Page 45 of The Summer Show

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By the time I set off for another morning of exploration, I’d shooed the darkness into the shadows and told it to sit and stay. Every so often, when the intrusive thoughts dared to creep forward, I gave them the side eye and they shrunk back.

I walked along the beaches, dunked in sunscreen and topped off with a hat that cast a big puddle of shade around me, no matter how hard the sun tried to poke its fingers in my eyes. Nobody bothered me because nobody knew me—yet. And by the time our faces leaked out, I’d be gone.

Although news had reached the US, so that was a problem. For all I knew, Mom had my name on a Google alert.

Google.

Holy cannoli, I was going to Google myself, wasn’t I?

This was a first.

Standing in the shadow of a souvenir shop, I plugged my name into the phone’s search engine and waited for the signal to phone home.

Huh. There were a lot of mes out there, including an author and a psychologist, so I added Greece’s Top Hoplite to the search to narrow the results.

And there I was.

Not photos of me from yesterday and photos issued by the show—although there were those, too—but a picture of me standing in the shade of a souvenir shop, Googling myself, while a statue in the window pointed its big wang at me.

Unbelievable. Someone was snapping pictures of me at this very moment.

Keeping my head still, I rolled my eyeballs up and scanned the promenade. Out of all these hundreds of people with phones in their hands, who was responsible for taking my picture?

Everyone was a suspect.

Even the old lady smacking an octopus.

Ask me, it was downright creepy being the center of anyone’s attention just for being on a TV show that hadn’t even aired yet. How did genuinely famous people do it?

Were the other contestants getting this much attention?

The only other contest I knew by name was Nick, so I Googled him, too. Nick Merrick was an investment banker and a photographer. According to social media, he was also a contestant on GTH, and if the live video feeds were to believed, he was presently emerging from Nera’s waters like Aphrodite’s hotter brother. There was no clamshell, and nobody was throwing flowers, but women were fanning themselves.

I had to see this for myself.

Sure enough, I found Nick toweling off on the beach that was just a dozen yards away. Sitting on his t-shirt was a paperback romance novel. The same one I’d read from on the plane.

“You bought the book,” I said, incredulous.

He looked me straight in the eye, completely unashamed that he had purchased a romance novel. “Figured I’d read the parts you skipped over.”

“I’m considering this a win. Turning non-readers into readers is one of my top five favorite things.”

He shook his head and laughed. “And the others?”

“Books in general, my family, friends, and food. You?”

“Don’t have a list.” He continued toweling himself off. I couldn’t help following the towel’s trajectory as it moved over his smooth skin.

“Everyone has things they like.”

“Is that so? All right. Today it’s swimming and listening to you talk about books.”

“I’d love swimming if I could swim.”

If he was shocked it didn’t show. I guess my situation wasn’t all that uncommon, growing up in Oregon. Our beaches were cold, except for the five days of the year when they were blistering hot, and backyard swimming pools were a rarity. Maintain a money pit year round for eight to twelve weeks of use? Forget about it. Parents had to go out of their way to send their kids to swimming lessons. Mom never did. There was no glory in it for her.

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