The Summer House in Santorini

by Samantha Parks

  “Who is that?” Xenia asked. “You two seem to be getting along quite well.”

  “His name’s Vasilis. He’s visiting his aunt for the summer. You know, Kassandra?”

  “Oh yeah, I knew she had a nephew visiting from Athens, but I thought he was like seven!”

  “Try twenty-seven,” Elena said, smiling. “We’ve been together almost every night since.”

  Anna looked at Elena. “I didn’t know that! You really like him, then?”

  “Well, you’ve been a little busy,” Elena said, nudging her. “Plus, didn’t you hear us talking all through the photoshoot?”

  “You were speaking Greek. He could have been teaching you physics, for all I knew.”

  The others laughed. “Well, we really like each other,” Elena said. “Sometimes that’s enough.”

  Anna tried not to feel like Elena was being pointed, focusing instead on flipping through the rest of the photos. She went through the one of Nikos down at the harbor, and then she was into the photos she had taken of the room the previous day.

  “Oh my god,” Xenia said, staring at the screen.

  “What?” Anna asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. These are incredible.” Xenia looked at Anna. “Did you take these on this camera?”

  Anna nodded.

  “I had a professional come in a couple of days ago who brought tons of expensive equipment with him, and he couldn’t get a shot even half as good as these.”

  “Oh, well, I can send them to you if you’d like,” Anna said. “Feel free to use them.”

  “I have a better idea. How about I pay you to come take more of them?”

  Anna’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

  “Yes, seriously. These pictures are exactly what I was looking for for the new website and marketing campaign. But we would have to do it really soon. Like, tomorrow.”

  “I would love that,” Anna said without hesitation. “Let’s do it.”

  “Amazing.” Xenia stood up from the sofa and shook Anna’s hand. “I’ll come by tomorrow while you’re on your shift at the cafe and we can talk about it.” Then she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Take that, Marcus, she thought. This was everything she could hope for. Someone else actually wanted to pay her for her work, and knowing this made her feel better than she ever had before. Maybe she didn’t need to rely on Marcus for success after all.

  “Oh my god, Anna!” Elena shouted, standing up and wrapping her in a hug. “Congratulations! That’s amazing!”

  Nikos caught Anna’s eye. “I told you you’re talented,” he said, joining the group hug for a moment. “Why don’t I go get us some pizza to celebrate? Alfresco should be open.”

  “That sounds so good right now,” Elena said, pulling away. “Could you?”

  “Anything for the professional photographer,” Nikos said, grabbing the keys to the truck.

  “This is so exciting!” Elena said after he left. “Are you absolutely buzzing right now?”

  “Yeah, basically,” Anna said. It was a feeling she couldn’t compare to anything else she’d felt. She was being paid to do the thing she loved. First the girls in Oia, and now Xenia. “Oh, shit,” she said, “I just realized I still haven’t sent those girls their photos yet.”

  “Well, we can’t have that,” Elena said, “you’ve got a reputation to uphold. Let’s get to it.”

  They sat down at Anna’s computer, moving the memory card over and choosing the best photos. In the end, Anna sent over forty photos to each girl, trying to make sure they had plenty of poses and locations to choose from.

  “Look at you, getting paid to take photos. That’s exactly what you said you wanted to do!” Elena held her hand out in front of Anna, who high-fived her.

  “I know,” Anna said, shutting her laptop and turning to face her friend. “I just didn’t expect it to happen so fast.”

  “That’s the thing. If you do something enough and you’re good at it, people will notice. You probably are getting all this opportunity because you weren’t trying to be a photographer. You were just being one.”

  “That’s incredibly wise,” Anna said. “You’re like Obi Wan Kenobi or Oprah or something.” She remembered the bottle of champagne she had stolen from the wedding the night before. “Should we celebrate? I have some champagne in the fridge.”

  “Yes!” Elena shouted in response, jumping up and grabbing the bottle from the fridge, immediately working on the foil. “Xenia must really like you.”

  “Actually, that’s from the wedding last night,” Anna admitted. “We stole it when we came back here. Turns out we didn’t need it.”

  Elena laughed. “Probably for the best. You would have drowned if you had been any more intoxicated than you were last night.”

  “That’s what I said to Nikos.” Anna flinched as Elena popped the cork, then reached out her hand to accept a glass after Elena had filled them.

  “We should probably finish this before Nikos comes back,” Elena said. “There are only two glasses, and I am not sharing.”

  Anna laughed and nodded, taking a big sip of her champagne. At least Elena wasn’t angry with her.

  They didn’t quite manage to finish the bottle before Nikos got back, but it turned out to be a good thing since he had a case of beer with him, along with another bottle of sparkling wine.

  “I see you guys started celebrating without me,” he said, setting the pizza and beer down on the table. “Is that the champagne from the wedding?”

  “Sure is,” Anna said, opening the pizza box. “But the real question is, why did you only get one pizza?”

  The rest of the evening, Anna, Elena and Nikos drank beer, ate pizza and room service desserts and watched movies in Anna’s bed. At around two, the three of them passed out on the bed, draped over each other like kids at a sleepover. Anna woke up a bit later to use the bathroom, and on her way back she paused and smiled as she looked at the two cousins asleep on either side of the bed. She was glad she had gotten a redo tonight. She needed to know that it was possible to be friends with Nikos and Elena after everything that happened.

  As she curled up on the couch under a blanket, she thought about the job Xenia had offered her. Eighteen months as a gallery assistant in Manhattan and she had only ever stared at photos hanging on walls. Now she was going to get to take them. They probably wouldn’t end up in a gallery anywhere, but she felt like she was finally a real photographer. Maybe Nikos was right. Maybe she could build a life here.

  The second she had that thought, her stomach dropped. It wasn’t the plan. She couldn’t stay in Santorini forever…

  …could she?

  Grace,

  Today is Lizzy’s sixteenth birthday, and all I can do is imagine what she looks like. I can’t believe that I don’t know what she looks like now. The thought breaks my heart.

  If I’m being honest, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how we should have done things differently. What’s worse, having children you adore and then losing them, or never having them at all? I would obviously never wish Lizzy’s and Anna’s existences away, but I’ve definitely fantasized about what it would be like to not carry the pain of what I’ve been through.

  What I really wish is that you hadn’t pretended. You pretended to be in love with me the entire time you were here. I may have been blinded by love, but you never did a thing to help me see clearly. Instead, you made promises to me and plans with me. We had our entire future mapped out, Grace. I still remember perfectly that time we went out on the boat and you said you wanted to open a store in Oia. You would use your law school money to buy one of the buildings. You would open a clothing store on the ground floor and fix up the upstairs to rent out to tourists. You weren’t a tourist, you’d say; you were there for good, so you weren’t like them. You were going to marry me in the big yellow church down the road and have babies with me and learn to drive stick shift so we could share the car.

  And yo
u know what? I think that some part of you actually wanted those things. Not with me, necessarily, but I think you were longing to be that person. You wanted to be carefree and unambitious and content with a simple life. The problem was that you never truly were. And I was so busy falling in love with the person you pretended to be that I never saw who you really were.

  I don’t blame you for that. But I don’t blame myself anymore, either. You were always going to be the kind of person to leave, and I was always going to follow. Not to sound like a fatalist, but I can’t imagine the situation playing out any other way. I just hate that it did. And eight years later, I still cry almost every day because of what you took away from me. What my ignorance to the real you ended up costing me. On the best days, I’m heartbroken. On the worst days, I wish none of it had ever happened.

  I know you probably won’t, but I have to ask. I will always ask. Could I please see them? Could I please speak to my children? Could you at least tell them that I love them?

  No, I didn’t think so.

  Giorgos

  17

  “These look incredible,” Elena said. “I can’t believe you were able to get these shots given how dark it was outside.”

  Eirini motioned for the camera, and Elena handed it to her. She held it up, leaning back so she could see the photo displayed on the screen.

  “Very nice,” she said, handing the camera back to Anna. “You should be very proud.”

  “It’s amazing what a reflector and the right settings can do,” Anna said.

  “It’s amazing what the right photographer can do,” Elena replied. She smiled at Anna across the table.

  They were sat out on the patio enjoying the sunshine after yesterday’s scattered showers. Anna had finally experienced bad weather in Greece, and of course it had to happen on the same day as her photoshoot at the resort. Xenia had even given Elena the day off specially to help, despite it being the first day of the holiday weekend. Xenia suggested postponing until after the launch, but Anna insisted on trying, which turned out to be the right decision. The cloudy skies ended up adding a moodiness to the photos that went perfectly with the sleek new website design Xenia had showed her, and it meant she didn’t have to worry about bright direct light. The rain had held off just long enough to finish the exterior shots. The interiors would need a bit of editing magic to brighten them up, but it was nothing Anna couldn’t handle.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said to Elena, who had spent the day holding the reflector and making adjustments as needed.

  “No problem. You can send my fee along any time,” she replied, winking.

  “Let me go see what’s taking your grandfather so long with the mezze,” Eirini said, standing and heading inside.

  “I am absolutely starving,” Anna said, closing her eyes as she sat back and tilted her face toward the sun.

  The island had been absolutely crawling all weekend for Agiou Pnevmatos, a national public holiday. In other words, as Anna now knew, the entire mainland of Greece emptied to the islands, even as far south as Santorini. So she and Elena had spent all weekend in the cafe, listening to Xenia shout last-minute orders at people as things came up that hadn’t been finished before the opening. Meanwhile, Nikos spent his time painting the summer house. Anna insisted that he didn’t need to, that he could wait until she was off work, but he had insisted.

  They still hadn’t spoken any more about what had happened between them, but Anna was okay with that. He wasn’t acting weird toward her, so she didn’t want to rock the boat. After all, this is what she’d wanted, right? So what good would come from discussing it?

  “How was your date last night?” Anna asked Elena.

  “So good,” she said. “Vasilis is seriously so hot. Everything he does is sexy. Picks me up on his actual motorcycle? Sexy. Orders the vegetarian dish? Sexy. Always offers to go down on me? Sexy.”

  “Gross!” Anna shouted, throwing a napkin at Elena. “I so didn’t need to know that.”

  “Whatever,” Elena replied, throwing the napkin back at her. “You’re just salty because I cock-blocked you after the wedding.”

  “I mean, I’m not happy that I haven’t gotten laid in over a month,” Anna said. “It’s the longest I’ve gone in a while.”

  Elena sat up and hit Anna’s arm lightly. “Oh my god, did you have a boyfriend before you came here? That would explain so much!”

  “Not exactly…” Anna started. Then, “Wait, what would that explain?”

  Elena shrugged. “Why you’re so desperate to get back.”

  “I’m not desperate to get back. I just know it’s the best thing for everyone.”

  “Whatever. Agree to disagree. But back to the guy.”

  “Right. The guy.” Anna hadn’t thought much about Marcus since she arrived. Not in that way, anyway. Not even when he had emailed her about the contest. He had turned out to be as forgettable to her as she seemed to be to him. “I was casually seeing this guy for just over a year back home.”

  “How often did you sleep with him?”

  Anna thought back to her time with Marcus, remembering the texts he would send giving her a day, time and place. Never any asking. No discussion. Just a when and where. And she always went. “A couple of times a week,” she said. “He had a busy schedule.”

  “Um, excuse me, a year of seeing each other every few days isn’t exactly casual.”

  “Yeah, well, it was a weird circumstance.”

  “Define weird.”

  Anna hesitated, but she couldn’t think of a reason not to tell Elena the truth. “He was my boss.”

  “Oh, shit, girl! That’s so shady.”

  “Not really,” she said. “It wasn’t like that. I never felt like he was hanging it over my head until the end, when I quit my job to come here. He didn’t like me bringing up our history to get what I wanted.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He fired me, actually.”

  Elena shrugged. “It kind of sounds like it was ‘like that,’” she said, making air quotes with her hands.

  “Yeah, well, it wasn’t.”

  “So he didn’t buy you expensive gifts that no one else would ever see, like lingerie or something? And he didn’t sneak you around, always having you over to his, never to yours? He didn’t call you ‘cute’ when you showed him things you were excited about? He didn’t sleep with other women and then try to make you feel crazy for not being okay with it?”

  Good point, Anna thought, remembering the time she showed Marcus the picture she had taken of a lighthouse on Long Island. He had actually used the word “cute.”

  “Okay, maybe it was a little bit like that.”

  Elena threw her head back and laughed. “It’s alright, girl. We all need a little bit of that to learn from.”

  “You sound like you know,” Anna replied, chuckling.

  Just then, Nikos came through the gate, and Anna sat up a bit straighter. She wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t want to talk about Marcus in front of him. She may not have done anything wrong, but she also wasn’t particularly proud of their relationship.

  Eirini and Christos followed soon after, each with a plate of mezze in each hand.

  “It looks so good in there,” Eirini said, setting down plates in front of them. The three of them immediately dug in. “Nikos was just showing us around.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said between bites. “He’s been working really hard on it this weekend.”

  “It’s all Giorgos’s plans,” Nikos said with his mouth full, earning a nasty look from Eirini.

  While she’d kept the inside of the summer house a traditional white, Anna had decided to follow Giorgos’s plan to paint the outside a vibrant yellow. She had also used the money from the girls in town to buy shutters and window boxes to turn it into a little cottage. Now all it needed was flowers trailing out of the boxes. Oh, and the dozens of other things on Anna’s list.

  She and Elena had spent the morning helping Nikos finis
h the inside, which was now looking clean and bright. The terracotta tiles looked beautiful with the white walls and cabinets and big picture windows. Nikos and Kostas had even managed to hunt down enough of the materials for the backsplash Giorgos had sketched in his notes: gorgeous blue, white and terracotta patchwork tiles that tied the whole room together. The new countertops were a lovely piece of natural wood that had been imported from Athens; a costly purchase using most of Anna’s advance from Xenia, but worth it. Giorgos’s vision for the summer house was coming together, and the closer they got to accomplishing it, the better Anna felt. That afternoon they were bringing in the new cabinet fronts, and next week, when they brought the appliances from Nikos’s, the kitchen would be done.

  “Well, I for one love seeing it come to life,” Eirini said. “It’s been long enough since that place saw any kind of hope.”

  Since your mother came and ruined everything, everyone finished in their heads. At least, Anna imagined that they did. She certainly did. If reading her father’s letters had taught her anything, it was that her father was much better off before her mother came along.

  “House looks good,” Christos added with a big grin, clearly proud of himself for stringing so many words together. Anna laughed and reached across the table to touch his hand. Her grandparents had been so supportive, even after realizing she was planning to sell the house. She had definitely lucked out where they were concerned.

  Anna’s phone buzzed, and she picked it up off the table to check the notification.

  “Anna!” Christos shouted, shaking his head. “No phone while eat.”

  “Sorry,” Anna said, “it’s for work.”

  “Elena says you’ve had some more work come through, Anna?” Eirini asked.

  “Yes, I do,” she said. “I have the work at the hotel this week, some shoots in the mornings, and then I’m shooting a wedding next weekend.”

  As it turned out, one of the girls, the one who had tried to pay her more, the one with the southern accent, had over half a million followers on Instagram. She’d given Anna credit for the photos as she posted them, and suddenly requests had flooded into her inbox from people wanting her to take photos of them on their vacations. One message had been from a bride coming all the way from Chicago to get married on the island, saying her photographer had to cancel at the last minute, offering to pay Anna nearly two thousand euros to photograph her wedding.