Big Greek Baby Secret Read online

  So, he’d shut me in the car, and I’d taken the early morning ferry to Athens, gotten on my flight, and disembarked in Wisconsin, walking back into my ordinary life. The one without Dimitri.

  My cellphone rang, startling me. Not only because I’d been deep in thought about Dimitri and his body and his hands on my skin, but also because I didn’t even think my phone had any battery left. I’d barely used it in Greece and I couldn’t remember whether I’d charged it once in the last few days.

  I picked it up and saw my best friend Katie’s face on the screen.

  “Are you back?” she asked, yelling into the phone.

  “Yes, I am, and I’m still not deaf, so no need to shout.”

  She laughed. “Sorry, the kids are fighting, and I can’t hear myself think.”

  Katie had two kids—a six-year-old son named Jonah and a three-year-old daughter named Maizie. Now that she mentioned it, I could hear them screaming in the background.

  “So, you made it back okay? You weren’t trapped in that horrible Greek paradise because of the strike?” Katie had been more than a little jealous when I’d told her I was going on a free international vacation.

  “Yes, I’m home perfectly safe.”

  There was a pause on her end of the line. “Are you okay?”

  Why had I even answered the phone? For as long as I could remember, Katie had been able to read my thoughts. She always knew when I was bummed or when I was keeping a secret from her. Usually, I didn’t mind because I loved talking to her. But now, it was an inconvenient superpower.

  I didn’t want to talk about Dimitri. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

  “I’m fine,” I lied.

  And I kept saying that for two months.

  My sunburn from days spent lounging on the beach faded, and I found myself bogged down in work. Diane was confused when I didn’t charge any food to the company account—except for that single wrap and iced tea—so I’d explained that someone had bought me my meals. That had led to an ongoing joke about my “vacation boyfriend,” which nearly broke me every time someone brought it up.

  “Maxine is probably itching to go to another international conference,” Diane said one day in the break room. When my cheeks flushed, she patted me on the back. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, sweetie. You have to live it up while you’re away. What happens on foreign soil, stays on foreign soil.”

  She winked at me, and something inside of me snapped.

  I realized I shouldn’t be living for the hope that they’d send me back to Barkas to make up the canceled conference. And I couldn’t stay at a job for the sole reason of going on an international trip once every few years.

  In the two months since I’d been back from Greece, every day had been endless drudgery. I thought of Dimitri constantly, wishing I could be with him. Wishing that he would be there at the end of the day. But he wouldn’t be. My life wouldn’t miraculously transform into my dreams; I had to make them come true.

  So, I quit.

  “You what?” Diane asked, mouth hanging open. Her red lipstick was congealed in the corners of her mouth and her stiff blond hair was frizzy on the ends from the rainstorm that morning.

  “I quit,” I said again, quietly. I didn’t scream it or jump up on my desk and shout it to the rafters. It was a quiet declaration. One I didn’t realize I’d been thinking about for weeks until I said it.

  “Do you have something else lined up? Is it about money? I can talk to corporate, you know.”

  “It’s not about money, Diane,” I said, packing up the meager belongings spread throughout my cubicle.

  I’d been in the gray box for years, yet I’d only added a photo of myself with my parents, one of me with Katie, and a pug mug—a coffee mug in the shape of a pug’s head, naturally—full of pens. I’d never tried to make this space a home. It had always been an impermanent passing space, and now, it was time to leave. Finally.

  I didn’t begin to panic until Katie took me out for a celebratory dinner later.

  “You did it,” she squealed, clapping her hands together and using the umbrella from her cocktail to salute me. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “I have no money,” I said, eyes wide, staring down at my hands. “Barely any savings. No back-up plan.”

  “No!” Katie exclaimed, grabbing my cheeks. “This is a good thing. Don’t think yourself out of it.”

  “I have to call Diane. Get my job back.”

  I began to dig in my purse for my phone. She would take me back, right? I could explain it away as a moment of temporary insanity. But would she want an insane person working for her? Probably not.

  “Maxine!”

  I blinked and looked at my friend. Her dark, curly hair was a mess on top of her head, but her skin was smooth and perfectly blushed on the apples of her cheeks. She looked like a doll.

  “You hated that job,” she said. “You’ve hated it for years. Let it go.”

  “But—”

  Katie shook her head and then my shoulders. “No. You were never going to open a bed and breakfast while you were working there.”

  “But I don’t have the money to open one,” I said.

  She shrugged. “So? You want to open one near the ocean, so move to the ocean. Move to Florida or California or somewhere up in the Northeast. Get a crappy job there that pays the bills while you save up. That would be better than what you were doing here.”

  I took a deep breath and released my anxieties as I exhaled. “You’re right,” I said.

  “I know.” She smiled at me and then lightly punched my shoulder. “You’re going to miss me when you move.”

  I began looking at apartments online later that night. Within the week, I zeroed in on southern California. The endless sunshine would sure beat the cold of a Wisconsin winter. I could see myself near the beach, wearing tie-dye shirts and flip-flops and rocking sun-kissed, beachy waves.

  I also saw Dimitri standing next to me, tan and handsome. I saw us on the same beaches we wandered in Barkas, except this time, my bed and breakfast was up and running near the loukoumades stand.

  I tried not to dwell on those images too much. They weren’t realistic, and I needed to move on. I had to.

  After a few weeks of unemployment, my meager savings were stretching a lot farther than I thought they would. Katie kept bringing me leftover casseroles her kids wouldn’t eat. She claimed it was so the food wouldn’t go to waste, but I knew it was because she’d caught a peek at my bank account over my shoulder and was worried about me.

  One night, Katie got a babysitter for the kids and brought me a turkey and spaghetti casserole for dinner. We were sitting at my small kitchen table eating from the large pan with spoons when she slammed her hand down on the table and pointed at me, eyes narrowed.

  “This is pathetic.”

  I reared back, shocked and a little offended. “What? What did I do?”

  “Nothing, and that’s the point,” Katie said. She took another bite and then sighed. “You can’t spend all your time hanging out with a single mom. You’re young and unencumbered. You need to find a man.”

  “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I’m planning to move soon. What’s the point in finding a man, now?”

  “I didn’t say find a relationship. I said, ‘find a man.’ It can be a fling. You’ve never had one and you should. They can be fun.”

  A fling. Like the one I’d had with Dimitri in Barkas. The one I still hadn’t told Katie about.

  I shook my head. “No way. I need to focus on me right now.”

  “Having a fling would be focusing on yourself,” she said. “Flings are all about satisfying your carnal needs and boosting your confidence. Come out with me tomorrow night. My mom can watch the kids and we can go to a club.”

  I was about to argue that I didn’t have money for drinks, but Katie had already thought of that.

  “Follow my lead, and you won’t need to spend a dime,” she said, winking at me.

  Katie wasn’t th
e type to let things go, so I did the smart thing and gave in. She’d take me out, I’d play along, and then it would be a few months before she brought it up again. And, by then, there was a good chance I’d be in California. I’d narrowed my apartment search down to a few complexes in Pacific Beach, so it was beginning to feel like the move might actually happen.

  I wore a black dress that barely came to my mid-thighs. I’d tried to back out and change last-minute, but Katie wouldn’t let me.

  “But it’s too tight. It’s making me feel nauseated,” I said, massaging my stomach, trying to help it settle down.

  “That’s how you know it’s just tight enough,” Katie said.

  The music at the club made my head pound and the colored lights coming from the sound booth made my eyes water. I knew it was uncool to go to a bar and order a water, but my mouth felt dry and I thought I was going to be sick. It was probably nerves. I hadn’t been out at a club in a long time.

  The bartender handed me my water with a heavy side dish of condescension. I still dropped a dollar in the tip cup, though, because I couldn’t stand the idea of the stranger being annoyed with me. I took a drink, and when I turned around, Katie was headed towards me, two men trailing behind her.

  They looked to be barely twenty-one, probably community college students out for a night on the town. I wondered whether Katie had told them she was a mom. Probably not. It was a sad but true fact that her children scared most men away.

  “Maxine, meet Greg and Dimitri,” she said, pointing to a tall redhead with dark freckles and a black-haired artist-type.

  My heart flipped at his name. I didn’t want to think about Dimitri right now, even though that wasn’t his real name. And I didn’t want to think about how I didn’t know his real name, and how I’d never see him again, and how I’d missed him every day for the last ten weeks.

  I tried to move closer to Greg and claim him, but Katie wrapped her arm around his and winked at me, nodding towards Dimitri.

  “Hi, Dimitri,” I said, trying to pretend that saying the name aloud didn’t crack my heart in two.

  “Nice to meet you. Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

  I asked for a gin and tonic, and within a minute, Dimitri was standing in front of me, glass extended.

  “Katie said you just got back from Greece not too long ago?”

  I nodded. “It has been a few months, but yeah, I travelled there recently.”

  “Wow, that must have been incredible. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  His elbow rested on the bar, but his entire body was angled towards me, outright declaring his interest—whereas I was folded in on myself, one hand clutching my drink, the other arm wrapped around my stomach, trying to pressure it into behaving. My insides sloshed and roiled like I’d been on a ship at sea.

  “It was a fun trip,” I said. Flashes of kayaking on the ocean, taking a donkey up to the top of a mountain, eating loukoumades until my fingers were dripping with honey and cinnamon… The thought of loukoumades sent my stomach into another spasm and I leaned forward slightly.

  Dimitri must have taken this as a sign of my interest because he moved a step closer to me, leaving me even less room to catch my breath. I looked over at Katie, wanting to shoot her a “save me” stare, but she was completely invested in whatever story Greg was telling and didn’t notice me.

  “Do you travel often?” Dimitri asked. And then, before I could respond, he continued. “Because I’ve always loved traveling. I went on a few mission trips when I was in high school and they were life-changing. It’s so eye-opening to experience another culture. I don’t know about you, but every time I came back to America, I just noticed how selfish we all are. We just consume and pollute.”

  Had all of my energy not been focused on keeping the contents of my stomach inside of my stomach, I would have smirked at how different this Dimitri was from the one I’d met in Greece, the one who wasn’t really Dimitri. This Dimitri had asked me a question, but didn’t even wait for my response before launching into his own tirade. He liked the sound of his own voice more than a good conversation.

  So, all of those things considered, I didn’t feel completely mortified when I leaned over and threw up all over his shoes.

  “Did you have too much to drink?” Katie asked me on the drive home, having rushed to my aid the moment she saw what was happening.

  “I had one drink. Actually, I had one sip of one drink.”

  “Could it be food poisoning? Have you eaten anything sketchy lately?”

  I shook my head. “No. And wouldn’t food poisoning last longer? I feel perfectly fine, now.”

  She hummed.

  “What?” I asked. Katie’s mouth was curled to the side and I could tell she was thinking.

  “Nothing,” she said, and then shrugged. “It’s just that it…kind of sounds like morning sickness.”

  “Like, pregnancy morning sickness?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Yeah. It comes on suddenly and then you feel fine after. Usually, anyway. Sometimes, there can be remaining nausea. It depends.”

  I shook my head. Even though my sex life hadn’t been particularly active of late, I was still taking the pill. “No way. Besides, it’s not even morning.”

  “Morning sickness is actually a misnomer,” Katie said. “It can strike at any time of day. With Jonah, I hurled every day at two in the afternoon.”

  “Wow, what a lovely image,” I said, laughing. “But no, it’s probably just a stomach bug or something.”

  “So, you’ve had a period recently, then?” she asked, apparently unwilling to let the subject drop so easily.

  I opened my mouth to say that of course I had, but then, I paused. I began counting back in my head, trying to remember the last time I’d bought tampons. Katie was saying something, but I couldn’t hear her over the blood pounding in my ears. I hadn’t had a period in over two months.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Oh my God, what?” Katie practically screamed, her head snapping back and forth between me and the road.

  Suddenly, the nausea returned, but this time, the cause was pure and unadulterated terror. “Pull into that drug store.”

  Katie did as I said and when we parked, she grabbed my arm to keep me from getting out of the car. “I’ll get it. You stay here.”

  Was I pregnant? No, I couldn’t be. But then, why hadn’t I had a period? Did traveling internationally mess up my cycle? Was that a thing that could happen? I doubted it, but then, in that moment, it was my only hope.

  If I was pregnant, it had to be Dimitri’s. Or whatever his name actually was.

  I dropped my head into my hands and bit back a panicked sob. I didn’t even know his name. I could be pregnant with the baby of a man I didn’t even know. I was a walking after-school special.

  I could feel myself moving towards hyperventilation, so I focused on taking deep, calming breaths. In and out. In and out.

  I was still taking them when Katie got back in the car with a small box wrapped in a brown plastic bag.

  I was still taking them when I collected my pee in a plastic cup at my apartment.

  I was still taking them while I sat on the edge of the bathtub, waiting three minutes for the test to make its final decision.

  And I was still taking them when I flipped the test over and read my fate.

  Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

  In.

  Pink plus sign.

  And out.

  Chapter 12

  Andreas

  I had so much work to catch up on after she left. Days of emails and phone calls to return. A mountain of drudge-work to get back on schedule, but I couldn’t keep my mind off of Maxine. I knew which flight she was on, so I tracked it using the airline’s website. I followed its slow yet steady path further and further away from me. Every mile felt like a tiny knife to the heart.

  We’d spent an amazing few days together, and waking up with her next to me in bed had felt like a dream. Sh
e’d looked gorgeous in the morning sun, and I’d wanted to live in that moment forever. We couldn’t have, though. She’d had to leave. And it was best that she had. If she’d stayed any longer, I never would have been able to let her go.

  When she’d asked me to tell her my real name, I’d wanted to so badly, but I’d also known how much worse it would hurt when she left. I hadn’t let anyone into my world for years. Maxine had come the closest, but our relationship wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. And if I’d let her all the way in and she’d left, I’d known it would break me.

  So, I’d kissed her and given her as much of myself as I could without being self-destructive, and then, I’d said goodbye.

  But as I watched her plane travel halfway across the world, I wondered whether I still hadn’t given away too much. Whether I hadn’t sent her away with my heart.

  Petra kept telling me to find her. “You are the richest man in the world,” she said one morning, as I was sat at the table eating a breakfast of oatmeal and fresh fruit. “Buy her a plane ticket to come see you. Buy her a plane. You can make it work.”

  “I’m not the richest man in the world, Petra,” I said.

  “You are close enough. Go find this American girl and stop mopping around. You are annoying without her.”

  Apparently, my friends thought so, as well. I didn’t have many friends, and we didn’t get together often, but I’d become close with a group of people I worked out with once a week on the beach. After our workouts, we’d go across the street to get drinks and eat enough appetizers to completely undo all the hard work we’d just done on the sand.

  A couple months after Maxine’s departure, Amy, the unofficial leader of the group, brought her sister along to one of our beach sessions. It seemed like she was just there to work out at first, but it didn’t take long for me to realize she was there for me. Amy was trying to set me up.