Chapter Nine #2
“Really? A hopelessly lovestruck guy desperately trying to win over his girl on the shores of a Greek island beach?” He lifted his eyebrows at me, and through his cheeky grin, I caught a flash of amusement.
It was all too much. The adoring way he was looking at me.
The intensity in his eyes. And most of all, the fact that I didn’t have the first clue as to how we’d gotten here.
Yes, Leo had managed to pierce my stone heart in Mykonos.
Even that day in the Athens airport when we made our plan to meet up six months later, I was so swept up in the moment I actually thought I might . . . And then, time passed.
We’d talked and texted, and he was just as funny, sweet, and charming from afar, but the radio show was really starting to take off, and then the book offer came in, all based on my brand of believing that love was a fleeting illusion.
I convinced myself that what we’d had over the summer was lightning in a bottle and that the man I was planning to meet under the Eiffel Tower would never, could never, live up to the foolish fantasy so many women fell victim to.
And I refused to fall because I knew better.
All the messy history with my parents . . . and then with Matty . . .
Yeah, I knew better.
So I stayed in New York and buried all my feelings for Leo beneath logic and ambition until whatever magic, enchantment, or cosmic chaos had happened on Galentine’s Day brought him crashing back into my life.
I shook the thought away as a line of dancers sashayed through a side door, waving white linen napkins in the air to the percussive upbeat music.
Leo grabbed his and mimicked their motions along with everyone else at the table.
Watching him intently, his bright smile and genuine enthusiasm was just as captivating as the show itself.
I blinked, trying to reconcile the reality in front of me with the version of myself who would have scoffed at all this just a few months ago.
No, just yesterday! Me? Getting swept up in a Mamma Mia!
–themed disco extravaganza? Laughing and singing along as strangers in elaborate costumes twirled napkins overhead like we were extras in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?
It felt upside down. I was supposed to be the one with my arms crossed, making snarky, cynical comments about how this was all just one big ploy to sell overpriced Voulez-Vous Vodka Sours.
But instead, here I was, leaning into the moment and into him.
Leo glanced over, catching me watching him, his grin widening. “What?” he mouthed, amusement dancing in his gaze.
I shook my head, feeling my cheeks flush.
Nothing, is what I wanted to say. Except it wasn’t nothing.
It was everything. The way his energy drew me in, the way he made it so damn easy to let my guard down.
I wasn’t supposed to feel this much. Or feel this free.
Not after heartbreak had kicked my ass one too many times, leaving me with nothing but disappointment and another strong justification for writing off love for good.
And yet, I did feel fantastically free.
For a girl who prided herself on keeping her feet firmly planted on the ground, I was starting to feel dangerously close to floating.
Thankfully, the moment was broken and I was off the hook from answering when one of Donna and the Dynamos, the actress playing Tanya, left the conga line and kick-ball-changed over to our table, pulling Leo from the crowd just as the music changed to “Does Your Mother Know,” the number in the musical where she flirts with all the younger men on the beach.
Leo looked slightly uncomfortable as she gyrated, teased, and danced in circles around him. But being a good sport, he played along, the audience cheering and urging him on more with every pelvic thrust.
And when “Tanya” shimmied his shirt right off him, his broad shoulders and still-bronze skin evoking whistles and whoops from the ladies in the audience, he turned the same color as the actress’s candy-apple lipstick, and my face flushed with secondhand embarrassment.
The music flowed into a new melody as she gave Leo a quick peck on the cheek, ruffled his hair, and tossed him his clothes.
He tugged his shirt back over his head, his smile never faltering, and she danced him back over to our table as I patted the chair next to me, but instead, Leo held out his arms as an invitation to join him on the dance floor.
I shook my head no, but he remained undeterred. “C’mon, Elliot, what’ve you got to lose?”
With the song “Take a Chance on Me” now pulsing at full volume and his hand extended toward me, my pulse skipped in time with the music.
Despite every instinct that usually kept me firmly on the sidelines, the thought of taking this chance suddenly felt less like a risk and more like the only thing I wanted.
And as colorful confetti rained down on us both like we were standing in the middle of Times Square at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, I did.