Page 66 of Tastes Like Summer

I tiptoe over to the couch before taking a seat on the coffee table in front of him. It’s nearly impossible not to get distracted by the muscles of his chest, nearly impossible not to remember how his skin feels beneath my fingertips, but I manage to keep it together.

“I’m not a numbers guy—pretty sure I failed math in school—but I find the game… stimulating.” We both chortle like children when he wiggles his brows, taking care not to raise our voices enough to wake the girls.

“You have such a dirty mind.” I shake my head, a grin spreading across my face.

“I meant mentally stimulating. You’re clearly the one with the dirty mind if you understood something different.” His smile is mischievous, and it makes my heart do that pirouette thing it loves to do around him lately.

He reaches out to hold my hand, staring down at it. “I was really worried about you today.”

I sigh, squeezing his hand in mine. “I know. But you came for me. You came and got me right before the power went out, and things got worse.”

His brows pull together, and he shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, sure, yes, I was worried about your and the girls’ physical wellbeing. But it wasn’t that. Your voice over the phone…” He sighs. “That’s what I was worried about. You seemed so scared.”

There’s a heavy pause between us as I look out the window at the pouring rain and think of what headspace I was in when it all went down.

“I was.”

“You said you don’t do well in storms?”

I inhale deeply, gathering my strength so that I can tell him this story, hoping he doesn’t think I’m being ridiculous. “It may sound silly without context, but heavy rain like this is a bit terrifying to me. When I was a kid, I went to something kind of traumatic—very traumatic, actually—and it sort of scarred me. I still remember every detail.”

“What happened?” Michael’s voice is cautious, which I appreciate it. Nothing in his expression reads impatience or insistence. All he wants is for me to come to him, to open up, on my time. And it makes me want to do it even more.

“I don’t know if you even remember this, or whether they even aired it on the news in the US. But when I was four years old, over the course of almost two weeks, the state where we lived in in Venezuela was affected by torrential rain. This all led to incredibly dangerous flash floods which ended up killing tens of thousands of people as well of the disappearance of whole towns. We managed to make it out alive—just barely—but…” I shake my head, squeezing my eyes shut. I don’t remember much about being four years old, but there’s no way I could ever forget that day. “I remember my dad pushing me onto this aid truck, and my parents and I scrambling in and—” The currents of mud destroying everything in their path, homes disappearing into the dark waters, entire families displaced and crying…

“Are you serious?”

I open my eyes and nod. “The Tragedy of Vargas went down as the deadliest mudslide ever recorded. It led to a complete infrastructure collapse, and took the state years to recover. It’s why my family ended up moving to the capital. We didn’t have clothes or a house or—” I feel myself choke on my words, the stinging in my eyes threatening tears. The tremble in my voice is clear, and I hate it. I hate that I can’t be stronger than this. It happened almost three decades ago in an entirely different country, and yet my body still remembers.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He brings my hands to his lips and presses a gentle kiss to my knuckles. “You’re safe now.”

“It’s dumb. It happened so long ago and I was so young. But I remember.”

“Of course you remember. Traumatic is an understatement. You were a kid and your whole life got turned upside down.”

I laugh once, watery. “It seems that’s always been the theme in my life, then.”

He raises a brow at me, displeased. “Don’t say that.”

“It’s not all bad. You turned my life upside down—but in a good way.”

His smile is so buoyant, I swear it could light up the whole house in this rainy darkness.

“Thank you for not thinking it’s dumb.”

Michael frowns as he laces his fingers with mine. “Why would I?”

“I don’t know. In the past, not everyone has been as understanding as you. Some people think it’s just me being dramatic and that it shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Who the hell would—” His expression shifts from confusion to anger. “Are you telling me all those years you were with your ex, he never once understood that living through a natural disaster could’ve had long-term effects over your psyche and he just, what, didn’t take you seriously?”

I shrug, embraced.

“I want to fucking punch him out.”

My laugh is soft. “It wouldn’t be worth the effort.”

Michael drags the back of his fingers slowly down my cheek, down my neck, before landing it on my exposed knee. “Your fears are valid. But I get the feeling that there’s more to it now. Something more? And it wasn’t just that you were scared of the storm, but of being alone, too. I think… you’re lonely.”