Chapter 9 #2
“You’re about to live in Greece for a year, I’m not sure you’ll escape the experience without seeing a lamb roast.”
He shrugs. “I feel like I’d enjoy it more with your family.”
“Oh God, you’ve only met them in very small doses and my parents were on their best behavior. When we all get together, it’s truly insane.”
“So if we were actually getting married, we’d have to worry about the plates at the reception?”
“Lexi had to bring her own plates to the catering hall so everyone wouldn’t break the ones that belonged to the venue.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I wish I was. We still had to pay for a few when my cousins finished off a few bottles of ouzo and they stopped caring. My family is a lot.”
“It sounds amazing, actually.”
“Oh, it is. Most of the time. They love me though, even if they don’t always know how to show it.”
He clears his throat and grips the steering wheel harder.
“You . . .” she hesitates, “alright?”
“You really wanted to say okay, didn’t you?” he asks, deflecting.
“I did, but you seem . . . Are you nervous?”
“Yeah, maybe a little bit and I . . . I don’t know why.”
“I’m sorry I’m dragging you through this. I can cancel if you want.”
“Hey, it’s part of the deal, right? Besides, I want to meet Alec.”
“He’s the best. So smart and sweet,” she gushes about her nephew. “Did you . . . did you ever think about having kids?”
Xavier shrugs. “It’s not a priority right now. Maybe, if . . .”
“If . . .”
He laughs. “I don’t know. I always felt like you should really want a kid if you were going to have one.”
“You don’t think most people who have kids want them?”
“I think most people think they’re supposed to have kids, or their partner really wants kids or, oops, they’re pregnant and just go with it. I don’t know.”
“That’s kind of . . .”
“Cynical?”
“No, not necessarily. I think that’s probably true, which is kind of sad.”
“Do you want kids?”
“Maybe . . . with the right person. I never really thought about it until Lexi had Alec and then it sort of went from no interest to if it happens, that’d be cool. I’m not in any hurry though. I didn’t turn thirty and suddenly think, time is running out!”
“Please tell me no one said that to you.”
“Oh, more than one person has said that to me.”
“Fuck, being a woman sucks.”
“Thank you for noticing.” She shakes her head. “There it is.”
The restaurant is a standalone building with a small parking lot that’s already full and a valet sign out front with a bored-looking teenager loitering next to it.
Xavier pulls up to it and Bianca leaps out of the car, basically bowling over the tall skinny kid wearing a red blazer that’s hanging off of him, clearly made for someone broader.
“Nico, did you grow again?” she’s asking, holding the kid by the shoulders by the time Xavier makes it around the car.
“A little bit,” Nico says, a flush building, even through skin even darker in tone than Bianca’s. “This him?”
Bianca steps back and Xavier practically beams when her arm wraps around his waist. “Nico, this is Xavier, my, um, fiancé. Xavier, my cousin, Nico. He’s going to UCLA in the fall. Try not to hold it against him.”
“Nice to meet you, man,” Nico says, holding his hand out.
When Xavier takes it, the kid squeezes and he tries not to snort, squeezing back just enough for the younger man to realize that’s not a game he should be playing.
Though he can appreciate the sentiment behind protecting his cousin, even if she’s perfectly capable of handling herself.
“You too,” Xavier says as the kid pulls away and he holds out his keys. “Here you go.”
“When you get your schedule, you send it to me,” Bianca’s saying as the kid takes the keys and heads for the car. “We’ll figure out your options from there.”
Nico salutes her and then he’s in the car and peeling away from the curb way too fast.
“You might have a new scratch or two when it gets back,” she says, wrinkling her nose as the Jeep disappears around the corner.
“It’ll blend with the others,” he reassures her. “Should we go in?”
“Just . . .” she hesitates, standing back, “how do I look?”
He clicks his tongue, taking in her cropped white top showing off a sliver of perpetually tanned skin, and her olive-green skirt that falls to an uneven hem from one knee to her calf, down to wedged sandals that wrap up with strings above her ankles.
She always looks great. He told her so the other day, but now it feels different, somehow.
But it’s not like she doesn’t know how attracted to her he is.
Hell, his dick was inside her mouth for – quite frankly – an embarrassingly short amount of time before he completely lost it. He can give her a compliment.
“Stunning,” he says finally, “as always.”
It’s hard to tell when she’s blushing, her skin tone doesn’t give much away, but he thinks he sees a hint of a flush at her cheeks and he revels in the small smile that forms across her face when her eyes meet his.
“You look nice too,” she says, taking in his crisp collared shirt, sharply creased navy-blue pants and brown dress shoes. “This is a little much though.” Reaching up, she unbuttons one more button of his shirt. “There. Perfect.”
“Ready?”
“Ready,” she says and leads the way into the restaurant.
It’s like walking through some kind of space and time portal straight from 2020s LA to 1990s Greece.
The walls are whitewashed, columns lining the rows of tables down the center of the restaurant, and at every table, a window painted with a different Greek landmark from the Acropolis to Santorini to the Parthenon.
“Bianca!” an older Greek man shouts, coming out from behind the bar in the front, head to toe in white, which matches the thick thatch of hair on the top of his head and the neatly trimmed beard. Tall and broad, he doesn’t look anything like either of her parents.
“Theíos!” she says, as she’s swept up into his arms.
“A doctor, the first in the family,” he says, squeezing her tight, lifting her off her feet for a second before finally putting her down. Xavier likes this guy already.
She turns back to Xavier with a smile. “Uncle Peter, this is Xavier.”
The man lunges at him, his hands landing directly on either side of his face, and kisses him on both cheeks, before pulling away with a rough nod.
“Bianca is a good girl, a smart girl, and you will treat her well, yes? Not like the malákas from New York.”
He doesn’t know who that is, but he’s quick to say, “Oh, yes, of course.”
“Okay, then, welcome to the family,” Peter says, his approval so fast Xavier’s sure he’s perfectly capable of revoking it with one misstep. “Go in the back, everyone is already there!”
“Malákas from New York?”
“My last ex. Five years ago. You would not have liked him.”
Xavier doesn’t doubt that for a fucking second.
“Uncle?” he asks. “I thought you said he was your dad’s cousin.”
“He . . . well, he’s not really even that. Peter and my dad came over together and then they lived in neighboring apartments and so, I call him uncle out of respect.”
“Your family is so confusing.”
“It’s just you and your dad, right?”
“Only child of two only children.”
“That’s . . . lonely, isn’t it?”
“It’s . . . it is what it is.”
“Lone wolf.”
He snorts. “Oh God, no, worst label ever. I just don’t need people much.”
“No?”
“No, not even as a kid. And now, well, I’m never in one place long enough to make friends, at least like the ones you have.”
“Is that the appeal of it then? The life you’ve chosen, that you get to go from place to place and be on your own and do what you love without worrying about anything or anyone else?”
“Huh, I . . . I never really thought about it like that, but . . . maybe? I don’t know. It’s just how I’ve always been.”
“Everyone needs people though, even the most introverted of introverts. Just . . . small doses,” she insists.
“Very small doses,” he agrees and grins at her.
“C’mon, I’m starving and they have the best taramasalata here.”
“Taramasalata?” Xavier says, trying to mimic the inflection she gave it as he follows her across the restaurant through an archway held aloft by large faux Ionic columns like the ones that border the opisthodomos of the Parthenon.
Bianca nods her approval and then translates. “Red caviar dip.”
“Fish eggs?”
“Don’t knock it.”
“I’ll try anything.”
“Ugh, I’m of half a mind to take you up on that and make Theíos bring out a lamb’s head, but all I want is some tarama, a gyro and then some rizogalo.”
“Rizogalo? Rice pudding?”
“He’s been brushing up on his Greek!” a booming voice says from behind him. “I knew I liked him.”
Her dad pulls him into a bear hug and then repeats the action with Bianca before leading them to a table further back, where her mom, sister, and brother-in-law are standing to greet them with little Alec, shrieking happily at his aunt’s arrival.
They’re barely in their seats when the table is loaded down with plates of taramasalata, pita bread hot from the oven, grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs – which Bianca tells him are called dolmathakia after he ate about six – orzo pasta in a garlic-infused red sauce, and spanakopita, little fried triangles of filo dough filled with feta cheese and spinach.
Bottles of wine are uncorked, glasses filled and refilled.
They haven’t even ordered dinner yet when her dad turns to them and asks, “So what’s the plan for after you two tie the knot?”
“We haven’t even set a date yet, Dad,” Bianca says, looking up from where she’d been breaking some pita into bite-sized pieces for Alec.
“But you must have a plan?” her mom chimes in. “I don’t remember a time that you didn’t have a plan, Bianca Bean.”
He feels her tense beside him, her hand falling to her lap to grip the napkin there.
He fights the urge to reach out and take it, to squeeze it gently and then twine their fingers together.
“No plan right now. Xavier has to go to Greece at the end of July for his fellowship, and hopefully I’ll be starting my job around the same time. ”
“So you’re just going to . . . be apart?”
“For now.”
Her dad sighs. “In my day, that wouldn’t have made any sense, but you’ve both worked so hard to get where you are. It’s just terrible that there aren’t jobs where you could do this closer to home, closer to each other.”
Xavier starts to answer, but Bianca jumps in. “Xavier deserves this opportunity. He’s going to do amazing things in Greece.”
Okay, if she thinks talking about him will divert the conversation, then that’s what he’ll do. “I was lucky, really,” he insists. “My mentor from undergrad is heading up the project.”
“Paolo, right?” Bianca asks and he smiles that she remembers the name of the man who took him under his wing fifteen years ago and stepped in for his own dad in so many ways.
“Yeah, Paolo. So when the job came up, he reached out.”
“You’re also the best,” Bianca scoffs, taking his hand and squeezing it lightly, like he’d just wanted to do. “Your research focus and experience make you uniquely qualified for it and he would have been stupid not to hire you.”
“What exactly do you do again?” her mom asks.
“I work in repatriation, trying to return artifacts to their homeland.”
“Most of them were stolen in the first place,” Bianca fills in. “Imperialism strikes again.”
“I never thought about it like that,” Lexi says. “I just . . . assumed, I guess, that they were on loan? The way paintings get loaned to museums sometimes.”
“So what’s the endgame?” asks her husband, Chris, who’s barely said anything since their quick hello.
“Shutting down the British Museum?” Bianca asks, taking a sip from her glass before leaning her elbow on the table’s edge and resting her hand on her cheek to look at him, her eyes glittering with humor, so he can answer Chris’s question.
“My nemesis, my mortal enemy. One day, maybe not today, but one day.”
“A museum is your nemesis?” Lexi asks.
“The world’s largest warehouse of stolen goods and it’s not close.”
“You two are so similar.”
Bianca’s brow furrows at her sister, the question clear.
Lexi grins. “You’re both believers. You want to change the world.
You’ll both fight to the death to right the wrongs you see.
I mean, I don’t know how either of you do it, all that righteous anger firing through you all the time – I’d be exhausted.
But that you found each other is . . . unsurprising. ”
“Wow, Lex.”
Xavier clears his throat. “Yeah, that’s . . . pretty spot on.”
“What? You’re not the only smart one in this family, Bianca Bean, and don’t you forget it.”
“What? Of course you’re smart,” Bianca says. “You’re brilliant.”
“Aw, babe, you’re brilliant,” Chris says, leaning over and pressing a kiss to Lexi’s temple.
“I’m brilliant!” Alec announces.
“So brilliant,” Lexi says, running a hand over the top of her son’s head.
Xavier grins and looks over at Bianca, who is smiling softly at her sister and brother-in-law and nephew, and suddenly something in his stomach warms and rises up into his chest.
If . . . if he was ever going to want that, if he was ever going to have that, he would want it with her.
He’s so entirely screwed.
“Excuse me for a minute,” he says, pushing back from the table and heading straight for the bathroom.
Once inside, he pops another button from his collar and breathes out heavily, leaning on the rim of the sink, staring into the mirror.
Still the same guy he was a minute ago, and yet, so entirely changed, on a fundamental level.
This was why he’d never . . . why he’d never made a move, why he never even let himself do more than just be near her.
Because now here he is, just a few weeks away from starting his dream job thousands of miles away, and the only thing he wants to do is give up the whole fucking thing to marry this woman and have babies with her and make a life with her.
A life that she would hate.
One that he’d hate too.
And it wouldn’t be long until it went from hating their life to hating each other.
It wouldn’t be like that at first – at first it would be perfect, but then after a while, it would fade.
Just like his parents’ marriage.
And he can’t do that to her.
Fuck.
He lets out another breath, long and ragged. Okay. He needs to just get a grip, get through dinner. It won’t be so bad. Maybe another hour, hour and a half tops, and they’ll be out of here. He splashes some cold water on his face, and with one last nod to himself, he heads back to the table.