by Lucy Morton
“Don’t even think about it, Adonis. You don’t...”
But it seems that the Adonis is not listening to me.
The summer of your life
Week 2
“That’s why I prefer my pink fluorescent dildo!" Lucy types, with a thousand lol emoticons.
“What a disappointment!" I write too, with so many sad emoticons while I am putting the corners of my lips down.
“Are you going to tell Stuart that you're beginning to feel something for him?" Betty asks.
“You should do it!” Charlotte insists.
“You know I do not usually agree with what these crazy girls have to say. But in this case, I agree with them" Pam writes.
“We are getting along, we're friends, and he fucks every living thing with two legs. Well, just women that I am aware of. He is so rude when he says: "Making love? No, no... No way, I just fuck!" She insisted me to fuck Stefan. And I am not his type, he made that clear to me" I write, as if it were my life to do so, while I am drinking the coffee of the morning of my last Monday on the Greek Island.
“Think about it, Kate. Besides Martin, who else make you feel butterflies flying around your stomach?” Betty asks, leaving me in shock. How the hell does he know that? Did my mouth run out when I was drunk sometimes? I thought that I had only confessed my grandmother's words to Stuart.
“And you are telling me this me because?”
“Because, that's what happens when you love someone a lot, a lot” Betty says with little hearts in her message.
“Look, Kate. You have nothing to lose. At this point in your life, what if he says no? New York is big, you go back to the city and you forget about it. You do not have to see it anymore" Pam writes quickly.
They are right. In this case, I do not want that someday, when I look back in time, I remember Stuart and what it might have been if he had had enough courage. By bathing in the sea as my mother brought me to the world surrounded by a lot of people, was revealing. It made me wishes the freedom to do and say whatever I wanted. No repression. No prohibitions. Under the slogan: my life is mine and only mine. No one is going to live it for me, so I'm going to enjoy the moment. And that is what God wants... even if I do not believe in God.
—Stuart...
We are lying on the deck chair by the pool of the Villa. Stuart responds with a drowsy "mmm" and I think this is not the right time to tell him he was right when he told me that sometimes butterflies did not fly around your stomach from the first day, but it took a little longer.
“Nothing.”
CHAPTER 8
STUART
The summer of your life
Week 2
I admit I was glad to know that the chef was not good in bed. Every time Kate was walking by the chef, she came up to me so that the Greek man would not tell her anything. One day, I thought he was going to kill me with the look.
It's Kate's last week and it will be probably mine, too. I cannot imagine Villa Dimitri without her and the fact of staying alone only depresses me even more than I already was when I came here. Going back to New York is really scared, but after a year, I have to face the situation once and for all. To the sad reality. I must make a decision that it should never have belonged to me, but yet, there it is... stalking me night and day.
We are having dinner at the Villa's restaurant. Kate is quieter than usual, but I think she may be tired. Today, after our day at the pool, we have gone in a rental car to the little fishing village of Armenistis, where we have spent a lot of money on souvenirs such as magnets, coffee mugs, postcards and other handmade gadgets that we really did not need at all.
Kate is playing with her dish, in which there are little appetizing Dolmades, which it consists of a vine leaves stuffed with meat, although the Greeks also fill them with rice or vegetables. They are called that because the dish comes from the Turkish dolma which it means wrapped.
“Are you afraid the chef may poison your dinner?" I ask her amusingly.
“If I were you I would be careful with your Spanokopita more than my Dolmades, Branson.”
I know something is not right when she calls me by my surname and not by my name. I look into her eyes and I want to know what she is thinking. Is she still thinking in Martin? The man who should have married her and who, however, at the most inopportune moment, recognizes that he was gay and he shouts to the four winds that he really wanted to be with his best lifelong friend. A dirty trick for poor Kate, by the way. A release for this Martin, who should not have agreed to prepare a wedding if he planned to stand Kate on the altar. I've been a bastard all my life, I admit it. But I wouldn’t do such a thing.
“The other day..." she says at last. She hesitates, she sighs and she looks at me with a smile. "When the chef interrupted us, you were going to tell me something.”
“Me?
I was going to tell her that these days with her had been the best days of my life. That this summer with her, was the best I had ever lived. I do not remember a summer being so happy since I was five years old and I was only devoting myself to climb the trees, cycling and screwing with the slingshots to all the lizards were so unlucky to run into me.
“I do not remember, Kate.”
She looks disappointed. She nods and she looks sadly at her Dolmades.
“My Spanokopita is tasteless. Let's go to the beach.”
Kate nods and just stepping on the sand in the dark of night, she becomes another person. She begins running towards the seashore, getting rid of her flowered short dress, to end up throwing herself into the water. She laughs. She looks at the starry sky and she encourages me to do the same thing.
“You, prude!” She is yelling from the water.
“I think I see a shark!”
“WHAT???!!!”
I laugh almost as much as I saw her fall down the hill the last time. Now it turns out that I am the one who is prude. I glimpse her gaze fixed on me. Watching me as she used to. With that desire and all the love in the world that I thought I would not be able to find again. Without mentioning the speed with which Kate has taken off her clothes, I undress and I slowly enter the water.
“It's cold!” I complain.
“Take off your boxers!" She laughs.
“Are we in fourth grade? Never!”
When I get into the water, Kate is approaching to me around my neck with her arms. We stare into each other's eyes and when I cannot help glancing at her lips, she slowly approaches me and she kisses me.
“I feel butterflies flying around my stomach, Stuart", she confesses.
“Do you see how sometimes you just have to wait?" I say, gripping her firmly around the waist and daring to caress her ass under the water.
“I may have felt it from the first time I saw you in the bathroom of the plane." God! They should make them bigger!” She laughs. But the pain and the frustration did not allow me to see them.
I kiss her. I kiss her in the moonlight and I feel that I was born again. That the Stuart I thought was forgotten and buried has reborn because he really wants to be with this woman.
KATE
The summer of your life
Week 2
“Oh, my God!” Betty exclaims, invading our WhatsApp group with hearts emoji.
Lucy changes the main picture of the group. Now instead of seven cats, there is a picture of Stuart sniffing a vispring by the nose. I laugh at her occurrence.
“Where did you get that from?” I write.
“From the all-powerful Google, Miss. And tell us, tell us... A magical evening, both naked, under the idyllic waters of a Greek island with a starry sky and...
Not even in my best dreams would I have imagined something like that. It was the most magical evening of my life and never before, not even Martin, the butterflies of my stomach flied around with so much force, passion and desire. We could not take our lips off. We could not stop caressing our bodies hidden under the waters of the sea. The shyness that I have always felt toward my body disappeared
in an instant, by watching how Stuart was looking at me. As if I was a Goddess drawn from a Greek mythological tale. I've never felt so much love.
“Do you want to...?” I said abruptly.
“You do not know the things I would do to you right now, Kate.”
Then he shook his head and he walked away from me.
“But this is not the time or the place" he continued, unable to look into my eyes.
I swallowed hard, trying to figure out exactly what it was he wanted to tell me. I guess he saw the disappointment and confusion in my face. After all, we have been together for more than a week almost twenty-four hours a day and it seems we have known each other forever.
“I do not want to fuck with you, Kate. I want to make love to you. I want to do it and I cannot.
He left me alone. He came to the surface, head down. He took the clothes he had left on the sand and he walked away, getting dressed quietly while he was walking on the cold white sand.
I felt cold, chills, and my head wanted to protect itself in a way, so I figured out the plan to imagine that hundreds of sharks had traveled from far and wide to where I was running for my life to the shore. I left my panties and bra in the sand, and I put on my dress quickly running to Stuart to catch him up.
“Branson", I said, taking his arm.
I saw tears in his eyes. Real tears.
And then I let him go.
“WHAT???!!!”
They all asked in unison, again with the same emoji Macaulay Culkin little face in the movie "Home Alone”.
“That’s right. So now I'm going to get drunk and sleep it off, girls.
“This cannot end like this!" Pam writes.
“No way!” Betty regrets.
“I have not seen Stuart 24 hours ago. That's not a good sign. It happens to me and what I least need now is another thump. I cannot take it" I explain them.
Hundreds of emoji with sad and tearful faces are invading the screen of my mobile phone.
STUART
The summer of your life
Week 2
It could have been a great night. The best of our lives. It hurt me a lot to say no. It really hurt me to stop kissing her lips and caressing her skin. Today I have not left my room mall day and she has not decided to call me or come to see me. I am guessing he thinks it's my turn. That I should explain myself and go after it. What a smart girl...!
“Stuart, we're waiting for you. Please come, please. What are you going to do?”
She keeps insisting. She keeps sending me WhatsApps every hour. She continues worrying me and causing me pain.
It’s nightfall on the island. Tonight the moon is not as big as yesterday nor do the stars shine with as much splendor as when I was immersed in the sea very close to Kate. I miss her laugh, her smell of vanilla, her flirty look and her messy hair. I also miss her clumsiness and her hobbies. I miss being with her and feeling millions of butterflies flying around my stomach. But I have made up on my mind and I must be firm with her.
Somebody is knocking on the door. I hope that it may be Kate, I run to open the door, but I was really disappointed to see the Greek Goddess. The receptionist, whose face seems worried about me.
“Are you okay, Stuart?" I have not seen you all day and I thought that maybe you would be sick. Or you'll need something... you know...
She approaches me and she begins to unfasten the buttons of her black shirt. I pull her away from my side, almost pushing her.
“Please, go away.”
“What is my name?” She asks with a mischievous smile.
“Again? I do not know, and I do not care.”
I close the door. I turn on the computer, and I buy a ticket for tomorrow at one o'clock to New York.
It's midnight and I do not know if Kate will be awake, but I have to try. I go to Apartment 2, assuring myself that it is the right number. I wouldn’t like to surprise a little married couple and I may get confused.
After a couple of silly walks in front of the entrance of Room 2 and a worried look at the moon, I decide to knock on the door. She takes a while to open and when she does, I'm surprised to see her lightly wearing clothes, giving me a silly smile that it can only be result from a fair drunkenness. She has a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“Kate, can I come in?”
“Stuart, leave me alone.”
“Please, I want to talk to you.”
She shrugs her head and she lets me in. I do not have to go far to find the naked chef sitting on her couch.
“What do you want?” Kate asks distantly.
“I want that asshole to get the hell out of here. That's what I want" I say furiously.
“You're late, my friend," the chef say teasing me.
I approach him angrily I've been holding back from having to put up with his face every day and I punched him in the eye. The chef, confused, ran into me and we started a brave fight in the living room of Apartment 2 of the peaceful Villa Dimitri.
Kate opens her mouth wide and she leaves her glass on the table and the cigarette in the ashtray. Then I can see out of the corner of my eye how she is approaching us, with the precaution of not being too harmed.
“Guys, please." She can barely speak. "Stop!”
I stop to stare into her eyes and I realize that again, I'm crying. So she is.
The chef takes advantage of my distraction to hit my face with all his strength, knocking me out on the floor.
“Get out!” I hear Kate angrily. “I said get out!”
I hear a murmur, a few steps away and the knock of the door closing. A caress, a pleasant whisper and an unmistakable aroma of vanilla mixed with red wine.
CHAPTER 9
KATE
The goodbye
I always wanted two men fighting for me since I saw it in a movie that I do not remember. But at the moment when Stefan and Stuart engaged in a violent fight in front of my nose, with a glass of wine that prevented me from concentrating on my obligation to split them off. The tears have taken over of me and an inexplicable anguish of the rest of my being. It was one of the worst moments of my life, especially seeing that it was Stuart who was the most affected person in all this.
Here he is, in my bed. I am sitting by his side, waiting for him to wake up, though I fear he will have a terrible headache. What a punch! A brown lock is falling on his forehead and he has his left eye completely bruised from the final punch that Stefan has given him. Fucking chef. What was I thinking by being drunk enough to open the room door and letting him undress on the sofa?
Stuart begins slowly to open his eyes. It is one o’clock and he seems confused.
“What happened?” He asks, touching his bruised eye. “God, it hurts!”
“I know... I've tried to heal it a little bit, but you're going to have it swollen for a few days.”
“What was the chef doing here?"
He gets up a little grunting and although he does not seem to be angry, he does want or needs answers. Then he shakes his head, knowing I do not have to answer him, that it is none of his business. And much less, when he has not decided to answer many doubts that I have about him and the "story of his life" that prevents him from being with me.
“It's not what you think. I was very drunk... well, in fact I'm still a little bit. I opened him the door and when you came, he took the opportunity to stay naked on the sofa. I think that happened... kind of. We did not do anything, I promise.”
“You do not have to give me any explanations. I’ll take a flight to New York in a few hours.
I am not feeling the butterflies flying around my stomach right now. I feel a terrible lump in my throat that prevents me from speaking. I try not to cry and I beg him to stay with me. Begging him to tell me what was the reason of all his rage and tears. What has happened to him so you he does not really know what to do with his life.
“Branson..." I breathe. “Are you going to be OK?” I just ask.
He nods and he getting up fr
om the bed. He takes a few dizzy steps and, when I see that he can continue walking, he continues walking until stopping on the threshold of the stairs.
“When the chef interrupted us that night. I do remember what I wanted to tell you, Kate.”
“Oh, really?”
I'm dying of curiosity to know about it.
“It's been the summer of my life. The best summer of my life thanks to you.”
Greece is not the same without you
The island and Villa Dimitri have been empty without Stuart's presence. I am counting the hours and minutes for the day that I will also leave for the United States. I have his phone number. I'll call him when I get there. But not now. Not because he has not done it and maybe it's for something. Maybe I did not mean as much to him as I had imagined. Maybe he was lying when he told me that he did not want to fuck me like the other girls, he wanted to make love to me.
I just leave the apartment. Just going to dinner, avoiding at any moment to meet with the lascivious look of Stefan. I also go to the pool or to the beach. I keep bathing each night naked in the moonlight and the bright stars, to remember his kisses and his caresses. His look and smell. Despite everything, despite how much it hurts, I want to keep his memory alive.
“One of two", Charlotte types with an angry emoji: “or you enjoy Greece the days you have left, or you go to the airport and take the first flight to New York. And when you get there, you call him.
“This cannot end this way, Kate", Lucy says.
“That’s really sad..." Betty regrets, to which I imagine typing while she is giving a massage to her husband, A.K.A the guy of the subway.
“Who was going to tell me that I was going to fall in love with the stupid guy of the plane...”
“I told you!” Betty exclaimed. “I told you that you would fall in love, that you could find the man of your life in Greece.
“Betty, I do not know what to believe. He never wanted to talk about why he was here alone, or making a decision so he can move on with his life. I have told him all about myself. I opened my heart to him. He knows Martin. He knows everything... And yet he never wanted to tell me anything.”