Page 95 of Problematic Summer Romance

Itisa cliché. And it fills me with more yearning than I thought I was capable of.

I stop, dizzy.

Conor’s movements slow to a crawl.

“It’s a mindfuck, isn’t it?” he says, low.

“What is?”

“You. This. What could…” What could be. He doesn’t say it, but I know he’s thinking it. If only I weren’t so young. If only he weren’t messed up. If only it could work out.

It can, I want to scream.It will. But he’s down to his shorts, and already saying, “I’m going first. Make sure you stay close.”

“Why?”

“So I can drown you, of course.”

I laugh.

“It should only be a few feet deep, but if there’s a weird current just tap me and—”

“I can swim, Conor.”

“I know. Twenty freestyle, twenty backstroke, ten breaststroke.”

I stare, confused. Then realize what he’s referring to is my morning routine. For the last couple of days. He counted every lap.

I press my trembling lips together. “Did you set an alarm to creep on me?”

“I just wake up. It’s like my body knows where you are, at any given moment.” He smiles, a little wistful. His finger starts on my collarbone, traces my shoulder, descends down the little bulge of my biceps.

I shiver.

“Stay close,” he repeats.

And then he wades in.

It’s a quickswim. Save for a brief stretch right in the central part of the sandbar, it barely qualifies. In no more than a couple of minutes we’re on the island, and Tiny…

Tiny, who’s really trying my patience, barks several times, then disappears behind a dry-stone wall.

“Tiny, wait!” But he doesn’t. “Well, shit.”

The island is something out of a movie, made of large rocks stacked upon each other, winding vertically toward a historic house. Lush and resilient, the trees grow everywhere: on top of and between the boulders, across the uneven stone paths, down the cliff’s slopes, inside hidden alcoves. My travel guide had a few pages about the history of the place, and I know that in the nineteenth century, a conservationist fell in love with it and decided to build a small villa in its center. She didn’t just preserve the vegetation that was already on the island, but also planted nonnative species.

Maybe that’s why it looks just a little out of place, and much less civilized than the rest of the Ionian coast. The spots we’ve visited so far, the restaurants and landmarks, and even Villa Fedra, with its neatly terraced lawns and well-kept groves, are orderly and sophisticated. Isola Bella, on the other hand, is a colorful, tangled jungle, a nature reserve bursting with shrubs and succulents and exotic flowers that could never be found beyond the confines of the sandbar. The island is now owned by the Sicilian government, but even with constant upkeep, everything feels overgrown and a little too cramped. It’s like the flora refuses to stop spreading just to give us mere mortals access to its wonders.

Isola Bella is a pleasure garden, and it cannot be contained.

“God, I missed this place,” Conor says, hushed despite the factthat we’re alone. He had the excellent sense to carry my flip-flops and his Birkenstocks. The rocks on the soil are sharp. Without them, our feet would be torn to shreds.

“Is it possible that it’s not open to visitors?” I was under the impression that we’d be able to walk deep into the island, but I spot a door carved inside the rock, and a ticketing office sign. Pink and purple bougainvillea grow all around its door. Unfortunately, we cannot reach it. Because it’s past a closed iron gate.

Somehow, so is Tiny.

“I think the whole area might be. Most people get here via the cable car,” Conor says, pointing behind us at the gondolas parked all the way up the hill. “Today they don’t seem to be running.”

“Because of the volcano?” Mount Etna’s column of smoke and fire is clearly visible from where we stand. Occasionally, it even growls.

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