Chapter Sixty
Sixty
The coveralls were gone, as were the heavy workmen’s boots. Andreas’s hair looked damp beneath his red baseball cap. He was wearing a faded T-shirt and the same shorts he’d had on the day she’d bumped into him at the beach.
When he saw her walking toward him, he smiled.
“Geiá sou, Skye. Ti káneis?”
How was she?
She was so many things, none of which she knew how to put into words.
“I’m…” Instead of finishing her sentence, Skye shrugged.
Andreas nodded.
“I am the same,” he said.
A furious yapping startled the two of them.
“éla re,” Andreas grumbled, opening the door of the truck.
“I brought Filiá with me.” The wiry little dog hopped down, strutted importantly to Skye for some attention, then scampered off into Victoria and Adam’s front yard.
They were both outside. Victoria looked wan and puffy eyed.
She was wearing pink Crocs, Bermuda shorts, and a tank top with “Venice Beach California” printed across it.
Adam, meanwhile, was stripped to his waist, a shovel in his hands that he’d already used to dig several large holes.
“Still hunting for buried treasure?” Skye asked. Adam pulled a face.
“Not so much as an earthworm yet,” he said with a sigh.
Victoria bent to stroke Filiá.
“Oh my word,” she said. “She’s darling. Is she yours?”
Andreas and Skye exchanged a look.
“She is not mine,” he said, “but she can be yours. If you are willing to take her…”
“Sure we are,” Victoria said over Adam’s tentative: “Maybe.”
“She belonged to my friend Karolos,” Andreas explained. “He unfortunately died during the earthquake.” He glanced at Skye. “It was an accident.”
“So she’s an orphan?” Victoria cried. “The poor little thing.”
Filiá rolled over onto her back, paws in the air, tongue lolling out from the side of her mouth.
“I think she likes you,” Andreas said. “She never behaves this way for me.”
“Come on, gorgeous.” Victoria clicked her fingers, and the dog promptly leaped to attention. “Let’s go and see if there’s any leftover chicken in the fridge.”
Adam watched them go, his smile lingering.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve seen her looking properly happy in a while.”
“Perhaps she and Filiá can mend each other’s broken hearts,” Andreas said, his eyes drifting to Skye once again.
“Righto.” Adam raised his shovel. “Better get on.”
“Where is your mother?” Andreas asked as Skye followed him back toward the truck.
“I woke to find a note saying she’d gone for a swim with Joy.”
“So you are alone?”
Skye turned in a slow circle, her arms outstretched.
“Do I look alone to you? I moved from one of the most overpopulated cities in the world to this tiny Greek village, and I’ve never felt less alone in my life.”
“Ah,” he said, pulling down the tailgate. “It happened. The island worked its magic on you.”
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. “It really did.”
“I have something for you. A gift.”
He slid a paint can off the truck and held it out to her.
“éla,” he said. “Let us go to the house.”
When they reached her front door, Skye put down the can and Andreas knelt. He extracted a penknife from his pocket and used it to pry open the lid.
“I thought it would be nice for the shutters,” he said. “This door as well, perhaps.”
The paint was not the bright, deep blue of the Santorini domes, nor did it have the rich intensity of the Aegean. This blue was velvety soft, and it stirred something within her.
“It is the color of the sky,” Andreas said. “In Greece, it represents a fresh start.”
“It’s perfect,” she said, her voice catching. “But you’ve given me so much already. I’ve barely given you a thing.”
“óchi,” he said. “What you have given me is more than anyone ever has.”
The air thickened. The wind, for once, had fallen away.
“Shall we walk?” she said.
They went side by side up the winding path, their steps quiet on the uneven ground.
Skye had always felt the pull of the ridge, a place that held her secrets, where she could lean against the sun-warmed stone and let the world fall away.
Below, the sea stretched vast and sparkling.
A boat cut across it in the distance, trailing a ribbon of white foam.
She sat, and so did Andreas, his knee grazing hers.
“You are pink,” he said. Before she could reply, he had taken off his cap and placed it on her head.
“Thank you,” she said as he raked a hand through his curls, mussing them up.
“I like to do this,” he said, tapping the tip of her nose with a finger. “I like to look after you, even if you don’t need me to.”
Skye searched his eyes. They were flecked with gold, shooting stars on a night sky.
“I am sorry,” he said. “Eurora was my wife for only one year. She was not faithful. I discovered very soon after the wedding that she was no longer in love with me. Perhaps she never was. We were young.” The words sailed out on a sigh.
“My ego was very bruised. The problem is that I am proud and I am stubborn. I did not want you to think of me in that way, as a man who had been rejected and humiliated.”
Skye’s jaw tightened. “She’s the one who should feel humiliated,” she said. “She had you and she cheated? What an idiot.”
A smile found its way to his lips.
“What about after Eurora?” Skye asked. “Have there been others?”
Andreas tugged at a tuft of grass.
“Some. But it was never serious. I learned that it is better to be alone than with the wrong person.”
“How will you know when you find the right person?”
A beat passed. Shorter than a breath. Longer than it took for Skye to see his answer before he gave it. It was there in the tenderness of his gaze, the fullness of his lips, the heat of her own longing.
“For me,” he said, “it was there at the very beginning. I saw you outside the house, a key in your hand, and the moment you turned around, I was lost. From that second to this, I have been yours.”
Skye drew in a long, shuddering breath.
“And you’re only getting around to telling me this now because?”
Andreas flicked up the peak of her cap and leaned in closer.
“In Greece, we have a saying: ‘Everything in its own time, and the mackerel in August.’ ”
She snuffled with laughter.
“It reminds us,” he said, “that things happen best when they are supposed to. And that certain fish taste better if you eat them in the right season.”
“Clearly I still have a lot to learn about being Greek,” she mused.
Andreas smiled broadly.
“You teach the children, and I will teach you.”
“Wait, children?”
“Nai. The children on the island. Unless you want me to give you some of your own?”
“Oh my God!” she said. “We haven’t even kissed and you’re taking about babies.”
“Come here, then,” he said, hooking a finger.
“Just like that?”
“Do you want me to beg?”
He started to shift onto one knee, and Skye grabbed his shoulders, pulling him forward until they toppled back into the dust. Andreas propped himself up on an elbow.
Slowly, he removed her hat. Her hair fell across her cheeks, and he brushed it away.
His fingers traced her eyebrows, her lips, the soft pulse on her neck.
When he kissed her, he did so gently. Barely a touch, a taste.
Skye dissolved into him.
She was liquid.
She was fire.
When they finally opened their eyes, it was to brilliant light. The sun had searched and found their hiding place. It had split the clouds in two purely for them.
Andreas wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
“Will you come with me to the mainland?” he asked.
“I want you to meet my family, my parents, and especially Elpida, my giagiá. After I read the letters you brought back to me, I took photos, sent them to her. She has never spoken about the war—not to me or anyone in my family—but now she says she is ready at last. She wants to tell us more about what happened here, in Folegandros.”
“Of course I’ll come.” Skye leaned her head against his. “Do you think they’ll like me?”
“No,” he said simply, laughing at her expression of mock outrage. “éla, they will love you.”
Skye moved closer.
“How do you say ‘I love you’ in Greek?” she murmured.
“S’agapó,” he said. “Easy to learn, difficult to say.”
She laced her fingers through his.
“I’d best start practicing in that case.”
“All this love,” he said with a theatrical roll of his eyes. “I am crazy with it.”
“You’d better kiss me again, then.”
“Perímene,” he said as she leaned in. “No more kissing until we discuss baby names.”
The sun had nothing on the heat blooming in her chest. Skye felt as if she might burst with it—love, laughter, the dizzying thrill of all that lay ahead.
“Go on, then,” she said. “You can choose first.”
Andreas smiled. There was lightness to it, but something deeper, too. It settled inside her like a promise.
“If we have a boy,” he said, “can we name him Sotiris, for my brother?”
Skye nodded, her smile catching as she squeezed his hand.
“Yes,” she said. “And if it’s a girl, we’ll call her Katerina.”