Page 4 of Problematic Summer Romance

Chapter 2

I first moved to Europe when I was nearly seventeen, after finishing high school early, driven by the unquenchable urge toget the fuck out of Austin! Out of Texas! Out of the States! Right now!

Get me. The fuck. Out.

It wasn’t the most carefully deliberated decision. I didn’t enroll at the University of Edinburgh because I wanted a prestigious research institution that would provide a rigorous academic environment—even though, stroke of luck, it did. My choice of college came down to three criteria: Did it offer me a spot with financial aid? Was the coursework in English? And: Was its location far enough from the black hole of my worst memories? Scotland simply happened to be the first to meet all of them, and I started packing my bags the second I received my acceptance.

I wasn’t very rational. Then again: I’d challenge any teenager whose parents both unexpectedly died in the span of two years,and who was sent off to live with her virtual stranger of a brother,notto act irrationally.

It was a rough time. Before the illness, before the accident, I’d been my mom’s best friend and Daddy’s little girl. I missed them so much, held inside such mountains of grief, I constantly felt on the brink of choking. Only one thing lent me air: my rage. It reached through my rib cage and pierced little holes in my lungs. It allowed me to function. It kept me alive.

Even at the time, as dizzy and disoriented andyoungas I was, I understood that neither my anger nor the strategies I used to cope were healthy, that I was pushing away the people who loved me, that my constant outbursts would only end up turning me into a wasteland. But being furious was all I had. Therapy helped, but not enough. Same for the meds. So I acted out. I defied my brother, who was just as much at a loss as I was. I said terrible things, reacted impulsively, and did a lot of dumb, risky shit.

I don’t like to think about that time. I don’t like to remember that I once went on a trip with my friends and disappeared off the face of the earth for twenty-four hours, worrying Eli sick. That I ruined his college jersey to retaliate after he yelled at me in front of the neighbors. That I lost my virginity on molly to some nameless guy who insisted that driver’s licenses were a ploy of big government. Plainly, I don’t like who I used to be. I’ve been trying not to use my pain as an excuse: I behaved stupidly, and selfishly, and out of anger, and I regret a lot about my actions from approximately age twelve to…I mightstillbe in my regret era. Certainly, I’mstilltrying to make amends.

And yet, moving to Scotland was a solid decision—one that I would make all over again. Being on my own gave me the space Ineeded, forced me to grow up, and cleared my head in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated. At twenty, when I returned to Austin, I was a better person.

I enrolled at the University of Texas to get my master’s in physics. Moved in with my brother, and found out that not only was he a pretty excellent dude, but he also chronically forgot to unsubscribe from streaming services, thus giving me access to endless entertainment. I reconnected with some of the high school friends I’d ghosted in my desire to make a break for it, including Jade. I picked up ice-skating again, volunteered at the local rink to teach younger kids the basics, learned that I enjoyed restoring old furniture, went to goat yoga at least twice a week. “You built a nice adulthood over the ruins of a shitty adolescence,” my therapist once said, and I enjoy the mental image of it. The idea of life as something I could choose, cultivate day by day, curate and nurture. Being mindful, instead of reactive.

And then, a little less than a year ago, my master’s advisor contacted me and told me about an internship opportunity. Computational physics. Fluid dynamics. Jupiter’s moon Io, and all those deliciously active volcanoes. Right up my alley.

If I accepted, I would have to move to a suburb of Geneva.

“It’s fucking amazing,”Eli said when I told him, with the same smile he got after winning a beer league hockey game. Proud. Exultant. Gratified.“Visiting scientist at CERN? Gets you bragging rights forever, Maya. It’s all downhill from here.”

“Maybe. But the last time I moved so far away, I was basically storming out and slamming the door. So leaving again, feels like…I don’t know.”

His eyebrow rose. He clasped my shoulder with his heavy hand. “It’s not the same at all. You’re leaving to go toward something.Not running away.” And that wasn’twrong. Except, Eli didn’t quite haveallthe information.

And he still doesn’t.

“Good?” the driver asks, pointing at the AC and catching my eyes through the rearview mirror. He takes a turn, and the little tree air freshener swings back and forth.Arbre Magique, it happily proclaims. “More? More cold?”

I shake my head and smile, which earns me my second wink of the day.

Are he and I flirting? Am I about to embark on a steamy affair with a spry septuagenarian (or a particularly rough-looking quinquagenarian)? Are older guys a toxic pattern I’m stuck to? Will I—

“Isn’t this stunning?” Avery asks, and I’m genuinely relieved to be pulled back fromthatwinding road.

“Yeah. This place has no right to be this beautiful.”

We’re almost in Taormina, our final destination, which is only about an hour from the airport. Despite my countless weekend trips all over Europe during undergrad, all fueled by cheap airfare and even cheaper hostels that always seemed just a heartbeat away from breaking into orgies, I’ve never been to southern Italy, or on one of the islands. The farther we move from Catania, the harder my forehead presses against the window. The hills roll past us, blanketed in olive groves and vineyards, so healthy and round and abundant under the late-morning sun, I feel almost taunted. Farmland turns into villages made of white stone, pockets of thick forests and shrubbery, and then…

God, the ocean.

“What was the name of this sea?” I ask Avery, watching the light bounce off the shimmery water. Not the Tyrrhenian. Not the Mediterranean, either. “Ionic?”

“Ionian,” she corrects me. Her tone is graceful—the one of intelligent, well-rounded people who don’t wish to make others feel ignorant or inferior. Because for the past hour, she’s been nothing but graceful. Tiny adores her, too, and she reciprocates: when he kissed her cheek with his sloppy tongue, she didn’t even pull back. I’m going to need this woman to do something objectionable, stat. I need permission to entertain uncharitably mean thoughts about her.I willnotlike you, Avery. Stop being great.

“Oh, right. Is it your first time here?”

She nods. “This is going to let my nerd show more than I’m usually willing to this early in a relationship, but…” She slides a book out of her faux-leather purse. The spine is bumpy, cracked in a well-read kind of way. It’s one of those old-school travel guides people used before we carried the internet in our pockets. I count dozens of tabs curling out of the pages.Taormina, the title says.

My upper lip curls up. “Thatisgrossly nerdy. Please tell me you didn’t annotate it.”

“Oh.” She blinks, taken aback. Her face slips into a confused hurt, then masks up again. “Um, no. Just wrote a handful of comments.”

“Good. Because that would be very…” I pull something out of my backpack. “Cringe.”

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