by Holly Rayner
“Just take her out once,” Amy said after I confronted her about it. “Please. She just got out of a long-term relationship and you’ve been in some kind of funk.”
“How would you know if I’ve been in a funk?” I asked.
“You’ve skipped three of the last six workouts and you haven’t shaved in over a month. Your exterior is starting to match your hermit interior,” she said.
It was true. The mess of hair on my chin had gotten way out of control, but that didn’t mean I was in a funk. Eating loukoumades four times a week because they made me think of Maxine meant I was in a funk, but Amy didn’t even know about that.
Amy’s sister stuck by my side throughout the workout, and though I tried to escape back up to my villa as soon as we were finished, she cornered me.
“Hey. Dimitri, right?”
“Yeah, hey,” I said, turning to face her.
She was pretty. Long blond hair that she had pulled back into a ponytail. Though we’d just been doing sprints in the sand, she didn’t look like she’d even broken a sweat, whereas I was wheezing—though that could have had something to do with all the loukoumades.
“I’m Elena, Amy’s sister.”
“Welcome to the workout group,” I said, hesitating around what to call our collection of friends. “We don’t have an official group name that I’m aware of.”
She laughed, and a pang of guilt shot through me, though I couldn’t say why. We chatted for a few minutes, and she was annoyingly easy to talk to, so when she asked me out, I couldn’t help but agree.
We went to a seafood place, and she was perfectly nice, but I was perfectly bored. I gave her a hug as we parted ways for the night, knowing I’d never see her again.
When I got home, I opened up my computer and pulled up a new browser. I typed in Maxine’s name and Madison, Wisconsin and her social media profiles popped up immediately. Like she’d said on our last night on the beach, most of her followers seemed to be family members and she didn’t post frequently.
There were photos of her with a woman named Katie. Maxine smiled wide for the camera, and I felt privileged to know it wasn’t her natural smile. It wasn’t the wrinkled nose, crinkled eyes, snorting laugh she did when she thought something was really funny.
As I scrolled through her feed, I learned that she had left her job as a telemarketer, but didn’t seem to have found a replacement just yet. I swelled with pride for her. Perhaps she had finally begun to pursue her dreams.
While part of me felt happy for her, another, darker part was jealous. Jealous of all the life she was living that I wasn’t there for. Jealous that she seemed to be moving on and moving forward while I felt stuck in the exact same place.
I played with the idea of creating an account and reaching out to her, but why? Would I come clean and tell her the truth about my identity? What good would it do? We would still live a world apart and she seemed to be fine without me.
Slowly, I began to realize that maybe I had taken our vacation fling a bit too seriously. Maybe it would be best to just forget Maxine and leave the past in the past.
I clicked out of the browser window and closed my laptop. It was time to move on.
Chapter 13
Maxine
“Is it Tony’s? Oh, please God, tell me it isn’t Tony’s.”
Katie was pacing around my living room while I sat on the couch, the pregnancy test laid flat on the coffee table in front of me. Katie had bought me a four-pack of pregnancy tests from the store and she’d insisted I take all of them before we freaked out. So, I’d dipped them into the cup one after the other, and one after the other, they’d revealed the same result. I was pregnant.
I knew the baby was Dimitri’s, but Katie didn’t even know Dimitri existed. I had somehow managed to leave him out of all of my stories about Greece. I’d told her about the donuts and the donkeys and the delicious food. I’d told her about kayaking and the secret cove and the local market. I’d just let her believe I’d done it all alone.
It was better that way. If no one in my real life knew about Dimitri, then it would be easier to pretend it had all been a dream. It would make it easier for me to move on and forget about him. Except, now, the truth had caught up to me in a big way.
“It’s not Tony’s,” I said.
Her eyes went wide. “Then, who is the father? You haven’t slept with anyone else. Is this like an immaculate conception thing?”
Despite the stress I was feeling, I laughed. “No! I’m not carrying the son of God. I slept with someone in Greece.”
“Nuh-uh,” Katie said, clearly incapable of words. She dropped into the armchair across from me, mouth hanging open. “One-night stand?”
I shrugged. “Not exactly. I kind of…met someone.”
I relayed the whole story to Katie—our meeting, the days we spent together, the night we spent together, our goodbyes—and she stared at me, enraptured. During any other story, I could have expected Katie to interrupt me a thousand times with jokes or gasps or inappropriate comments, but she didn’t utter a word.
Then, when I finished, she screamed.
My hands flew to my ears to protect myself from her screech. “What was that?”
“You are in love. You are in love with a Greek god and he is the father of your baby,” she said, holding her hands up to her chest and looking at me with moony eyes. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
“It’s not like that, either,” I said. I hadn’t wanted to have to tell her that I had fallen for a man who hadn’t even given me his real name, but there didn’t seem to be another option, so I explained his private, hermit ways.
“Okay, this guy is seriously mysterious. What if he’s in the mob or something? Do you really want to contact him?” Katie asked.
“He deserves to know,” I said. “Right?”
Katie shrugged. “I guess, but it’s also your choice. Being a single mom is hard, but I know it was the right decision for me. It could be the right one for you, too.”
I wanted to sit up all night and make Katie tell me what to do, but it was late and she had to get home and relieve the babysitter. So, she gave me a hug, patted my still-flat stomach, and told me to call her in the morning.
After she left, I stared at the pregnancy test, trying to make sense of everything. I was pregnant. Based on the timeline, almost twelve weeks pregnant. Almost to my second trimester. I would have a baby in my arms in a little over six months’ time. The thought made me feel nauseous, though that could easily have been the morning sickness again.
Suddenly, I couldn’t just sit there. I had to act.
Before I could stop myself, I looked up the number to the hotel resort and dialed the front desk. The woman answered in Greek, but transitioned seamlessly to English when I began to speak.
“I’m looking for Dimitri…well, I don’t actually know his last name. He lives in a private villa on the beach.”
“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to give away guest information,” she said. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“I understand, but this is kind of a special circumstance. I really need to get in contact with him. It’s an urgent personal matter.”
“Perhaps, if you were family, I could help you, but as it is…” the woman said, her voice trailing off.
“I am family,” I blurted out. Technically, I was carrying his family.
“But you don’t know his last name?”
Crap. I decided the truth was my friend.
“Okay, I’m not his family, but I know his name isn’t really Dimitri and I know a lot of the employees at the resort are paid to protect his privacy…but I’m pregnant with his baby and I have to get in touch with him.”
My declaration was met with silence.
“Please?” I begged.
I heard a sigh on the other end of the line and then a whispered voice.
“Okay, I know he is no longer staying here at the resort. He left a couple of weeks ago and no one knows w
here he went. That is all I know.”
“He moved?” I asked softly, hopes dashed.
“I’ve said more than I should,” the woman replied. “Good luck. Don’t call here again.”
Then, she hung up.
The receptionist had acted like Dimitri was a celebrity of some kind. Was he? I honestly didn’t know. I had no way to even guess what his real name would be to even try to look it up. Feeling exhausted and sick and beyond terrified, I went to bed and endured a fitful night’s sleep.
Over the next few days, I went to doctor’s appointments and applied for jobs—because having a baby had put an indefinite pause on my move to California—and scoured Greek gossip magazines, looking for pictures of Dimitri. I didn’t know whether he was an actor or a pop star or an artist, but if he was famous enough, I hoped I’d somehow happen upon his true identity.
“This isn’t healthy,” Katie said one night when I showed her my internet search history. “You can’t keep staying up until two in the morning looking for this guy.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Give up?”
“Do you have a picture of him?”
I pulled up the selfie we’d taken on the beach and handed my phone to her. I hadn’t spent much time looking at the picture, because seeing his perfect smile and caramel eyes always threatened to send me into a fit of hysterics, but I also hadn’t been able to bring myself to delete it, either.
And now that I knew he was the father of my child, I couldn’t delete it. Even if I never found him again, I’d want my baby to at least know what their father looked like.
“This is the father of your child?” Katie asked, eyes wide.
I nodded, and she shook her head, mumbling about how beautiful our baby would be. Then, she sent the photo to herself and handed my phone back to me.
“I’ll at least help you look, Max. Scouring the internet for him may be the most hopeless idea I’ve ever heard, but I won’t let you do it alone.”
So, we both searched the internet. Katie sent me the occasional picture of some actor or politician who she thought might possibly resemble Dimitri, but it was never very close. As time went on, I began to lose hope I’d ever find him.
Then, one morning, I had a craving for loukoumades.
“You want donuts?” Katie asked when I called at nine in the morning.
“No, I want loukoumades. Greek donuts.” The craving had struck at seven, but I’d had the self-restraint to wait to call Katie until nine. My car was at the shop getting an oil change, so I needed her to drive me. “I found a Greek restaurant nearby that has them on the menu.”
Katie agreed, but only after I swore I’d babysit Jonah and Maizie while she went on a date with Greg that weekend—despite me vomiting in the middle of their conversation at the club, she and Greg had hit it off and were going out regularly.
The restaurant was ten minutes away from my house and the sign in the window said they opened at ten, but the waitress seemed less than enthused to see us there that early in the morning. She wore a white uniform with a navy-blue sailing collar stretched out across her shoulders and a blue-and-white striped bandana tied under that. When I ordered five orders of loukoumades—each order was two donuts—she ran her eyes up and down my frame, clearly trying to imagine what I would look like, forty pounds heavier.
“She’s pregnant, ma’am, so if you could put a rush on those donuts that would be great,” Katie snapped, giving the thin red-headed waitress a death glare.
“Katie! I’m not telling anyone yet,” I said when the waitress had disappeared into the kitchen.
“Pregnancy comes with a lot of perks, so you might as well start using them now,” Katie said. “And besides, she’s a stranger. Who is she going to tell?”
I wanted to remind Katie that the father of my child was more of a stranger to me than our waitress. At least I knew her name was Kaitlyn.
Kaitlyn came back a few minutes later with our water glasses and as she leaned over the table to place my glass on a coaster, I noticed an elaborate crest sewn on the lapel of her uniform. Something about it caught my eye, though I couldn’t figure out what. There was a shield in the center with the image of a serpent wrapped around the body of a lion.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked, following my gaze to her chest and then giving me a glare.
“No, that will be all,” Katie said, curling up her lip and tilting her head to the side threateningly as the woman walked away. “Can you believe this girl? She is so not getting a tip from me.”
“Did you recognize that crest?” I asked.
Katie shook her head. “What crest?”
“On the lapel of her uniform. I would swear I’ve seen it before.”
“Well, you were just in Greece. Maybe it’s a common symbol,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe.”
When the waitress came back a few minutes later, her nasty attitude was forgiven because she had two large plates with five loukoumades dripping in honey syrup and cinnamon sitting on each plate. I followed their descent to the table like a predator eyeing my prey. I began reaching for one of the donuts before she’d even fully pulled her hands back.
“Hey!”
I jolted and so did the waitress, dropping the plates the last inch so they clattered on the table. We both turned to Katie, wondering what could have caused her outburst. She had her hand outstretched, pointing at the label of Kaitlyn’s uniform, and her mouth was hanging open.
“What is it, Katie?” I asked, shooting the waitress an apologetic smile.
“The crest,” Katie stammered, beginning to wag her finger in the air.
Kaitlyn crossed her arms over her chest and took a step away from our table, no doubt trying to figure out how she was going to have us removed from the establishment.
“What about it?” I asked. I’d almost forgotten about the crest. As soon as the donuts had arrived, my thoughts had become preoccupied with getting them into my body as fast as possible.
“We’ve seen it before,” Katie said, turning back to the emblem and leaning forward to get a better look.
“What is going on?” Kaitlyn asked, clearly uncomfortable with the amount of attention her chest was getting from our table.
“It’s from the picture of you and Dimitri,” Katie said, getting more and more excited. She was starting to bounce up and down in her seat. “I saw it on his suit in the photo. That’s where it’s from.”
As fast as I could, I whipped my phone out of my purse and flipped through my photos. When I reached the photo of me and Dimitri, I opened it and began zooming in on his suit pocket. He had a small handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, and sure enough, stitched into the fabric of the handkerchief was the same exact crest.
“Oh my God,” I said, looking from my phone to Kaitlyn’s shirt and back again.
“Are you two okay?” Kaitlyn asked. “Should I get you a manager?”
“Do you know what that crest means?” Katie asked. “Does it stand for something specific? And are the words written around it Greek? What does it say?”
Kaitlyn held up her hands and took a step away. “I don’t know Greek. I just work here.”
“Is anyone here actually from Greece?” I asked.
“I think my manager is,” Kaitlyn said with a shrug. “Do you want me to get him?”
As we waited for the manager to show up, I tried to talk myself down. It was likely the crest was a common symbol and wouldn’t lead us to anything specifically about Dimitri. I couldn’t get my hopes up.
The manager was a stooping man with salt-and-pepper hair and a thick gray mustache. He ambled over to the table, looking confused. I wondered what Kaitlyn had said about us when she’d gone to get him. She’d probably told him we were completely nuts and he should get rid of us. But it didn’t matter. As long as he answered our questions, he could think whatever he wanted.
“Good morning,” he said. “I hear you ladies wanted to see me. I ho
pe the food is all right.”
“The food is perfect,” I said, though I hadn’t actually eaten any of the loukoumades yet. “I actually have a question about the crest I saw on the waitress’s uniform.”
His eyes immediately narrowed, turning defensive. “What about it?”
“Do you know where it’s from?” I asked.
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “If this is going to become some kind of copyright issue then you are going to have to speak to my lawyer. I’m not going to say anything that could get me or my business in trouble.”
I waved my hands and shook my head. “No, it’s nothing like that. We recognize it and are wondering where it’s from. I promise. Nothing fishy here.”
The man still seemed nervous, but he sighed and then began to explain.
“It is the symbol of one of the richest and most prestigious families in Greece. I know family crests are meant to be used only by the families, but it is a fascinating image. The lion being ensnared by the snake while also stepping on the snake’s tail. It’s a power struggle. I’ve always found it intriguing. So, when I opened my restaurant, I had it printed onto the menus and the uniforms.”
I’d been so busy trying to get my loukoumades fix that I hadn’t noticed the menu. I flipped it over and saw the crest printed front and center on the menu. The picture was as bag as the palm of my hand.
“Which family is it?” I asked, my heart hammering like a hummingbird’s.
That couldn’t be good for the baby, but I didn’t know how to calm myself down.
“Stanis, I believe,” he said, his eyes looking up towards the ceiling as he thought. “But it’s hard to say for sure. My memory isn’t as good as it used to be.”
The man was still talking when Katie and I looked at one another, eyes wide. Immediately, we both pulled out our phones and began searching frantically.
Seconds later, I was staring at an entire page of results for “Stanis family Greece.” I clicked on the first image and nearly screamed. It was Dimitri. He looked younger and skinnier, but I would have recognized that hair and those eyes anywhere.