Free Lucky Break by J. Minter

mouth.
    There it was: this cheese had the exact same smell as Alex’s gym bag did after a lacrosse tournament. I was eating my cheating ex-boyfriend’s sweaty gym bag. Could it get any lower than this?
    Marco’s face fell. “She hates it,” he murmured.
    â€œNo!” I insisted, making myself swallow the lump of cheese. “It’s wonderful. Very unique. I just … I was thinking about something else.”
    â€œShe was thinking about shopping, maybe,” my mom prompted, tapping her watch. “About how maybe Flan would like to see another side of Capri before all the stores close? Hint, hint.”
    I nodded my agreement, and after my fatherbought half the cheese in Marco’s shop, we stepped back out to the street, ready to hit the stores.
    Mom was right about the shopping scene in Capri. For such a tiny little island, they had a lot of big-name designers lining the streets. One stop into LouisVuitton, Fendi, and Ferragamo later, and even I felt shopped out.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Flan?” my mom asked. “Do you think the Fendi blazer you bought is the wrong color?”
    â€œNo,” I insisted. “I love it. I don’t know, maybe the jet lag is still affecting me. I just got really tired.”
    â€œTake a load off.” My dad gestured to the large courtyard full of café tables. “I’ll order us a few lemon sodas and we’ll people-watch your strength back.”
    It sounded like a great idea, and it did feel really great to sit down after all the running around we’d been doing. The people-watching was hilarious and fun too. Italians were certainly in love with their hot pinks and electric blues. But what stood out more was that they were also in love with each other. Literally. Everyone around us was a couple: young and old, short and tall, fabulously dressed and even more fabulously dressed. And every single one of them was making out. It was like I’d suddenly ended up in the capital of PDA-ville, and I was all alone. I closed my eyes and started rubbing my temples.
    What was my problem today? I just couldn’t get Alex out of my head. I remembered what SBB had mentioned the other day about Bianca, the Serbian breakup expert, and it started to make sense why people had to resort to such drastic measures. Was I going to be one of them?
    I shuddered. No. This was only the beginning of my trip. I still had a whole week to make progress. All I needed was a good night’s sleep, a can-do attitude, and a better day tomorrow.

Chapter 10
MOTHER KNOWS BEST
    When the warm kiss of the Amalfi sunrise woke me up the next morning, my broken heart wasn’t the first thing that popped into my head. Okay, it was the second, and the third, and the fourth—but at least I was making
some
progress!
    On my bedside table, someone had left another gorgeous breakfast platter. Was it bad that I was getting used to this kind of special treatment? I was just about to pop a perfectly fuzzy apricot in my mouth when I heard the doorbell ring.
    At first, I figured one of my parents would answer it, but after a minute, the doorbell was followed by a rough knock and the words, “
una casella da FedEx
for Signora Flan Flood.”
    The forgotten apricot plummeted from my fingers as I raced to pull on my robe. What if it was something from Alex? As I dashed to the front door of our villa,I tried not to envision what he might have included in his “forgive me” care package. Black-and-white cookies from Pick a Bagel? That new Magnetic Fields CD we’d listened to at his apartment? A piece of jewelry from Bird, my favorite boutique in Brooklyn? No—it’d be better to be surprised.
    But when I opened the door to the muscular Italian deliveryman, all he had in his hand was a tiny brown box. It seemed too tiny to make up for Alex’s
huge
mistake. I gulped as I reached to sign the delivery slip. They
did
say good things came in small