Page 10 of The Summer Show
“I also need a shower,” I told him. “And anyway, how did you get here so fast?” I smacked my forehead. “Of course. We missed the first ferry because the cabdriver got pretend-lost.”
Confused, Ana tilted her head. “You two know each other?”
“We were on the same flight,” I said.
His gaze flicked back to mine and held steady. There was something in them that hadn’t been there before. He gave a tiny head shake that Ana missed because she was so busy swinging her attention back and forth between us. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but I would swear on any book that Nick Merrick, anxious passenger, didn’t want his sister to know about his issue with aeronautics or the bottle of anti-anxiety meds in his carry-on luggage.
His secret was safe with me. I returned his shake with a nod.
“What?” Ana said.
So much for discretion.
“Did you two …”
“What? No! How? Don’t answer that.” My imagination wouldn’t dare. It was fine hugging its own lane. “My neck’s stiff, that’s all. I need a hot shower and a bucket of cold drinks.”
“Cold drinks we’ve got. Hot shower …”
“Shower’s mine.” Nick ruffled his sister’s hair as he pushed past us and padded toward what I assumed was the bathroom in bare feet and not nearly enough towel. The back was as impressive as the front. Ana slapped at him and missed.
“And my soon-to-be-dead brother just took it.”
Nick paused. It was a blip. A scar in the space-time continuum. The only reason I noticed was because I couldn’t peel my eyes off him.
I was shameless.
Okay, not shameless. There was definitely some shame brewing. This was my best friend’s brother and I was ogling.
Anyway, Nick recovered in the space between blinks. He ducked into the bathroom and the door closed with a rebellious click.
“I’m so sorry,” Ana said, utterly distraught. “I don’t know what’s going on. He’s not supposed to be here. We’ve got another bathroom, but the hot water tank is the size of a kindergartner’s bladder.”
“I can get a hotel.”
“No. Absolutely not. Anyway, I doubt that’s even possible right now. It’s the killer combo of regular summer tourism and Greece’s Top Hoplite probably filming on the island. If you could even get a room, it wouldn’t be a room you’d want. Nick will just have to go back to the family home and suck it up.” A small ditch appeared between her brows. “Normally he loves the coddling. They fuss over him and he eats it up. It’s a Greek son thing. Boys are treated like minor gods from birth.”
My brain spun her words in its centrifuge and what I pulled out was this: Nick Merrick was a bit of a mama’s boy, with all the cockiness that goes with believing the sun shines out of your gluteus maximus.
In Nick’s case, the buttocks of a Greek god cast in marble.
Ye gods, I’d been single for too long.
“Come on,” Ana said, looping her arm through mine. “The very least I can do is ply you with drinks until Buttbrain gets out of the shower. Then you can freshen up and I can evict his tush.”
five
Greece stopped at noon, or so Ana and Thanos told me, for mesimeri—the country’s name for a siesta. Fun fact: mesimeri translated as noon or midday.
Neither of my hosts napped (“We’re too American,” Ana told me) so they usually worked on lesson plans and hung out with their animals while the rest of Greece slept.
Today we had drinks. Thanos whipped up a quartet of frappes and served them at a table in the backyard with an array of Greek desserts. They were familiar, yet not. I knew chocolate, I knew pastry, I knew cream, but not in these shapes and combinations.
After fifteen or so minutes, Nick emerged, still damp, wiggling into a white T-shirt, muscles rippling for attention.
That said, it was the sweatpants that almost killed me.
You know the ones. Grey. Clinging in all the right places.