40. Galena
GALENA
T he Aegean stretched out before us like melted glass, blue and endless.
Greece had been an interesting revelation.
While I’d imagined the tiny white houses with blue roofs like in the posters that you saw online, what Ilias had shown me instead were cities filled to bursting with drivers that were nearly manic as they drove with no rules at all, and country roads that curved along the coast. We visited outdoor movie theaters and stopped at vendors for ears of corn roasted over open fires until the kernels were blackened and coated in butter and salt.
He took me to his favorite open-air restaurants where they served huge platters that were so delicious that we had to swear not to tell Evgenia that some dishes were better than her renditions .
I loved everything about it, but most of all, I loved that I was doing it with Ilias’s hand in mine, which sounded incredibly sappy when I thought about it, but I was ridiculously happy.
My knees were bent as I lay in the hammock, my notebook resting on my lap. My pencil moved lazily over the paper, making sweeping curves and soft lines. I’d started drawing the cove below us, but it had shifted into something else—us in the hammock, with the lines of Ilias’s face.
Beside me, Ilias lay with one arm folded under his head, the other draped loosely around my waist. He was shirtless, skin bronzed from days in the sun, book forgotten on his chest. His sunglasses rested low on his nose, and I could tell by the rhythm of his breathing that he wasn’t reading anymore. He was watching me like always.
“I can feel you staring,” I murmured without looking up.
“You’re more interesting than geopolitics.” He wasn’t ashamed that he’d been caught.
Laughing at him, I tucked my pencil into the wire spiral. “Gosh, I hope so.”
A breeze rolled in off the sea, warm and soft. The hammock swayed slightly with it. The house was quiet and private. It was just us here, wrapped in sea air and olive trees. Ilias tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’re so talented. I love watching you draw. Is that me?”
“You. Us.”
“Let’s see.” He peered over at the notebook. “I like how you always draw me when I’m thinking. You are really great at catching expression.”
“Maybe one of these days I’ll learn to do caricatures. Specialize in faces.” I sent him a saucy wink. I was just teasing him. That style of art wasn’t my thing. Even if it were, Ilias would champion it and declare it awesome because that was the sort of person he was.
“I’d love anything you do,” he said, confirming his absolute bias towards anything I did. Then he leaned over and kissed my bare shoulder. “I’m still trying to figure out what I did to deserve all this happiness.”
“You do deserve it. You’re a good brother, a husband, and a good man.” There was a time I knew that he hadn’t been happy in his life and hadn’t felt he deserved to be happy.
“I’m coming around to the idea,” he admitted.
“The conditioning from my father is hard to break. You help me every day.” His thumb brushed slow circles against my hipbone over the edges of my swim coverup.
“But you are. And you made me happy. You gave me back pieces of myself I didn’t realize I’d lost.”
We’d talked about his upbringing and the dark times with his father.
Yianni Anthakos had been twisted in his torment of Ilias, and Ilias had never understood why he was singled out among all the other children.
That was one of the reasons he never spoke to them about it.
Trauma is a fickle beast, and I understand that. We all have different ways of coping.
I turned in the hammock until I could lie my head on his chest. His heartbeat was steady beneath my ear—solid and grounding and mine. “I’ve been loving our time away. It feels like we’re dreaming,” I whispered.
“Then we’ll stay asleep a little longer.” The sun shifted. A bird landed on the railing and took off again. Somewhere below, the sea kissed the rocks.
“Are you missing the city? Or your work?” I asked, twirling the pencil between my fingers, darting a look over at him.
I’d been worried before we left that he’d been taking this extended vacation just for me, and he’d regret leaving his company.
Also, I’d been terrified that things would be messed up with his brothers because of it, so I was always trying to check in on him.
So far, I hadn’t caught any indication of either thing.
He spent time with them when they called him with work-related questions and he still got emails to answer.
He gave a low hum. “I won’t lie and say that there aren’t things I miss about it, but I love spending time with you. I really needed a vacation.” He bumped my nose with his. “This was a good excuse to get one.”
“What about you? What do you think about all this? I know you haven’t really had much of a chance since your mom died to get into any normal routine.
Have you thought about whether you want to go to school when we eventually go back to New York?
” I doodled a little in a corner, feeling Ilias’s eyes on me.
“Whatever answer you give is fine. You know that. I don’t care if you want to juggle, stay home and read, or go to school.
I hope you know that. I love you just the way you are. ”
“I haven’t completely decided yet, but I think I might take some art classes.
He nodded beside me, but I didn’t look up.
They seemed frivolous. I’d been studying business because, even when I was in school before on scholarship, it was a privilege to go, and I knew that once I finished, I’d need to support myself, not lounge around reading books or juggling.
“You’re sure you’re fine if I don’t work?
” We hadn’t really been specific about it.
I understood he didn’t care about money.
He’d already given me access to accounts with obscene amounts in them and credit cards with my name on them.
Still, I felt like it would be weird not to work.
“Positive. I don’t ever want to stop you from doing what makes you happy. We don’t need you to work. We have more money than you and I could ever spend.”
“Okay. I won’t worry about it.” I wouldn’t either.
He smoothed another curl back and looked me over as if double-checking to make sure I meant it.
“I promise.” Changing the subject, I said, “I like this. The quiet. The way no one here knows who we are or what we’ve survived.
There is something about being anonymous that I like. ”
I felt him nod. “It lets you breathe coming to a place like this.”
We lay in silence for a long time. In the distance, a sailboat cut across the horizon, and I sketched it absentmindedly on the page with simple lines.
Ilias traced a scar on my thigh with the back of his knuckle.
“I used to think that the blood oath was just another form of my father’s control.
” He looked off into the distance for a moment, as if he could see into the past. “In a lot of ways it was, but in so many ways,” he turned back toward me. “I was so lucky.”
I reached for his hand and laced our fingers together.
“ We were so lucky,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t meant to help us, but we definitely were made for each other.
” I leaned up and kissed him, slow and sweet.
No hunger. No heat. Just the kind of kiss that said you’re home.
When I pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine. “So what happens next?” I asked.
“Whatever we want.” He smiled softly. “We’ll go wherever you want to next. We can go home. Keep traveling. Anything you want.”
I closed my sketchbook and leaned against his side, arm draped over his chest, legs intertwined with his. Whatever came next, I wanted to face it with him. I figured that was what life and love were all about. I tilted my face up to the sun and whispered, “That sounds perfect.”