Page 6 of Problematic Summer Romance

“And we never even knew it.”

“What kind of neglectful parents don’t even plant a citrus grove in their backyard?” I reach for the tree at my left, potted in a colorful ceramic vase, and stroke the tips of my fingers against a shiny leaf. When I push it aside, I discover a lemon, plump and juicy and a little pornographic. Its tang perfumes the air surrounding us, mixing with sea brine and something that reminds me of…thyme. The scrub half climbing down the cliff, as if trying to get away from us, is a spontaneously growing thyme bush. I’m inlove. “Watch out, Eli. Rue might leave you for this lemon.”

“Too late. The lemon and I already eloped.”

I smile, and he slides an arm around my shoulder to squeeze me into him. We don’t usually hug much, my brother and I, but I’m feeling out of sorts for all kinds of reasons, and this is comforting. “I’mhappy you guys decided to do this here. Now, I know I gasped very obnoxiously, back when you told me that you weren’t just going to stand in line for six hours at the Travis County Clerk’s office and exchange plastic bottle rings. But this actually feels like…”

“Like more than an afterthought?” I nod as he draws back. “Like I actually took time off to celebrate and publicly acknowledge the fact that I’m in love with Rue?”

“Ugh, keep it in your pants, please.” But when he tries for a noogie, I can’t help laughing. “Besides, it doesn’t sound like you took off work.”

“Oh,Idid. It’s Hark who’s congenitally unable to not check his email. Which is okay, since watching him pick fights is a leisure pursuit of mine.”

I avert my eyes. “Where’s everyone else? I thought Avery and I would be the last ones to get here.”

“You were. Most people are catching up on sleep. Someone went to the city center, and Rue’s taking a walk down at the beach with Tisha.”

I glance at the cliff. Still steep, and half-covered in moss and shrubbery. “Did they jump?”

He points at a spot slightly farther down the coast, where the slope is gentler. Someone installed a stone staircase there, nestled in the dense, burnt orange soil. It twists and turns multiple times before terminating in what looks like a private beach. “Oh, nice.” I let my eyes follow the shoreline, and that’s when I spot it. Right there in the bay, just a few hundred feet into the ocean, there is a small, rocky islet covered in lush vegetation.

“Holy shit. I didn’t think we’d be so close. Is that—?”

Eli nods. “Isola Bella.”

When I first read about it, my only thought was that the localscould have put a bit more of their backs into the naming process. But now that I’m in its presence, it occurs to me that simplicity might have its merits. Because…it’s certainly beautiful. And itisan island—at least, I think so. A round, jagged mound of green and gray, completely surrounded by sea. The only exception is a thin strip of pebbly sand that connects it to the mainland.

“Is it high tide? Right now, I mean.”

Eli shrugs. “Dunno. Why?”

“Low,” a deep voice says from behind us. “The sandbar was underwater this morning.”

Well. I guess I put this off as long as I could.

I exhale, paste a serene expression to my face, and turn around. “Hey, Conor,” I say cheerfully. Which is…a choice, given that nearly everyone else in the world calls him Hark.

Old habits, though.

“Maya,” he says.

NotHi, Maya. OrMaya, hey. Clearly,hedoes not feel the need to pepper his emails with overenthusiastic punctuation. Conor barely even smiles, though I refuse to take that personally. It’s just how he is—sharky, impatient, sometimes mean. Maybe it comes from the emotionally dystopian family that raised him. Maybe it’s a deliberate business strategy, being at once intenseandscaryandangry as the true path to embody the wealth-portfolio guy. I always figured the suits did lots of heavy lifting, but he’s wearing whiskey-colored pants and a simple white T-shirt, and I still could never mistake him for a software developer or a philosophy professor.

Honestly, he’snotmy type. Too overworked. Too incapable of letting go. Too single-minded. Too much of a dickhead.

And for the last three years of my life, I’ve been in love with him.

I’ve always been stubborn, but this is twisted. Sclerotic. Toxic.My brain tripped on him when I was twenty, and here I am. Still. Despite all that has happened since.

All those teachers telling my brother how smart I was, and here I am. So fuckingdumb.

“How’s school?” he asks. He has a knack for this—asking innocent questions that’ll put me in my place. Which, in his head, is at the kiddy pool. Far away from the adults. Fromhim.

“Great.” I smile, pointedly ignoring the familiar way Avery’s hand rests on the back of his upper arm.You knew that this would happen,I remind myself.And physical contact is a totally normal thing between people who enjoy each other’s company.

I can’t remember the last time I touched him.

“Avery,” I ask my new friend, “did you see how close Isola Bella is?”

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