She speaks too fast for me to translate on the fly, but I catch words here and there and piece them together like some mismatched puzzle. Something about Nick and Sophia and babies and disappointment.
Oh, Lord. Not back to this again.
Nick’s natural olive complexion turns a little green. “Óxi, Yiayia,” he growls, his back ramrod straight as he pushes his plate forward and makes a desperate-looking grab for his beer bottle. “Let it go.”
But his grandmother has never been one for letting anything go. See: finding me in her grandson’s hotel room, completely clothed. She snaps back furiously, hands flying through the air and nearly smacking Effie in the face. My best friend ducks out of the way, eyes rolling toward the heavens, and downs the rest of her wine.
“Shoot me,” she mouths in my direction.
I nod toward Sarah and make a show of tapping my bare ring finger. “Lucky bitches,” I mouth back, and they both snicker and huddle their heads together, Sarah leaning over at the last moment to kiss her wife.
I’m not kidding. They really are lucky—to have found the one, their best friend, the single person they’d do anything to protect.
I return my attention to Nick, my fake boyfriend, who looks on the verge of losing his temper—which is so out of character for him that I’m tempted to see if Uber Eats will do a girl a favor and deliver a bowl of popcorn.
Nick shakes his head curtly at whatever his yiayia is tossing his way, then grimaces and looks toward Sophia. “Sorry,” he mutters in English, “you’re great, I’m sure, but I . . . I don’t want to”—his jaw visibly flexes—“breed with you.”
From the way his beautiful pewter eyes flick to Kyria Stamos, I’m guessing that was one of her grand ideas, repeated verbatim. If I know her at all, then I’m sure the “breeding” came in the same sentence as “before I die, Niko.” Oh, the awkwardness. Screw the popcorn, it might be time to bust out the Tito’s.
Or you can come to his rescue.
I could, but what was it he mentioned before? Oh, yeah, that his family would never believe it if we claimed to be dating. Effie knows my relationship with her brother is nothing but a sham, and I can almost guarantee that Sarah’s in the loop too. Aleka and George wouldn’t believe it either. Not because they don’t like me, but because Nick has always had a solid type: women with “future wife material” written all over them. I don’t know what Savannah Rose does for a living, but Brynn Whitehead is a kindergarten teacher and you don’t get more “wifey” and “babymaker” vibes than that.
Except tonight he veered from the norm.
Tonight, he veered toward . . . me.
And there’s one person at this table—the one causing Nick the ultimate level of grief—who would absolutely believe that I sank my claws into him . . . Kyria Stamos herself. If I were a lesser person, there would be no better satisfaction than playing my one trump card over the woman who made my life hell for months on end.
But there’s no satisfaction thrumming through me right now, only nerves as I slap together the Greek words into a coherent sentence that she’ll understand. I conjugate the verb for “dating” into the present plural, my mouth silently moving over the words as the wineglass in my right hand turns slippery from my clammy palm.
You can do this!
Si se puede!
Oops, wrong language.
Naí boreís!
That’s better. Never let it be said that I’m not an overachiever.
The Stamos matriarch is still venting, rambling on about Nick’s lack of babies and how disappointed she is that she won’t have any grandchildren to spoil when she kicks the bucket—i.e. dies—and I clear my throat, set my wineglass down and move to stand up.
“Kyría Stamos—”
“Nick should come!”
My gaze flies to Sophia, who only clarifies, “To Maine.” She leans across the table to settle her hand over his. “You should totally come with us to Maine.”
The man looks positively terrified. “I wasn’t in your grade.”
“And?” Sophia visibly squeezes his hand. “We’ll trade one Stamos for the other. You know, the married one for the single one.”
Before I have the chance to throw out that Nick isn’t single, not really, she’s whipping around to Kyría Stamos and bursting into a fluent string of Greek. I envy her ease with the language, but that doesn’t stop my gaze from volleying between the woman decked out in all black to the woman thirty years her younger, who’s wearing so much pink, I’m worried Pepto-Bismol might come calling.
As much as I want to ask what’s going on, that would be like admitting that I might as well be as non-Greek as Sarah. I search out my best friend’s wife now, noticing the creases between her blonde brows as she struggles to wrangle the conversation into something coherent to an outsider.
You and me both, girl.
She catches my eye and cocks a brow, as though to say, a little help over here!
Unfortunately, she’s all on her own. The words are moving way too fast for me to cling onto one of them, let alone all, and I inhale slowly to ease my frustration. Frustration with myself, not with the people at this table. It’s not their fault that I’m me. Mina Pappas, my mother’s daughter—and not my father’s blood. Or rather, I’m the girl who’s always wanted to belong, to feel like I fit in . . . and I’ve been reminded all my life that I don’t. At school, I was the dumb girl with the Barbie fetish; at home, my dad never made it a secret that I’m nothing but the product of a short-lived affair with some random guy my mother met on a trip to America before they immigrated to the United States. A mistake my father oh-so-kindly overlooked for reasons they’ve never divulged.
But my half-Greek blood is something he’s always made me aware of: that I’m not Greek enough, not Pappas enough, a little too wild, a little too unlike him, my adopted father. Growing up, I used to wonder how my father and my Theio Prodromos, his brother, could be so incredibly different. One thrived off anger and bitterness; the other wielded a smile like his personal weapon. I don’t know if my uncle ever knew that I wasn’t his brother’s real daughter, but he never made me feel anything less than part of the family when we visited him. Those summers in Greece were my favorite times of the year—although that had to do with being near Nick 24/7 as well.
Still, my half-breed lineage definitely isn’t something that’s known outside my immediate family. Ahem. Rather, my mom’s infidelity isn’t known to anyone outside of my immediate family . . . although I did let the secret slip to Aleka Stamos way back when.
Because she was so nice and motherly and sweet and I was a kid in desperate need of comfort.
Because even then, when I was around twelve years old, I found every way to rebel against Yianni Pappas. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know that Aleka was in on the family scandal. I knew and Effie’s mom knew, and whenever my dad started in on scrutinizing me for things I couldn’t change—like, you know, his wife’s infidelity—at least I had somewhere safe to retreat. With the Stamos family, I never felt anything less than supported.
Even tonight, Aleka’s hug when I came inside soothed my frayed nerves, and George, who is my dad’s opposite in every way, took the seat beside me so he could ask questions about Agape. Do you need any help? he asked. I am proud of you, Mina, he praised with a pat to my shoulder and a familiar twinkle in his eye.
Love. The Stamos family has it in spades, though, in many ways, Nick and my dad are a little too similar for comfort. Both men are uptight. Both men can be reserved, their true emotions shielded from everyone around them.
“I’m not fuck—” Nick clamps his mouth shut, biting off the curse before it can truly greet the world. He rubs a hand over the lower half of his face, his annoyance written in his expression.
Okay, maybe he’s not so emotionally stunted. The man curses like a sailor, and in two languages at that.
Aleka jumps into the fray, casting a glance at Sophia like she hates having her mother-in-law lose her cool in front of people who aren’t family. “Think about it, Niko mou,” she says. “It could be fun, yes?”
“Like a root canal on the first day of my period.”
Oops, that one was me.
Nick leans forward, elbows on the table, and turns his head toward me. He’s two seats away, on the other side of his dad, but that doesn’t stop him from announcing, “I’ll go if Mina goes.”
I open my mouth, then snap it shut. I do it again because I can’t think of a damn thing to say that isn’t you’re out of your flipping mind. “I—”
Except now he’s visibly warming up to the idea. With a little, self-satisfied grin he can’t even hide, he plucks up his beer bottle from the table and drains the rest in one swallow. “Yeah,” he says, voice all smooth and velvety and confident, “we’ll go together. One car. A full weekend of skiing and—”
“I don’t ski.”
Nick doesn’t cave to my stiff rebuttal. “Where in Maine are we going again?” he asks Sophia without taking his eyes off me.
“Bethel,” offers up the instigator of this entire fiasco. “It’s about three hours away. Maybe three and a half depending on how slow you drive.”
Amused pewter eyes pin me in place. “Fast, then, just how Ermione likes it.”
I’m going to murder him. Forget about kissing him, forget about doing anything more with him, I’m going to kill him and then do something horrible with his body. Like bury him in a 1970’s home with awful wallpaper and shag carpeting in every room. Because that’s the sort of godawful grave he deserves, the jerk.
I return his unblinking stare. “I’m going to be sick that weekend. I’m predicting the flu.”
His mouth twitches. “All the better to let me take care of you for a full seventy-two hours. You’ll never meet a better nurse than me.”