There was something special about realizing that someone loved you for even longer than they admitted to originally. This excitement that shot through your body like a live wire and made you a giddy, bouncy mess. And a horny mess at that. I couldn’t get enough of Alex touching me, kissing me, strumming my clit lazily even after I had sucked him off. He just kept going.
It was well into the early hours of the morning when he fell asleep beside me, faintly snoring and haphazardly covering his eyes with his arm. I sat on the bed, pouring through my poetry chapbook. The pages were worn in the corners and the text faded from clear overuse. It mostly looked this way when I loaned it to Alex, but the dog-eared corners were his doing. I brushed my fingers across the illustrations and glanced up at him when he mumbled something in his sleep. I was too awake now, too wired from everything that sleep just wasn’t an option.
After a minute, I pushed myself off the bed and went to put my book away. As I turned back, I stood in front of the windows, gazing out over the island and admiring the gorgeous view. What’s that? I frowned and leaned forward a bit, in the distance I could just barely make out a figure, tall and slight, walking along the cliffside. Lena? What the hell was she doing up and out at this time of night? I was going to find out.
Quickly, I pulled on my leggings out of the hamper and Alex’s rumpled blue button-up. I glanced at him but he seemed perfectly content where he was. I blew a kiss to him from the doorway and took the stairs two at a time down and out the front door. I didn’t bother with shoes, I’d taken these paths dozens of times and knew my way without hurting myself.
The wind ripped through the open field and I shivered, clutching Alex’s shirt tighter as I followed Lena through the trees and down to the beach. She was standing with her feet in the water, letting the tide come up and lap at her toes. Her hair was loose and she wore a robe over what looked like a nightgown. I slowed my pace and stopped a few feet behind her.
“What do you want?” she snapped, looking back at me over her shoulder. “Come to kick me out right this second?”
I shrugged. “No, I was wondering what you were doing out here.”
“Walking,” she said, as if it was obvious.
“Clearly. You don’t need to be a bitch though.”
“I’m supposed to be friendly and joyous about being told to get out?” She scoffed.
“You know, I honestly could have made peace with you and Peter,” I told her. “If either of you had an ounce of regret then I wouldn’t feel forced into doing this.”
“I’m sorry for hurting you!” she yelled as she spun around to face me, hair whipping around her shoulders wildly with the wind. “Okay? I’ve apologized, I’ve tried to move on and—”
“That’s just it, Lena! You’re trying to move on, not apologize! You want this to just go away never have to admit that what you did was wrong and just plain fucking mean.”
“Because I apologized already and all you want to do is cry about it to a million people and never do anything productive.”
I stepped closer to her, feeling my anger start to really bubble up. “I only told Iva,” I replied evenly. “I never said a single bad word about you to anyone else, in fact I defended you. You were the only person I was willing to overlook hurting me.”
She opened her mouth to say something and closed it again as she looked down at the sand. I could barely feel the cold anymore, but I could feel the loss inside me squeezing on my heart. Lena didn’t let her culture dictate how she saw me, I was her sister that she was willing to defend no matter what anyone said. And she was mine. I loved her, for better or worse, and I hoped that one day we could be friends again, but that wouldn’t happen until I got an honest apology, and that certainly wouldn’t bring us back to the level we were at before the betrayal.
I wished it was cut and dry, I wished I could tell her to leave and never see her again, but Peter was Alex’s son, and that was his grandchild – my grandchild too, I guess. More than anything I just wanted her to see that she hurt me in a way that would stick with me forever, even now I felt anxious when Alex was gone, I had this horrible fear that maybe he would cheat when he went back to work, and I had never felt like this before. I wanted her to understand that even though I didn’t feel for Peter the way I had originally, my trust was still broken.
“You can always come back,” I told her finally. “Not forever, and not until after the baby is born, but you guys can come stay in the guest house sometimes. It would be good for Alex and Peter.”
“You say that like it’s just so easy when it’s not.”
“There’s nothing holding you back, you can move literally anywhere you want. Just not here.”
“Where else are we supposed to go?” Lena demanded. “Mama won’t let me move in as long as Peter and I are together, Mike and Marie’s house is only a two bedroom, and I don’t have a job anymore!”
“Peter owns a company!” I cried exasperatedly. Fuck me, was I the stupid one here? What the hell wasn’t I seeing that everyone else was? “He’s owned that construction company for more than five years and he’s been living here while he did it! You cannot tell me that he has nothing to fall back on.”
Peter and I never talked finances, but he was always gone, always supervising the office and filling in for missing members of the crew when needed. Yeah, he lived on the compound or island or whatever it was, but until his mother moved into the big house in the spring, we’d been living here alone. Why not live on the rent-free isolated paradise if you had the option? The only issue was that it wasn’t isolated anymore, Alex and I were living in the big house now – so it was time for Peter to move.
“We weren’t prepared for this!” she snapped back. “We weren’t ready to move and we didn’t think his dad would kick us out. We thought—” she broke off and gestured wildly.
“You thought that Alex would give you the big house?” I ventured. “Or that I would be totally chill with you and Pete living in the bungalow?” I stepped closer to her and offered her a tight-lipped smile. “Or was it that you just didn’t think you’d have to worry about it because I wasn’t supposed to know and then you could move in together without an issue?”
Lena gawked at me in clear shock; her lips parted, eyes wide, and the colour draining from her face. What’s she thinking?Hopefully she was realizing that no matter what shit I took from Iva and Eleni, I wasn’t taking it from her too. My aunts were older, it was cultural thing for me to respect them even when they weren’t always kind, but Lena was on my level and I could act however I wanted with her.
Her expression hardened suddenly and she shoved her hands in the pockets of her robe. “You didn’t even want to be with Pete,” she said sourly. “I don’t get it. I just don’t. And right now, Clo, having you act like this just makes you look jealous.”
I scoffed. “I’m not jealous. I really just feel bad for you, because if he cheated with you then he’ll cheat on you. And who’s going to be there for you next time?” Not me.
“I was always there for you!” she cried, tears welling. “No matter what Mama said, Aunty Eleni, I stood up for you! That’s all I want you to do for me now and you won’t.”
“There’s a difference between defending me when your mother calls me a dumb slut and me defending you when yousleep with my fiancé. Can’t you see that? Can’t you see that the decent fucking thing to do was to defend me?”
They didn’t call me a slut outright. They pulled at the hems of my clothes and tsked about the length, they pursed their lips when I went out without a chaperone, they whispered to each other about me living with Peter before we were married. It was like how they didn’t call me fat straight to my face but would pinch my thigh and laugh about it. But Lena always called out my Aunt’s for their behaviour, calling it rude and backward. How she couldn’t see why the two things were so different was beyond me.
Lena held up her hand and turned away, eyes shining with unshed tears. “Fuck you, Chloe.”
I watched her climb the hill, heading back to the bungalow, and turned my attention to the sea as the waves lapped at my feet. I didn’t know if Peter would cheat on Lena, their relationship seemed solid, but I had a mean little part of me that not-so-secretly hoped he would. Then she would know exactly what it felt like when I found them together. The horrible pain of feeling like she never cared, of Peter being a liar, of feeling like it was a joke that everyone was in on except for me.
I dropped down onto the sand and pushed my feet further out into the rolling waves. The moon hung low over the beach, making a path on the water that glittered like liquid silver. I had sat here several weeks ago, the night when Lena came to have dinner with us. I’d kissed Alex on this beach. I’d cried a lot on this beach. I threw myself back on the sand gazed up at the stars, not caring about the grit now in my hair. That kiss had set a lot in motion.
I closed my eyes. I’d been so close to leaving Greece, to giving up being treated like less than my cousin because my reputation wasn’t as good as hers. Mama had tried to tell me before I came that I needed to be mindful of how I dressed, how I talked, to be respectful of my elders – and I’d done none of that. I dressed provocatively at best and slutty at worst, I swore without a second thought, and I talked back to my aunts and uncles. I wasn’t invested into the culture and it made me an outcast. But being that outcast had led me to this beach – it led me to Alex.
Where would Peter and I be right now? I’d be another month-and-a-half in with him refusing to help plan the wedding, I’d be ready to rip Marie’s hair out. I’d be wondering how to get out of the relationship without feeling like the past two years had been a waste. A slow smile crept across my face and I opened my eyes again. I would be lying in bed next to Peter and trying to push the fantasies of knocking on Alex’s door out of my mind. My palms tingled and I took a deep breath. Would I have cheated on Peter?
It was the hard question, the one that I wanted to think I knew the answer to already. My mind kept weaving out situations, reasons for me to leave that would have made it easier, where I didn’t feel like a failure. I wouldn’t have, I told myself vehemently, I’m not that kind of person.
“Glykia mou?”
I tilted my head back in the sand to see Alex coming down the side of the hill, half-sliding down the slope. He jogged to a stop almost over top of me and I felt a crooked smile pulling at my lips as I gazed up at him.
“Hi,” I greeted tiredly. “This seems familiar.”
He smirked and sat down beside me. “You stole my spot, I used to like to come here to be alone.”
“Really?” I asked while I pushed myself to sit up. “How come?”
“It’s just a nice place to come, I like being on the water. That’s why the bungalow was built on the cliffside.”
I nodded in understanding and leaned against his arm with my head tucked against his shoulder. “How’d you find me?”
“I woke up and saw you were gone, I just had a feeling this might be where you were. I heard yelling on my way over and saw Lena. What was she doing up?”
I shrugged. “Probably couldn’t sleep, we didn’t exactly have a nice chat.”
He kissed the top of my head. “I think she wants to apologize – actually apologize this time, and just doesn’t know how.”
I nodded; I was pretty sure he was right. “What are we going to do when the bungalow is empty?”
He shrugged and gently combed his fingers through my hair. “Ma can stay there sometimes, I’d like it if she did. Daphne and her kids could also stay there. I might renovate it – add another bedroom for them.”
“And you’re really okay with Peter and Lena moving out?”
“I love him, he’ll always be my son, and I want to make sure that he has the support that I didn’t get, but this is for the best. I think it’s an important boundary to set. I’m alright with it, but it just makes me anxious…”
I kissed his bicep and hugged him. “You gave him more than you ever got, and you’re a good dad, Alex, and an amazing husband.”
He laughed and slipped his arm out of my hold to wrap it around my waist. “Kai eísai ypérochi gynaíka. You’re a wonderful wife, glykia mou.” He paused and pulled my hand up, pressing a soft kiss to my engagement ring.
Wonderful wife. I hoped I could live up to that title.