Page 16 of The Summer Show

I curled up on the soft cushions with the ceiling fan above me swatting at the cooler air. Shutters that blocked the heat during the sun’s attack hours were now thrown wide open to allow the sea breeze to whisk away pockets of stale heat that had managed to hide in the shadows.

Outside, the donkeys made occasional chuffing sounds. The goats muttered. Murder Goose issued low death threats. The world felt completely still, as if Nera alone had the ability to fully sleep while other places never managed anything deeper than a doze.

I drifted, warm and happy. Well, not entirely happy. Not the soul-deep kind of joy where you’re untouchable. The scar on my psyche would never allow that. When a parent wounds you, the scar isn’t a fixed point in time. It’s a silk thread that weaves itself around your days, months, years, tightening in some places (holidays, birthdays, first kisses), loosening in others. It’s always there. Like when you get a long hair stuck in your undercarriage.

But I was content, and that was more or less the same thing.

At some point the air shifted, the way it does when something is plowing silently through an open space. My skin prickled. I forced my ears to hone in on a sound that wasn’t there. Probably this was the same unease gazelles and springboks experienced in the African savannah when a lioness was coiled tightly in the scrub, waiting for the perfect moment to snatch her lobster out of the tank.

Logic stepped in to ease my mind.

Outside, the animals weren’t freaking out, so I knew this wasn’t an intruder situation. And given that I was on a couch and not in a bed, I knew the monster under the bed hadn’t finally decided to grab me. Also, I had a sheet for protection.

Against my better judgement, I opened my eyes a fraction to see Nick Merrick standing beside the couch, looking down at me in a way that suggested he didn’t know what to do about me.

He wasn’t angry. More … bewildered.

Instead of berating me for taking the couch or trying to wake me up, he bent down and scooped me up, sheet and all, lifting me as though I were a large kitten. He cradled me against his wide expanse of muscled chest and set off for Ana and Thanos’s spare bedroom.

Did I flail and fight?

I did not.

And I didn’t snuggle up to him, but I didn’t not snuggle. I’m not proud to admit that I pretended to be asleep. Why? When you’re single for a prolonged period, when your only real experience with touch on a day-to-day basis becomes hugs from small children, something inside you withers and shrinks. What fills that previously warm spot inside you is cold and damp and insidious. By carrying me close to his body, Nick reactivated the part of me that remembered the warmth and intimacy of touch that wasn’t sticky. Every fiber of my being wanted to enjoy this for however long it lasted.

About sixty seconds from beginning to end, as it turned out.

But it was enough to reestablish a soul-deep sense of longing.

Not for Nick, but for someone of my own to hug.

Okay, and maybe for Nick.

* * *

The next morning his luggage was gone, and so was he.

Guilt stabbed my chest wall.

Ana checked her text messages for answers and waved her phone in the air. “He found a place to stay.”

“Where?” Thanos, big buff occasional gym teacher, was cradling an indignant rooster in his arms. The rooster seemed happy about the situation.

“Doesn’t say. Nick is a fount of no information whatsoever these days.”

Ana gave me a quick hug and lifted the rooster out of her husband’s arms. She gently tossed him—the rooster, not the husband—outside.

“School time,” she announced. “Today you get a reprieve, but you have to come to class for at least one day.”

“Yay!” I said. “What’s my job?”

“Talk to kids.” Her nose wrinkled up. “Well, tweens. They’re like kids, they even look like kids, but they know everything.”

“That’s perfect, because I know nothing.”

* * *

After some extensive petting the animals—picture me with hearts for eyes—I slathered my whole body with sunscreen and set off for the promenade in my walking sandals, shorts, and a long floppy T-shirt that almost touched the hem of my shorts. Ana and Thanos would be finished for the day at 1:15 PM and we were all invited for lunch at Yiayia and Proyiayia’s house. Until then, I was free to wander the island, get lost, and never be heard from again.

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