Page 93 of Rhodes

All week I've been counting sight lines, tracking who's on the stairs, keeping a foot of respectable air between us in every photo. Now the whole estate belongs to the two of us and a car that hasn't come. I put my hand flat against her back while she drinks her coffee. Nobody is here to see it.

"Can you believe Cain left us to lock up?” She asks. "Us. The two least responsible people he knows."

"Speak for yourself."

"Says the man who is on his family's payroll and probably couldn't tell me what half the people in those meetings are talking about."

I take a drink instead of defending myself. She’s smiling, and I let her have it. The joke lands close enough to something real that I don't bother correcting her.

She turns back toward the water, and I look at her instead. Her wet hair, my shirt hanging past her hips, and both hands wrapped around her coffee while the afternoon light catches the side of her face make me smile.

Every time she shifts her weight on that railing, I think about her riding me last night and how badly I want her on me now. Tomorrow night she'll be down the hall from me in New Orleans, and none of this will be mine to touch.

"How did we accumulate this much stuff to take back?" She asks. "It was a week. I have two bags even though I came with one."

"I'm not sure how to answer that. I'm going back with exactly the same amount of stuff that I came with."

"Well, maybe you're just a better packer."

"I've been accused of worse."

She laughs, and knocks her shoulder into mine.

Gravel crunches down the drive. The car is here. Tallulah looks toward the sound.

"That's us."

"Yep," I say but don't move. She heads in and after I can't wait any longer without it being weird, I follow her in. We gather the bags without talking about it.

I close the villa behind us and turn the key. Tallulah waits beside the car, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

In a few hours, we'll be on a plane home. For now, though, we're still in Italy, so when she reaches for my hand, I take it.

At the airport she has both boarding passes in her phone before I've found mine. She holds the tray at security while I dump my watch and belt, then hands me my things back in the order I need them.

"You're going to get us flagged," I tell her. "Nobody moves through security this efficiently without a nefarious reason."

"The reason is I want a pretzel before we have to board and you're slow."

At the gate, she takes the seat by the outlet and points me to the one beside it, never asking which one I want.

I get the aisle on the plane too, because she gave it to me at check-in without saying so, and I only figured it out when we boarded and she scooted past me to the middle like that was always the arrangement.

The meal is an insult. The chicken is gray with a roll and a square of cake. She peels the foil back and frowns.

"Trade you my cake for your roll."

"You had a pretzel. I need my roll."

"You could have gotten a pretzel." She's already moved the cake onto my tray, so I give her the roll. I don't really like the rolls, anyway.

The lights dim over the water. Somewhere past Ireland she stops fighting it and tips sideways, her head finding my shoulder like it has a standing reservation there. I go still. If I shift, she'll wake, and if she wakes she'll sit up, and I am not ready to lose the weight of her yet. I pull the thin blanket up over her arm, and she burrows in.

I watch the little plane crawl across the map. I'm going to miss this when it's gone.

She stirs when the cabin's gone dark and quiet.

"You know the deal," she murmurs, eyes still closed, head still resting on my shoulder. "Carriage turns back into a pumpkin when we land."