Chapter 16 #3
It registered to Ethan just how young they actually were, and he felt a pang of guilt—guilt at the responsibility he held for portraying their lives to an audience of millions.
For manipulating people into believing something that wasn’t true about two strangers they’d formed parasocial relationships with, which, in turn, gave those people the delusional bravado to assume certain feelings and intent without taking a moment to consider the real thoughts of the actual people involved.
It was bonkers. And he was right in the thick of it.
Now there was no going back. He looked at Julia, standing still though not looking at him, instead observing the environment around her, hair still blowing back softly in the breeze.
In her profile, he caught how her cheeks and nose were a bit red, indicative of the chill in the air, which seemed to grow cooler as the day progressed.
As if possessed by the spirit of something he couldn’t name, he quickly lifted his phone up and snapped another shot of her, this time intentionally.
He slipped his phone back into his pocket hurriedly, as if he was afraid of getting caught red-handed, and then picked up his pace.
He was eager to catch up to her, to be walking beside her again.
“It’s only about a ten-minute walk from here,” she was saying as he fell into step with her. “Back to the cottage, I mean. Because we’re farther east but also a bit more south.”
Ethan nodded, as though her directions meant anything to him.
Julia had always been good at placing them geographically in any given spot; it was an innate grounding ability that helped her determine where they were and where they needed to go.
Ethan was better at executing the move than choosing the direction.
It was kind of a metaphor for his life, if he thought about it.
Constant motion without a focused destination.
He had once thought photography was going to be the career he’d make for himself.
He would travel the world taking pictures of all the amazing sights and people there were to see, he would sell his stuff along the way to fund the next legs of the trip, and his name would grow until his fame reached the farthest corners of the globe.
Instead, he and Gem had left Buffalo together. They’d ended up at NYU together, and then, to make ends meet after college, they’d found a job at Kouzina, that Greek restaurant in Queens—again, together.
Years had passed, and the photography thing hadn’t really taken off—he could take some pretty pictures on Washington Street, but they were a dime a dozen, and nobody paid him enough for them to fund anything other than a few weeks of inner-city transit, with the occasional jaunt to Brooklyn for more of those DUMBO Manhattan Bridge View pictures.
And Julia, though well-loved by Spiros, the owner of Kouzina, especially as the creator of a galaktoboureko that was advertised as Better Than Yiayia’s, had failed to elevate herself beyond hostess and occasional pastry chef over his own daughters and sons.
Apparently the nepotism lived strong, especially in second-tier Greek restaurants across the river.
They’d both started becoming bitter and disillusioned with the trajectory of their lives in a way they hadn’t predicted. Life had never been easy for the two of them, though Julia would probably argue that Ethan’s had been a little bit easier than hers, but it had never been so…disheartening.
This was also the point in their lives when they were both living in cramped postcollege apartments with roommates and lives that hadn’t quite turned out the way they’d imagined. That was probably where the cracks had really started—tiny fissures that, in time, became seismic.
“—take you there tomorrow.”
He realized belatedly that Julia had been talking during his quick mental jaunt down memory lane. He also realized that he had no idea where Katy and Noah had gone.
Maybe she saw his confusion—or the fact that he clearly hadn’t been listening to her—because she sighed.
“They went into the stationery store over there.” She pointed at yet another quaint storefront, bricks painted white, with a navy blue pergola and matching front door. “I decided to stay with you and plan for tomorrow, but I lost you once I started referencing the compass rose.”
He snorted, then shook his head. “Sorry. Just thinking how I went from wanting to be a photographer”—he held his phone up ruefully—“to this.”
“A photographer…?” Her face grew shadowed, the smile freezing in place as memories seemed to take over behind her eyes as well.
He wondered what she was recalling—if it was the same mental album of faded Polaroids that he had just seen.
He wanted to shake her out of it, since he knew how unpleasant parts of it could be.
But maybe if she remembered the good parts, too…
Her face shuttered and her eyes grew flat. “Let’s go,” she said, not waiting for him to follow her to the stationery store before entering on her own. He watched as she hobbled in, with her ankle brace barely supporting her.
He sighed.
So maybe she doesn’t remember the good parts, after all, he thought. And then he shifted the phone into his back pocket, making his way to the stationery shop behind her.