Page 69 of The Summer Show
“Shh, not so loud. People will hear you.”
He tipped back his head until it was touching the painted steel fence and laughed.
“Okay, so Skype? Let’s swap numbers. What’s yours? I’ll text you so you’ve got my number. Then I’ll take a little tour of the roof and you can tell me what needs to be done. Then I’ll do it. Voila!”
He reeled off his number. I added him to my contacts and fired off a message to him. “Sweetheart, I am not sending you up onto my aunt’s roof to do my job.”
“I’m not worried about heights. I look out windows all the time. I change my own lightbulbs. Those big ladders at Home Depot? I climbed one once. They told me to get back down, but whatever.”
He looked incredulous. “Why were you up there?”
“I wanted to make sure I could. I’d volunteered for Bush Lake’s first and second grade egg drop, and that requires standing on one of those extra tall ladders.”
He shook his head slowly. “I can’t send you up there.”
“Okay.” I stood and brushed the dirt off the backs of my legs and offered him my hand. “Then I’ll come up with you. Consider me your emotional support human. Pretend I’m wearing a vest.”
The edges of his lips rose slightly. “And do what?”
I shrugged. “Keep you company. Make bad jokes. Learn something. Read a book.” I went to shield my eyes with my hand then remembered I was wearing a hat and sunglasses. “Given that the washing line is on the roof, I’m guessing your aunt goes up there all the time. How bad can it be?” I picked up his toolbox and then set it down again because there was no way I could haul that thing up two flights of steps. Instead, I volunteered to carry the thermoses.
He shook his head. “Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Everyone’s biggest cheerleader.”
Is that how he saw me? I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. But he wasn’t wrong. My informal cheerleading days started when Brit was small and Dad was constantly berated by Mom. They both always looked so damn sad. Someone had to lift them up, and that someone else was me.
“Someone has to be,” I told him.
“Who is your cheerleader?”
“Ah. That’s the thing about cheerleaders: not everybody gets one.”
twenty-six
I was drowning him, and I couldn’t seem to make myself stop. How did I justify it to myself?
Like this: This wasn’t going to end badly because it was never going to start.
How deluded was I? Don’t answer. I knew the answer was very.
For the next two mornings I met Nick at his aunt’s house and we went up on her roof together and stayed there until the heat started to make good on its death threats. We ate lunch at his family’s house. He took me swimming. We went our separate ways until it was time for that evening’s filming.
After my third day as a roofer’s sidekick, jester, and emotional support human, on the walk to his family’s house, he said, “I saw your mother.”
My heart stopped. Well, not literally because then I’d be dead. But it felt like the muscle had turned to stone. The idea of my mother tainting Greece—tainting Nick—was abhorrent. She was the poison oak of people, and I didn’t want him to break out in a rash.
“She’s here?” My voice squeaked out.
“No, I saw her online.”
My shoulders slumped from sheer relief. “Next time lead with that.”
“I take it you wouldn’t be happy if she was here.”
“Definitely not.”