24. Vouliagmeni, Greece
24
VOULIAGMENI, GREECE
Now
A lex grabbed a seat at the far end of the pool bar, just a few stools down from the chaotic spot where she’d load her drink orders on a tray before ferrying them to the loungers. Kynosoura Resort felt so much smaller than she remembered it. In her twenty-two-year-old mind, it was an endless sprawling wonderland on Vouliagmeni Beach, a thirty-five-minute bus ride from her studio apartment in central Athens. So many days were defined by that ride to and from the resort, on which she was perpetually exhausted: in the mornings, from waking up early; in the evenings, from working ten-hour shifts on her feet under the Grecian sun. She felt as if she were entering a parallel universe each day, one that kept her so busy she rarely had time to think of anything but her next order. Running around the resort as she waited on demanding tourists gave her a bone-deep exhaustion that felt, at the time, medicinal.
At Kynosoura, she slept well, she built up strength, and she lived in her cutoff shorts, an apron tied around her waist. She ate heartily at employee meals: octopus and salad and lamb with lemon potatoes. She got incredibly tan. She made fast friends with what felt like the whole staff. She even had an intense (if brief) love affair with a bartender, which everyone had warned her against. It ended disastrously but was a beautiful distraction: he was both handsome and charming enough to cauterize the freshest of her wounds from Danial. She remembered the day she spent at the austere health clinic getting tested after learning he had been sleeping with a guest at the resort: it felt humiliating and degrading but also, on some level, freeing. Greece was where she became herself, no doubt about it, and just being back at Kynosoura filled her with a nostalgic pride.
Despite her grandiose memories, the property was actually fairly limited, with two pools—one for families, one for adults—two restaurants, and a coffee shop. The rooms were expensive due to the resort’s prime location, but the hotel itself was rather simple, more like the place she had stayed in Corfu than the Verseau . But she remembered how luxe it felt to her at the time, how the price of the drinks she served her guests had shocked her. She dreamed of a time when she’d be able to return and drink or eat whatever she liked without checking the price. It felt both frustrating and satisfying that even a decade later, she was still checking the prices, and still feeling rather appalled by them.
From her seat at the bar, she could see everything: the pool—which, unlike the family-friendly one, did not feature a waterslide—the expansive beach, and the other resorts dotting the coastline. The pool loungers were still a deep blue, the parasols still blue-and-white striped, but the hotel towels were now a bright, welcoming yellow. It felt both familiar and fresh, and more importantly, it felt like a place where she only had positive memories. She was still friends on social media with most of her former colleagues, with the notable exception of the cheating bartender. They all congratulated her on her professional victories and wished her happy birthday, liking and commenting on her photos. She did the same for them, of course, because it felt like they had all been at summer camp together, and a notification from one of them felt like putting on an old friendship bracelet.
“I’m going to need to see some I.D.,” a throaty British voice said behind her, and Alex immediately turned around to see her old fellow server, Louisa.
“ Lou!” Alex shouted, wrapping her arms around Louisa’s neck for one of those hugs that necessitates much back-and-forth rocking, “It’s so good to see you!”
“What about you?” she replied, pulling back from the hug but keeping her hands on Alex’s shoulders, taking her in. Her bleach-blonde curls seemed to bounce with every word, appearing almost white in the afternoon sun. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m just here for a quick visit, then I’m headed to a wedding.”
“You’re staying at the hotel?” She looked down the bar at the handsome young man shaking a cocktail, and dictated an order to him in perfect Greek.
“No, no, I got a cheap place in the city. Also, excuse me, you speak Greek now?” She looked over at the bartender now preparing two drinks for them, and startled herself with the realization that as young as he looked, he was probably about the exact age she was when she worked there.
“Well, you know, English is enough for slinging drinks to tourists but,” Louisa sat herself down at the open barstool next to Alex, “if you want to join the ranks of management, at some point you need to learn Greek.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Your Greek was always pretty good, if I remember correctly.”
“You don’t remember correctly,” Alex laughed.
The young bartender seemed to materialize in front of them, setting two refreshing-looking green cocktails with edible flower garnishes in front of them.
“Two Olympus Smashes, one virgin,” he said, in a heavy but perfectly clear accent.
“Thank you, Georgie,” Louisa said, raising her glass for a toast. “To your unexpected visit!”
“And to your upcoming visitor!” Alex smiled, gesturing toward her now fairly visible bump. Louisa had posted the ultrasound months ago, and it had been one of the first pregnancy announcements on social media that made Alex feel genuinely old. She was thrilled for her—and the father, Dimitri, who worked in the resort kitchen when Alex was there and was now head chef at one of the hippest new restaurants in Athens. But it also felt like a sign that everyone, from all eras of her life, was moving forward and becoming adults, while Alex was still waiting at some kind of existential bus stop.
“Oh, thanks,” Louisa said, looking down at her stomach. “The mat leave here is shit, but Dimi has good investors at the restaurant who are going to give him time off, so we’re making it work.”
“I can’t believe you two are going to be parents.” Alex smiled, sipping her drink. “It’s so surreal.”
“Right?” Louisa asked, raising her eyebrows. “I never thought I’d quit smoking, never mind giving up rosé and oysters for almost a year.”
“You’re going to be an amazing mom,” Alex said, and meant it.
“Don’t get all sentimental on me.” Louisa smiled, gently cradling Alex’s face in her tanned fingers. “I need there to be a few strident bitches left in the world.”
“Am I a strident bitch?”
“You can be, and that’s what I love about you. You were always picking fights, and then you went and made it your full-time job. Picking fights with bellends who deserve it.”
“Well, we have a lot of them in America.”
“We have a lot of them here, too. Might need to take your show on the road.”
“I’ll make a note of that.”
“And you?” Louisa asked, stirring her drink with her striped paper straw. “Are you seeing anyone?”
It was a completely normal question, but it still felt like an arrow to the heart.
She took her time with her words, willing herself to answer sincerely, no matter how anxious it made her feel. “I’m actually not, not right now.” She paused for a deep sip from her drink before continuing. “And, not for a pretty long time, if I’m being honest. I’ve had a few boyfriends here and there but nothing serious.” She paused again. “I think because I never really got over that guy from college.”
“The gay one?”
“No,” Alex laughed. “That’s my best friend. It’s his wedding this weekend. But, no, the guy from the friend group I played chess with.”
“The asshole.”
“Well, it’s complicated, but yes, he was not my favorite person when I worked here.”
“ ‘Not your favorite person?’ Lex, please, I think I’ve probably spent more hours of my life listening to you bitch about that man than I’ve spent learning Greek.”
“Yeah, that sounds like me.” She winced, not at embarrassment for having talked about him, but with regret for having wasted so many years of her life obsessing over him while doing nothing to give them an actual chance. “Well, anyway, I never really got over him, and then he was on the bachelor boat trip I’ve been on for the past week.”
“Is that where you were? The photos looked insane, I was wondering what the hell was going on.”
“Yeah, I mean, Paul comes from a lot of money.”
“He’d have to. We have yachts like that come in and out of the harbor, it’s usually some greasy tech founder and a bunch of influencers.”
“This was… not exactly like that. But similar.”
“But, so, he was there?” Without breaking the conversation, Louisa indicated to Georgie that they would like two glasses of ice water. “The college guy—what was his name?”
“Danial.” His name was sweet in her mouth, and at the sound of it her body flooded with memories of the other night, the exquisite feeling of him between her legs. “Danial Azad.”
“Nice name.”
“Nice everything.”
“Oh?” Louisa cocked an eyebrow as Georgie dropped off their waters.
“Yeah, it was… a lot.”
“A lot as in, what exactly?”
“As in, we hooked up.”
“Stop. On the boat? Also, I need a photo of this man.”
Alex laughed, pulling her phone from her bag to select the photo she always referenced when she wanted to show someone what Danial looked like. Her fingers had committed the click pattern to memory, second down on the left on Google Image search.
“Yes, on the boat. Well, sort of on the boat.” She passed the phone to Louisa, who promptly brought a hand to her chest in a gasp. “But then again in my hotel room. I left the boat for a few days, and he came to give me a necklace I forgot in his room.”
“I bet that’s what he came for.” Louisa used her fingers to zoom in on the photo, examining the details of his face. “Fuck, this is the man you were so upset about? I totally understand. And I’ve never felt more annoyed about being pregnant—this conversation calls for a rosé and a smoke.”
“Truly.”
“So, you hooked up, and now what? You’re his wedding date?” She handed Alex the phone, taking one last look at Danial as she passed it over.
“Well, not exactly. We’re on fine terms, we can be friends or whatever, but we can’t be together.”
“Oh, was the sex bad? Isn’t that always the way?”
“God, no.” Alex laughed, feeling almost delirious with how exceptional it was. “We just have way too much baggage. We’re always being kind of… awful to each other. It’s a long story, but I did something that really messed up his job. It was a nightmare.”
“Why is that?” Louisa sipped her drink, looking at Alex with the breezy expression of total nonjudgment she’d always had. “Why are you always being awful to each other?”
“Well…” Alex thought and tried to answer as truthfully as possible. “I think because he hurt me so badly back in school. And it wasn’t just that he rejected me, you know? It was that he let me humiliate myself and wouldn’t even talk to me as a friend. He avoided me after, like I never meant anything to him. And he knew how insecure I already was in that group, you know, because they were all so privileged and chic and I was just this loser from upstate New York who happened to date their friend.”
“I’m sure you weren’t a loser.” At Alex’s earnest tone, Louisa seemed to relax into a similar emotional vulnerability. “At least, you weren’t a loser when I met you.”
“I don’t think I was a loser either, honestly,” she said, “but when you’re surrounded by people who have so much more than you do, you don’t know that—at least at twenty-two, you don’t. So him rejecting me just felt like this final, official confirmation that I was never really part of their group, that my life was just me kind of lying to myself, if that makes sense? It just completely decimated my self-confidence. So hating him was my way of powering through that, making it all about him and what he did to me instead of what it actually was, which was me needing to get some self-confidence.”
“So you messing with his job was kind of paying him back, then?”
“It felt like it. But then it happened, and I just felt awful.”
“But then you still hooked up?”
The question took her by surprise, but it made sense. To anyone outside of their very specific dynamic, the particulars probably seemed insane.
“Well, yeah. I mean, there’s definitely, like, this core attraction there, there always has been. But I know that me going after him like that ten years after college just solidified it in his mind: I’m someone he can sleep with, but not someone he could marry.”
“We’ve jumped to marriage?”
Alex hadn’t even realized she’d said the word.
“I mean, you know. Date.”
“Right.” Louisa raised that brow again, taking a long sip of her ice water. “Unsolicited advice?”
“Please.”
“I didn’t always know Dimitri was my person. We met when I was twenty-one, and I don’t think there was a single day that year I wasn’t under the influence of at least one substance.”
“Maybe two.”
“Maybe two!” Louisa said, laughing her wonderful, hearty laugh. “I always thought: no, the guy you meet in your crazy phase is not The Guy. He can’t be, right?”
“Right.”
“And I think it’s the same for your weird loser college phase—no offense. You still think of yourself as that person when you’re with him, because he takes you back to that place. You probably did that thing with his work because of it. Whatever you did.”
“Probably, yeah, you’re right.”
“And listen, maybe you will be good together, maybe you won’t. But you need to come to each other as two adults, not as two weird, horny teenagers. You need to actually take each other in as the people you are today.” She gestured toward another group at the far end of the bar, motioning for Georgie to take their order. “It took me years to see Dimitri like that—it’s why I waited so long to have kids, I think. I couldn’t fully see him until he stepped up with the restaurant and followed his dream, because it still felt like we were our crazy kid selves. But one day I kind of looked over and thought, oh shit, that’s a man.”
“I had that thought when we hooked up in the hotel, honestly,” Alex laughed, taking another sip of her drink.
“I’m not just talking about the sex,” Louisa clarified. “Although, as a very pregnant woman, let me say I am extremely jealous and would love gory details about a man who isn’t my husband.”
“Happy to provide.” Alex winked.
Louisa reached over and put her hand on top of Alex’s in a surprising moment of tenderness. “Lex, I’m serious. You’ve been talking to me about this man for literally over a decade now. I say you go and see if it’s worth a shot, for real.”
“What if he just says no again?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, flagging Georgie down for a bit more ice water. “What if he says yes?”
The sunset always took forever to come at Kynosoura, and then it seemed to come all at once, slipping behind the Mediterranean like an extinguished candle. Alex had been on the beach for hours, sitting on a lounger Louisa had set aside for her and alternating between thinking and reading her book. Their conversation was more than playing catch-up with an old friend, it was like an afternoon with her former self. This was a place full of nostalgia and joy for her, yes, but it was also a place where she had worked. It was a place where she felt equal to people, where she felt proud of herself each day—a place where she never had anything to prove or anything to hide. She felt here the way she did at her office back in Philadelphia, and she swelled with emotion at the thought of being back at her desk with Clara and the rest of the team. She thought about all the campaign events they would attend in the fall, the beautiful and challenging work ahead of them.
This self—the one she had worked so hard to build in years of therapy, in paying off debt and being true to her values—was her real self, not the self-conscious wreck she became around her college friends. She loved Paul, and she would always love Danial, but she was not part of their world, and she no longer needed to prove to them, or anyone else, that she could play the part well enough to pass.
Alex reached into her bag, noticing that it was distinctly sandier than when she had arrived in Greece and making a mental note to clean it out when she got to her hotel. She pulled out a postcard she’d bought in Corfu, and the pen she’d taken from her hotel’s front desk, clicking it open and bringing it down to transcribe the words that had been swirling in her head all afternoon:
Mom,
I know that I’ve made some pretty crazy decisions in the past, and that we don’t always see eye-to-eye. I know there are things you want for me that I don’t have, or times when it’s hard to trust my judgment. But even though my life isn’t perfect, I am really, truly happy in it. I’m proud of myself, proud of where I come from and how I got here, and grateful for everything I have (including you and dad).
Sometimes I might need a little more room to figure out my own path, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still need my mom. (Maybe we could set times to talk instead of surprise FaceTimes? Lol.) Anyway, this trip has been really enlightening, and part of that is realizing how important our relationship is to me. I love you, and I can’t wait to visit you guys once I get home.
Alex