22. Corfu Town, Greece
22
CORFU TOWN, GREECE
Now
L ater, Alex found that they had migrated to the bathroom floor, waiting each other out in the silence of what they had done.
“What time is it?” she asked, not moving her head from his bare chest as it gently rose and fell beneath her.
The words felt like a broken spell, an acknowledgement that this couldn’t last—or, at least, that it shouldn’t.
“Umm,” he replied, lifting his wrist from the tile floor to check his watch. “Late.”
He paused, and she could feel his neck craning down to look at her. But she would not ask him to stay, and he would not offer to. Maybe they were both cowards, or just reasonably self-protective from the hurt they were constantly inflicting on one another. Either way, there was no limit to their physical vulnerability, and nothing but boundaries when it came to anything remotely emotional.
She sat up, suddenly self-conscious of her nudity. As if reading her mind, he reached up and pulled a towel down from the bar, allowing her to wrap it around herself. With him still totally undressed on the floor, she felt the familiar comfort of the power differential shifting in her favor, taking a last, delicious look at him as he slipped his shirt over his head. His body had always been beautiful, but his discipline in every area of his life since college was paying dividends. She could barely decide which part of him she loved most, but she was drawn to the dark, fine hair on his muscular chest and the angular shape of his hips: they formed a perfect arrow with the trail running down his defined stomach, directing her to the impressive features waiting just below.
She looked away: half to preserve his modesty, half to stop herself from wanting him again. The sound of his belt buckle reminded her of that night in her cabin, wondering what he must have looked like on the other side. If she had known then what she knew now, she might have died on the spot.
“You can come to dinner, you know,” he said, turning to check himself in the mirror. “You need to eat.”
It was something he had done since they were young: constantly making sure she’d eaten, asking if she was still hungry even when she’d cleaned her plate.
“Thank you, but I’ll find my own food,” she replied. She stood up, slipping on her shorts underneath the towel. “If I wanted to come to dinner, I wouldn’t have left.”
“I didn’t mean to drive you away, you know.”
“It’s really fine.” She nodded reassuringly, removing her towel to pull her tee shirt over her head. She took her time, knowing he would be enjoying the sight of her the way she’d enjoyed him. “And honestly, I’m kind of relieved to be here.” She untucked her curls from the neck of her shirt, observing him in the mirror. “You might not remember this, but being surrounded by extremely rich people when you don’t have money gets kind of exhausting after a while.”
He turned on the faucet, letting the water run over his hands before expertly combing them through his hair. “I remember.” He met her eyes in the mirror. “And by the way, that feeling never really goes away, even if you manage to make some money.”
She took in the painstaking care he put into his appearance, the rigorousness of it. They were both treading water in this social group, and although his head was more securely above the surface, it was only because he was kicking that much harder. A twinge of empathy ran through her heart.
“Well, now you know that,” she said, her voice soft.
He smiled in a slightly chagrined way, turning off the faucet and flicking his hands dry in the sink. “Are you really coming to the wedding?”
“Yes, of course. I wouldn’t miss Paul’s wedding.”
“Even if you can’t stand Guy?”
“I can stand Guy,” she lied, knowing that more unpacking of their fraught relationship was an exercise in futility. “And I’ve made plenty of decisions Paul didn’t agree with.” She folded the towel, hanging it neatly back on the rack. “But yes, I’m definitely going. I’m just going to spend a few days by myself first, go to Athens for a bit.”
“Solo travel.”
“It’s always kind of been my thing.”
He leaned against the counter, taking his time with his next words.
“You know, my mother still asks about you.”
“Really?” she answered, genuinely taken aback. “I only met her twice.”
He glanced down at his wrist again, clearing his throat. “Well, you made an impression. And, you know, she’s very female empowerment . She loves women who are ‘self-determined.’ Her words, not mine. Solo travel is the kind of thing she would have loved to do.”
His face assumed the familiar, tender expression it always did when he spoke of his mother. Alex pictured her working endless hours at the salon, watching other women live the adventures she couldn’t. And now, with her body failing her, it was probably too late.
At the mental image of Marjane, Alex’s mind inevitably drifted to Elena, a woman who had similarly spent her whole life sacrificing for her family. It hadn’t even been a full day since their argument, but her absence was already tangible. By now, her mother would have sent her at least a few text messages, or photos from the daycare. She would have asked for updates, FaceTimes so she could see the tourist attractions. And she would have joined her lunch with Paul on video, asking what they were eating and telling them they looked tan.
“Thank you,” she finally said, unsure of a better response to encapsulate her huge emotions. “Danial,” she continued, meeting his eyes head-on. “I need to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“Congressman Stephens emailed me about the video. He wants us to make it a series.”
His expression fell, and he quickly reassembled it into something diplomatic. “I see. That makes sense.” He paused for a moment before adding, “Thank you for telling me.”
“Yes, well, I know it’s not great news, but I regret not telling you about the video, even if—” She stumbled over her words. “I tried to edit out the worst of it, but it was too late.”
He raised a single eyebrow before seeming to catch himself and lowered it, nodding his head.
“I believe you.”
She couldn’t tell if he actually did, but it didn’t really matter at this point.
“But I also have to be honest that we’re probably going to move forward with the series. I can’t tell them not to just because you work there.”
“I would never ask you to.”
That she was sure was true.
“I know you think I targeted you,” she said. As she heard herself, she pivoted in real time to the less accusatory language she’d practiced in therapy: “Well, I know it would seem like I was targeting you. And maybe I was being petty about some things. But I actually believe in the stuff we’re fighting for.”
“I know you do,” he acknowledged. “And I would never want you to change that.”
“Thank you,” she replied, swallowing the ball of emotion rising to the top of her throat. Among so many other things, she was truly sick of crying.
“We’re all just trying to do our jobs,” he offered.
Her eyes met his, and she raised an eyebrow of her own. She might have punished him with that video—might have lost the essential moral high ground she’d had over him for a decade—but it gnawed at her that he was still trying to conflate her job with his. Against her better judgment, she pushed back.
“Danial,” she started, keeping her eyes steadily trained on his. “Our jobs are very different. You know that, right?”
To that, he said nothing, so she continued.
“I’m sorry about the way that video came out, but you should listen to what it said.”
“I watched it about fifty times,” he replied. “I could recite it verbatim.” His thick eyebrows furrowed in frustration, and she followed the thin scar above his left eye before refocusing herself.
“And you don’t have a problem with any of it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You know Cameron County was already the poorest in Pennsylvania before Horace, and—”
“I don’t want to talk about work.” He cut her off with a sharpness she hadn’t heard since he first knocked on her door.
“I’m not talking about work.” She modulated her voice in response, settling on a much softer tone. “I’m talking about you . I know how hard you’ve worked. I know how important it was for you to prove yourself, to be the man of your family, and—” she could hear a wobbly emotion beginning to color her words and cleared her throat. “And you succeeded. You won. Couldn’t you still take care of your mother without working for them? Like, when is it enough, Danial?”
His eyes were glassy, his jaw tensing and untensing for a few moments before he swallowed hard and responded. When he spoke, his voice was unsteady and quiet.
“If you know how hard I worked, and how important it was to prove myself, how could you do that to me? How could you humiliate me like that?”
She stood, silent, as he composed himself, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Her gaze flicked upward again to that scar, the old wound from a prep school hazing gone wrong. It had become such a feature of his face that she often forgot its origins, the humiliation he suffered as a teenager at the hands of boys with a thousand times more than him. The thought that she could have brought him back to that place of deep public embarrassment shattered her.
“I’m sorry,” she offered, and meant it. “I guess I just wanted to stop you.”
It was a truth she took some solace in: yes, she had wanted to hurt him—but more than that, she wanted to save him, to stop him from becoming this person she couldn’t respect. It was still supremely selfish, but at least there was a flicker of love within the raging fire of her anger.
“You could have called me at any point if you wanted to stop me that bad,” he replied, blinking hard to hold back his emotion.
His words lingered between them for a moment, and though she longed to comfort him, she also needed to defend her former self.
“You know I couldn’t,” she whispered. “Not after what happened.”
At his side, his hand clenched into a fist before he opened it again, stretching his fingers.
“You didn’t even check to see if I was okay that night,” she continued, voice barely audible. She only realized then that she was crying, too, that both of them were rooted in place by their respective sadness and resentment. “I told you I loved you, and you acted like you never even knew me.”
“I know,” he answered, breath catching in his throat as he spoke. “I know.”
At this, a heavier silence fell. In another time, it would have been the start of a long, bitter argument, one that no one ever truly won. But in this moment, in the exquisite pain and joy only they were capable of causing each other, he only offered a quiet, defeated nod.
“Listen,” he finally replied, wiping his face. He checked his watch before returning his eyes to hers. “I have to go. I’ll see you at the wedding, okay?”
At that, she nodded, and he grabbed his phone on the counter before turning to leave. She listened to the sound of him slipping on his shoes and walking to open the door. And then she counted the seconds until it quietly clicked into place behind him, only exhaling once he was gone.