Summer Wine

What do normal people do when they come to Crete for a summer vacation? They probably post photos on I*******m with captions like "Sun, sea, sand #blessed," sip ouzo in the evenings, smash plates, and just soak up that effortless island vibe.

And what am I doing? I’m covering my ears with my hands, counting prime numbers backward in my head, and trying not to lose my absolute mind. I am in a literal marathon to stay sane.

Because my aunt and uncle’s chaotic, noisy, decibel-shattering family dynamic is a total "hell simulation" for an Asperger’s girl like me. Just this morning on the beach, I watched my eight-year-old twin cousins pull their shorts down to their knees and sit their bare butts right on top of the perfectly symmetrical sandcastle I had built with painstaking effort and milimetric calculations, laughing hysterically.

I had been using fine craftsmanship to channel the entire essence of Baroque architecture into that sand, and the result?

My art was violated by the misshapen backsides of twins!

As if sand flying everywhere wasn't enough, my uncle was sitting on the lounge chair right next to me, smacking his lips as he ate watermelon and spitting the seeds into the sea at a precise 45-degree angle.

 It completely paralyzed the left lobe of my brain. He was driving me insane with that slurping sound, sucking on the watermelon with juice dripping from his chin, targeting his seeds like a sniper.

People's obsession with talking loudly and making wild hand gestures, the crowd smelling of sticky sunscreen, skin rubbing against skin...

Welcome to the sensory overload capital of the world. And of course, my sunscreen wasn’t one of those "tear-free" formulas either—it was burning its way right into my sandy eyes!

It was precisely to escape this "watermelon-butt-screaming" triangle that I abandoned myself to the middle of a bright pink inflatable donut covered in strawberry patterns. My swimming skills were on par with a newborn panda cub, and my survival instincts were apparently matching, considering I fell fast asleep on top of the float.

My plan was flawless. I would put on my headphones, turn the noise-canceling mode to the absolute maximum, and rest my brain exactly twenty meters away from the shore, basking in the magnificent balance of gravity and the buoyancy of the water. No one would touch me, no one would yell, and no one would smack their lips next to me.

There was just one tiny detail I failed to calculate: the surface currents of the Aegean Sea. And, of course, just how heavy of a sleeper I am.

When I opened my eyes, the situational assessment was as follows:

My headphones were dead, and that horrible, rhythmic "beep-beep" low battery sound was clawing at my brain. I ripped them off instantly and tossed them into the middle of the float. The shoreline—that noisy beach—wasn't even a tiny speck on the horizon anymore.

I couldn't swim.

Zero.

Mathematically speaking, my ability to stay afloat was barely better than a rock. I was about five seconds away from sinking to the bottom like a potato spinning inside a pork stew. I was so far out that people weren't even visible! Land was nowhere to be seen, captain, and drowning with my pink float wasn't going to be some Titanic-level legend.

Alright, nobody was going to write a song for me or shoot a high-IMDb movie, because a pink, strawberry-patterned kids' float was just too tragically embarrassing.

"Okay, Nova," I told myself. "Don't panic. Panicking raises your heart rate to 140 beats per minute, which accelerates dehydration. Just calculate the geometry of the situation."

The sun was directly overhead, which meant I had been drifting in the open sea inside this pink donut for hours. My skin was probably twenty minutes away from entering first-degree burn territory, my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth from thirst, and worst of all, the massive blue expanse around me had suddenly gone dead silent. Just as I was preparing a dramatic farewell speech along the lines of, “Well, I guess this is it; the cybersecurity world is losing a genius way too early,” I heard it.

Chug-chug-chug-chug...

A deep, powerful, and definitively mechanical sound. When I forced my head around, I saw a massive, snow-white, luxury yacht heading straight toward me, practically screaming, "I am filthy rich and probably evading taxes."

 Compared to the sheer majesty of the yacht, my pink strawberry donut looked like a single piece of chewing gum dropped into the ocean.

The yacht slowed down right in front of me. As the waves rocked my float, I tried to keep my stomach from turning inside out and looked up. Standing on the deck, holding onto those luxurious railings and looking down at me, was a man. Wait, wait... a walking Greek statue!

He looked like a relic from Ancient Rome, except he wasn't made of marble. In fact, he perfectly embodied the Mediterranean—skin darkened from being kissed by the sun, dark brown hair curled by the sea salt, and large, charcoal-colored eyes.

I pushed my oversized, horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of my nose and narrowed my eyes.

Let’s be logical here; even in a moment of panic, my eyes were fully functional. The man looked like a genetic miracle. He was easily around six-foot-three, his shoulder width formed a perfect inverted triangle, and he clearly made wearing tight shirts a life philosophy because his chest muscles were practically shouting, "We are here!" His curly, dark hair was slightly tousled by the Mediterranean breeze. He had a sharp, chiseled face.

But right now, this visual feast meant absolutely nothing to me. Because the man leaned down toward me and extended a massive, imposing hand. His hands were longer than both of my hands combined.

WHAT HAD THEY BEEN FEEDING THIS MAN?

"Hey! Are you okay?" he shouted.

His voice was a deep bass-baritone. Roughly 110 hertz. If I weren't clinging to an inflatable donut for dear life right now, I could have added this voice to the relaxing ASMR videos I listen to before bed. "Give me your hand, I’ll pull you up!"

To be honest, it was a voice that would make me cheat on the spa ladies in those Korean hair-washing videos...

Give him your hand. Let him touch you.

A giant red warning instantly flashed in my mind ACCESS DENIED.

An unknown hand. A foreign skin carrying who knows how many millions of bacteria. Whenever someone touches me, a Windows 95 crash screen pops up in my mind, flashing a blue screen of death. On top of that, the faint hum from the yacht's engine and the radio static were already triggering a new sensory meltdown. Instinctively, I pressed my hands against my chest and curled deeper into the donut.

The man furrowed his brows. This was probably the first time in his life he was trying to rescue a drowning person, only for that person to look at him with sheer terror.

"I’m not going to hurt you,hey!" he said, raising his voice a bit. "Don't be afraid. Just take my hand."

"No!" I shouted, as my filterless inner voice and my logical plane formed a sudden alliance. Though my voice cracked a bit from the sun, it was clear.

"Please do not touch me! The salinity rate of the Aegean Sea at these coordinates is thirty-nine point two percent! If you try to pull me up abruptly with that hand, I might slip out of the float and fall into the sea due to sensory anxiety. I don't know how to swim. Which means while trying to save me, you would actually cause me to drown! If I die in the middle of the sea, my family won't be able to sue you, so you'll just sail away, and no, I do not want to be the main course for the fish today."

The man stared at me, his extended hand left hanging in mid-air. The expression of utter shock on his face was priceless.

This muscle mass, who was probably used to getting everything he wanted in life and having everyone obey his orders, had encountered a psycho in the middle of the ocean for the very first time—one who threw chemical formulas at him and screamed, "Don't touch me!"

"What?" the man said, his tone throwing completely off-kilter by confusion. "Salinity rate? Did salt get into your brain, girl? Take my hand! It would take you more than half a day to swim to shore!"

"Yes." I said, tilting my nose up. "And furthermore, if you don't turn off that yacht's radio and the engine generator immediately, we are going to have a much bigger problem than the salinity rate I am going to start screaming bloody murder any second now. Sir, you are about to roast me like a piece of mince meat!"

The man slowly lowered his hovering hand, fixing his sharp eyes directly onto mine. He was trying to figure me out. "Malakas..." I heard him mutter. Alright, that word had two meanings.

"HEYYY!" I thundered at him, narrowing my eyes.

Perched on my pink float, my pale skin was as red as a sunburned chicken, but I was still refusing to touch his hand. "Did you mean that as 'dude' or did you just call me an idiot? I have a double major degree, and—"

"I’LL FEED YOU TO THE SEAGULLS, SHUT UP ALREADY!" he roared, turning his back on me.

Wonderful. God had sent me a heavily muscled, illegal mafia gangster, and I had managed to drive him crazy too. Now I was left miles away from the shore under the scorching sun, looking like a chicken wing reddening with sea salt!

If I was lucky, the wind would blow me across the Turkish sea or the Ionian Sea straight to the Italian border. That is, if countries didn't mistake my pink float for a declaration of war and start fighting each other, right?

However, it seemed the handsome brute had decided not to leave me to die today after all... Or maybe he was going to strangle me with his own hands so I wouldn't report his illegal, flagless, fugitive yacht. Well, at least they would be hands washed with antibacterial soap.

I hoped...