Chapter Six
Basil
Challenge: Picnic in the park
Evan didn’t bat an eye at my suggestion that we stuff a cooler with enough food to feed a family and have lunch al fresco on the Lawn. He’d been back a week and was up for visiting old haunts. He had no idea how true that was about to be.
“You might run into some of your viewers,” I told him so he wouldn’t go out looking like a hitchhiker. Whatever his feelings for Elizabeth were, he’d never forgive me if I let him run into her in his ratty hoodie.
“I’m still an ordinary citizen until Monday.”
“You’re Evan Spurlock at six and eleven at Charlottesville’s favorite news channel. You might get recognized.”
A grin broke across his face. “Not until Monday.”
“So you like it there?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. The current meteorologist is great, but he’s leaving.”
“And Elizabeth?”
He sighed. “And Elizabeth.”
“So, what, you don’t like her now?”
“I don’t know her. I feel like an idiot for believing her lies, and now it’s just confusing. I’m not sure how not to be angry about it.” His shoulders sagged. “And yet…”
“And yet?”
“That was a surreal night. I have to confess I still think about it.”
“Yeah.” Major understatement. “I never would have thought I’d be the one still in the saddle after all this time.”
“Seriously. It’s been four weeks, Easy Lover.”
“Dude.”
“C’mon. You usually move on by now.”
I sucked on my teeth. “That’s not what I meant. And this is different.”
“It always is.” He laughed. “Until it isn’t.”
I focused on filling one thermos with coffee and the other with hot apple cider. The least Evan could do was pretend I was capable of a long-term relationship.
“In case it hadn’t slipped your notice,” I said, “I’m still in the game. You took your balls and went home.” I leaned against the counter to face him. “What’s the real reason you blew her off?”
“Self-respect? Self-preservation?”
“Because you don’t like her?” I crossed my arms. “Or because you do?”
“Because I don’t like being used.”
I noticed he didn’t dispute liking her. “Maybe if you took the time to know her, you’d find out she wasn’t using you.”
He scoffed. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?”
“Flirt so easily, like there’s nothing at risk. You fall in and out of love before you have a chance to get your heart broken, chasing after the next challenge like you’re bulletproof.”
I resented his assumptions about me.
Yes, flirting came easily to me. Yes, I was thrilled by delicious banter and got butterflies from kissing. Of course, I loved sex with a beautiful woman. But I never intended my interest to flame out after a few weeks. I wanted to build a deep connection that would outlast the novelty, but so far my relationships skittered across the surface, nice and easy, and my love life was a disappointment like every other avenue of my life.
But I wanted romance. I wanted to be loved and to love. I believed in the possibility despite several failed attempts.
“Have you ever truly been hurt before?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I deflected. “Have you?”
He blew out his breath. “All the time. The difference is I want something real.”
“And you think I don’t?”
“I think you believe you’re impervious, but one of these days, you’re going to throw yourself into one of your easygoing romances, thinking you can skate by unscathed, and you’re going to fall. Then you’ll understand.”
I double checked that I’d packed everything, including some utensils, plates, and napkins. Then right when we were about to leave, my phone rang, and I answered, even though the call would cost me valuable minutes. You don’t hit ignore on Mama.
“Hi, Ma.”
“ There you are. I thought maybe I should call the Charlottesville hospitals. Nobody’s heard from you in days.”
I paced my kitchen, shooting an apologetic grimace at Evan. “I called you on Tuesday, Ma.”
“And today, it’s Saturday.”
“I’ve been busy.” Maybe I could talk and walk. I grabbed the cooler and gestured to Evan to head out the door.
Dad hollered in the background. Ma translated. “Zoe says there’s a woman?”
“No. Well, sort of.”
She called to Dad, “He’s got a woman!”
“No, Ma.” I popped the trunk and dropped the cooler in.
“You’ll bring her to meet me. Your dad will want to meet her. You’ll bring her for Thanksgiving.”
Oh God. “I’m not going to bring her home for Thanksgiving. I’m sure she’s got her own plans.”
“Your yia yia and Theo Kostas will be here.” My uncle Kostas was my mom’s brother. Yia Yia was her mom. “You should talk to Kostas. He still wants you to go work for him.”
“In Greece.” I froze with one hand on the door handle.
“Yes, in Greece. Why not?”
This was what I had to contend with on a near-daily basis. “I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”
I exhaled. I loved my family, but there was a reason I’d moved to Charlottesville against their strong protestations. You’d think I’d moved to the most dangerous neighborhood in Beirut by the way my mom fretted and nagged. Granted, it wouldn’t have been much different if I lived in Richmond, even if I lived next door to them. I saw how my sisters’ and brother’s lives were forever intertwined with my parents’. While I wanted to be involved with them, I needed distance.
I’d always been the apple that fell too far from the tree. They’d sometimes blamed themselves for raising me too American. Sometimes they questioned if I was sufficiently Greek. I had no idea.
When I was younger, everything my family did was a reminder of where my parents had come from—Greek festivals, holidays, food, language. Then I went to public school and pledged allegiance to the American flag and taped a hand-traced turkey to a Popsicle stick. Straddling two cultures, but truly a part of neither, I’d had an experience my parents could never understand. Being immersed in both worlds, I’d taken my heritage for granted, sometimes even tried to hide my differences. I just wanted to fit in somewhere. The first time I took a French class and had to learn a language and culture as an outsider, I felt like a clueless American teenager. Normal.
Ma expected me to integrate into Greek society as if I’d been born there, like her. But it seemed so far away, and as they said, I had a woman here.
Or I might, if the stars aligned.
I’d lost ten precious minutes talking my mom out of planning my wedding and future career. As I drove to the Corner, the small shopping area across from the university, I threw irate gestures the whole time at other motorists who were slowing me down with their indecisive driving. “It’s a road! Move out of the way!”
Maybe that proved I was Greek after all. I came by impatient driving honestly. My father seemed to believe that words could actually influence the functionality of other vehicles. One day, both of us were going to end up in a road rage incident.
Today, I was extra impatient. I had a girl to see.
“What are the odds?” Elizabeth said with an artificial laugh as she entered the coffee shop, spying Evan and me at a front table.
Chelsea shot me a smirk. “Yeah, right. What are the odds?”
She wore a dark-brown, knee-length skirt, a soft cream lightweight sweater, and a pair of boots, and I could picture her as one of the university students, heading to the library. I wanted to throw an arm over her shoulder and pull her close, like I was her university boyfriend. I fit the part in my distressed UVA sweatshirt, but it would be a mistake to make unsolicited moves on her. From everything I’d learned about her, she’d fuck me, but she wouldn’t easily hold my hand.
“ I am going to straight up murder you, ” Evan said through gritted teeth.
“What? Why?” I said, all innocence.
Evan stood, like he was considering making a break for it. “I can’t believe you tricked me. Again.”
Chelsea clucked. “Aw, come on. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad ,” he said. “I just don’t like being lied to.”
Elizabeth shook her head, relaxing. “I think they were just having fun. No harm done.”
Chelsea shrugged. “You wouldn’t have hesitated to do the same to me.”
Elizabeth craned her neck around to the line at the counter. “Can I at least get some coffee? I’m barely awake.”
“We’re not getting coffee at this soulless corporation,” Chelsea said. “We just needed a place to meet.”
“Picnic.” I held up the cooler I’d packed earlier.
“Evan, wouldn’t you like to try those mini pumpkin muffins you were trying to pinch this morning?”
Evan surrendered to the power of food, but I could tell it was only an excuse. When Elizabeth wasn’t looking, he studied her like she was a puzzle he needed to work out.
We let the girls precede us outside and up the path that wound under the Rotunda. UVA grounds in the fall had to be one of the most picturesque sites in the world. Even though I’d never graduated, I always felt a stab of pride that I’d managed to get accepted here, that I’d spent a few years living the academic dream.
Near the Colonnade Club, I spread a blanket under an enormous sugar maple exploding in golden leaves. We were a picture postcard.
Once everyone sat around the edges of the blanket, I grabbed my phone. “This needs to be documented.”
Chelsea and Elizabeth leaned their heads together. Evan smiled like he was posing for a toothpaste commercial. “Say Velveeta!”
I caught the picture right before Chelsea could roll her eyes.
Her expression changed to pure delight once I started unpacking the food. “So I have some mini egg-and-sausage quiches, some pumpkin muffins with a cream cheese filling, a thermos of coffee, and another with hot apple cider.” I looked back in the bag and saw another wrapped item. “Oh, and strawberries.”
“Of course you do.” Chelsea’s sarcasm was belied by her look of wonder.
“How do you guys know each other, anyway?” Elizabeth asked.
“We were roommates in college,” I answered. “Here, actually.”
Elizabeth nodded. “We were roommates here, too. Now we’re neighbors and heterosexual life partners.”
“You’re what?” Evan croaked.
“She means we’re best friends,” Chelsea clarified. “We spend way too much time together.”
Evan asked, “So what do you do, Chelsea?”
“Little of this, little of that. Like Elizabeth, I cobble together jobs to make rent, but my passion is graphic arts.”
I nudged her. “When I first saw you, I thought you might be a physicist.”
She snorted. “That’s kind of random. Why did you think that?”
“Because of your gravitational pull.”
She smacked my arm. “Groan. That’s so bad.” But she was smiling, so I considered it a score.
Evan shot me a withering look. “You did not just say that, bro.”
Then Elizabeth detonated a bomb by asking, “What did you study, Basil?”
Evan tried to save me. “Bas was a bit of a universal scholar.”
“What does that mean?” Chelsea cast a serious gaze over my face, and I sighed because there was no way around my disappointing past.
My college failures were indicative of everything I started with the best of intentions. I entered academia optimistically, studying everything I found interesting, but nothing clicked. I could still hear my parents lecturing me after I decided to drop out and pursue cooking: You weren’t supposed to quit school, Basil. You were just supposed to find a more lucrative major .
All that was too heavy for a picnic.
Evan knew me. My family knew me. But there was a reason I never shared this side of myself, especially not with women I hoped to impress.
So I played it off like a positive quality. “I dabbled in everything. I wanted to study art in Paris and live like a bohemian. Silly, right?”
“No way!” She froze, a strawberry halfway to her lips. Lucky strawberry. “You studied art?”
“I know. Not very practical. I even declared a minor in art history.”
“No, I mean, I studied art. I wonder if we were ever in the same classes.”
“Maybe. Though I never finished the program.”
“I barely made it through. Fat lot of good it did me.”
“Was that your major?” Elizabeth asked.
Moment of truth. “Um, no. I majored in French.”
Chelsea double blinked, as people do whenever I confessed how I wasted my parents’ money. But she said, “I’d love to be able to speak a foreign language. I keep starting various courses and never really learn any.” She winced as if she’d shared a venial sin. “One of the hazards of wanderlust. Are you fluent?”
The whole topic embarrassed me. “Depends how you define fluent. I spent some time in France, but I dropped out before I got my degree. I’d say I probably speak it better than most Americans, but it’s hardly a job qualification when there are actual French people with a skill set other than their ability to speak their native tongue. I might as well have just studied English.”
“Ouch,” Elizabeth said, and I recalled that she’d majored in English. “Shots fired.”
“No, I mean, the language. God. Sorry.”
“No offense taken. Seriously.”
I shrugged it off like it hadn’t been another example of my failure to commit. “Anyway, I decided to take some classes at a cooking school. Unlike a persuasive paper on the influence of Balzac on modern American film, haute cuisine actually makes people happy. And puts food on the table. Literally.”
“I would actually read that paper, but you can’t eat a thesis.” Elizabeth snickered.
“Hey, what’s the American novelist’s favorite drink?” I asked her.
“Oh, shit.” She tapped her forehead for a second, like she’d heard this one before.
I put her out of her misery. “Tequila mockingbird.”
Three people groaned at once, and I grinned. My work here was done.
Chelsea reanimated the topic I wanted to let die. “I’m a little bit jealous of your life choices, Bas.”
That made me snort. “Please pass that on to my parents.”
She sighed. “I’ve never been to Paris.”
I took a sip of coffee, hoping to relax into a normal conversation and get her to drop her guard. Maybe my confessions would encourage her to share some of her secrets. “When I first decided to study French, it pissed off my parents. Especially when I chose to go abroad to Paris for a summer instead of visiting family in Greece.”
“So, what? You dropped out of school and became a chef?”
My lips pursed, and I forced myself to smile. This was just small talk, not a lecture. “Pretty much.”
“Bas was also a world-class fencer,” Evan said around bites of pumpkin muffin. I wanted to tell him to shut up, but he rattled on. “That’s how we first met, actually. In the fencing club.”
Elizabeth choked on her cider. “Fencing?”
Evan shook his head. “I know. Everyone expected me to play lacrosse, but I’d never been very good at it, and I wanted to try something new. I never won any big tournaments, but Bas could have gone Olympic.”
I shuttered my eyes. I’d hoped he wouldn’t go there.
Fortunately, Elizabeth assumed Evan was fucking with her, maybe getting even for pranking him that first night. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “You must think I’m the most gullible person on the planet.”
It was too late. Chelsea was all over this news. “You’d make an excellent swashbuckler. What made you start fencing?”
“There’s a club in Richmond. A friend of mine was going, and he took me along. He quit, but my parents signed me up for three months, and by God, I wasn’t going to waste that money.”
Evan was too generous. I could have gone Olympic if I hadn’t lacked discipline or follow-through. Ask my coaches. Ask my dad. They could have written a dissertation on how disappointing I turned out. There was no success high enough to appease my dad and make it worth the trouble, so I quit and joined an amateur club because I enjoyed the sport but not the competition. My dad had a harder time letting it go.
I tried to consider every angle I could pursue that would impress Chelsea further, but I didn’t want to end up explaining why I’d quit fencing, why I’d quit school, why I’d quit everything I ever started. But after all, maybe a quitter was an ideal candidate for Chelsea’s war on romance. At least I couldn’t let her down, since she expected nothing from me.
I didn’t want to talk about it. “Did you ever take up any sports?”
“Not really. I learned karate from YouTube.”
“Maybe you can show me some of those moves later on.”
She laughed. “In your dreams, Stavros.”
“Exactly.” I took a chance and reached for her hand. She didn’t pull it away. Touché. Another point for Bas. Intent on keeping her laughing, I cataloged the various positions I wanted to try out with her. “I think I could start with a sleeper choke, right? Then later, maybe I’ll flip you?”
She squeezed my hand. “You know I could take you down right here, right now.”
I cut my eyes over. “Promises, promises.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’ll let you take me anytime, anywhere.”
“Let me?” she objected. “You won’t see it coming.”
She had no idea how true that already was. Now on top of every other image I’d formed, I had superimposed visions of her topping me, controlling me, forcing me to the ground, and then using me.
“This was nice,” Chelsea said, and I saw the time slipping away.
Searching for a way to see her again, I asked, “What do you do around here for fun?”
“Shop for wine. Eat dinner in grocery store kitchens. Picnic with strange men.”
“Funny.” I tried again. “And what about the places I haven’t yet seen you?”
Chelsea twisted her mouth, like it was a tough question. “If the weather’s nice, we walk around town. Sometimes I hike.”
Something we shared in common. “Where do you like to hike?”
“The Priest. Humpback Rocks. Anywhere. I grew up in the Virginia Highlands, so the Blue Ridge Parkway was my backyard.”
“Seriously? I’ve hiked all of those trails.”
Elizabeth piped in, “FYI, hiking’s on the list.”
Chelsea pulled out her phone. “Ooh, so is going on a picnic. Plus the walk in town…”
“So what else do you have on there?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t as transparent as I felt. “Kiss a Greek?”
Chelsea snorted.
“Live music,” Elizabeth said, extra loud, and Evan looked up from gathering trash.
I said, “You wanna go see who’s playing at the Jefferson tonight?”
Evan’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea. I haven’t been there in ages.”
That left Chelsea. I squeezed her hand and said, “Come on, Sunshine.”
She shot me a curious glance, like nobody’d ever dared mistake her for a princess, but with a reluctant smirk, she said, “Sure. Why not?”
I wasn’t sure if her list was working out better for her or for me, but I was grateful it was giving me another chance to get to know her better. Evan was wrong about one thing. I was absolutely not impervious to this girl’s charms.