Chapter 11
Three Months Ago
After reading the message from her editor, Max, the message that fired Wren from all future contracts, Wren burst into tears.
Angelos woke up right away and wrapped his strong arms around her.
He covered her cheek and neck with kisses, murmuring, “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it.
Don’t worry yourself!” Wren pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and shook.
For years, she’d built up her photography portfolio.
She’d built up a relationship with Max. She’d thought this gig would be her meal ticket for another few years, at the very least. Now, all because Max had come to Antiparos to spend time with Wren and Wren alone—whatever that meant—he’d decided to end their contract.
When Angelos found out what the email said, his eyes narrowed, and he got up and paced the end of the bed angrily. “I want to go to his hotel,” he said. “What he’s doing is wrong. He can’t do this to you.”
But Wren knew that Angelos going over to Max’s hotel to “demand answers” would make everything worse.
She imagined them getting into some kind of altercation—verbal or otherwise—and Angelos getting arrested.
She shivered, got up, and hugged him tighter.
“I don’t need Max,” she told both Angelos and herself.
“I hated always going where he sent me, anyway. This frees me up for more Greek traveling. Where else should we go?”
Angelos kissed her so beautifully, so emotionally, that Wren grew weak at the knees.
Greek sunlight oozed out from behind the curtains, and the day tugged them outside.
They got dressed and went to a local breakfast place, where they drank Greek frappés and ate creamy, thick yogurt.
Angelos borrowed a map from the owner, and together, Wren and Angelos charted a course from Antiparos through several more islands.
Wren had dreams of winding up somewhere in Turkey, where these glistening turquoise waters would take them.
“We will have a long, slow, easy pace,” Angelos promised her, his eyes glowing with love.
Back at the hotel, they packed. It occurred to Wren, vaguely, that Angelos had said he was needed back on Santorini soon, but she decided not to ask.
Maybe he’d already cleared a vacation with his parents.
Surely other people on Santorini could work at the hotel in his place?
Surely Angelos couldn’t do everything his parents wanted him to do forever.
Especially not now that he and Wren were going to start their future together.
From Antiparos, they traveled to Hydra, where they ate some of the most divine seafood Wren had ever had and rented a little room near the shore.
That first night, at a taverna, they danced and laughed and made friends and drank ouzo.
They talked about the places Wren longed to photograph and where she could send her photos now that she wasn’t locked into a contract with Max.
She decided not to mention her bank account.
It had always been sufficiently stocked for a few weeks, but now that she was looking at a few weeks, if not months, of unemployment, fear rushed through her gut.
Later that night, Wren watched Angelos pull out his phone and immediately pocket it again.
She’d seen many, many notifications on the screen.
Someone was looking for him. Suddenly, she was frightened.
What if Angelos had a girlfriend or even a wife somewhere?
Maybe she hadn’t been on Santorini when Wren was, which made their affair easier.
Maybe now, Angelos was sneaking off Santorini to have his affair with Wren, only to return to Santorini to take care of his wife and kids.
Wren filled her lungs, preparing to ask this venomous question.
But before she could, Angelos tugged her back onto the dance floor, and she promptly forgot.
For three days, they traveled like this, filled with unending joy. Angelos hardly ever looked at his phone, and Wren told herself not to be paranoid. She told herself that she was living the greatest love story she’d ever heard. What a marvelous thing!
And then, one morning, she woke up and found Angelos sitting at the edge of the bed. The look on his face made her panic. She curled up in a ball as far away on the mattress from him as she could get, then stammered, “What’s going on?”
Angelos spread his hands out on his thighs.
“Just say it,” Wren ordered.
Angelos sighed. “I have to go back to Santorini.”
Wren swallowed the lump in her throat.
“I told you,” he said. “I have to go back and help out at the hotel. I’ve been trying to blow them off, and they are not happy.”
Wren scrutinized his face, wondering if she could believe him. In the grand scheme of things, they were still basically strangers, weren’t they? Was she being stupid, allowing herself to fall in love with him so quickly?
“We have a few options,” Angelos said. “I have to work for the next five or six days, but I can come find you after that. Or, I mean, you can come back to Santorini with me.”
Wren furrowed her brow. She had the strangest sense that he’d suggested that she come back to Santorini in order to push her off the scent of his “real” life, his wife or girlfriend or whatever. Maybe his kids. She felt sour and unwanted.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said to him.
Angelos looked taken aback. “Do what?”
“We don’t have to see each other again. It’s really okay.”
Angelos pulled his hair. “I don’t know what you’re saying. I want to see you. Every day, if possible. You should come back with me. You should…”
But Wren suddenly saw herself as terribly pathetic.
The feeling dropped out of nowhere. She saw herself the way Max had seen her on Antiparos, unprofessional and in love with a stranger.
Her career was falling apart, and she had no way to stop it, not unless she hustled and built something back immediately.
Angelos came closer and took both her hands in his. “I know guys are good at saying ‘all the right things’ or whatever,” he said. “But I truly believe we’re meant for something, you and me. I’m not making it up. I’m falling in love with you, Wren Harper. Please, don’t slip away from me.”
Wren murmured, “I’m falling in love with you, too.” But she hated herself for admitting it.
Wren watched Angelos pack his things. Twice more, he suggested that she come with him back to Santorini, that they’d sail together and go to the hotel together, that he could probably get her a room in the hotel if she wanted that. “I promise, I will kick a tourist out if I have to,” he joked.
But Wren had no interest in following him around, even if they really were falling in love. She decided to take a breather, to regroup. If he came to find her in five or six days, they could continue. If he didn’t, she’d know that he wasn’t telling the truth about any of it.
Angelos was clearly hurt that Wren didn’t want to walk him to the port. She kissed him in the hotel room, hating how much she loved his smell and the feeling of her body in his arms. And then, he walked out the door and closed it behind him.
Two hours later, Wren boarded a ferry headed for Crete.
Crete was the biggest of all the Greek islands—such that it would take six hours to drive from the West Coast to the east. Wren read online that Crete was culturally different from the other Greek islands and that it was slightly less touristy, which felt like a relief after all the chaos of the past few weeks.
More than that, Wren thought she could take some photographs of some less trodden areas and maybe sell them to a travel magazine.
While on the ferry to Crete’s port at Chania, Wren’s stomach began to slosh. She got a bottle of bubbly water and tried to keep her wits about her as the massive boat swept across the water. Frequently, she ran to the bathroom, but she never actually threw up.
She wondered if this was more proof of her lovesickness. She wondered if this was her ache at having lost not only her job but Angelos, too.
When the boat reached Chania, Wren checked her phone and saw no messages whatsoever from Angelos.
She’d expected him to check in at least once.
She’d expected him to send a selfie or two from aboard his sailboat.
She tried to harden her heart, but tears spilled from her eyes.
By the time she reached her hotel, which she’d booked online while on the ferry, she felt heavy with self-pity and sorrow.
She checked in and went immediately to bed.
When she woke up the following morning, there were no text messages or calls from Angelos.
Nobody had reached out to her at all, and her stomach felt worse than ever.
It felt like her seasickness was going to chase her all over the land.
Unable to drink coffee or really eat much of anything from the breakfast bar, she left her hotel, telling herself she could walk it off.
That afternoon, she was finally able to choke down some salad and fish.
Her stomach wasn’t as sloshy and strange, and she was feeling in better spirits.
So what if Angelos hadn’t called or texted.
Now that he was gone, now that he’d shown her what kind of man he really was, she could move on.
She could dismiss all her feelings for him (somehow) and focus her attention on what mattered: getting her career back on track.
After lunch, Wren walked around Chania, taking photographs, before catching a bus out of the city and along the coast. For hours, she photographed water, beachgoers, sailboats, and long stretches of beautiful sand.
When she returned to her hotel, she was exhausted but regenerated.
She spent a few hours editing, then updated her portfolio and spent another hour and a half applying for jobs in travel and photography.
It wasn’t till around midnight, when she got up and immediately had to throw up, that she remembered her stomach again. What on earth was going on?
The following morning, she went to the pharmacy to get some anti-nausea medication. While in line to pay, she scanned the products in the aisle beside her. Condoms, sanitary pads. Pregnancy tests. Suddenly, her heart shot into her throat.
What if she were pregnant?
She turned to look at the people in line in front of her.
Most of them were Greek women, all ages, from twenty-two to seventy-five.
How many of them had taken a pregnancy test before?
She guessed many of them had. Wren had always been safe and conscious of her body and her free time.
She’d always protected herself. Hadn’t it been the same with Angelos?
Accidents happened, she supposed.
Just to rule it out, she grabbed a pregnancy test, paid for the test and the nausea medication without looking the cashier in the eye, then fled back to the hotel.
There, she didn’t hesitate. She tore apart the packaging and took the pregnancy test right away.
The instructions told her to wait two minutes before reading the results, so she left the bathroom and paced the hotel room.
Everything was going to be all right. Everything was going to go back to normal after this.
It would be too cruel, she felt, for the universe to cause her to fall pregnant right before her beloved Angelos left her forever. For it was increasingly clear he was “ghosting” her. He was gone.
But the universe had other plans for her. The pregnancy test told her a resounding truth: you’re pregnant! She threw it in the trash and told herself not to scream.
She’d never felt so alone in her life. For the first time in ages, there was a tightening in her chest that told her she needed her family more than ever. But she resisted it and told herself to be strong.