Chapter 34
Even though he’d spent most of his formative years in Florida, Niko still wasn’t prepared for the heat.
His sisters and their stepdad were waiting in the kitchen, along with enough food to feed fifty people rather than five, and Niko felt a sense of relief for the first time since he’d left Crested Peak in his rearview mirror.
Of course moving on wouldn’t be easy. Of course he’d miss everything and everyone he left behind.
But as he filled his plate with moussaka and meatballs and stuffed peppers, chatting with Alex about her first week of freshman orientation and Lydia about making captain of her varsity dance team, he remembered why he was here.
Alex, who had resumed scrolling through her phone while Lydia gave him a detailed rundown of all the cliques and alliances within the team, let out a yelp so loud and sudden it halted all conversations mid-sentence.
“Oh my god. Niko,” she said, in a tone both breathless and accusatory, “why didn’t you tell me you know Grey Brooks?”
Niko’s brow furrowed. “Who?”
“She’s an actress,” said Alex, the duh only implied.
He racked his brain. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it to any of the people he’d met in LA. “I don’t think I do,” he said.
“Then why does she have a painting you did in her house?”
Niko blinked, sure he’d temporarily gone deaf. “She what?”
Alex turned her phone toward him, holding her thumb down to pause the video playing.
Sure enough, one of the paintings he’d donated to the auction was hanging on the wall, tagged with his username.
He jolted at the shock of seeing it. It had been months since he’d last checked his social media, let alone updated it—he only had a few pictures on it, none of which featured his artwork.
With shaking hands, he pulled out his own phone and opened the app, but he was so overwhelmed by notifications he immediately turned off the screen and placed it face down on the table.
By now, the rest of his family had crowded around Alex’s phone and were staring at him with matching dumbfounded expressions.
“You painted that?” his mother asked.
“Uh…yeah,” said Niko, his brain sluggish, desperately trying to wrap itself around what any of this meant.
“When did you start painting?” By now, the stunned look on his mom’s face had taken on shades of hurt.
“Um, I always have, kind of,” he said slowly, and he saw her brow crumple further. “But I stopped once I…when I came back to Florida. Except in school. But I picked it up again once I moved to Colorado.”
“Oh. Okay.”
A tense silence settled over the kitchen, Alex and Lydia immediately burying themselves in their phones again. He watched his mother visibly pull herself together, then turn back to the refrigerator. As she passed behind him, she put a hand on his shoulder, bending down to kiss the top of his head.
“I’m so proud of you, agápi mou,” she said softly. “Do you take commissions? I want one for the office.”
He laughed, but it was more of a sigh of relief. “For you, mamá? I think we can work out a deal.”
He had a week before he left for Greece, and he would be starting his new job at his stepdad’s insurance firm as soon as he got back.
Based on the interview, it would mostly be data entry to start, and even though he wasn’t great with computers and got restless from sitting too long, it seemed simple—and mindless—enough.
But until then, he had the days to himself, with his sisters busy and his mom and stepdad at work. He spent most of that time driving aimlessly around the suburban sprawl, trying to familiarize himself, wondering how long it would take before he began thinking of it as home.
He’d never struggled with insomnia before, but he spent his nights staring blankly at the glow-in-the-dark stars Alex had stuck above her bed.
He should’ve said a real goodbye to her.
He should’ve told her how he felt.
But would it have changed anything? Was it what she even wanted?
Every day, he saw something that made him think of her, mindlessly reaching for his phone to text her before remembering.
But he knew it would fade. It wasn’t his first heartbreak—although he couldn’t remember it ever feeling quite this intense.
With Helene, there had been the distraction of the humiliation, the betrayal, but this was just pure, unfiltered loss.
It felt so overwhelming that it had to be visible just by looking at him.
Something integral to his very being was gone, like his arm or nose.
But no, nobody commented on any missing appendages, so he didn’t bring it up.
A few days before he left, he finally had a moment alone with his mother, since her office closed early on Fridays. He offered to help her make dinner, so she put him to work chopping vegetables for sheet pan–roasted chicken as she mixed up the vinaigrette.
He straightened his spine, gathering his courage. “You know, it’s not too late for you to come with me. I could still buy you a ticket, if you wanted.”
He didn’t look at her as he said it, but the sound of the fork clanging against the metal bowl abruptly stopped. “Why are you so hung up on this all of a sudden?”
She didn’t sound angry, though, just tired. Like she’d already been having this argument over and over with herself and was sick of hearing about it.
“Because nobody ever talks about it,” he said.
The real answer was that for most of his life, he hadn’t been able to face the pain of looking this conflict straight in the eye—and he suspected his mother and grandparents felt the same.
Now, though, when he thought about it, he felt like he’d outgrown his skin, itching to shed the old one that no longer fit.
She turned to look fully at him, appraising him with sad eyes, then shook her head.
She turned back to the counter, removing the plastic wrap from the chicken thighs and placing them in the vinaigrette.
Her movements were mechanical, her expression distant.
“I don’t think we need to dig up these old hurts right now.
But I hope you understand that cutting them off wasn’t a choice I made lightly.
I did what I had to do to protect myself. ”
“But what about me, mamá?” He was startled by his own emotion. He felt so wrung out after the past few weeks, scraped so raw, that he couldn’t handle being shut down on this front, too. “This is about me, too.”
His mother moved to the sink, washing her hands, then drying them on the dish towel, the silence interminable as he waited for her response. “This isn’t your burden to carry, agápi mou,” she said, finally.
“Well, I’ve been carrying it anyway,” he said, a crack in his voice that came from deep in his chest. “And I don’t want to anymore.”
She glanced back at him, the movement sharp, her mouth twisting.
He’d never spoken to her so candidly before, and he half expected her to reprimand him.
But instead, she pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down at the table, resting her head in her hands.
He set his knife down and turned to face her, leaning back against the counter.
“When I found out I was having you…I can’t even tell you how afraid I was.
I was so young, and I had so many plans, and this wasn’t part of any of them.
It was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced.
And your grandparents…they made me feel like such a failure.
Like I’d ruined my life, and theirs. I couldn’t give them that power anymore, or I’d start to believe it.
” She lifted her face to look at him. Her cheeks were pink, a hard, tense line between her eyebrows.
“But I want to make one thing clear: You are not the reason we don’t have a relationship. They are.”
He stood still, arms tightly crossed against his chest, head down.
“I’m not saying the way they acted was right,” he said.
“But you haven’t seen them in twenty-something years.
Don’t you think they might’ve changed since then?
Don’t you think you have? I know they have a lot of work to do to make it up to you, but…
will you let them try?” He fought to get his next words out, a knot in his throat again.
“I forgave you. Why can’t you forgive them? ”
He hadn’t meant to say that. Actually, he hadn’t ever thought of it exactly like that until the words came out of his mouth, but the truth of it washed over him like an enchantment.
He’d spent most of his life refusing to believe that he, too, was part of the endless cycle of parents letting their children down when they needed them most. Of children shaped and scarred by it.
His mother closed her eyes. “Oh, Nikolaos, that’s not fair,” she said, her voice trembling, two identical tears trailing down her cheeks.
Niko’s stomach twisted with regret, and he felt like the biggest asshole on the planet for making his mom cry.
He sat down in the chair next to her and scooted it closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, mamá. I shouldn’t have said that.”
She shook her head, wiping her face with the towel. “It kills me, you know. All the ways I don’t know you, because we lost those years. I made the choice I thought was best for you, but…”
Niko took a heavy, shaky breath, trying to keep his emotions under control as she continued. “I hope you never for a minute think that you have been anything but a gift. I’m sorry if I ever made you believe otherwise.”
“But all your plans—” Niko gulped. She shook her head forcefully.
“You’re right, I had a different plan for how things would work out for me. I couldn’t even imagine how difficult things would get—or how wonderful my life would be now. I wouldn’t trade a single thing in it. Especially not you.”
That was his breaking point.
“Damn onions,” he mumbled, even though he was now three feet away from the cutting board. His mother let out a choked laugh. They sat there like that for a long moment, still and thoughtful, his hands enclosed in hers. Finally, she handed him the dish towel.
“Speaking of. We’d better get this in the oven.” She got to her feet, and Niko followed, resuming his chopping, the two of them working in a slightly unsettled silence for several minutes before he was surprised to hear her say, in a small, unfamiliar voice, “Do you really think they’ve changed?”
Niko’s heart leapt, but he fought to keep his voice casual.
“Yeah, I do. Remember what they were like when Uncle Konstantin first came out? Well, I guess you don’t, but you can probably imagine.
But now they invite his husband around to all the family stuff, and they all have a great relationship.
I think they realized that having us in their lives is what matters most to them. ”
His mother nodded tightly and didn’t say another word until they were done arranging the vegetables, chicken thighs, and marinade on the baking sheets.
“Well,” she said, as she shut the oven door and they began gathering the dirty dishes into the sink, “I do have a lot of PTO I need to use up before the end of the year.” She looked at him, her face solemn. “And you don’t have to buy my ticket.”
Niko responded by wrapping her tightly in his arms. “Thank you,” he said, his voice thick. When they pulled apart, she rested her hand on his face, just for a moment, her eyes shining with affection, even as her mouth turned down on one side.
They returned to the dishes, working in quiet harmony, Niko washing, his mother drying.
The mention of his Uncle Konstantin reminded him of something, though it seemed a little out of place to bring it up now. But then, they’d never been this open with each other before, so maybe this was as good a time as any.
“Mamá?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m bisexual,” he blurted out. Her head whipped up, but she seemed more confused than alarmed. He continued, even more awkwardly, “I just…I just wanted you to know. To know me.”
She nodded slowly, understanding blooming across her face. “Thank you for telling me.” The corner of her mouth turned up. “Is there someone special you want me to know about?”
“No,” he said, too quickly, but probably not for the reason she thought. “There’s no one.” It came out more forlorn than he’d meant it to, and concern knitted her brow as she looked at him.
“Okay,” she said, a little skeptical. “Are you—”
Just then, the front door burst open, Alex and Lydia crashing through, laughing and talking at the top of their lungs, and Niko tried to ignore the disappointment rippling over him that their conversation was cut short.
It was only a passing feeling, though. Mostly, he felt nothing short of euphoric that his mother had agreed to come with him.
Even if the trip was a disaster, even if they didn’t make up, it didn’t matter. He’d been brave enough to be honest about how he felt, and she’d listened to him. She’d heard him. He’d be riding this high for a long time.
At least, that was what he thought. But it faded the instant he realized that the only person he wanted to share it with was Merritt.