Page 5 of The Summer Show
This was the closest I’d been to any man in far too long, and it felt nice to be someone’s pillow for a while—a while in this case being approximately six hours.
Even though I couldn’t go to the restroom, maybe this was an auspicious start to my first international vacation ever. Maybe I’d meet a man here. One without a wife or children who were my students. Someone who liked holding hands in public.
Someone who liked me.
Not Mr. 24C. With those blinding good looks there had to be at least one crazy woman waiting in the shadows, ready to shiv the competition.
But I did enjoy the view.
* * *
The pill wearing off was one of those mixed blessings.
Bad: Mr. 24C slowly peeled his face off my shoulder and returned to the “these skies are full of space spiders” position.
Good: No more bladder the size of a basketball.
Neutral: Athens was heading right for us, and I barely made it back to my seat before the seatbelt signs lit up.
On the subject of using me as a pillow across a couple of oceans, Mr. 24C remained silent. In fact, he didn’t utter a word until we landed and shuffled out into the aisle to join the passenger crush. Now that we were on the ground, he was no longer wearing his shoulders as earrings, and his knuckles were the same tan as the rest of his hands.
Wherever he was going next, I hoped he would find peace there.
Uh-oh. He was looking at me.
“You okay?”
“Huh?” Eloquent, Kathleen. So eloquent.
With a concerned ditch between his brows, Mr. 24C shook his head slightly. “You remind me of sunshine.”
He lifted down my carry-on, gave me a curt nod, then he was gone. Lost in the shuffle with all the other strangers I’d never see again.
three
Ana and Thanos were waiting for me in Athens when I spilled out of customs with my bag crammed full of American treats that were—thankfully—all on the approved list. Although I did spot the customs officer trying to sneak a Reeses into his pocket.
I let him keep it and gave him a second one for company. Probably I was now on some list of shady characters who’d tried to bribe Greek authorities.
Thanos was holding a big sign that was obviously Ana’s work. Lots of glitter, bright colors, and pictures of books. They both looked amazing. Sun-kissed, healthy, happy. Living in Greece—and love—suited my best friend and her husband.
“Glitter?” I said as she went full anaconda on my ribs with her hug.“Really?”
“That’s how much I love you.” She released me with a sigh that said she hadn’t had her fill of squeezing me yet. “I was willing to get crafting herpes.”
“Not just anybody would get crafting herpes for me,” I told her.
Thanos tucked the sign under one arm and grabbed my luggage. “How was your flight?”
“Weirdly, I spent some of it reading aloud.”
“Do you normally read aloud outside of Bush Lake’s library?”
Mr. 24C popped back in my head with his white knuckles and deadly grip. And the sweetness of his face while he cuddled up to my shoulder. But I digress. “Not usually, but there was a passenger …”
My best friend smiled at me as she looped her arm through mine. “You can take the librarian out of the library, but you can’t take the library out of the librarian.”
Heat slammed me as the sliding doors whooshed open. The sun was high and it meant business—the assassination business. Greece’s sun was out to murder me for the crime of being a pasty strawberry blond-headed woman from Oregon, where we lurked in coffee houses all fall, winter, and spring, and waited for a more casual sun to show up June through August. Athens was by the water, but the sun had sucked every speck of moisture out of the air. The second my skin produced sweat my pores were robbed.