Chapter Three #2
“Hey, Kamila. Thank you so much for coming tonight. What’s on your mind?”
She cleared her throat and spoke loudly from one of the last rows.
“After all these years of listening to you, I have always wondered . . . Have you ever had that moment? You know, the moment of the relationship that makes you wonder how things might’ve turned out if you would have made a different choice?
A lingering ‘what if’ that sneaks up on you late at night?
A long-lost high school sweetheart? A missed connection?
Maybe even a love-at-first-sight moment with a sexy stranger? So, do you have a story?”
I swallowed hard and my face warmed, feeling every ounce of those full-bodied reds now climbing up my neck and settling in the apples of my cheeks.
The room swayed in a soft blur, and I wasn’t sure whether it was the question or the wine that made it feel like I was suddenly on a rickety canoe in the middle of choppy water. “I . . . um . . .”
Leo’s face, however, came into perfect focus.
Eyes as blue as the Aegean Sea. Thick, dark hair and the bronze skin of a man who’d lived his whole life on the water out in the sun.
His passable Greek mixed with a melodic South African accent as he ordered us drinks and dinner at the little taverna where no one spoke a word of English.
The long fingers of his soft hands grazing my skin as he helped me into my cardigan, the sea breeze curling coolly off the water.
A god by most people’s standards. Just a fling while on a work trip to Mykonos this past summer. He’d been a dalliance and nothing else.
That is, until he became more.
“Um, sorry, what was the question?” I asked.
Cassidy leaned in to the mic. “She asked if, in spite of your more cynical take on love, you’ve ever had a missed connection or a love-at-first-sight moment?”
I forced a laugh, swirling the wine in my glass as if I could disappear into it. “Love at first sight? Oh, yeah. It happened the first time I saw a wine bottle with a twist-off cap. I knew we were meant to be.”
Cassidy tilted her head and pursed her lips, clearly not satisfied. “Oh, no, we’re not letting you off the hook that easily. Seems like you’re dodging the question, which means there’s gotta be more to the story,” she said in a singsongy voice. “C’mon, it’s just us girls here. You can dish!”
More to the story? More like a sweeping romance novel with an open ending that still keeps me up at night.
“Oh, y-you know, just one of those summer things,” I stammered. And as I fumbled for the words, the memories crept in like an uninvited visitor, unsettling and relentless.
Last July, the radio station covered all my expenses for a two-week trip to Mykonos, famous for its singles’ nightlife and party scene.
If you were in your twenties, unattached, and looking for the opposite of love, chances were you’d find it somewhere on Super Paradise Beach.
The plan was for me to conduct a series of on-the-street-style interviews, only in my case, they’d be on-the-beach interviews, further exploring the popular mantra “What happens on vacation stays on vacation.”
The goal was to show that companionship, flirtation, and sex didn’t necessarily have to lead to a relationship.
That a good time didn’t have to be anything more than just that.
So I packed my cutest bikinis, my flowy sarongs, and my SPF and headed off for what had to be the easiest assignment anyone in the history of the world had ever been given.
On day six, I met Leo. He was surrounded by a group of good-looking guys reveling in the sun-soaked chaos of a stag party, kicking around a soccer ball, shirtless and carefree.
I zeroed in on them immediately as the perfect subjects for my exposé, bachelors likely looking for nothing more than a weekend of harmless fun.
I went to the bar, ordered a round of Mythos, and carried the drinks over to the group as a way to break the ice.
My approach worked, and it didn’t take too long before the charming blokes visiting from Johannesburg were regaling me with tales of their wild stag-do exploits.
All except Leo, who remained absorbed in his pint and cell phone, barely registering that I was there at all.
After finishing the interviews, I thanked them and made my way back to the bar, laptop in hand, to transcribe my notes for the show. Leo followed, stepping up behind me to order another draft.
“You didn’t want to interview me?” he asked in a low and sexy voice that practically knocked me off my stool.
I swiveled around and came face-to-face with one of the most striking men I’d ever seen. From far away he’d been good-looking, but up close, good Lord, he was damn near perfection. My stomach dipped and I struggled to produce enough saliva to swallow before I could speak. “Um . . . sorry?”
“You asked all my mates their views on love and dating, but not me.”
“That’s not true. I didn’t bother you or the groom. Him for obvious reasons, and you because you didn’t seem particularly interested.” I shrugged and turned back to my computer.
“I was responding to a work email before, but if you’re still looking for some additional content, I’m available now,” he said, pulling up a stool. “What did you say your name was?”
“Elliot. West. And I think I’m all set. Your mates gave me quite an earful.”
“Did they, now?” He lowered his voice. “You should know, that was mostly ego, not to mention that they were likely just trying to impress a beautiful woman.”
“As opposed to your thinly veiled compliment probably meant to act as some sort of strategic charm offensive?” I squinted at him, not only to show my skepticism but because staring right at him was almost like looking directly into the sun.
His chiseled bone structure and warm demeanor was making it hard to think straight.
He smirked, displaying the cutest creases around his eyes and highlighting the cleft in his chin. “Okay, you got me there.” He pointed to my computer screen. “So why all the questions about relationships? Are you some sort of cultural anthropologist or something?”
An amused laugh tumbled past my lips. “Pfft. Hardly. I host a radio show that challenges the traditional notions of love.”
He nodded in approval, and that’s when I knew I’d reeled him in.
A girl who hosted a show challenging the traditional norms of love?
If that didn’t scream vacay hookup, I wasn’t sure what did.
And so, in the name of research, I continued to charm and banter and laugh with this handsome stranger in the hope of tumbling into a little vacation fling myself.
Little did I know that over the next week, this small flirtation would erupt into an inferno, threatening everything I’d worked so hard to build: my radio persona as a cynic of love, my brand, and most terrifyingly, the walls I’d built to protect my heart from ever breaking . . . again.