Chapter 3: A Fig, a Dare and a Barefoot Walk Home

The big fig tree behind the chandler's shop is older than anyone's opinion of it. It leans over a wall with the loose confidence of something that has never been told no, and in July its fruit drops onto the stones and goes warm and sticky and slightly obscene. Locals walk around the mess with their noses lifted. She, of course, stopped dead in the middle of it and looked up like a woman who'd found a cathedral.

I should have known better than to say what I said. I told her you could tell a person's character by how they eat a fig, and she raised one eyebrow and asked me to demonstrate. So I picked one, split it with my thumbs, and ate it the way my grandmother taught me: slowly, no hurry, a little too much juice on purpose. She watched with a face I couldn't read and then said that was very instructive, and that she'd do it better.

She did not do it better. She did it differently, which was worse for my composure. She took the fig from my hand instead of picking her own, and her fingers were warm against my knuckles for exactly one second longer than the transaction required. Then she dared me to walk home barefoot, all the way down the stepped lane, on stones still hot from the day. The dare had a smile hidden inside it, like a seed.

So we took off our sandals. The lane was warm under my soles, rough in places, smooth where a thousand years of feet had polished it. Somewhere below us a ferry horn sounded, low and lazy, and the whole harbor seemed to exhale. We walked slowly, shoulders almost touching, saying nothing important. I remember the smell of jasmine over a gate and the sound of her sandals swinging from one hand, tapping against her thigh.

At the wall between our gardens she stopped. The streetlamp had come on, humming, and moths were throwing themselves at it with great conviction. She said it had been a long time since she'd walked anywhere without a destination, and that she hadn't expected to like it. Then she looked past me, toward the dark edge of the headland, and asked quietly what exactly lived out at the cove, because the fishermen had gone strangely silent when she'd mentioned it that morning.

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