Page 97 of Problematic Summer Romance

“He’s a him, I think,” I tell Conor. “Aren’t you, handsome?”

That last part is a bald-faced lie—so obvious, Conor raises an amused eyebrow.

“Oh, shut up,” I say, biting back a smile. So maybe he’s not the platonic ideal of canine beauty. His underbite might interfere with mastication, and one of his eyes is larger than the other. He’s at once skeletal and stocky, too wide for his length and comically tiny-headed. His floppy red ears, though, are a spectacle. And: “Some of us value temperament over looks,” I tell Conor after the dog stops hiding behind Tiny, approaches me to cautiously sniff my hand, and then licks it.

Conor snorts. But when the dog lets him scratch the top of his head, he reluctantly concedes that, “He might be growing on me.”

“Tiny. Look at you, making local friends.”

“Takes after you,” he mutters, and I need a moment to figure out that he’s talking about Not Hans.

“You think he just did it to make us jealous?”

I feel the weight of Conor’s eyes on me, his confusion fizzling in the air, and it sinks in that he really doesn’t get it. He truly believes that I would walk away and sleep with someone else.You have to know, I want to tell him.You have to know that I’ve been in love with you for three years longer than it was wise.

But this is Conor’s M.O.: he pushes me away because he fundamentally doesn’t believe that I know what I want. In his head, I’m still a twenty-year-old with shiny-object syndrome. One who cannot be trusted to make her own decisions.

Depressing, that’s what it is.

“Think he’s still a puppy?” he asks.

“Maybe?”

“Wonder how Tiny found him.”

“My guidebook said that there are lots of stray animals here in Sicily. Maybe they met around the villa and led each other here?”

He nods, thoughtful. “We need to take him to a vet.”

“Lucrezia will know who.”

The dog wags his tail with excitement—of meeting new people, of being free, of warm hands petting him. But when thunder roars through the cave, he and Tiny both duck for cover under a protuberance jutting out of the rock wall, curling into each other.

Conor sighs. “We should wait for the rain to be over before we go back. And we might need to carry the puppy.”

“Is your phone back at the Lambretta?”

He nods. “Yours?”

“I lost track of it a while ago. In my room, maybe?”

“Isn’t your generation supposed to be attached to phones?”

“Yes. And yours is, too. You weren’t born during the Great Depression, Conor, you’re a millennial. Can you stop acting like everyone you knew growing up died of measles?” Then I notice his smile. Ikeepfalling for this shit. “Fuck off,” I mumble, turning to inspect the cave.

It’s stunning. A large chamber of all-encompassing blue. The walls are rugged and not excessively high, but the rounded ceiling gives the place a cathedral-like appearance. At the mouth of the grotto, rain ripples the surface of the sea. Ribbonlike streams of light and rainwater filter through the cracks in the rock, a pleasant, soothing rhythm, interrupted only by the occasional birdsong as the island’s inhabitants take shelter.

But where we are, the deep belly of the cave, is undisturbed. Cocoon-like, intimate. The stone gently slopes into the sea, and I scoot down to let my feet soak. The fish quickly swim away, confused by the intrusion, and I cannot help laughing. We may be stuck here, but…

“I’m not mad about it,” I say.

When Conor gives me a quizzical look, I step into the water. It starts shallow, but deepens more dramatically than I expected. Soon, my feet cannot touch. I dip my head, then push back my flattened curls and wash off the dirt, and sweat, and the dread of having misplaced my brother’s dog.

I don’t expect Conor to join me, or to come as close as he does. And yet, here we are. Studying each other as he watches me stay afloat, the indigo-tinted shadows playing on the bones of his face.

“I can’t believe it,” I tell him.

“What?”

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