by Holly Rayner
He shrugged. “Occasionally.”
“I wouldn’t recognize anyone from Greece’s royal family. Maybe I should look them up…” I started, thinking out loud.
“No,” he barked, making me jump. He coughed and leaned back in his chair. “It’s really not very interesting. Barely worth the time you’d spend doing it.”
“I’m interested in learning more about your culture—” I began.
“Where is the check?” he mumbled to himself, cutting me off. Then, he waved his hand and caught the attention of the waiter.
When the waiter left to get the check, Dimitri turned to me and smiled, his expression once again at ease. “So, are you ready for the secret cove?”
I wanted to push him to answer the question, but I didn’t understand his avoidance enough to feel comfortable asking for answers. Instead, I just returned his smile and nodded.
We spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between sunbathing and splashing in the crystalline water of the cove. It was just as beautiful as Dimitri had said it would be, shut off from the surrounding world. A few people wandered in and out while we were there, but no one stayed long. It felt like we had the entire place to ourselves.
We talked about nothing and everything. Though Dimitri still avoided anything specific, he told me about how inadequate he’d felt trying to fill his father’s shoes after he died. How lost he’d felt when his mom had followed a few years later. I laughed when he told me how much he truly hated peas and that he still gagged whenever he smelled them. And, I gasped when he admitted that the bookshelves in his living room were all for show and he hadn’t actually read a physical book in over a year.
“Are you illiterate?” I asked, shocked. “Because that’s a deal-breaker for me. I love to read.”
He laughed. “I read e-books, mostly.”
I shook my head. “You are the reason the print industry is dying.”
“The print industry isn’t dying!” he argued. “And e-books don’t get warped by the ocean air when I read outside!”
In the end, we agreed both e-books and physical books had their merits, though neither of us would ever switch.
“What’s your biggest fear?” he asked, rolling onto his stomach and lifting himself up onto his elbows.
It had taken me a full half hour once he’d taken his shirt off to be able to look him in the face. It was unfair, honestly. Someone with a face like his shouldn’t have a body like that—all clean lines and sharp angles.
“Isn’t that a little deep for beach talk?” I asked, rolling onto my side. We hadn’t thought to bring any towels, so I was laying on my dress and Dimitri was laying on his shirt.
“I got deep,” he said.
I knew he was referring to telling me about his parents, but it concerned me that he thought that was deep. It had been personal, but it was hardly his deepest fear or biggest secret. In fact, over the course of the day, I’d decided Dimitri had a fair amount of secrets he was keeping from me.
Could I be in a relationship with someone who kept parts of themselves hidden away like that?
It didn’t matter. We wouldn’t be in a relationship. He lived on a Greek island. I lived in the States. I was leaving in two days, and this was a vacation relationship. A brief fling I would look back on fondly, and one that wouldn’t have any substance.
Dimitri didn’t need to open up to me any more than he already had, because our relationship was not made of the stuff that lasts. It was built on a foundation of sandy beaches, and that was okay. At least, I kept telling myself it was okay.
I rolled onto my back and squinted up into the sky. The sun had begun its descent towards the horizon, but the cloudless sky was still too bright to look at directly.
“Well, we’ve talked frequently about my fear of falling,” I said.
“Which you’ve also stated should be every person’s biggest fear,” he said. “I want the fear you’ve never told anyone about.”
“Okay,” I said, sitting up and crossing my legs. “I’ll tell you, but you can’t make fun of me.”
“Maxine.” He drew out the syllables of my name like he was savoring them, and it sent a small shiver down my spine. “You’ve already done and said several embarrassing things in front of me. I highly doubt you could say anything now that would make me laugh.”
He hadn’t heard my fear, yet. I’d never told anyone this fear without immediately being laughed at. No one took it seriously.
“I’m afraid…” I said, hesitating, drawing out the moment, upping the tension.
Dimitri widened his eyes at me, urging me to continue.
“Of.”
“For the love of God, Maxine. Spit it out!”
“Statues!”
He stared at me for a few seconds and then tilted his head to the side.
“Statues?”
I nodded.
“Like, marble statues?” he asked.
I nodded again. “Any kind of statue. Anything that resembles a human being, but is not a human being.”
“No way.”
He began to smile and I pointed at him, giving him a warning.
“You promised.”
“Now, actually, if you’ll recall, I simply said that I doubted you could say anything that would make me laugh. I never actually promised.”
“That’s cheating!”
His smile widened, and he began to chuckle. “When did you first discover this fear?”
I stuck out my bottom lip in a pout. “On a field trip to the history museum. They’re just so creepy!”
He snorted. I reached out and slapped his shoulder.
“You’re mean. What’s your biggest secret, then? Give me a chance to laugh at you.”
Dimitri was still smiling, but he calmed himself down, and I could tell he was thinking. “I think my biggest fear is being alone.”
I’d been fully prepared to laugh in his face regardless of what he said, but suddenly, I didn’t feel like laughing at all.
“Sorry,” he said, running his fingers through his hair and grabbing at the back of his neck. “I didn’t mean to bring down the mood.”
I reached out before I could stop myself and touched his cheek, my palm curling around the hard line of his jaw. “Don’t be sorry.”
For a second, he turned his face into my hand and closed his eyes. Then, almost as if I’d imagined it, he was gone. He sat up and shook the last remaining water out of his hair. “Well, I’m starving. Are you hungry?”
“Famished,” I said, feeling only the slightest twinge of disappointment that it was already time to leave.
My disappointment vanished, however, when Dimitri led me up the hill from the cove to the main road and across the street to a restaurant.
“I didn’t know there was a restaurant right here,” I said, looking up and down the empty street.
“Not a lot of people do,” he said, buttoning his shirt up before we walked inside. “That’s my favorite thing about this place.”
He held open the door for me and I walked into the smallest restaurant I’d ever seen. It was narrow, looking more like a large hallway than an actual room, and there was only enough room for one row of tables along the right wall. The rest of the space was reserved for walking.
We were seated in the back corner. A small candle flickered in the center of a small table and a few standing lamps were plugged in around the walls in lieu of harsh overhead lighting. Antique fishing nets and equipment tastefully decorated the walls, and every table had an old sepia-toned photograph of fishermen catching fish in the ocean, which I could still see just a slip of through the front window. The atmosphere felt incredibly romantic.
“Do you come here a lot?” I asked, trying to gauge how special this restaurant was. Because, again—the small, quiet atmosphere, the dark, candlelit ambiance…it all screamed, “this is a real date!”
But I didn’t want to get ahead of myself.
“Not as often as I’d like,” he said, which wa
sn’t helpful in the slightest. “Would you like me to order you a salad?”
I looked up and his mouth was turned up in a heart-stopping, lopsided smile.
“Oh, don’t even get started on the salad thing again,” I said, closing my menu. “Like before, order for me, oh wise one.”
Dimitri laughed and bowed regally, accepting my praise.
I’d never been a big fan of seafood, but after eating the fish at lunch, I was beginning to think I’d just never had proper seafood before. When our food arrived—mussels in dark blue shells cooked in tomato sauce and a bowl of lobster pasta big enough for us to share—I knew I was right. Even slurping the orange mussels from their salty shells—which even thinking about a few days before would have probably made me gag—was a delight. Everything tasted rich and full. The flavors coated the inside of my mouth and I felt like Dimitri would have to roll me home.
“How was everything?” Dimitri asked, a smirk on his face. He knew he’d ordered perfectly again, and as much as I wanted to pretend everything hadn’t been absolutely delicious, I couldn’t.
“It was so amazing. Thank you,” I said, spooning off another bite of the orange and cinnamon cake—portokalopita, I think it was called—even though I was pretty sure I didn’t have any more room inside my body for dessert.
“Good.” He nodded and looked out towards the front of the restaurant. I followed his gaze. The sun had set while we’d eaten, and I realized we’d spent the entire day together—from sunrise to sunset. “Are you ready to call it a day?”
Honestly, no.
There would never be a good time to end this perfect day. I wanted it to go on forever. But I couldn’t deny the ache in my feet, the stinging heat of my sunburned shoulders, and the heaviness of my eyelids. And now that I was full of seafood and cake, I knew I could fall asleep standing up if I wanted.
“Are you?” I asked.
Dimitri shrugged. “I’m pretty tired.” He plopped his elbow on the small table and rested his head in the palm of his hand, letting it loll to the side. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then they popped open, wider than before. “I wish I wasn’t, though.”
“I know what you mean.”
He smiled at me and I smiled back, and then, I was struck with the crippling realization that I wasn’t sure life would ever get better than this. I’d never met a man like him before. Definitely not in Madison.
And I had to wonder whether there was another man like him. Someone who wanted to give me all of their time, who didn’t try to rush me, who wanted to hear what I had to say. We’d spent a full twelve hours together, and I liked him just as much as I had at the beginning of the day. I wasn’t tired of his company or ready for a break. I didn’t feel emotionally exhausted from having to stay engaged and talk to him. It came easily. Everything seemed to come easily for us.
There had to be a catch. Surely.
“Do you have a secret wife?” I asked suddenly.
Dimitri’s head popped up off his hand and he sat upright, forehead wrinkled. “What?”
“Are you actually a married man who’s on the island for a business trip and you’ve fooled me into thinking you live here?”
Dimitri blinked a few times and then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
I felt silly now for asking, but it was too late to back out. “I just feel like there has to be a catch.”
“A catch?”
I nodded. “Yeah, like, a trick. I meet an amazing guy in Greece, but he turns into a frog at night. Something like that.”
“Do you think I turn into a frog at night? Because I don’t,” he said, pointing to the dark sky outside. “It’s nighttime, and I’m still a man.”
“You know what I mean,” I said, though I wasn’t even sure I knew what I meant.
His lips pulled back into a small, thoughtful smile, and then he reached across the table and grabbed my hand. He squeezed it twice and then let his eyes trail up my arm to my face.
“I’m not secretly married. I do live in the villa on the beach. I don’t turn into a frog at night. And I’m not that amazing.”
I squeezed his hand back, just once, grateful for the contact. “Okay.”
“Are you secretly married?” he asked.
I laughed. “No. Do I seem secretly married to you?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never met a secretly married person before,” he said.
I held up one finger in the air, like I had just solved a mystery. “That you know of.”
His eyes widened for a second. “Oh, no, you’re right. Maybe I’ve been fooled before.”
I offered to pay for my half of dinner when the check came—after all, it was on the company’s dime—but Dimitri refused. That made the evening seem more like a date, which made our walk back to the resort feel loaded with expectation.
That morning, with tourists and locals wandering around, and the sun shining down on us, it had been easy to focus on everything else. But now, the evening air was cool and thick with water from the ocean. The dark sky was dotted with thousands of stars that stretched out forever in every direction.
I could feel Dimitri moving next to me like he had an electric current rolling off of him. Our arms swung loosely at our sides, close enough that either one of us could have reached out and grabbed the other’s fingers. Several times, I almost convinced myself to do it, but then I would chicken out, look up at the sky, and sigh.
“Beautiful night,” Dimitri said.
“Yes, perfect,” I agreed, hating myself for not making a move. This could be it. Once we parted ways, it was possible I’d never see him again.
The thought felt like a knife to the heart, yet somehow, my heart began to beat faster. I could see the smooth white pavement of the resort’s front entrance. Soon, we’d be walking away from one another.
I looked up at him one last time, trying to remember his face. Despite my efforts, I knew I’d forget within the month. I had never been great at remembering faces. It would be that way with Dimitri. If I ever did see him again, it was possible I wouldn’t even recognize him.
I studied the straight slope of his nose, the way his dark brows hung over his gold-flecked eyes, the sharp cut of his jawline, and I realized my fears were silly. No one could forget his face.
“This is where I leave you,” he said, sweeping his arm across the glass-paned doors that lined the entrance.
“It is,” I said, biting my lip and twirling my fingers in the fabric of my dress.
“Thanks for letting me be your tour guide. I had a great time.” Dimitri ran his hand around the back of his neck and then shoved his hands in his pockets.
“Thanks for teaching me how to truly travel,” I said, folding my own hands behind my back so they wouldn’t do anything rash and lunge for him. “I probably would have stayed at the resort all day if it hadn’t been for you.”
He shook his head. “No, you would have ventured out eventually.”
I smiled, grateful to him for saying so. For believing in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.
“Well,” we both said at the same time. Then, we laughed.
“Well,” he said, winking at me. “Thanks for a lovely day, Maxine.”
His hands slipped out of his pockets and there was a stuttering moment where I didn’t know whether we were going to shake hands or hug or kiss passionately. I just stared at him, hands locked behind my back, until he stepped towards me, arms held out, and I knew.
I stepped into the circle of his arms and pressed my cheek against his hard chest. I could feel his heart hammering against his ribcage, and I wondered if he could feel mine beating against his firm abs.
The hug went on longer than I thought it would, but I was too afraid to move or step away. Not to mention, I didn’t want to. He smelled sweet and woodsy and warm, even after a day spent on the back of a donkey and lounging on the ocean’s shore. His hands were on my upper back, but slowly, his fingers trailed down my spine, sending electric sho
cks to my limbs. My breath caught in my throat as I stood there, too nervous to move, afraid I would break whatever spell we were under.
Dimitri’s hand clutched at the fabric against my lower back, and he pulled me against his body until we were flush. I could feel the warmth of his skin even through his shirt. My hands moved up his back of their volition, exploring the planes of his body. My fingers outlined his shoulder blades and I thought how easy it would be to lean back, tilt my head up, and meet his lips with my own. It would be just a few adjustments, a few inches of difference from where we were, now.
My body tensed, prepared to jump into action, and then, he pulled away.
“Goodnight, Maxine.”
He stepped back like it was the easiest thing in the world, and I felt foolish for nearly kissing him. It would have overcomplicated things, anyway. I was glad I hadn’t done it.
That night, I dreamt of Dimitri. Of his tousled hair, his soul-searching eyes. But mostly, I dreamt of his lips.
Chapter 7
Andreas
I’d given Maxine something real. Perhaps a little too real. When we’d hugged goodnight, I’d been seconds away from wrapping my hands around her legs, scooping her up, and running away with her.
She couldn’t be leaving in two days. But she was, and I had to be okay with that. It was better that way, anyway. If she stayed any longer, I’d tell her the whole truth, eventually—my entire sad story. How I’d changed from the mischievous, adventurous boy who climbed trees in his underwear during a former king’s speech to the man who hid away in his villa, never letting anyone in.
I’d let Maxine in, though. Just a little. I’d told her one of my favorite childhood stories. Despite the fallout at the time, it was a cherished memory. A time when my parents were still alive, when the only concerns I had were about being bored at a family function.
And then, it had backfired. Immediately, Maxine had wanted to look into the Greek royal family. The moment she did that, she would learn all she needed to know about me. And really, I didn’t know that I would care if Maxine knew the truth. It wouldn’t be so bad if someone like her—someone kind and smart and beautiful—knew my secret.