Ignoring my sister, I turn to my mother. “I invited Mina to dinner.”
“Pappas?” she says, tugging at the cork in the bottle until I usher her out of the way and do it myself. “I love Mina! Do you think she remembers Sophia? How wonderful that we can all be together tonight.”
Do I think Mina remembers Sophia? There weren’t many of us kids at Greek school, which belonged to our local church. Maybe forty in total, throughout all the grades, which means that it’s near-on impossible to not remember Sophia.
She used to cling to my arm. Sit next to me at every opportunity. Latch onto my hand whenever we lined up for our traditional Greek dancing lessons. And, always—always—she made sure to laugh at Mina’s Greek accent.
Knowing what I do now, no matter that Mina probably didn’t intend to let it slip about her learning disability, I can’t help but get the feeling that Mina questioned herself more than she ever let on otherwise, thanks to judgmental people like Sophia.
The thought sits like acid in my stomach.
“Ma—”
The doorbell rings to the tune of Zorba the Greek playing throughout the house. I did it as a joke when I first bought the place for my parents. Only, the joke’s on me—they thought it was the best thing ever and refused to let me rewire the doorbell to, you know, play something normal.
“Niko mou,” Ma exclaims, “get the door, will you? Effie, bring the wine to the table. Where’s Sarah?”
Something tells me that I won’t just find Sophia on the other side of the front door, and sure enough, when I pull it open, I’m met with two pairs of eyes staring back at me.
Fuck my life.
14
Mina
You know you’re officially an adult when you’re standing next to the girl who made your life hell back in grade school—and all you want to do is offer to redo her hair because it looks like a Cheeto mated with Tony the Tiger and puked all over her head.
I clamp my hands behind my back, all the better to not pluck at her orange strands.
She stabs the doorbell for yet another time like the prospect of waiting with me is not something she particularly enjoys.
Right there with ya, lady.
Sophia’s dark eyes narrow when a familiar tune erupts inside the house. “Please tell me that’s not Zorba the Greek playing.”
I avert my gaze and stifle a grin. “It’s not Zorba the Greek playing.” Except that it totally is, and I can’t help but tap my shoe along to the beat as we wait, side by side. Play nice, Ermione. “How’ve you been?”
Sophia stiffens next to me. “Great. Totally great.”
I bob my head in a quick nod, keeping my gaze locked on the door. “Divorce all finalized?”
“H-how?”
Tap, tap, tap-tap-tap. “Your husband used to come into the salon I worked at. I’m sorry that he was such an asshole to you.” Tap, tap. “And that he did what he did.”
“H-he didn’t do anything.”
Her ex-husband made it no secret that he was having an affair with a woman who worked in his office. He came in every Friday, as routinely regular as my period, to have his hair trimmed before he and his mistress (side piece? cheater-in-accomplice?) left town for the weekend. Sophia may have been my own personal Regina George from Mean Girls back in high school, but no one deserves the backstabbing assholery her husband put her through. On more than one occasion, I reached out to her over social media to broach the subject. On more than one occasion, she read my messages and never responded.
Zorba the Greek descends into silence, and then the front door pulls open and Nick is standing there. He looks . . . yummy, my brain happily supplies. Dark jeans, which seem to be his favorite; those amazingly soft leather shoes he wore for Toula’s wedding; and a Red Sox T-shirt that lends him a casual vibe that I like more than I should.
His gaze visibly widens at the sight of us.
“Sophia,” he greets roughly, and then his pewter eyes zero in on my face. Veer down the length of my body in a slow perusal before swinging back up again. “Ermione.”
Ermione.
When he says it like that, all deep and masculine and confident, it sounds less mocking and more suggestive.
You do not like the suggestive! Remember what Effie said!
As though I can possibly forget. Plus, she’s not wrong in her assessment: Nick and I want two very different lives. Aside from that one, delicious moment earlier this week, he’s made no move to make me think he wants anything more than a fake girlfriend to ward off the crazies.
I peek over at Sophia. Years ago, I would have labeled her as a crazy. The queen of the crazies, even. Now, though, she just looks worn down, a little defeated by love and life.
As much as I’d love to throw my arms around Nick’s neck and play up the fake-relationship factor, it seems cruel to throw that in Sophia’s face, given the circumstances. I mean, the girl has orange hair, for God’s sake. Forget Tony the Tiger, it’s like a traffic cone has taken up residence on her head. If that’s not a cry for help then I don’t know what is.
Without giving her the chance to leap out of the way, I loop my arm around hers, linking us together. Her muscles twitch under my touch, which I studiously pretend to ignore. “Sophia and I have so much to catch up on tonight.” I blast her with a smile that I hope doesn’t look deranged. Then I gesture to the man standing slack-jawed in front of me to get out of the way. “Scoot aside, Nick, before my nipples freeze off.”
Ice crawls up my stockinged legs as I wait for him to move.
He stares at me, darts a glance to Sophia, then steps out onto the front porch. My high school nemesis wastes no time in rushing forward out of the cold. Before I have the chance to do the same, Nick shuts the door behind him and steps in front of me. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m slightly hunched against the chill in the air, but he’s got the whole human-mountain thing down pat. He looks massive as he blocks me from heading inside.
Voice pitched low, he says, “Let’s take a walk.”
My heart gives a little jolt of surprise. “It’s cold out.”
His thumbs sink into the front pockets of his jeans. “I run hot.”
Oh, I just bet he does.
Standing on my tiptoes, I attempt to peer over his shoulder. Unfortunately, I’m a solid six inches too short to see much of anything. “Just because you’re an aberration doesn’t mean I run hot.” I point to my outfit: suede, caramel skirt, with an emerald green blouse tucked into the waistband. My knee-high suede boots are warm enough, and flat enough, for a short walk, but that doesn’t mean I’m keen on breathing out icicles for the next twenty minutes.
It’s not even forty-degrees outside.
Nick closes the gap between us, his fingers going to the parted fleece collar of my coat. His breath is warm against my forehead as his fingers trail over the metal of my zipper, down past my breasts, down past my belly, down farther until my lungs are heaving and I’m welcoming short bursts of icy air into my body.
Then, swiftly, Nick zips my coat all the way up to the collar, locking in the heat he’s so easily sparked to life.
“Feeling warmer yet?” he husks out by my ear.
He steps past me, tromping down the three front steps to the sidewalk.
I’m frozen for a heartbeat, maybe two, before I break into action and scurry after him. He slows his pace, no doubt hearing my shoes scrape over the gravel, until we’re walking side by side, our elbows knocking together.
It’s an instant reminder of all those days we walked home after school and I hoped with everything that I was for our hands to touch.
I shake off the memories and look at him out of the corner of my eye. The man is grinning like he’s not even aware that it’s freezing outside. He’s insane. “You’re crazy, you know that?” I pluck at the short sleeve of his T-shirt. “You’re going to catch a cold.”
With his hands shoved deep into his pockets, he tilts his head. “Will you sit at my bedside in my time of need? Comply to my every whim and desire?”
“Every whim and desire?” Rolling my eyes, I pull my gloves from my coat pockets and put them on. And, yes, maybe I do it with a fair share of sass. He’s lucky I never leave home unprepared for Boston’s snowy winters. “What? Are you trying out for the role of Henry VIII?”
“Didn’t he have nine wives?”
“Six,” I tell him. “Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, lived.”
“He loved the last one enough to let her live?”
The wind caresses my face with icy fingers, and I zip up my coat the final two inches. I should have opened up Agape somewhere warmer, like Florida or Hawaii. “Probably not. Or maybe he did, I don’t know. He died; she became a widow. Thus, she lived.”
“Huh.” His bare elbow brushes my arm as he leads us down the winding street. “Where’d you learn all that?”
My cheeks flush with embarrassment. “Jeopardy.”
For years, I spent hours watching the show, acquiring random facts the way some people collect baseball cards or rocks. Reading was hard, but my ears worked just fine, and TV became my saving grace. Jeopardy, the History Channel, PBS—I devoured them all. Let’s put it this way: I wipe the floor with my opponent’s tears on Trivia Night.
“I’m more of an HGTV guy myself,” Nick drawls after a small pause. “Probably no surprise there.”
“You mean, your favorite thing to do on a Friday night doesn’t include watching paint dry?”
His deep laughter curls around me. “You’ve got the days mixed up. On Wednesdays, I watch paint dry. It’s exhilarating.”
“Oh, I bet.”
At my sarcasm, his hip collides with mine and nearly sends me stumbling off the sidewalk. Before I can fall to my doom, he catches me about the waist and hauls me upright. Correction—he tugs me right into him. My boobs smash against the hard planes of his chest. I fist his T-shirt; all the better to hold myself steady, I tell myself.