Page 3 of That Last Summer

“Really?”

“Yes. They almost gave me forty, or fifty, I think.”

Talk about overdoing it...

“Forty or fifty?”

Priscila knew by now what those numbers meant: a very long time at the swimming pool, watching her neighbor swim tirelessly.

“Yeah. There was blood everywhere. It was amazing.”

Showing off—being cocky—was second nature to Alex; it came so easily to him.

“Really? How much? Let me see.”

Priscila moved closer and was instantly overwhelmed by the smell of wound disinfectant. But behind that, she could also smell... Alex. And he smelled so good. A fragrance she couldn’t describe, something flower-like, fresh with a touch of vanilla. If she’d asked her neighbor about it, she’d have received a sharp retort; Alex didn’t like the cologne his mama daubed him with every morning: Bvlgari Petits et Mamans. He wanted to wear his big brother’s perfume, but he didn’t know how to get it.

“There were puddles on the floor and blood was dripping down into the sewer,” Alex said, his face mere inches from hers.

The girl had her quirks, but squeamishness wasn’t one of them. She pulled back, gave him an appreciative look, and kept asking her questions.

“That much?”

“Yes. But I’m fine.”

And that wasn’t a lie because—inexplicably—he felt good.

Priscila walked her neighbor to his classroom and they parted with a sweet “bye-bye.”

Once the girl left, Alex was pensive for a little while. Priscila was a living contradiction. She looked like a fairy-tale princess: sweet, pretty, fragile, perfect. And with those horrendous shoes. But her personality seemed to fight all that. Every time he’d seen her around, Priscila had been behaving like a boy—playing with her brothers, doing things he considered boy things. The five siblings were always drawing attention to themselves with their wild bicycle races, their soccer and basketball matches. But Priscila wasn’t a boy.

And from then on, he couldn’t help but notice the other girls’ shoes—no, there were none like Priscila’s ugly ones. She was out of the ordinary. He also began paying attention to her shoes—he couldn’t help himself—when they saw each other in the school corridors, or around town. And those hairbands and bows she always wore. One day at the swimming pool he noticed the enormous number of flowers her flip-flops had on them and even had to smile. He’d never seen anything like it, but in that moment he was sure about one thing: if there was anyone in the world who could find flip-flops that hideous, it would be Priscila Cabana.

That summer, the summer of 1996, was colored purple—maybe the same color as Alex’s wound—but nothing really changed between them. Not until the next summer.

(Re)discovering the town and its townies

“Okay, okay. Wait. Let’s clarify, please. What do you mean by husband, exactly?” Jaime asks, facing me with his hands on his hips.

“Well, I guess I mean husband in the broad sense of the word: a man. Married. To me.” I answer, counting the keywords on the fingers of my right hand. “But it’s just an official term, so please don’t call him my husband.”

How could he be my husband if we only lived as man and wife for three months and we’ve been separated for almost four years? How could he be my husband after what he did? How could he be my husband if he doesn’t respect me, love me with all his heart and soul? Someone who hurt me the way he did, who forced me to run away to the other side of the world, far from my family, my people...

“Only an official term? Really? I think the word official makes your whole argument fall flat, Pris.”

“Do you know what else falls flat?”

“What?”

What? Who answers what to that? How do I know what? I just wanted to sidetrack him.

“That wasn’t a real question, you didn’t have to play along,” I point out. “I don’t have a witty answer. Well, I don’t have any answer, witty or not.”

“You’re trying to distract me,” he warns, pointing at me. “I’m sorry, but I am immune to your babbling. How long?”

I give up my efforts to evade him. I know what he means by that question.

“Since summer 2012.”