Page 76 of The Summer Show

Something in him was bruised, maybe even fractured. And it had something to do with heights. No—probably everything to do with them. Maybe he was hiding his pain inside a compartment, but there was no denying it was spilling out and causing him grief.

We were not unalike, Nick and me. Both wounded in our own ways.

Of course I didn’t say that aloud. My instinct was to make all the right “There, there. It’s going to be okay” sounds. Perfectly fine for a small child who had tripped in the playground, but for a grown man they were pointless platitudes. He was obviously not okay and wouldn’t be unless he worked through this. With the hand that wasn’t rubbing comforting circles on his back, I located my phone and opened the book I was reading.

I started to read aloud to him. This was no simple reading. For five pages I did voices for all the characters. I put on a performance. And when I hit the cliffhanger at the chapter’s end, Nick finally spoke.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“Cliffhangers?”

“Rooftops.”

I set my phone aside and wrapped both my arms around him. Why? Because it felt like the right thing to do. A hug was the biggest comfort I could offer.

When in doubt, imitate a snuggly blanket.

“So don’t.”

His breath came out shaky. “Got to make money somehow, and this is all I know how to do. I’ve been doing it since I was out of school.”

He leaned back and stuck his legs out, the side effect of which was my hug falling to pieces. There was a moment of loss, acute, cold, unexpectedly harsh. Maybe he experienced the same feeling, I don’t know, but what I did know was that he immediately scooped me up and sat me on his lap so that my back was pressed up against his chest and his arms were curled around me.

I couldn’t recall a time when I felt so snug. I felt other things, too. Like the wall of muscle hard against my back and the way everything about Nick turned me on.

We sat like that for a good while, neither of us saying anything, both of us enjoying the companionship. Meanwhile, my emotions lashed back and forth. I was trying so hard to keep them under control, but it was a hopeless cause. Every day, my heart inched closer to the point where losing it to Nick was inevitable.

“Did something happen?”

Against the side of my head, his jaw pulsed as he swallowed. “Yeah.”

“Want to talk about it?”

No reply. His jaw kept pulsing. I got the feeling he was grinding his teeth while his mind raced at warp speed.

“We could do this with puppets, if you like. Of course, I don’t have any puppets handy, but” —I scanned the clothes line for helpful teaching aids— “it just so happens that my ability to improvise is amazing. I spy with my little eye, two socks on the washing line.”

“That’s not how you play I Spy.”

“Isn’t it? We’ll discuss the flexibility of those rules later. In the meantime …” I left his lap and helped myself to the two socks. They were white sport socks, the crew kind, and they didn’t have faces or hair, but that was okay. I could imagine just about anything.

Now that I had secured our puppets, I returned to Nick and sat cross-legged between his feet. Sitting on his lap, facing him, would be too much for this heart of mine. I had to at least try to keep an even keel.

“Hand,” I said, gesturing at him in a “gimme” motion.

“Are you serious?”

“Buddy, I am so serious right now. Hand over your hand so you can be puppeted.”

“That’s not a word. Is it?”

“As a librarian, I’m a keeper of words, and I say puppeted is now a real word.”

With great reluctance, and an ample amount of suspicion, he held out his hand. I bunched up one sock and slid it down over his wrist, then I did the same with my own sock-slash-puppet.

“From the clues in our conversations, Mr. Merrick, I have begun to suspect you were not always afraid of heights, and that something happened involving a higher-than-sane elevation,” my puppet said.

He blinked at me. “What do I do?”