27. Lofou, Cyprus
27
LOFOU, CYPRUS
Now
A ray of sunlight snuck in from the not-quite-closed curtains, catching Alex’s half-opened eye as she turned in bed. She breathed in sharply at the unexpected intensity of it, her body stirring underneath her in a half-waking state. Turning to face the window, she saw Danial, undisturbed by the thin beam of golden light cutting across him. His hair was wild around his face, a day’s worth of stubble casting his jawline in a heavy shadow. Alex moved under the sheets, reaching for the watch he had placed on her bedside table the night before. It took her a moment to read the time in analog, the hour revealing they were already running late.
She sighed, quietly placing the watch back on the marble top. Tiny motes of dust danced in the light splashing across the two of them, and for a moment she watched them swirl and fall in silence. The warmth of Danial in bed next to her felt like a tiny sun, and they seemed to form their own little solar system, a closed circuit of peace and affection.
She knew they would have to wake soon, to re-enter the world, and she longed to extend this moment as much as they plausibly could. She turned her body away from his and reached for his arm, draping it over her waist. Instinctually, his hand moved over her stomach as it had on the dance floor, pulling her against him. Their naked bodies snapped perfectly into place like the final piece of a puzzle, and he released a deep sigh into the crook of her neck. Still in a half-dreaming state, he kissed her shoulder, muttering the words I love you under his breath.
In return, she moved her hand over his on her stomach, lacing their fingers together and cradling them both. I love you, too, she breathed, so quietly even she could barely hear it, her eyes fluttering to a close.
She could feel every muscle in his body relaxing against her, his heart dropping into a steady rhythm. It was the first time they had been together this way without making love, and somehow it felt profoundly more intimate: the stillness between them felt like a promise, a mutual reassurance that they had their whole lives to do whatever they wanted. And right now, all she wanted to do was to fall back asleep with him in the early morning light.
“Will you guys hurry up?” Paul shouted impatiently from the side of the court. He looked up at the sun, as if to confirm that the heat really was hot, before removing his sheer silk jacket. “I wouldn’t have agreed to play the winner if I knew it was going to take this long.”
Alex froze, hand half-extended for her next throw. Her eyes darted over to him. “You made us drive an hour and a half to the only hotel on this island with a pétanque court, you’re not going to rush our gameplay, too. You’ll play the winner when there is a winner.”
“I have to meet my parents tonight,” he protested, grumpily setting the velour bag with three metal boules next to him on the bench. “You guys have nowhere to be.”
“I have somewhere to be,” Danial whispered in Alex’s ear, taking her place on the court for his turn.
She laughed, bumping his shoulder on her way to the bench. The gravel court was on the grounds of a hotel much less grand than the one they had left, surrounded by overfull bushes of pink flowers. In the afternoon sun, it looked like an oil painting, or maybe a scene from an old French movie.
“Remind me what time your flight is tomorrow?” she asked Paul, reaching into her tote bag to fish out her sunglasses.
“I would check, but I’m not allowed to turn on my phone.” He winked, standing up to refill their glasses of sparkling water.
“Right, duh,” she corrected.
It was a rule she had implemented after about two dozen abusive WhatsApp messages from Guy.
“But I know Dev and Bee are on my flight.” He took a long sip of his water. “So I’m sure they’ll catch me up.”
“I told Dev you don’t want to talk about it,” Danial called over from the court. “He’s not going to bother you with wedding stuff.”
“Don’t you love to see men be emotionally intelligent?” Paul laughed.
“That’ll go straight to his head.” Alex joined Paul at the high-top table with their water glasses.
“I am very modest about my emotional intelligence.” Danial smiled, scoping out his next throw with typical intensity.
Alex placed a cupped hand over her eyes, observing him. In the whirlwind of the past two days, Danial had risen to the occasion with spectacular flourish. He’d started by sitting down with Naomi and Edward to review the spreadsheet of to-dos he’d put together, sorting the tasks he could handle from the ones only they could execute. He’d reassured Naomi in particular that it would all be okay—that things would be uncomfortable for a bit, but it was all essential to ensuring their son lived a happy and healthy life. He’d also started a rather terse email thread with Guy, providing a buffer for anything they might need to communicate about until a lawyer could be brought up to speed.
“It doesn’t even matter now,” Paul said, peeling the label from his bottle of sparkling water. “But the hotel staff somehow magically found my caftan, now that it can no longer be used to humiliate a Norwegian man.”
“It absolutely does matter,” Alex corrected, allowing him the self-harmful comment while pivoting. “We need to find somewhere completely fabulous to wear it.”
Paul looked at her with a conspiratorial glint in his eye.
“Maybe at your wedding?”
“ Paul—” Danial called out across the court, a faux sternness in his voice.
“Listen, I didn’t say to whom,” he called back, keeping his tone perfectly mercurial. “I’m still pulling for some of those guys from the Marital Mindset.”
Alex rolled her eyes. “The Marital Mindset guys are not the villains of my story, they’re my fellow victims.”
Paul sauntered onto the court, where Danial was crouched down, measuring his latest throw’s distance from the cochonnet. “Did she tell you about the speed dating event?”
“No.” He looked up, grinning. “Please, go on.”
“Can we not?” She sighed, unable to hide her own smile. The prospect of her dating history becoming a funny memory rather than a trauma was too delightful not to indulge. And besides, it was Paul’s day—anything he wanted to talk about was fair game.
“Well, I won’t spoil my next stand-up special completely, but I can share that one of the men was named Wayne Paine, and he ran a used Lexus dealership. His third question was what kind of porn Alex preferred to watch.”
“Okay,” she countered, “in Wayne’s defense—”
“We’re defending him?” Danial cut in, eyebrow raised.
“The prompt for our speed date was to show our spicy side .”
“Your mother paid for you to do this?” The disbelieving laughter carried on his voice as he stood up, brushing the dust from his pants.
“My mother just wanted me to find happiness,” Alex explained, a surprising note of sincerity in her words.
He said nothing, but she could sense Danial’s quiet approval at her response. They looked at each other across the court, hanging in the ambient sincerity like the final note of a song.
Paul cleared his throat, walking over to grab his velvet bag. “I’m calling it. Alex won—you’re not coming back from five points behind. My turn.”
Danial cocked his head, face forming into the beginning of a protest. But in total diplomacy, he corrected his expression to one of resignation, shrugging his shoulders and walking toward the bench to take his seat.
“Sorry,” Alex chided, crossing him on her way to his position. “You lose again, unfortunately.”
“I let you win.” Danial said, meeting her eyes for a devastatingly handsome smile.
“We both know that’s not true.”
The breeze picked up slightly, and in it a few of the pink flowers brushed along the court, moving like little skirted dancers. She had forced herself to forget how well the three of them fit together for so long, how much she missed their dynamic, that the joy of its return was almost more than her heart could manage.
“Do you have a Shirley Temple?” Alex asked, looking up from the menu.
“I do not—” the waiter started, looking rather confused. “What is this?”
“Do you have grenadine?” she asked, shielding her eyes from the setting sun with a cupped hand.
“Yes, miss.”
“I’ll take a grenadine and sparkling water, please.”
“Two of those,” Danial added with a smile.
It was aperitivo hour on the hotel patio, every bistro table occupied by a couple or small group, little bowls of nuts and olives set out on each. Soft music drifted out from the open double doors to the hotel’s dining room, and the garden was bathed in that perfect pink evening light. It was the first night of the trip that truly felt like vacation—at least to Alex. It almost didn’t matter that it was also their last: that tomorrow, she’d be taking a long series of flights back to Philadelphia and return to her office two days after that. Tonight, Alex was here, on a real, undeniable date with the man she loved, enjoying a long dinner in Cyprus before heading upstairs to the room they were sharing.
She watched him in the romantic light, grabbing a handful of nuts from the small ceramic bowl and taking in the scenery in peaceful silence. Every detail of him was impeccable, dark hair and thick eyebrows and long eyelashes, crisp blue shirt and thin gold chain, broad shoulders and slim waist. She could spend her entire life just observing him and never get bored, her mind drifting to the many exquisite meals they would share over the years. As if reading her thoughts, he turned to her, face relaxing into an easy, effortless smile. He offered his open hand to her across the table and she placed her palm in his, sending a subtle shiver through her body.
“Grenadine,” the waiter said, setting down two highball glasses with reddish syrup and a few large ice cubes. “And sparkling water,” he continued, popping open a large glass bottle of San Pellegrino. The soft pink hue the drink took on as he poured matched the sunset itself.
As the waiter flitted off to another table, Danial raised his glass, looking Alex in the eyes. “Cheers.”
“Cheers,” she replied, bringing their glasses together for the gentlest clink. “And thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, taking a sip.
“For…” she thought about it, flipping through the endless rolodex of things she was grateful for. “For your letter. For taking care of this hotel. For changing to be on my flight. For upgrading me. For renting a car and driving us here. For being so good to Paul. For… god, for everything.”
The truth was, she could have gone on for an hour, listing out his exquisite acts of service like a hiring manager reading a CV. But she figured she should stop there.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, simply.
“Can I pay you back for anything?” she asked, tentatively. “It’s not huge, but I do have an emergency fund.” She didn’t mention it, but one of her primary motivators in building that fund was to be able to extricate herself from a bad relationship if needed—she could justify using it to help Paul for the same reason.
“Alex.” His voice softened. “That’s very generous, but I don’t want you touching your money. I’m lucky enough to have a lot of financial flexibility, and the only reason to have money in the first place is to spend it on people you love.”
She blushed, overwhelmed by the simple truth of his statement.
“Well,” she continued, “I still want to help.”
“You’re being extremely helpful by taking care of Paul, and helping him feel normal. If you hadn’t taken him back to your room that night, he probably would have gone through with the wedding. I want you to just focus on being his friend. I’ve got everything else.”
“I think it was your letter that made him call off the wedding, to be honest.” She realized only after she said it that he might not like the idea of his intimate words being read by anyone else. “I’m sorry—he picked it up, and I didn’t realize what it was until he started reading it.”
“Alex.” He smiled, popping an olive into his mouth. “I don’t say anything to you that I’m not okay with Paul hearing in full detail.”
“I’m usually very discreet,” she laughed.
“Are you?” he raised an eyebrow. “There’s an entire hotel in Corfu that knows my name—or at least, everyone on the third floor does.”
She blushed, pulling up a cocktail napkin to hide her face. “Oh, god, I’m sorry. I guess I was just excited.”
“No.” He reached for her arm, pulling it back down to the table and meeting her eyes. “I loved it.”
“I loved it, too,” she agreed, her body becoming heavy again with that lovely, familiar desire. “I’ve never been that way before.”
The truth was, there were so many things she was feeling for the first time. And she sensed, more in her body than her mind, that life would forever be a series of ecstatic, beautiful firsts now that they finally belonged to each other. They could relax, and focus on other things, because this big, absorbing problem was finally solved.
“Oh, unrelated,” she said, remembering her life back home. “I don’t think I can come to New York next weekend.”
“Hot date?”
“Shut up.” She playfully shoved his shoulder. “No, there’s a rally in Lancaster I want to go to, and I already told the team I would drive.”
“Lancaster it is, then.”
“Oh, god, you do not have to do that—it’s probably not going to be very interesting for you.”
“Seeing you at work, buying unregulated dairy products from the Amish, meeting Clara and Nate? I don’t know if I could design a better weekend, frankly.” He grinned, sipping his drink.
“Isn’t that kind of short notice?”
“I quite notably don’t have a job anymore. Well, I mean, I do—but I’m on my way out. It’s full-blown senioritis at this point.”
“So you’ll come?”
“Of course. But LA is nonnegotiable, so I still need your dates for when we can swing it.” He grabbed another handful of nuts, shaking them loosely in his hand before bringing them to his mouth. “If I don’t bring you to see Mom soon, she’ll send actual hitmen to my apartment.”
“Yes, I know. LA before the election, I remember. And we have to visit Dev and Bee at some point before the holidays.”
“To meet the twins?”
“And to hear all about Cancer-Scorpio compatibility.”
“You’re not still sure if we’re compatible?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I am, but it’s always nice to hear the stars confirm something you already knew about yourself.”
He smiled, taking her chin in his hand and pulling her in for a brief, tender kiss of approval.
“Now, let’s order some food,” he said as they broke apart, sliding a menu toward her with his free hand. “I don’t want you disappearing before Mom gets her hands on you.”