influx for a startup that’ll never gain enough market share to be sustainable.”
“As a partner, I get a say—”
“Not with a conflict of interest of this size. Not with no one else backing the deal. Not as a limited partner. We have these things called words , and they have meanings.”
Eli and Avery exchange silent laughter, and I glance away, taking in the view. Which is so breathtaking , Conor’s Irish-accented financespeak fades into a remote corner of my brain.
Villa Fedra, where the wedding party will be staying, was built on top of a hill. Like most historical homes in Taormina, it perches on the cliffside—according to my travel guide, as defense from pirate attacks, and to make the most of the breeze in the sweltering Sicilian summers. Knowing that, I always expected the landscape to be somewhat craggy. I had not, however, imagined how steep the overlook would be. The abrupt plunge of the rocky cliff into narrow white beaches, and the never-ending stretch of the sea.
Ionian, as I now know.
It’s too much. Too beautiful. The turquoise waters and dark green trees are too bright, like some AI-generated postcard. Except that when I move a few feet from the car and lean forward, palms flat against the stone balustrade installed to keep tipsy visitors from smashing themselves against the rock wall, a gust of wind blows against my face.
It hits my jet-lagged, semicomatose brain that this place actually exists . As implausible as it seems, I’m here . And turning my head southwest makes reality even more questionable, because dominating the view is Mount Etna. The most active volcano in all of Europe. A squat, gently sloped presence. It rises and rises and rises , culminating in a black peak that’s at once terrifying and majestic.
“This is ridiculous,” I whisper to myself. To the volcano. To the air. To the entire Sicilian seascape.
“Right?” Beside me, Eli rests his elbows on the handrail. At his heels, Tiny frantically chases new scents. “I’ve been feeling dirty and ugly since we got here.”
I turn back to glance at the villa, take in the ivy and wisteria that decorate its white facade, and mentally compare it to the house where we grew up. Peacock, meet turkey. “We were raised in a rat-infested hovel, huh?”
“And we never even knew it.”
“What kind of neglectful parents don’t even plant a citrus grove in their backyard?” I reach for the tree at my left, potted in a colorful ceramic vase, and stroke the tips of my fingers against a shiny leaf. When I push it aside, I discover a lemon, plump and juicy and a little pornographic. Its tang perfumes the air surrounding us, mixing with sea brine and something that reminds me of…thyme. The scrub half climbing down the cliff, as if trying to get away from us, is a spontaneously growing thyme bush. I’m in love . “Watch out, Eli. Rue might leave you for this lemon.”
“Too late. The lemon and I already eloped.”
I smile, and he slides an arm around my shoulder to squeeze me into him. We don’t usually hug much, my brother and I, but I’m feeling out of sorts for all kinds of reasons, and this is comforting. “I’m happy you guys decided to do this here. Now, I know I gasped very obnoxiously, back when you told me that you weren’t just going to stand in line for six hours at the Travis County Clerk’s office and exchange plastic bottle rings. But this actually feels like…”
“Like more than an afterthought?” I nod as he draws back. “Like I actually took time off to celebrate and publicly acknowledge the fact that I’m in love with Rue?”
“Ugh, keep it in your pants, please.” But when he tries for a noogie, I can’t help laughing. “Besides, it doesn’t sound like you took off work.”
“Oh, I did. It’s Hark who’s congenitally unable to not check his email. Which is okay, since watching him pick fights is a leisure pursuit of mine.”
I avert my eyes. “Where’s everyone else? I thought Avery and I would be the last ones to get here.”
“You were. Most people are catching up on sleep. Someone went to the city center, and Rue’s taking a walk down at the beach with Tisha.”
I glance at the cliff. Still steep, and half-covered in moss and shrubbery. “Did they jump?”
He points at a spot slightly farther down the coast, where the slope is gentler. Someone installed a stone staircase there, nestled in the dense, burnt orange soil. It twists and turns multiple times before terminating in what looks like a private beach. “Oh, nice.” I let my eyes follow the shoreline, and that’s when I spot it. Right there in the bay, just a few hundred feet into the ocean, there is a small, rocky islet covered in lush vegetation.
“Holy shit. I didn’t think we’d be so close. Is that—?”
Eli nods. “Isola Bella.”
When I first read about it, my only thought was that the locals could have put a bit more of their backs into the naming process. But now that I’m in its presence, it occurs to me that simplicity might have its merits. Because…it’s certainly beautiful. And it is an island—at least, I think so. A round, jagged mound of green and gray, completely surrounded by sea. The only exception is a thin strip of pebbly sand that connects it to the mainland.
“Is it high tide? Right now, I mean.”
Eli shrugs. “Dunno. Why?”
“Low,” a deep voice says from behind us. “The sandbar was underwater this morning.”
Well. I guess I put this off as long as I could.
I exhale, paste a serene expression to my face, and turn around. “Hey, Conor,” I say cheerfully. Which is…a choice, given that nearly everyone else in the world calls him Hark.
Old habits, though.
“Maya,” he says.
Not Hi, Maya . Or Maya, hey . Clearly, he does not feel the need to pepper his emails with overenthusiastic punctuation. Conor barely even smiles, though I refuse to take that personally. It’s just how he is—sharky, impatient, sometimes mean. Maybe it comes from the emotionally dystopian family that raised him. Maybe it’s a deliberate business strategy, being at once intense and scary and angry as the true path to embody the wealth-portfolio guy. I always figured the suits did lots of heavy lifting, but he’s wearing whiskey-colored pants and a simple white T-shirt, and I still could never mistake him for a software developer or a philosophy professor.
Honestly, he’s not my type. Too overworked. Too incapable of letting go. Too single-minded. Too much of a dickhead.
And for the last three years of my life, I’ve been in love with him.
I’ve always been stubborn, but this is twisted. Sclerotic. Toxic. My brain tripped on him when I was twenty, and here I am. Still. Despite all that has happened since.
All those teachers telling my brother how smart I was, and here I am. So fucking dumb .
“How’s school?” he asks. He has a knack for this—asking innocent questions that’ll put me in my place. Which, in his head, is at the kiddy pool. Far away from the adults. From him .
“Great.” I smile, pointedly ignoring the familiar way Avery’s hand rests on the back of his upper arm. You knew that this would happen, I remind myself. And physical contact is a totally normal thing between people who enjoy each other’s company.
I can’t remember the last time I touched him.
“Avery,” I ask my new friend, “did you see how close Isola Bella is?”
“Yes! I’m really excited about exploring.” She frowns. “Scared, too. I’m not the strongest swimmer.”
“We can go together,” I offer.
“That would be amazing.”
“I was thinking later, maybe after a nap—”
“Jesus, Maya,” Eli chuckles. “We’re here for a week and have nothing planned for most of it. Take today to just sleep off the jet lag. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.” He accepts a suitcase from the driver and heads toward the portico, stepping between two fluted white columns with Tiny in tow.
I would love nothing more than to follow him, but.
“Eli, that’s actually my suitcase,” Avery calls, hurrying after him.
“Shit—okay, why don’t I show you to your room, Avery? Hark, can you take Maya’s? Any of the open rooms is fine.”
Conor doesn’t reply. He does, however, hand the driver a few bills, exchange a few words I don’t understand with him, and grab my bag.
Fine. Fine .
“You speak Italian?” I ask him, chipper. I do not sound like I want to gouge my spleen out and let the exsanguination take me, and I am proud of that.
“Yup.”
“Is that because…Wait, was that nanny you told me about Italian? The one who would hang a ham in the shower?”
“Lisa would have been greatly angered by your insinuation that she’d stoop to eating anything other than prosciutto.”
We step into the marble foyer, and silence falls between us.
“Are ham and prosciutto different?” I ask airily, because I cannot bear the quiet. Come on, Conor, I think. Help me out, here. Let’s set the tone. Cordial strangers for the rest of the week. “Who can even tell them apart—”
“Prosciutto is a type of ham,” he says. Not blunt, but terse.
“Ah.” At least we’re inside. And if there is one thing I can certainly do with a fancy three-story nineteenth-century building, it’s point out the stunning architectural details to make up for the lack of conversation.
“Look at that fresco.
“Can’t believe how elaborate the ceiling is.
“I wonder if that chandelier works?”
It’s annoying, and maybe mortifying, too, how Conor replies only to direct questions. He lets my chatter fill the silence and leads me up the stairs. I follow. Watch his athletic, former-rower shoulders as he effortlessly carries my bag. His thick, dark brown hair, now even more streaked with silver than the last time I saw him. The frown that deepens in his brow, pushing me to blabber just a little harder.
“I die for French doors.
“Would anyone notice if I stole that carpet?
“Is that a library ?”
I’m sure there is staff somewhere on the premises, but we cross paths with no one. Eli must have picked a room on the second floor for Avery, perhaps adjacent to Conor’s. It would certainly explain why Conor took me all the way to the third. The lengths he goes to, just to avoid me, have always been impressive.
“This one okay?” he asks, interrupting my monologue on the hallway’s mosaic floor to point at a door. A silver, ornate skeleton key rests inside the lock. When I nod, he carries my bag inside.
“Thank you so much. Eli was right, I am exhausted. Better take a nap, before I collapse.” It’s a clear invitation to leave. But Conor closes the door behind him, dark eyes suddenly hard.
I die a little.
I die a lot , because he asks: “Are you high?”
“I…” I blink, unsure whether I’m processing the question correctly. “Excuse me?”
“Are you on drugs? Stimulants? Is this a thing you do for international flights?”
“I…Sorry, what?”
“I’m not going to narc on you. But if there is a problem—”
“ No . Why the hell do you think I’m on drugs?”
He steps into me, forcing me to tilt back my neck. He’s always been too tall for comfort—physically and spiritually. “You’re manic. Your pupils are dilated. You’ve been hyper and fidgety since you stepped out of the car, word-vomiting—”
“This is just how I am .”
He laughs. The dark sound fills the room. “Maya.”
There is so much behind that word. Maya, come on . Maya, I know how you are. I know you , Maya.
And yes. He does. He does know me. Which is why he should know better than to think I’d do drugs at my brother’s wedding. “I’m not high. And you could stand to be a little more grateful.”
He frowns. “Grateful to whom?”
“To me . For trying to be easy.”
“Easy?” An amused huff. “You haven’t been easy a second in your life.”
“But I can be.”
“Maya.” That same tone. He shakes his head and looks down at me, like it never even occurred to him that I would want to pretend that things between us are not fraught and uncomfortable and sticky. “Get some sleep. And stop acting like a red dye–guzzling child. That’s not easy .” He turns to leave, not even annoyed enough to be angry. As dismissive of me as he’s always been.
And that’s when I decide that if he’s going to play this game, I’m going to give him difficult . “It was Avery, wasn’t it?”
He freezes, facing away from me. “What?”
“ She was the reason you stopped talking to me.”