Summer in the City

by Alex Aster

It’s interesting how love colors things I would normally hate into my absolute favorite shade.

Summer is supposed to be warm and rejuvenating and inviting, but there is nothing warm and rejuvenating and inviting about me. I hold grudges like security blankets.

“Espresso martini,” she says. “Always.”

There are moments in life, I think, that make you grateful you didn’t just stay in your room.

He looks up at me. Smiles. He rises to his feet the way gentlemen do in Jane Austen adaptations whenever a woman walks into the room.

This is the last time for this, before I leave and our lives diverge again. What a gift that they converged at all, if only just for the summer.