20. Corfu Town, Greece
20
CORFU TOWN, GREECE
Now
A lex ran her thumbnail under the label of her water bottle, peeling the corner from the glass. Even with her sunglasses, the high noon sun glinting off the blue bottle was laser-like, refracting an uncomfortable amount of clarity. The brilliance of the day only seemed to highlight its imperfections, the chipping paint on the worn buildings that lined the square, the faded fabric of the patio umbrellas shading each table, the potted plants wilting in the unforgiving summer heat. She looked down at her hands, where small chips had begun to form on her gelled nails. She added a trip to the nail salon to her mental list of the many things she had to do between now and Cyprus.
She was sitting at the end of another patio full of diners, this one far more upscale than the scene of the phone call with her mother. Her waiter swept by again and she shook her head, offering an apology in basic Greek and indicating that she was waiting for a friend. Paul had requested they meet at this place—it had “the best grilled fagri on the island,” he’d insisted, as if she cared about fish right now—and Alex knew better than to even glance at an appetizer without him. He had sent her a flurry of text messages while she was talking to Elena, asking her to meet for lunch and stressing that it was “ nothing scary .”
It was something he had learned to do early on with her—specify whether a looming conversation was cause for anxiety—and she had rarely appreciated the gesture as much as she did now. And in truth, she was glad he had asked to see her, as being alone would inevitably mean stewing in the aftermath of all the horrible conversations she couldn’t seem to stop having. Seeing Paul would give her at least one opportunity to speak thoughtfully, instead of defaulting to her usual defensive stance when things got uncomfortable.
Her nail scraped under the remaining spot of adhesive on the water bottle, removing it entirely and setting it next to her plate. In an effort to keep her hands busy, she pulled her phone from her bag and flicked open to MOONBEAM, which she’d immediately downloaded after Bee sent her the name. Her words about retreating into a shell had been echoing in Alex’s mind for days, but in light of her fight with her mother, they felt downright deafening.
As she scrolled, her free hand mindlessly dragged the ramekin on the table toward her, stabbing one of its olives with a toothpick. There was something comforting about astrology as a lens through which to analyze oneself, the plausible deniability of it. The salty olive in her mouth felt like popcorn at a good movie, her mind completely enraptured by the insight the app had to offer, the prism it gave her to understand her actions, which were sometimes baffling even to herself.
She looked up from an article about Cancers and attachment theory and spotted Paul from across the square, looking every bit the jet-setting American in his crisp white shirt and pleated khaki shorts, inseam just a few inches higher than Guy would have wanted it. Catching her eye, he waved, his dark green aviators positively gleaming in the sunlight.
“What is this?” he asked, slipping into his seat, kissing her cheek, and picking up her water bottle in one perfect motion. “Water? Ugh, no.”
He flicked a hand up toward a passing waiter, ordering a bottle of dry white wine in unapologetic English.
She could feel the anxious, upset energy radiating off of him, which instantly made her own heart rate slow. They’d always had a sixth sense for which of them was more in need of rescuing at any given moment, and it immediately made the non-urgent party snap into a nurse-like calm. Sometimes, they would joke that they shared a nervous system, and it only had so much cortisol to go around.
“Thanks for coming.” He sighed, grabbing an olive. “I had to get off that fucking boat.” He popped it in his mouth, chewing pensively before discarding the pit.
“That makes two of us, then.” She sipped her water, observing him from across the table. She swallowed, acknowledging her embarrassing behavior up front. “ And, I’m sorry for running out like that.”
“What?” he asked, seeming almost surprised. “Oh, yeah, it’s fine. Honestly, I feel like this whole trip was a mistake.”
His words were uncharacteristically cold, and she took a beat before responding.
“Why?” she finally asked, keeping it open ended.
He spoke to no one in particular, musing out loud as the clearly painful memories flooded him: “It’s like, I literally can’t do anything without it being a thing , you know? Everything I do is wrong somehow. He’s like my parole officer.”
“Guy?”
He took a beat and looked up at the waiter, who had arrived with a large ice bucket, two whisper-thin wine glasses, and a bottle he immediately began opening.
“Of course,” Paul finally said, eyes trained on the movement of the waiter’s hands.
“What happened this time?” Alex took pains to linger on this time, subtly emphasizing just how often their conversations about Guy began this way.
“Well, you’ll be pleased to know it had nothing to do with my outfit.” He smiled sarcastically, tasting the wine and nodding approvingly to the waiter, who poured each of them a glass before slipping the bottle into the steel bucket. “Instead, it was about the many other things I’m doing wrong: apparently I’ve gained ‘ at least five pounds ’ since Spain!”
“That’s terrible,” she said, simply.
For a moment, the affirmation just lingered in the air.
“And it’s crazy, too, because it had zero to do with how the argument started to begin with.”
It was usually at this point that Alex would tell him the origin of the argument didn’t really matter—if it ended in such a personal, cutting way, that itself was a problem. But today, she was too tired to go there. Besides, she didn’t feel particularly qualified to give romantic advice.
“Well?” she asked, searching his darting eyes. “What started it?”
“It was about your video,” he blurted out, emphatically avoiding her gaze.
Her stomach dropped, another onion-like layer of the catastrophe that was this stupid video peeling back.
“Hey.” She touched his shoulder, rotating him toward her. “What do you mean?”
“Well.” He sipped his wine again, flicking his eyes down to the glass she hadn’t touched. “It came up, obviously.”
“With everyone?”
“Yeah, of course. I mean, I told them.” He adjusted his cutlery nervously. “I told them you had a personal thing in Athens—a good reason for leaving. But they aren’t stupid, Alex. The video came up.”
“What did Danial say?”
“He didn’t say anything.” Paul clocked her suspicious expression and nodded for emphasis. “Literally. He was just in a corner scrolling. Reading comments, I think. He was silent all through breakfast.”
She took a beat to consider the implications, the mental damage inflicted on someone reading thousands of hateful comments about their work when they weren’t already used to it, like she was. Among many other things, she wished she could give him a hug.
“Did he seem sad? Or more angry?”
“He seemed… exhausted, honestly.” Paul adjusted his plate as he spoke, becoming increasingly superfluous with his distractions. “I don’t think he got much sleep.”
After a moment, she pushed forward with a line of questioning likely to provoke more detailed answers. “And what did Guy say?”
“You know,” he said, pushing his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose, further hiding his expression, “he didn’t like it.”
“Too radical for him?”
“Basically.” His whole body was cheated away from her now, as if he were going to run from the table.
“Paul.” She put her hand on his knee, which had been nervously bouncing up and down since he’d joined her. “What did he say?”
There was a silence, then a breath so heavy it felt like it contained the whole life they’d shared.
“He said that your politics were just about resentment. And I told him—”
“Are you fucking kidding?” Suddenly, her remorse over her conversation with her mother—and even the fight with Danial—evaporated. All she could feel was the righteous frustration that always fueled her work, frustration at the flippancy with which people like Guy treated the lives of people like her, and her parents, and everyone who had less than he did.
“Babe, I defended you! I told him about your dad. I told him about the healthcare work, and all the Carter stuff. Dev did, too, by the way.”
“Thank you,” she huffed, finally grabbing her glass to take a long sip of wine. She leaned into her high ground, into the retroactive permission to leave the boat that Guy’s cutting words granted her.
“But,” he continued, tapping his finger on the table, “I’m just going to say this, and I don’t want you to get mad at me.”
“What?”
“I don’t think it was cool to put all that stuff about Danny’s work in there. It kind of undermined your point.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she snapped, more harshly than she’d intended.
“Hey,” he leaned back slightly, as if physically struck by her words. “You have to stop getting so defensive. I went out of my way to tell you I wasn’t mad at you for leaving my bachelor trip early, because I knew how awkward it was for you to stay. I literally helped you pack your bags. And now you’re going to bite my head off, too?
“You’re right,” she conceded, her voice wobbling. “You’re completely right. I’m sorry. I’m just under so much fucking stress right now, and I—” She took a beat to think about how she wanted to phrase her next statement. “I just feel like life is one big party for you, and me and Danial are just another fun thing to make happen, and it’s not that way for me. Like, this is my whole life, and my career, and I already feel terrible for messing it up again.”
She stopped herself before continuing onto the thought constantly circling her brain whenever Paul was hurt by Guy—that he didn’t take himself seriously enough to think he deserved better.
“It’s okay.” He sighed. “But the video made you look petty, and I’m telling you that because I know you’re not a petty person about serious stuff.”
“Thank you.” She tore a piece from the corner of her bread, occupying her hands. “And I do regret it, for what it’s worth.”
“Why did you do it?”
“I was—” she paused, taking a moment to think about it. “I was angry after our fight, but I think also just angry at him for working for this horrible company and refusing to admit it, even to himself. Like, they literally just destroyed the only job opportunities for an entire town in Pennsylvania with no notice or severance. Just locked the door and either offshored or automated everything. It was a union town for almost 100 years before that.”
“I saw the video,” he confirmed, and Alex had the thought that it may have been the first one of hers he ever closely paid attention to. “But it’s not your job to fix him, or whatever.”
“Okay, Paul, I hear you, but I’ve just gotten it from my mom not even two hours ago—” The waiter approached, and Alex ordered two grilled fagri with roast potatoes and salad.
As soon as he cleared their menus and refilled their waters, Paul continued, not missing a beat.
“Gotten what from your mom?”
“Told that I messed up with that video. Even though her reasons are mostly bullshit.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know my mom.” She sighed. “It’s all about me ruining my chances with some perfect guy, because all she cares about is me getting married and having babies.”
Paul took a beat, opening his napkin and setting it on his lap.
“That’s what she said?”
Alex felt a flush of frustration at the implication that she might be misrepresenting the conversation, especially because she knew she was.
“Not exactly, no, but that was the gist. That I push everyone away, meaning men in particular.”
“Okay, but”—he placed his hand on the base of his wine glass, swirling it unnecessarily—“do you think that’s totally wrong?”
“That I push everyone away?”
“I mean, calling things early. You know, before they have a chance to get serious.”
Her eyes cut across the table, waiting him out until he was firmly looking back in her direction after much evasion.
“He told me he was done with me,” she said, sending a fresh jolt of pain through her own heart. “He’s the one who called it off early.”
“He had just seen the video.”
“We had a long conversation, and that’s where he left it. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, Paul.”
She flashed back to the moment by the door, the tear running down her face, him stopping himself from wiping it away before all but asking her to leave.
“Okay, but you don’t think it’s worth following up, once you guys have cooled down?” There was a slightly petulant insistence in his voice.
“If he reaches out to me, maybe,” she answered.
“Listen, you were so sure last time that you knew the exact right way to communicate with him, and it didn’t work.”
“Last time?”
“With the letter.”
“Oh, come on, ” she sighed, feeling herself getting frustrated again in real time. “I was twenty-two years old.”
She observed him pointedly, waiting for him to meet her eyes. There were moments like this between them sometimes, where the extent of their history—the things they had seen up close—revealed itself. It always felt so vulnerable, being with someone who knew her as well as he did, and in as many ways. Sometimes it would hit her all at once, leaving her so exposed that the only thing she could do was retreat.
“But if you want to talk about communication strategies,” she finally said, “I’m right here for a conversation about Guy.” She could hear the sibling-like cadence in her voice that often accompanied their frustration with one another.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what ? You’re the one who came up here because he called you fat!”
He winced at the word.
“Because I was defending you .”
“And then it became about you, somehow. Like it always does.” She flicked her napkin open, setting it down over her lap. “Is that what you want your life to be like?”
“Why can I never just vent to you without it becoming a TED Talk?”
“Me telling you—” She checked her tone, softening it before starting again. “Me telling you it’s not normal for your fiancé to constantly insult you is not a TED Talk.”
A silence fell over them, and neither party moved to occupy it. Alex grabbed the water, refilling her glass and offering a refill to Paul with a subtle tilt of the bottle. He nodded, sliding his glass her way with the back of his hand.
The same harsh sunlight landed on their table again, prompting Paul to move his glass out of its path. As it had before, the brightness felt almost accusatory, like it was pointing out something neither of them had a desire to acknowledge. She glanced down toward her chipped nails and, almost without thinking, slipped her hand beneath the table to hide the physical evidence of her anxiety. Across the patio, she noticed a couple seated on the same side of a table, sipping their drinks and leaning in for overlong embraces that bordered on inappropriate.
“Get a load of them,” she muttered, tapping her finger on the table to get Paul’s attention.
He slid his sunglasses down his nose, rolling his eyes. “Ugh, we get it, you’re just so horny for each other. Congratulations.”
She looked over at him, offering her first tentative smile since he’d sat down.
“I know you were just trying to defend me.” She reached across the table, taking his hand in hers. ”I’m sorry for being a bitch.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” he instantly corrected. “And I want you to have fun in Athens. You know I always thought you should stop by there.”
Alex knew that his haste in ending the argument was more about his own eagerness to pivot away from Guy than in her rightness, but she leaned in.
“Thank you.”
“Are you going to Kynosoura?”
It was the first time in years she’d heard the name of the resort she’d worked for after college, and it sounded funny to her ears—from an alternate universe, almost.
“Yeah, I think so. It’ll be fun.”
“You know,” Paul replied, a flicker of discomfort overtaking his face again, “I’m just going to say this, for whatever it’s worth. But whenever I talk to your mom, she doesn’t ask me about your dating life.”
“Yeah?” Alex’s heart pinched slightly at their last conversation, the harshness of its ending.
“Yeah. She just asks me if you’re happy.”
The waiter arrived, setting their overfull plates down with a flourish. The two of them nodded thank you in sync before picking up their utensils. She knew that neither of them had much of an appetite, but they would both put forth a good effort. If nothing else, stretching out this lunch meant avoiding everything else. In just a few hours, Paul would be back on the Verseau with a fiancé who constantly belittled him, and Alex would be in her tiny hotel room, as alone as she’d ever been. They chewed in silence, looking out onto the ancient street full of tourists.
“It’s a little underseasoned,” Alex finally observed, knowing that in her current mood, anything would have probably gone tasteless in her mouth.
“I’d love to add some salt, but I can’t afford to retain any more water right now,” Paul said, a sarcastic little smirk on his face as he handed her the shaker.
She grabbed it and immediately set it down, along with her fork.
“Come on,” she corrected, turning to face him fully. “You look amazing, and you know it.”
He paused, holding his utensils just inches above his plate, waiting to cut himself another bite.
“I don’t, actually,” he said, his typically impish voice sounding small and anxious. “But thank you for saying so.”
At this, she was quiet, unsure of what more she could offer in light of such a heartbreaking statement. And as if reading her mind, he set his hand, palm up, on the table, and she immediately placed hers within it. The two of them remained that way, loosely holding hands and barely talking, for the rest of the meal.