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Mel tipped her head back on the patio overlooking the Tuscan vineyard and let out a contented sigh. “I want to stay here forever. Can we do that?” She glanced at Finn and Priya from behind her sunglasses. “Just stay on this patio, surrounded by wine and cheese, for the rest of our lives?”

Priya raised her glass of white wine in a toast. “I am totally with you.”

Mel smiled from behind her sunglasses, face tilted toward the sun as she leaned back in the chair. “Maybe we should become vineyard owners.”

It was late afternoon, the sun hanging low in the blue sky, the vines a vibrant green against the golden hues of the surrounding countryside. The whole place had a contented glow about it—kind of how Finn was feeling after an indulgent meal, having had a wine paired with each of the four courses, and finishing with a cheese board. They’d come away for a week, Mel declaring that a holiday with her two favorite people in the world was necessary.

Priya had brought along her very meh boyfriend—even though no one, including Priya, thought it would last. Finn could barely remember him now—he talked a lot about his family home in the Cotswolds and the fact that he knew how to play polo. What was his name? Ross? Possibly Ross. Or Ron. Not good enough for Priya, Finn and Mel had agreed on that.

Friends for a reason, friends for a season, friends for a lifetime, Priya had replied to that assessment, which hadn’t totally made sense, but they’d gone with it.

“Finn can do up the house,” Mel continued, waving to the villa that stood, majestic, behind them, its weathered stone walls the color of sunbaked earth, softened by age and covered in creeping ivy.

“Sure,” Finn agreed lazily.

“Priya can give the tours of the vineyard. You’ll be good at that,” she added directly to Priya, who nodded, like, of course she would be good at that. “And I can be the accountant.”

Finn scoffed. “You want to move to a Tuscan vineyard to be an accountant?”

“Can’t you just do the jewelry from here?” Priya asked, sweeping aside her long dark hair. “You can work from anywhere, right?”

Mel hesitated. “I suppose I can.” It was like she hadn’t quite accepted her own success yet—like she didn’t think it would last.

“You can make wine earrings,” Priya said, and Finn snorted a laugh at the idea.

“Grape necklaces?” he suggested.

“A nose piercing shaped as a bottle,” Priya declared—and everyone laughed. Priya frowned as she glanced around—most other people had left after the tour, only a few tables staying to eke out the last of the day, like them. “Where is Ross? Didn’t he go to the loo about an hour ago?”

Finn shrugged. “Maybe he’s fallen asleep somewhere.”

“Wouldn’t blame him if he had,” Mel said with a yawn.

“Okay, so Mel is the accountant and on-site jewelry maker,” Priya picked up, distinctly unconcerned about her boyfriend’s whereabouts.

“Oh, so I’ve got two jobs now, do I?”

“ ’Course you do,” Finn said. “You’re a multitasker, Mel, that’s what I love about you.” It had become easy, by then. To say the word “love” to her—to mean it. After years of shying away from any kind of commitment, he’d suddenly found himself fully in it with Mel. It still amazed him, that he’d gotten her, that she was happy to be with him. He’d started to think that maybe other people were wrong—maybe he wasn’t so like his dad, after all.

“Oh yeah?” Mel asked slyly. “What else do you love about me?” It had become sort of a joke between them, but unlike the first time she’d asked, in the middle of the Alps, it didn’t send him cringing with awkwardness and fear.

“Everything,” he declared easily.

She lowered her sunglasses to look at him over the top of them. “It’s impossible to love everything about someone. What about the way I slice the bread unevenly or how I sing the wrong words to the songs in the car, hmm?”

He laughed. “Okay, I love almost everything about you, then.”

She nodded. “Almost everything, I’ll take that.”

“GUYS,” Priya groaned loudly. “Do you have to be so bloody adorable?” Mel grinned at Priya, as Priya pulled them both in toward her, one arm around each of them. “I do love you both, though.”

Finn snorted. “You’re just drunk.”

Priya made an offended sound. “I am not. Admittedly, I am a little bit tipsy, because it is the daytime and we are drinking wine and I think I am also sun drunk, but—”

“Sun drunk?” he asked.

“It’s a thing.”