When you kicked me out, you said that you knew I was cheating on you. I know you were just making a scene to make yourself look like the victim. You’re very good at that. But do you understand what that will do to our girls? Even if they didn’t hear it when you were shouting, they’ll hear it from someone else, assuming you haven’t told them already. Please don’t lie to my daughters about me. Especially Anna. She’s too young. If you tell her I hurt you, that I betrayed the family, she will hate me forever. I know it. Please don’t tell them what you said. We both know it’s not true, and I couldn’t take it, never seeing my girls again because of a lie.
I understand if you don’t want us to be together. I know this isn’t the life you wanted for yourself. If I’m honest, our life wasn’t exactly my ideal, either. But our girls changed everything for me. I just want to be with them. Please don’t petition for divorce. I’ll never be able to get back to them, and you know it. I’ll live somewhere else, let you have them full-time, just as long as I can see them. You can be with whoever you want, though you don’t need my permission. If my suspicions are correct, you’ve been doing that anyway. But Grace, darling, I don’t care about that. I care about you, but I know our marriage is over. Just, please, I’m begging you, let me be a father to our two perfect daughters. I don’t know what I am if I can’t be that.
Please.
Giorgos
10
“So, what do you think it means?” she asked. “Do you think it means my mom was the one cheating on him?”
Nikos sighed. “Do you want my honest answer?”
Anna nodded.
“That’s what he told me,” Nikos continued. “When we spoke about it, he always said that she was the one who wasn’t faithful. Not that he was madly in love with her anymore; it seemed like he only stayed married to her for you and your sister. But from what he told me, he never cheated. Why were you so convinced he had?”
Anna shrugged. “I guess when he left, I felt confused and hurt. I was too young to comprehend anything beyond ‘he’s not here, so he doesn’t want to be here.’ So when my mother started offering explanations, I channelled all my emotions into those. It was easier to be angry than it was to see both sides, even when the cracks in her story started to show.”
“Well, it seems like she fabricated quite a bit.”
“I honestly don’t know how someone could ever make up something like that,” she said, putting down the letter and picking up a crowbar.
The old tiles were almost gone, good riddance. Over the next two days, they planned to tile and grout the floors while Anna stayed at the resort. She had managed to convince Xenia to let her use an empty room, promising to vacate if they had any more bookings. Guests were scarce, though, with the building in the final stages of renovation. They had put a warning on the dates in the booking system, so it was practically a ghost town despite being the start of the summer season. It certainly wasn’t doing anything for Anna’s tips at the cafe.
“Anyway, what are you up to tonight?” she asked Nikos. “Still playing video games with Kostas?”
“Actually, no,” Nikos replied. “He texted me this morning to cancel. He said he wasn’t feeling well, but knowing him he has a date or something.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Anna hesitated before continuing. Things were just starting to get better between them again. But maybe that was the reason why she should continue.
“You know, I’m not doing anything tonight, either,” she said. “Want to watch a movie?”
Nikos glanced up at her and smiled a cocky little grin, and Anna immediately regretted offering. He was sure to think she was hitting on him.
“You’re not going to make me watch something dumb, are you?” he asked.
Anna rolled her eyes. “What, like The Notebook or Sleepless in Seattle?”
“Are you kidding me?” Nikos asked, standing up from the ground. “The Ryans are absolute legends.”
“The Ryans?”
“Ryan Gosling and Meg Ryan, obviously,” he said with a wink. “No, I meant are you going to make me watch some shitty macho movie because you think it’s what I want to watch, so I have to pretend to enjoy it?”
“I would never,” Anna said, feigning offense. “How about you pick what we watch?”
“Okay, but I sure hope you’re ready for a good cry,” he said, bending down to pry the last tile from the floor. “Because if you don’t cry every time Jennifer Garner reads one of Gerard Butler’s letters, I’m never hanging out with you again.”
Anna chuckled and watched as Nikos pulled the final tile free and set it in the wheelbarrow.
“And fin,” he said, taking a bow. Anna tucked the crowbar under her arm and offered a golf clap.
“Bravo!”
“Thank you very much,” he said, standing up and wiping his brow. “Now, if we’re going to have a movie night, we’d better get cleaned up.”
Anna stopped clapping. “Do you not need to go home?”
Nikos shook his head. “Nope. I’ve got a change of clothes in the truck.”
“Oh, okay,” Anna said, desperately trying not to picture the clothes-changing happening. While she was busy not lusting after him, Nikos took the wheelbarrow outside, came back in with a bag, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Anna considered texting Elena to ask her to act as a buffer, but she decided against it. If she and Nikos were going to be friends, they needed to be able to do things together without it being awkward. She just had to make sure they didn’t get too cozy while that friendship was still being established.
She stood up and started tidying the room – at least, she tidied as much as she could with the floor fully ripped up. She wiped down all the surfaces, put away the tools, and took the plastic off the bed and sofa.
She heard the water stop and knew Nikos must be getting in the bath, so she forced herself to think about her summer house to-do list instead of the scene in her bathroom at the moment.
The old tiles were ripped out, and the windows had been replaced. They would lay the new tiles next week, and then they could start painting. The new appliances and furniture were at Nikos’s so they wouldn’t get splattered with paint or grout. The plumber was coming in a couple of weeks to fit the shower and check out the plumbing situation. Now the only things she needed to sort out were the utilities and the driveway, and then she would need to buy decorations and linens.
While she was waiting for Nikos to finish, Anna grabbed her laptop off the table and settled down on the sofa to check her bank account balance. At least Eirini and Christos were still letting her use the WiFi. She logged into her bank’s website and pulled up her accounts. Based on the estimates she’d received, she had just enough to finish what she needed to do before running out of money, and that was if she managed to keep it cheap on the decorations. If her earnings from the cafe stayed the same – so, low – then she would just be able to get by until the house sold.
Having logged out of her account, she was about to shut the computer when she noticed the date: June 8. She realized that it was the day her application for the MarMac contest would have sent. She smiled. Part of her hoped it would do well, and obviously winning would be amazing for her career, but, for the first time since she’d arrived, she didn’t much care about what the people back home thought of her. It may have been inconvenient, but her time here was definitely giving her some much-needed perspective. People on the island seemed far less concerned with climbing the corporate ladder and reaching the next level than people back home. They cared far more about enjoying the level they were on, and it was starting to rub off on Anna as well. She was spending less time worrying about how she was perceived or what she would do next in life and was enjoying each moment as it happened. Not that she could completely escape thinking about the future, but it certainly wasn’t hanging over her head like it usually did.
The water started again, and Nikos emerged in a cloud of steam from the bathroom wearing only a towel
wrapped around his waist. There was no need to look through a holey tee shirt this time to see how fit he was.
“I would say something about conserving water, but frankly it was grey by the time I got out, so I’ve drained it and am refilling it for you.”
“Thanks,” Anna said, trying not to stare, but he was now standing directly in front of her. She decided to stand up so at least she was eye level with his face instead of what was there now. As she stood, it brought her closer to him. She could feel the heat coming off him, and she wasn’t sure if it was from the water, the physical work or the tension.
“Your turn,” he said, smiling, but he didn’t move out of her way.
“Listen, Nikos,” she said quietly, not sure how to articulate what she was thinking – I’d really love to jump your bones right now, but I don’t want to screw up our friendship or hurt your feelings again – but she was sure that she needed to say something.
“Yes?” he asked, grabbing a piece of her hair that had fallen loose from her ponytail and tucking it behind her ear.
Anna froze on the spot, her heart pounding. She was close enough to see individual water droplets trickling from his hair and down his torso, getting lost under the towel wrapped loosely around his waist. She couldn’t let herself go further than that. That towel felt like the point of no return.
She moved away from his touch slightly, and he seemed to take the hint. He took a small step back.
“Sorry,” he said, looking at the floor. He looked so disappointed that Anna had to fight the urge to reach out and touch him. Talk about mixed signals.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not that I don’t want—” He looked up at her hopefully. This was coming out all wrong. “It’s just that you’re a friend. And you and Elena are all I have here. And I don’t want to ruin that.”
Nikos nodded. “It’s okay,” he said. “I get it. You don’t know how long you’ll be here. I don’t want to make things more complicated for you than they need to be.”
Anna smiled. “Seriously, if you knew how complicated my last relationship was, you’d understand even more.” He cocked his head to the side. “I sort of ended up sleeping with my boss. For more than a year. And when I left to come here, I had just caught him with someone else.”
“Wow,” he said, exhaling sharply. “Yep, that does sound complicated.”
“It’s just, I promised myself that I wouldn’t use anyone the way that he and I used each other. And with my time here limited, it would feel like I was using you.”
Nikos laughed. “It’s fine, really. You don’t have to explain yourself.”
“You sure you’re not mad?”
Nikos chuckled in response. “What kind of guy would I be if I was mad that you wouldn’t sleep with me? A shitty one, I imagine.”
Despite being startled at the fact that he had said aloud that he wanted to sleep with her, Anna laughed, too. “Thank you,” she said. “It really does mean a lot to have you here. Especially with everything I’m learning about my dad.” She walked over to the table where the envelopes were still laid out in order, the pile of notes next to it. Nikos walked over as well.
“Have you looked through these?” he asked, thumbing through the notes.
“No, between work and the tiles, all I’ve been able to do is read the first letter a few times. Plus, most of them are in Greek.” She walked over to the wardrobe to grab some pajamas, careful to choose the more modest ones. “You’re welcome to look through them while I clean up. You can let me know if there’s anything interesting.”
“Will do,” Nikos said, already doing just that.
Anna closed herself in the bathroom and leaned back against the door. Nikos was overwhelming in so many ways. Of course she felt something for him; it would be impossible not to. He was kind and funny and smart, he clearly liked Anna, and he was definitely easy on the eyes. But as much attraction as she felt for him, there was affection there, too. Friendly affection. And friendship was a lot less messy for her right now. She could always change her mind later, but they’d never be able to go back if she hooked up with him now. And depending on how long the house took to sell, she could be around for a while. The last relationship she had been in was thoughtless and convenient. There was no affection. Not even respect. She refused to let herself be treated the same way again, and she certainly didn’t want to treat Nikos the way Marcus had treated her.
Anna took her clothes off and sank into the warm bath Nikos had started for her, turning off the tap as she got in. She looked over to the window and out at all the lights twinkling their way down to the sea. She let the heat seep into her muscles, loosening them and easing the soreness that had been building all day. Tearing up tiles was hard work, and her arms were grateful for the bath, but the walk to and from work had been having the most noticeable effect, and her legs were always in need of a good soak. She made a mental note to add magnesium bath salts to her list.
After a few minutes in the tub, Anna got out, dried herself off and slipped into her pajamas. The sweatpants had unicorns all over them, and she had gotten the tee shirt for free from some terrible bar in Manhattan when one of their servers spilled beer all down her front. That was when she had first moved there and was trying to actually make friends, before she got together with Marcus and had spent most of her nights either working at the gallery or at his place.
Yep, she had definitely chosen the least sexy outfit she owned. The thought of Marcus had shut things down entirely.
She opened the door and saw that Nikos had finished getting the place ready. The oven fan was whirring. Two bottles of beer were out on the table, which was set for dinner, her laptop open across the table with the screen dark.
“I was going to get the film loaded,” Nikos said, “but I don’t know your password. I tried ‘password,’ but it turns out you’re smarter than a lot of people.”
Anna smirked as she walked over and typed it in. “And don’t you forget it,” she said.
She caught a whiff of whatever was in the oven just as a timer went off on Nikos’s phone. “What’s for dinner? It smells great.”
“Spanakopita,” he replied, pulling it out and placing it on a potholder in the middle of the table. “Spinach pie with feta cheese in filo pastry.”
“I know what spanakopita is,” she said. “It’s one of the few Greek foods we serve at the cafe.”
“Well then, you know what you’re in for.” Nikos sat down at the table as Anna pulled up the streaming service. As she logged in, Mamma Mia! came up as the recommended option.
“What do you say?”
“Perfect,” he said. “We can sing along, and then I can tell you everything that’s wrong with it.”
Anna laughed. “Sounds perfect.”
One hour and forty-nine minutes – plus a couple of minutes from when Nikos insisted that Anna pause the film while he used the bathroom – and four beers each and their spanakopita later, Nikos and Anna lay on the bed, flakes of filo from assorted pastries all over every surface in sight.
“I can’t believe you cried,” Anna said. “I thought you had seen this movie before?”
“I have!” Nikos said. “That doesn’t mean I wasn’t moved.”
“But none of it was sad.”
Nikos turned on his side to face Anna. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t incredibly emotional. There are other emotions besides sad, you know.”
“Whatever,” Anna said with a laugh. She could sense that Nikos was still looking at her, but she didn’t return the gaze. They had maintained the perfect distance all evening, and she didn’t want to ruin it. It felt so tentative, like one wrong move might crumble them. Or at least crumble her resolve.
“Your dad’s notes were interesting,” Nikos said to change the subject.
“Oh yeah?” This caught her attention. She sat up and looked down at Nikos. “In what way?”
He sat up too, bringing his legs around to cross in front of him. “Well, they were m
ostly about the summer house,” he said. “There’s even a plan for what he wanted to do with it to fix it up. Based on the notes, I’d say they’re from before he met your mom.”
“Can you show me?”
Nikos stood up and walked over to the counter where he had put everything, grabbed a piece of gridded paper and crossed back to the bed. He handed it to Anna and sat down next to her. Unfolding it, Anna found a sketch of the summer house.
It was laid out the same – that was no surprise, since Anna hadn’t changed anything about the layout, and there wasn’t really another way to arrange it. But there were also notes all over the paper with arrows pointing to the kitchen, the windows, the tub… and there were actually some bigger differences evident. For one, he had sketched a patio on the front of the summer house with what looked like a trellis, a porch swing and a fire pit. Anna certainly didn’t have those things. There was a driveway as well, coming right up along the side, just like Anna had planned to do.
She pointed at some of the notes with arrows. “What do these say?”
“They’re mostly just notes about the types of finishes he’d imagined,” Nikos said. “Actually, it seems you guys chose the same tiles for the floor.”
Anna thought about the stack of tiles in the kitchen – an extra-large square style in an almost terracotta color. She had chosen it because it reminded her of their conservatory back home, which her father had built with his own hands. He must have built the things at their house in Connecticut that he had dreamed for the summer house.
“Why do you think he never did any of this after he came back?” Anna asked. “He was back for like nineteen years before he died.”
Nikos sighed. “Well, I never knew your dad before, obviously, but he was never much of the self-improvement type. He always wanted the best for others and helped them achieve their own dreams, but he never seemed to care much when it came to himself.”
The Summer House in Santorini Page 9
