“I’m not letting you go by yourself,” I said.
“Well, you can’t stop me.” She stood and straightened her sweatshirt. “Iamgoing on this trip, Harrison.”
I tipped my head back and groaned. There was no way I was getting on that plane, knowing no one from our group would be waiting for us when we landed. But there was also no way I was letting Lila out of my sight.
“I’m not just going to leave you in a foreign country by yourself.”
She arched a brow and tilted her head toward the waiting plane. “Then you really only have one option.”
NINE
Lila
We satside by side on a half-empty shuttle bus, our knees brushing with every jolt. Charlie had forwarded us the old Santorini itinerary from the travel agency, and when we landed, we’d expected a private ride to be there to take us to our accommodations. But after twenty minutes waiting at ground transportation, no one came. Harrison insisted that it seemed a little strange, but I had already researched the bus options and found us the quickest way into town. We were staying in the cliffside city of Fira, which was on the western edge of Santorini.
Our flight in had been quiet.
Harrison had finally, very begrudgingly, agreed to join me. You would have thought I was asking him to help clean farm stalls for the week or plan a family funeral, not jet-set off to a Greek island. I think it helped my case that boarding began almost immediately after I had insisted on going, giving him quite literally seconds to make a decision.
Now he sat next to me, all big and looming, with a permanent glower on his face.
Outside the window, a rocky landscape whizzed by, dotted with scrubby vegetation and whitewashed buildings with blueshutters. As the bus climbed higher, I caught a glimpse of the sparkling dark blue water in the distance.
I elbowed Harrison,
“Look, the water!”
He leaned over me to look for two seconds before saying, “Yep,” and setting his dark eyes straight ahead again. If this was going to be his attitude the entire time, I almost wished he hadn’t insisted on going with me.
I turned away from him to lean my head against the windowsill. My eyes drooped ever so slightly. Despite not wanting to miss a thing, the exceedingly long travel day and the whole trip switch dilemma had caught up with me. My whole body both ached with exhaustion and burned with anticipation simultaneously.
The thought of missing Charlie’s bachelorette trip did sting, but I’d already promised her we’d make up for it another time. It wasn’t like this was the only chance we’d ever get to travel together. The fact that Skylar and Ben were there did spark the tiniest, microscopic pang of jealousy. Irrational, I knew, but it was hard to watch your best friend grow this whole new community of people that didn’t include you. I mean sure, they were always great and welcoming toward me, but soon they’d be making plans for only the four of them, leaving me with empty weekends. A bitter, illogical part of me wondered if having a significant other would somehow turn those hypothetical plans into six instead of four.
And after this trip? They’d have all these core memories together—inside jokes I’d never be a part of, even though they’d try to tell me the story over dinner. They’d laugh and reminisce, all the while telling me, “You just had to be there.”
And what did I have? Harrison. The thought of us making any inside jokes on this trip was so ludicrous it was laughable.
“I can’t wait to see the caldera,” I said, my forehead now fully pressed against the glass.
“The what?” Harrison asked.
His bulking frame pressed against mine in our cramped seats was my only hint that this was reality and not some bizarre fever dream. Because Greece was a dream; a bucket list item of mine, in fact. And now I was finally here, but with a virtual stranger. Actually, worse than a stranger. An acquaintance who barely even tolerated me.
After this shocking change of events, who knew where our truce stood? He didn’t seem pleased about the new circumstances, but at least he wasn’t being openly hostile. Perhaps a little inadvertently hostile, but that seemed to just be his personality.
Regardless, Harrison Porter would not ruin a single second of this trip for me. If he thought I was too bubbly on a normal day, he was in for a treat. Vacation Lila was a whole different breed. I wasn’t about to dim any bit of my glimmer just so he could look cool—or whatever the hell his motive was for always being so salty and disagreeable.
“The caldera,” I repeated brightly. “It’s basically this giant circle depression that forms after a volcanic eruption. I read about it in a travel guide. Santorini is the only inhabited caldera in the world. That’s why some people call it Atlantis.”
He cocked his head, studying me, but didn’t say anything.
“And the food,” I said, practically moaning. “I can’t wait for the food.”
Harrison remained silent and resumed staring straight ahead, not even interested in the views rushing by. Unable to take his weird silence anymore, I elbowed him in the ribs.
“Aren’t you even the tiniest bit excited to be here?”
“Not really.” He said it so easily. Smacking me in the face would have stung less. My face must have looked all kinds ofwounded, because Harrison’s brow knit together. He pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Shit.”
