Page 20 of The Summer You Were Mine

“Yeah, well.” Cris scratched his scruff and adjusted his cap.

“You know I was little.” Ellie shook her head.

Just because she knew the intimate details of his growth spurts didn’t mean that the whole world did.

“Right, right. Okay, well, my dear Dr. Beltrami, I was a rather small child, actually,” he said, launching into an attempt at a British accent.

“You have to act like you don’t know me personally, not like you’ve had a brain injury. Don’t call me ‘doctor.’”

“Yes. Okay. Right. Well, I was a really tiny kid growing up, and in a sport where size is important, I didn’t have a chance. I was a good swimmer. It made more sense to start something I could excel at.”

Ellie looked at him over the top of her sunglasses. “So coming from a family that revolved around water polo for three generations, did you feel pressure to continue with the family legacy?”

Cris looked back at her and blinked. “I didn’t feel pressure.

If I wanted to continue with swimming, I knew my family would support me.

Honestly, I always thought I would end up back in water polo.

After a certain point, it didn’t make sense anymore, of course.

” She continued to stare at him. “Anyway, at that age I wasn’t ready. ”

“Would you say that your behavior reflected this inner turmoil? What did your dad think?”

“My dad wanted me to be a success even when I was only a punk—meaning he strongly encouraged me to pull my head out of my ass by any means necessary.” Cris reached down for the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head.

He shook out the shirt, making his chest muscles jump, and slipped part of it under his hip.

He ran his hands through his hair again.

“Here. Let’s speed this up a bit, okay? I know what you’re getting at.

Yes, I was a pain in the ass when I was a kid, and I gave my parents, especially my mom, a lot of gray hair.

I came from a family where success equated to how good an athlete you were, so my dad was doing the best he could in trying to offer me another road to success. ”

“That’s really insightful,” she said, trying to mask her surprise. Apparently, she failed.

“Don’t sound so shocked. You think I got this far without therapy?

Professional athletes either go one way or another when they retire, and I wanted to be more Phelps than Lochte, you know what I mean?

I have no problem with the fact that I was depressed, but I did not want to let it get away from me.

I had two nights of falling asleep hugging a bottle of Don Julio before I said enough is enough. ”

“So you have a therapist? Like, now?”

“Yes, like now. I know I need to work on stuff, and it’s not going to happen overnight. Which is why all of this is pissing me off to be honest. I’m not Superman, but damn, I’m not trying to be an idiot, either. I’m looking after myself. I have the Calm app and everything. You’d be impressed.”

“Well. Okay, so—” Ellie looked back at her notebook.

Every one of her questions was written for an oblivious crybaby who was going to try to weasel his way out of his own bad decisions.

They were not written for a guy who was self-aware enough to own some mistakes and actually manage his own mental health.

She’d made a judgment call based on what she thought she knew—again.

And she was wrong— again . But somehow, she wasn’t upset with herself for miscalculating. She was relieved.

She looked up to see him watching her with his hands resting on the ends of the oars, and she realized something else.

He wasn’t on the defense. He was comfortable.

He was comfortable with her. Could she play into that and make him come off as a good guy in the interview?

If people heard the way he was talking now, they’d definitely change their minds about him, which was exactly what he and Ellie needed.

But how could she reveal who he was without noticing herself?

“You look a little confused, El. Want to take a break?”

“I am not confused. And I don’t need a break unless you do,” she said.

Cris shook his head. “I’m good,” he said, looking toward the shore. Ellie followed his gaze to the end of the promenade, where carnival rides were being set up and the beginning of a Ferris wheel was taking shape. “Ah! Looks like they are setting up for the Nostra Signora dell’Orto Festival.”

“I forgot it was this month,” she said. Every town in Italy threw an annual party for itself in the name of the most prominent church, but the celebration seemed like a relic from another time.

There would be dishes of pasta eaten at communal tables, music, games, and surprisingly wild thrill rides.

The kids all spent countless hours goofing around there, stuffing themselves with candy and playing Skee-Ball until a mostly nonexistent curfew.

It seemed like back then, the worst thing that could happen was mixing a belly full of cotton candy with a ride on the Megaspin.

“I wonder if they still do concerts. We should check out the schedule,” Cris said, smiling back at Ellie, but then it looked like he caught himself. “I mean—I should see—for myself, I mean—not that you would—”

“I actually meant to ask you when Fuchsia is getting here,” she said, taking advantage of what seemed like the right time to ask the question that had been in the back of her head most of the morning.

“Violet,” he said, his smile fading. He pulled an oar handle up to scratch under his jaw.

“Oh right, Violet.”

“She’s not.”

“Oh,” Ellie said, actively resisting the muscles in her face that were gunning to show shock.

“We are not together.”

“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. I assumed you guys were still going strong.”

“More like going strongly in opposite directions,” he said, pushing the oars away from each other. “I guess that you had your own opposite direction situation a while back. I’m sorry to hear that you broke up with your fiancé. Or should I be? I never actually met him.”

“It’s not a big deal. We weren’t right for each other. Not much else to say.” She shrugged, not seeing the point of getting into something she hardly ever thought about anymore.

“Yeah, we weren’t, either. We weren’t really a couple, to be honest. We were…

something, but not a couple. Violet is still very much in the athlete world and—let me say this in your language.

” He paused and glanced up to the sky, like he was remembering.

“She was unable to empathize with my present because it may have represented a deep fear about her own future. That was like, week two of therapy.”

“Wow. I had no idea. I assumed you’d stood the test of time together.”

“Yeah, not really. She let me know she’d had enough of me in the end. Or maybe she was just projecting her insecurities onto me when she told me the amount I was lifting and eating would make me bust out of my suits by summer.”

“Well, not that it matters, but you look great.”

“Yeah? Thank you.” He smiled.

“I mean, you used to look like a skinless chicken breast.”

“Hey! What’s wrong with skinless chicken breast? I happen to like chicken breasts.” He laughed. “In fact, that’s pretty much all I ate for twenty years, which is why I don’t mind taking a few risks now.”

“Ugh. I get it, but it’s so sad.” Ellie made a face. “I bet you ate them with brown rice.”

“I did.”

“And broccoli. Wait. Steamed broccoli.” She grimaced.

“Hey, come on now, are you some kind of psychic?”

“No. I’m someone who grew up with a dad who was coaching one of the top water polo teams in the country. Same as you. And I was surrounded by athletes. Same as you.”

“And yet, you seemed to escape the contagion mostly unscathed.”

“I don’t know about being unscathed,” she said, putting her head down. “Let’s get back to you, okay?”

“Yeah okay, back to me. All this talk of chicken is making me hungry. You want to head in and get some lunch?”

“Maybe, yes. I haven’t seen my parents all day, and that only makes me worried that my mom is over there holding my dad’s socks hostage or something.”

“Vicious.”

“Yeah. Peg’s got a violent streak. The morning they left LA she probably put his Eggos in the toaster on level ten.”

“No! Ten? Psychopath.”

“Totally,” Ellie said, and caught herself heading into a smile again.

Their conversations were easy, too easy.

She pulled out her phone, remembering that she’d put her ringer on silent when Cris did.

The screen lit up with a stream of notifications—every one of them titled MOM or PAPINO .

Her parents still could not get their heads around the fact that if they used text to reach her and she hadn’t responded, it did not mean that she was somehow more available by WhatsApp, Marco Polo, FaceTime, or Messenger.

Did she really want to open any of these right now?

The better question was whether they needed arbitration or a character witness.

The bubble broken, she sighed and put her phone back in her bag.

“Everything all right over there?” he asked.

“Sure. I just think I need you to row Jaws here back to shore so I can go referee my parents.”

“Are you sure you want to do that?” He smiled, nodding to the horizon behind her. “Corsica is only about three hundred kilometers that way. We can make a break for it.”

“I actually would prefer dealing with them. But only by a little.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, picking up the oars again. “Just remember I offered.”

“I’ll try,” she said, watching him, but she had already forgotten what he’d said.

He leaned back into his first pull, snapping the muscles in his arms, chest, and abdomen into action.

Ellie watched his body fall into the kind of rhythm that was only possible after decades of practiced, coordinated movement.

It had been years since she’d seen him swim, but even out of the water, he was a symphony.

She suddenly wished the boat was bigger.

And that she was at the other end of it.

And maybe on a different boat altogether—in Africa.

It was hard not to be rattled. It had been easier to assume that everything good about him had been erased and that he was a stranger now.

Otherwise, she would have had to miss him.

And missing him had been out of the question.

She watched the shore come closer over Cris’s shoulders and tried not to panic.

This conversation didn’t have to change anything.

In fact, nothing was different—except now she wouldn’t be lying when she told people he had some integrity.

At least I won’t have to lie, she thought, letting her eyes slide down his chest, then to his abdomen as he leaned back to pull the oars.

But why did the truth feel so much harder?