Page 66 of The Summer Show

“You could fake food poisoning.”

His laugh rumbled through me. “I could, but that wouldn’t get me out of it. My aunts were the types of mothers who sent their kids outside to puke when they were sick. They’re only maternal when someone is watching—and barely even then.” He stretched out his legs. “If I hadn’t seen them sweat, I’d say they were more reptile than mammal.”

His words struck me. It was as though he was describing my mother and her brand of parenting. Over the years I’d struggled to dredge up a single memory—just one would suffice—of Mom showing Brit or me affection. We weren’t tucked in and kissed at night. When we needed reassurance it was Dad’s lap we gravitated towards, never hers, as though we instinctively knew she was not a sanctuary.

Tears gathered behind my eyeballs, hot and spicy.

Technically that was not how physiology worked, but that was how it felt in that moment.

I excused myself for a moment to retreat to the bathroom, where I located a tissue to dab my eyes and issue death threats to my tear ducts. Now was not the time, I told them, and this definitely wasn’t the place.

On the way back out, I spotted it from across the room.

The books. Sitting atop his bedside table was a stack of novels, with a bookmark jutting neatly out the topmost book. Fantasy books, with romance. The titles were all familiar to me.

I was gobsmacked.

“You bought them all?”

Nick followed my gaze. “They came highly recommended from someone whose opinion I value.”

“You bought the books,” I whispered.

“Yeah. I did.”

I sat back down. Sipped the beer. Wrestled the growing affection for Nick back into its designated container.

But it was no good. My feelings had outgrown the box I was trying to hide them in.

twenty-five

Because on some level I was a glutton for punishment, the next morning I snuck out of Ana and Thanos’s house before the sun had time to pull on its boxing gloves. If Nick had spent the night on the couch again, he had left before sun-up. I touched the couch, but the fabric was cool.

Was I prepared? Yes, yes I was. And I had a new appreciation for folk medicine because the onion had banished my bruises. According to the bathroom mirror, I was me again.

In the kitchen I located two thermoses and filled them with brewed coffee, then I fixed the coffeepot so Ana and Thanos would have plenty of hot, fresh coffee when they rolled out of bed. Not knowing what a person would wear to be a roofer or a roofer’s sidekick for the day, I decided on jean shorts, a fitted t-shirt that covered my shoulders so they wouldn’t fry, and the boots I had squeezed into my luggage at the last minute in case of a hiking emergency.

Climbing onto a roof was sort of like hiking. One could make that argument. One, in this case, being me.

Honk.

My feet stopped. I knew a goose when I heard one, and even without turning around, I knew which bird was stalking me.

Murder Goose.

And here I was without food to throw.

I pivoted. “I’m fresh out of food.”

The look in her eyes said she would settle for a human sacrifice in lieu of food.

“Can I buy my freedom with juggling?”

Honk.

No food. No potatoes to juggle. One homicidal goose between me and the gate. What to do?

How fast could a goose run?