Chapter Two
It took a fair amount of begging and parental intervention, but the school agreed to let me and Liam be roommates for the trip.
It’s pure heteronormative nonsense that the school ever questioned it for a second.
Why wouldn’t a gay guy and a lesbian be allowed to room together?
But the administration finally got their thinking caps on right and let it happen.
We had to promise to be on our best behavior the whole time, which we fully intend to do.
Minus right now, of course.
“So, where are we going?” I ask.
“Give me a moment,” Liam snarls, tossing a T-shirt out of his suitcase.
We checked in about ten seconds ago, and Liam has already destroyed our little hotel room. The area around his twin bed is littered with all his clothes, which he’s tearing out of his suitcase piece by piece in search of the perfect outfit for our first night of sneaking out.
I peer out the window onto the busy street where we’re staying. The exhaustion I’ve been lugging around all day has evaporated, my body comfortable in the knowledge that it’s five p.m. in New York right now.
Of course, it’s midnight here, and our wake-up call is a mere six hours away. But the restaurant across the street stays open all night, and the jet lag has my stomach rumbling even after our copious dinner.
And, well, who am I to argue with that?
So here I am in one of the nicer sundresses I brought, a strappy yellow situation with flowers that Lizzie embroidered on the hem. I finally got to wash the plane out of my hair, and I decide I have time to curl it a little while Liam finds the right shirt for the night.
When he decides on a blue button-down and I accept that my brown frizz is as good as it’s going to get, we poke our heads out the hotel room door.
The hallway is empty. Ms. Barlowe is surely fast asleep by now.
She extolled the virtues of melatonin far too much to be a woman awake past the ten p.m. lights-out announcement.
All the same, we tiptoe our way to the elevator.
“I’d take the stairs to the side entrance if I were you.”
I almost start out of my skin. We whirl around to find Melanie smirking at us, her arms crossed.
“My mom and your teacher have discovered the joys of the hotel bar,” she warns us. “They’ll see you walk out if you go through the lobby.”
“Thanks,” I say, staring at my shoelaces. There’s a splotch of paint on my right shoe that must’ve been there since a teaching artist came to lead our cohort in a demo on painting vases.
“Wanna come with us?” Liam asks. The effort not to roll my eyes at him physically hurts.
“Where are you going?”
“That restaurant we saw across the street,” I tell her. I have to fight the urge to blush every time I meet her eyes, so I stick to examining my shoelaces as I talk. “A midnight snack was calling to me.”
She grins. “I can show you somewhere better.”
And that’s how we end up on a rooftop terrace overlooking the literal Acropolis.
It’s my first time ever seeing it, and I’ll admit, I tear up at the sight, even from afar.
Its iconic columns are lit up at night, and the slivered crescent moon hangs just above it.
It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
Around the hill on which the Acropolis sits, Athens’s nightlife bursts at the seams of the city.
Chatter rises from the streets below, and I do my best to snatch at the words I know in the unfamiliar language.
Our sleek rooftop patio is packed with people and the sounds of clinking drinks and cutlery.
Our table is by the hedge outlining the edge of the roof, jasmine flowers bursting through the greenery.
Their sweet scent freshens the air with the feeling of summer.
“This trip is going to blow my mind at every corner, huh?” I say.
My eyes can’t settle on any one thing. All of it—the streetlights casting a glow on the groups of people laughing their way down the street, the stray cats dashing across the road, the enduring remains of the ancient civilization watching over the whole scene—is too beautiful.
Liam is so enraptured by the view, he doesn’t even hear me, but Melanie laughs.
“Yes,” she says. “I haven’t been many places, but all the same, I know Greece is the best place in the world.”
I take a sip of the fruity mocktail I ordered, trying to ignore the way the moon seems to make Melanie’s tanned skin glow. “Have you lived in Athens your whole life?”
She nods. “My mom teaches humanities at the American school here, so I’ve been going there since kindergarten. What about you?”
“I’ve been in New York my whole life,” I tell her. “This is the first time I’ve left the city, actually.”
She raises her eyebrows, smiling. “Wow. Welcome to somewhere else, then.”
“Thanks,” I laugh.
Liam finally manages to tear his eyes off the Acropolis to answer Melanie when she asks how we became friends.
Our lore is one of my favorite stories. We both started at our middle school in seventh grade, two awkward new kids wondering how to make friends when everyone else had already settled into their middle school friend groups the year before.
And then we both failed our first math quiz so colossally that I started crying in the middle of the test period.
He found me after class to tell me that he wanted to cry too, and when we found out we’d both gotten literally every single question wrong, our fate as best friends was sealed.
Learning that he was also an ancient-world nerd on top of that just made it too good to be true.
Melanie laughs as Liam performs a reenactment of my math drama.
“Number four was just…so…impossible,” he chokes out between fake sobs, and she snorts with laughter. Her eyes light up as she does, her smile transforming her whole face with its warm glow.
You can’t actually like her, my brain reminds me. She’d just see all the bad parts of you and run away. And maybe then Liam would see all the bad parts you’ve been hiding from him this whole time, and you’ll lose him too. And then what will there be?
I drown my thoughts with another sip of my drink. I don’t need the reminder. There’s no way I’m nursing a crush on Melanie. I’m just here to be her friend. Anything more would mean risking everything—and for what? A summer fling? A date to Lucy’s precious end-of-trip party?
“Y’all are so cute,” Melanie says.
“We’re not a couple,” I say quickly. Not that Melanie, specifically, needs to know that.
It’s just that nothing grinds my gears more than people assuming that Liam and I must be dating.
Somehow, in the year of our Lord 2026, people are still wondering if men and women can really be friends.
Even if everyone involved is literally gay.
“Duh,” Melanie says. Her eyes meet mine, and for the briefest moment, I let myself melt into the warmth of her brown irises. It feels like she’s seeing straight into me, and she wants to keep looking. Like she feels this too.
I blink at the thought and force myself to straighten my spine, moving away from her. Feeling what too? There’s nothing here to feel.
“Sorry,” Melanie says. “I shouldn’t assume…”
“No, we’re both quite gay,” Liam says with a grin. “It makes the dating rumors even more exciting.”
Melanie snorts. “Who the hell thinks you guys are dating?”
“Our teachers, half our classmates, most of my extended family, anyone who passes us on the street…” Liam counts on his fingers.
“It’s the default assumption,” I tell her, rolling my eyes. “It’s this thing we always have to explain, and whether or not people believe us is sort of a coin toss. Half of everyone we know thinks we’re at the beginning of a friends-to-lovers rom-com and just don’t know it yet.”
Melanie shakes her head. “That’s so stupid.”
It’s a thought loop I’ve gotten caught in too often. So many people think I must be harboring secret romantic feelings for Liam. I’ve proven to myself—over and over and over again—that all the love I have for him is deeply platonic.
Still, I’m afraid to talk to Paige about that one. What if she says the thought loop is worth paying attention to?
“Well, I’m a lesbian too,” Melanie says. “I get how endlessly frustrating that must be.”
At the confirmation, my brain does a cute little short circuit. She’s gay. So it’s entirely possible she does feel it too. The way my face splotches red every time I look at her, the way looking into her eyes feels like looking at a work of art—could that be happening for her as well?
I mentally shake myself. I can’t let my romantic nature win out over the part of me that knows I could never be in a relationship.
Melanie grins at me, and it lights up her whole face. “So, are either of you actually dating anyone?”
“Nope,” Liam says before I can answer. “We’re both single.”
I fake a laugh and wrap my hands around his arm. “How dare you besmirch our relationship like that?”
Melanie snort-laughs. It’s the cutest sound in the world.
I force myself to draw a breath in. It’s not cute. Or, at least, not especially cute. It’s just a laugh. All laughing is cute.
My head is spinning, and the thoughts are coming on too fast for me to process them. I can’t fend off the thoughts about Melanie. Nor can I allow them in.
“Excuse me.” I barely manage to choke out the words before I claw my way out of the booth and stumble to the bathroom. Mercifully, it’s a single-stall situation. I lock the door behind me and sink to the floor, propping myself up on my heels.
You’re always such a mess. It’s exhausting.
The thought comes fast and rings in my ears like a slap. The thoughts keep coming, raining down on the coils of my brain, where there’s nowhere I can escape.
If you fell in love with her, you’d have to let her in close enough to see this part of you.
The part that leaves me breathless on a bathroom floor, the cold of the tiles seeping through the thin material of my dress. Red blotching my pale cheeks, sweat tingeing the edges of my hair, fingers scrabbling at the grout.
If she saw this part of you, she’d never want you.
She’d tell the others.
It’s a part of me I don’t even let Liam see.
I love him too much to let him know me like this.
How could I possibly explain it? The way my thoughts can completely take over my body, the brain gremlin piloting my mind in directions that spin so far out of control, there seems to be nothing I can do to call it back.
So you have to keep her far away.
Paige always tells me to use my senses to come out of moments like this. I take a deep breath and notice what I smell. Wouldn’t you know, it smells like bathroom in here. Great therapisting, Paige.
Although, the snarky thoughts about my therapist alert me to the fact that my brain has slowed. This thought spiral has set me free. For now.
Taking a shaky breath, I straighten my stiff legs and move to wash my hands.
My reflection in the mirror above the sink captures all the panic that’s been coursing through my veins.
I let the cold water run a little too long over my hands, let it soothe my fingers, until the color of my cheeks returns to its usual pale tone.
I swing through the door and head back to our booth, where my two platonic besties await with piles of baklava warming the air between us.
Where I force laughter that sears when it comes up my throat, keeping everything they say at arm’s length like a fire that might scald me if I get too close. Where I bite into the baklava every time I need to swallow down the urge to make a joke just to hear Melanie laugh.
Where I avoid direct contact with the warmth of her eyes for the rest of the night.