Big Greek Baby Secret Page 8

  I’d been reveling all morning in the attention he’d paid in planning our day out, but maybe these were standing reservations he kept in case he happened to meet a lonely tourist on the beach. But, once again, did that really matter? I liked Dimitri, but I’d spent a good deal of brain power reminding myself that we weren’t in a relationship. I would leave Barkas and Dimitri behind, so what did it matter to me if I was just one woman amongst many who had spent days like this with him?

  The thought sent a stab of jealousy through me, but I did my best to push it down as we left the restaurant and walked a few blocks down to a local market.

  As we meandered through the stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables, hand-made pottery, and flowy dresses and linen shirts, Dimitri walked behind me, keeping his head down and his voice low. It was a stark change from the way he’d behaved the day before. Now that we were surrounded by people, it was like he had become a different person entirely.

  And he wasn’t the only one acting strangely. Many of the vendors working the stalls seemed to pay us extra attention. One man was in the middle of selling a wooden flute to a young boy and his mother, but he darted away from them to welcome us and shake hands with Dimitri. Another woman smiled warmly at me but seemed shocked when Dimitri walked up behind me. I mean, I knew he was handsome, but her reaction seemed a little over the top.

  The people in the shopping crowd who were obviously locals watched us as we walked by. Women batted their eyelashes, men tightened their jaws, and young kids, too young to show much discretion, actively pointed and whispered.

  I wanted desperately to ask Dimitri about it, but I also didn’t want to seem paranoid. I’d also been convinced that the woman in the hat shop was flirting with him, when in reality, she was probably just being a good saleswoman. However, when we made it through the market and a woman on the pier whispered something in her husband’s ear and he looked at us and said, “that’s him?” I knew for sure that something strange was going on.

  Dimitri either didn’t hear the man or was doing a very good impersonation of an oblivious person. Though he had been quiet all afternoon, he didn’t act like he’d noticed people behaving strangely around us. But I wasn’t sure whether that was because he truly didn’t notice it, or because he was used to it.

  Either way, I was tired of keeping my thoughts to myself.

  We reached the end of the pier and Dimitri leaned forward, his forearms resting against the metal rail. I stood next to him, my back towards the ocean, facing him.

  “Why does everyone seem to notice you?” I asked, relieved for the words to be out of my head.

  He placed his hands beneath his chin and pouted in an exaggerated model pose. “It’s the downside of being so pretty.”

  I laughed and then lightly hit his shoulder. “I’m serious, Dimitri. Now that we’re away from the more touristy spots, I can’t help but notice that everyone on the island is staring at us.”

  Dimitri stared out over the water, looking contemplative, and then he turned to me, a smile stretched across his face. “Did I tell you that I learned to sail on this island?”

  The dramatic change in topic nearly gave me whiplash, but his excitement made it hard to call him out on it. Plus, after spending several days with him and still knowing next to nothing about his life, I was basically a starving dog desperate for any scrap of information.

  “No, but you did mention you know how to sail,” I said.

  He turned and looked back out over the water. “I was fourteen years old, and my mom was petrified at the idea of me taking a boat out by myself, but my dad thought it would make me a man. To remind you, this was only a few years removed from the half-naked broken arm incident, so I still had a bit of growing up to do.”

  I chuckled at the memory of the story and nodded for him to continue.

  “So, we took a tiny charter plane from the mainland and took my dad’s sailboat out onto the water. He taught me how to read the water and navigate using the sky, and he also let me sip from my own bottle of wine, which he’d nabbed from the wine cellar when my mom wasn’t looking. When we got so far out we couldn’t even see the shoreline anymore, we dropped anchor and floated around in the sailboat. My dad was a large man, with a barrel chest and white chest hair, but when he was doing cannonballs off the side of the boat, you would have thought he was a teenager.”

  “That seems like a great memory,” I said, secretly imagining Dimitri in thirty years’ time. His jawline would soften and the hair at his temples would be peppered with gray.

  “It was,” he said softly. “He taught me to swim and sail in these waters. I think it’s why I always come back here. All my best times were on this island.”

  “Do you still sail?” I asked.

  I found myself wanting to go out on the water with him. I knew absolutely nothing about sailboats, but watching him pull on ropes and move sails and lick his finger and raise it into the air to find the wind would probably send me into a heat flash.

  Suddenly, the dreamy expression in his eyes turned stormy. His mouth turned down and he shook his head. “No, not anymore.”

  It was clear to me that there was a story behind his reaction, but I didn’t want to pry. He hadn’t answered my question about why so many people on the island seemed to notice and avoid us, but he had opened up a little more, and in the moment, that seemed like enough.

  Chapter 9

  Andreas

  Part of me wanted to tell Maxine about why I no longer sailed, but another part of me wanted to keep it locked away forever. It didn’t matter anymore. The past was in the past. Though, was it? I still dreamed about Victoria driving away from me, tears streaming down her face. Sometimes, I would follow after her and apologize. Other times, I did the same thing I’d done the night she’d left. I opened a bottle of brandy, poured myself a glass, and drank until sleep took me.

  I expected Maxine to push, to pry. That seemed to be her way. But surprisingly, she didn’t. She just nodded and then took a long, deep sigh, grabbing my attention, though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t look at her until I could calm the emotion in my features.

  “I’m trying not to be afraid of things anymore,” she said, declaring it suddenly.

  “Oh, yeah?” I didn’t quite understand why she’d said it, but I could tell she was proud.

  She turned to me, smiling. “Yeah. You have so many great stories, and if this weekend is any proof, your life is full of adventures and experiences. I want to live like that.”

  I felt bad for somehow fooling her into thinking my life was perfect. It was far from it, actually.

  “I haven’t experienced anything, though,” she went on. “I love my family and friends, and a part of my heart will always be in Wisconsin, but that’s not where I want to stay. I’ve felt stifled there for years, and I’m tired of being afraid to leave.” She turned to me, her blue eyes blazing with life and passion. “For so long, I’ve thought leaving would be a betrayal of who I am, but I see now that I’m betraying myself by staying there. As long as I’m there, I won’t be pursuing my dreams.”

  “You figured out a lot on this vacation,” I noted.

  “I did,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

  I shook my head. Maxine kept insisting that I was responsible for her exploring Greece and her epiphany about her life back home, but I knew it wasn’t true.

  “I was just along for the ride,” I said, shrugging. “You did everything yourself. I never forced you to do anything, just gave you a gentle nudge. You were the one who had to be brave. And you were. You are so, so brave, Maxine,” I said, realizing then how much I meant it.

  She laughed and waved me away. “I’m definitely not.”

  “No, you are,” I said, insistent. “You are willing to admit that you are unhappy, which most people never do. And you know what you want from life. So many people are afraid to admit what they want because they are afraid they may never get it, but you are open to disappointment, to failure. That takes
incredible bravery. I think you are one of the bravest, most beautiful women I’ve ever met. Inside and out.”

  I’d been speaking my mind so freely that it took me a few seconds to realize what I’d said. But when I did, I looked down at Maxine and saw tears in the corners of her eyes. I worried I’d said something wrong, but then she smiled and lunged towards me, wrapping her arms around my waist.

  Her face was buried into my chest, so her voice was muffled when she said, “That is the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  I laughed and rubbed her back. “It’s all true.”

  We stayed like that for a while, embracing while the afternoon sun drew its path downward through the sky, turning the water yellow and orange and then inky blue.

  I offered to take her out to a restaurant, but she insisted she wanted street food. I took her to my favorite gyro truck and we stood on the corner of the busy main street, eating the beautifully tender pork wrapped in flatbread, dripping tzatziki down our chins and onto the concrete.

  Afterwards, we indulged in lemon frozen yogurt and ate while we traveled back across the island towards the resort, walking off our dinner. I thought several times about hailing a cab, but I wasn’t ready for the day to be over.

  The houses built into the rocks were lighting up as the night grew darker, reflecting down onto the water and making the island look like a fairy village. Maxine took in the scene around us with wide, eager eyes. She seemed to notice everything, which I looked at as a blessing and a curse.

  On one hand, being with her made me feel like a kid again. She had a contagious excitement for life and experiences and sugar. But, bit by bit, she also seemed to be catching on to my deception. As we walked, I considered telling her the whole truth, but it felt like it would only spoil our time together. She had one more day on the island, and then, she would be gone. What was the point in ruining her opinion of me, now? I liked the way she looked at me. The way she thought of me. She viewed me as this wild Greek adventurer, and I liked that idea of me. I wished it was true. And, at least in Maxine’s mind, it would be.

  When we got to the front entrance of the resort, I wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye yet, so I offered to walk her back to her room. We both understood the implications of this, and we were both playing the “will they, won’t they?” game in our minds.

  Maxine was beautiful and smart and kind. She made me feel like the man I wanted to be, rather than the flawed man I was. But I’d been lying to her. If I went into her room and stayed the night, it wouldn’t be as myself. It would be as Dimitri. Could I live with that?

  We were standing in front of her door before I knew it, and Maxine couldn’t seem to look me in the eyes. Her gaze flicked between the door to her room and the pool, skipping over me entirely.

  “Today was great,” she finally said, pushing the toe of her sandal into the concrete slab in front of her room. “I had a lot of fun.”

  “Even when your arms almost fell off from kayaking?” I asked.

  She laughed and finally met my eyes. “Even then.”

  “Wow, that’s saying something.”

  She nodded in agreement. “It really is.”

  We fell into a heavy silence, then. I knew we were standing at the precipice of something, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, her fingers trailing a line down her neck, and I ached to feel the same sensitive spot of skin with my own fingers.

  I’d been towing the line all day, touching her back, placing my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into my side. Then, she’d hugged me on the pier, burying her face against my chest, and I’d felt like finally, after two days, I could breathe. Now, my lungs felt cemented into place. I couldn’t suck in air or push it out. I was in a perfect stasis.

  “Do you have any plans tomorrow?” I asked finally. A voice in the back of my head reminded me about all of the work I’d already put off for too long. I hadn’t taken a day off in over six months, let alone two in a row. My employees would probably think I’d been kidnapped. But it was Maxine’s last day on the island. Would I really be able to sit in my office and get any work done, knowing she was wandering around the island? “I don’t want to intrude and steal your vacation. I know we’ve already spent two days together—”

  “No plans,” she said, practically yelling it. We both laughed at her sudden outburst, and then, she smiled. “I don’t have any plans. Did you have something in mind?”

  I thought about it and then shook my head. “No, nothing at all. But I’m sure we can figure something out.”

  Maxine took a small step towards me, closing the distance between us, filling the air with the smell of sunscreen and strawberry shampoo and the sweetness of lemon frozen yogurt on her breath. “I’m sure we can.”

  I followed her lead and took another step until we were toe to toe. It would have been easy to lean down and wrap my arms around her waist. It would have felt so good, and I wanted to. I wanted to go into her room, pull the blinds, and never leave.

  But I also saw how complicated things were. Maybe, if I didn’t like her so much, it would be easier. She could be a quick fling, someone to pass the time with. But I had a strong feeling that I wouldn’t be able to forget her that easily. I bent my head forward and I could tell she was tilting hers back. It was a welcoming, and I wanted nothing more than to accept it.

  Then, her eyes captured mine and I couldn’t break away—couldn’t look anywhere but at the oceans hidden behind her pupils. They were beautiful and captivating and I could have spent my entire life getting lost in them.

  Then, a thought floated to the surface. An unmanned sailboat battered by storms, lost at sea for months.

  I stepped back quickly, as though I’d just realized my hand was dangling over an open flame.

  “I’ll meet you here in the morning,” I said. “What time will you be ready?”

  Maxine looked around, confused, and I could hear it in her voice when she answered, “Eight will work fine.”

  I ignored it, though, and tried to pretend everything was fine. “Perfect. I’ll see you then.”

  I could feel her eyes on my back as I turned away, and all I could think was that I’d just done her a huge favor.

  Chapter 10

  Maxine

  My last day on Barkas passed like the two before—only, this time, my departure hung over us like a dark, angry cloud, full of rain and ready to burst at any moment. Dimitri picked me up at eight on the nose, and unlike the days before, he didn’t whisk me off to some secret location. Instead, we walked past the resort pool and straight down to the ocean, mingling amongst the tourists and children screaming as their mothers lathered them in sunscreen.

  We used towels from the resort bathroom and laid back on them, putting our arms over our eyes to block the sun, and talked. We talked as though we’d never get another chance—which, in fact, we likely wouldn’t. I had an early flight out the next morning, so this was our last day. Dimitri had packed fresh fruit and bread. I asked whether Petra had packed the meal, and he insisted that he was perfectly capable of slicing fruit.

  “I’m actually a wonderful cook,” he said, pushing his chin out as if I’d offended him.

  “You’ve never offered to cook for me,” I said, rolling over and squinting at him.

  “It’s because I don’t like to cook. It feels like a waste of time when I could walk a few blocks away and eat some of the most amazing food prepared by professionals.”

  “Some people can’t afford to eat out for every meal,” I said, pointing to myself. “We peasants have to cook for ourselves every day.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m treating you while you’re here,” he said. “You can go back to Wisconsin and have some guy who thinks he knows how to cook make you dinner anytime. You can’t eat authentic Greek food with me. I’m giving you a once-in-a-lifetime experience, Maxine.”

  He winked at me and I smiled, though my heart shattered a little. This was a onc
e-in-a-lifetime experience. I’d felt it the first moment I’d seen him. Somehow, I knew I’d stepped into a special moment in time, and the idea that it would be over in twenty-four hours nearly made me cry. But I swallowed back the emotion.

  “You think I can get a guy to cook for me anytime I want?” I asked, snorting in disbelief. “I’ve never had a guy cook for me.”

  “Never? I don’t believe you.”

  I held my hand up as if I was making an oath. “Swear it. One time, Tony made me a frozen pizza when I was sick, but that’s as close as I’ve come.”

  Dimitri scrunched up his nose. “I can’t believe that. How many boyfriends have you had? Not including teenage boyfriends. I mean, adult relationships.”

  “One.” I said it quickly, hoping we wouldn’t dwell on it.

  His eyes widened. “Just Tony?”

  I nodded.

  “Tony, the guy who didn’t want you to travel, who made you a frozen pizza once and didn’t support your dreams? That’s your only adult relationship?”

  “Well, when you say it like that, it sounds bad,” I said, trying feebly to defend myself.

  He waved his arms as if to erase his previous question and start again.

  “Okay, I’ll make an exception. You can count teenage boyfriends.”

  I sighed. “Two.”

  His jaw nearly hit the sand it opened so wide.

  “How many relationships have you had, then, if you’re so experienced?” I asked, crossing my arms, prepared to tease him.

  “Three as an adult. Too many to count as a teenager,” he said with a straight face, though I noticed the tiniest little smirk at the corner of his mouth.

  “You couldn’t even take a guess? The number is just too high?”