Forever in Blue (30 page)

Still, it surprised her how much she was thinking of him here, how often she thought she saw him. Around the corner, looking out a window, sitting at a table in a café. Not a ghost or a memory of Kostos, but Kostos as he was now.

“It’s weird. Now I keep thinking I see him,” she confided to Bee later that day when they were canvassing people around the Paradise and Pori beaches.

“What do you think when you do?” Bee asked.

Lena considered this question as she showered before dinner.

After the scene in the motel in Providence, Lena knew she had changed. She knew she had destroyed whatever remained of her and Kostos. God, what must he think of her now?

She wasn’t who he thought she was. She wasn’t who she thought she was. She had displayed an ugliness he hadn’t imagined was there. But it was a relief, in a way. If that was part of who she was, he should know it. He shouldn’t be tricked. And there was a perverse, childlike part of her that wanted to get to be ugly sometimes.

She wondered about him. Had he ever really been able to love her? Did she really love him? There was undoubtedly something beautiful in longing and wishing. Their love story stayed perfect because they couldn’t have it.

But could he love her imperfection? Would he accept the fact that she wasn’t always beautiful? Could he allow imperfection in himself? Would he give up being lovable for her sake?

They had their imagined love. It had been wrenching and beautiful. But she wondered now whether either of them had ever had the stomach for the real thing.

The following day they tried the port of Athinios, where the ferries came in. They posted signs and they went shop to shop and restaurant to restaurant. Valia had by now trained them how to ask “Have you seen these Pants?” in Greek. They even learned to say it in French and German.

There was one moment of excitement when an ice cream scooper said, “Oh, I saw those.” But after all four of them closed in on him, they realized he meant he’d seen the signs.

“We aren’t getting hopeless, are we?” Tibby asked. She couldn’t hide her worry.

“No,” Bee reassured her.

“We’ll find them. They want us to find them,” Carmen said.

Tibby sensed that none of them was willing to think about it any other way. Or at least, they weren’t yet willing to say so.

When they got home from Athinios, Lena’s grandmother was waiting inside her door. She practically tackled Lena as soon as she saw her.

“Kostos is here!” she said. Her fingers were pressing a little too hard into Lena’s shoulders.

“What?”

“He’s here. He’s looking for you.”

Her friends clustered around her.

“He’s looking for me?” she echoed.

“Oh, boy,” Tibby said.

“See, he is here,” Bee said.

“He said he’s leaving the island and he vanted to find you before he left.”

Lena’s heart started to rampage in its old familiar way. “Where did he go?”

“He said he vould look for you at the grove.” She shrugged. “I don’t know vhat, but he valked up.” She pointed.

Lena knew what. “Thanks, Grandma.” She paused, trying to gather her feelings around her.

“Are you going?” Valia looked like she was going to go for her if Lena didn’t hurry up.

“Yes, I’m going.”

With words of caution and encouragement from her friends, Lena walked slowly up the hill. It was strange. She thought she’d found some place of calm regarding Kostos. Why was her heart racing?

Why did he want to see her? What more was there to say? She couldn’t have been clearer than she had been. She was frankly surprised to think she hadn’t scared him off for a lifetime.

Of the things she’d said, would she take any of it back? Did she want to? Was that why her heart was racing?

She walked up and up until the cliff leveled into a sort of plateau. She was happy to see how green it was again. The rain had been good this year.

Yes, some of the things she’d said that night had been lies. Maybe she’d correct a few of those if she could, but they represented some kind of truth, and she had needed to get it out. She was glad she had, if only so she could move on with her life.

Her heart rose at the sight of his back as he stood in their grove. Some feelings you just couldn’t kill, no matter how much they deserved it. He turned and saw her as she came close.

Why did he look happy to see her? Why was she so happy to see him?

“We always come back to here, don’t we?” she said.

He nodded. He looked better. Not in handsomeness, exactly. He looked straighter, fuller, stronger. He’d worn a hangdog, hopeful look last time, in Providence, but he didn’t look that way now.

He rolled up his pants and they sat side by side at the edge of the pond. The water was so cold Lena yelped, and he laughed.

He doused his feet and then he reached in and washed his hands. She kept her hands in her lap. She looked at the foot of scrubby grass separating them.

“I’ve been unhappy,” he told her. She believed him, though he didn’t look very unhappy now.

“I was awful to you,” she said.

He plunged his hands into the water again and shook them out. “I have a story to tell you,” he said, looking at her directly.

“Okay,” she said uncertainly. She had a feeling she was going to play a role in this story.

“Remember how you asked if I thought you would rush into my arms when you saw me?”

She winced. She’d said it cruelly then. She’d wanted to hurt him.

“Well, that is what I thought,” he declared unflinchingly. “When I flew to see you, I packed clothes to last me for two months. I imagined I would call my grandmother and she would send the rest of my stuff in boxes. Because I did think you would rush into my arms and we would be together forever.”

As painful as this was to hear, she admired his honesty.

“I called the Greek consulate. I started working on a student visa. I got transfer applications to three universities near you.”

As much as she admired his honesty, she wished he would stop now.

“I brought a ring.”

Lena chewed her cheek so hard she tasted blood. How could he tell her these things? They were clearly as painful for him to say as they were for her to hear. She couldn’t think of any way to respond.

“I didn’t think we would get married. Not in the first few years. But I wanted to give you something to show you that I would never leave you again.”

She felt the boot in the head. The unexpected tears. She felt herself softening for him; she could feel her body changing.

He was tough. He was gritting his way through this confession. She could tell he wasn’t going to stop until it was done.

“I worked two different jobs, almost a hundred hours a week for the last two years, and I spent almost everything I made on the ring. It was good to be distracted and also to think I could make it up to you.”

Lena’s friends teased her for the humming sound she made when she felt their unhappiness. She heard herself make that sound now.

“Do you know what I did with it?”

He was staring at her so fixedly she realized he expected her to answer. She shook her head.

“I threw it into the Caldera.”

Her eyes were wide.

“You know what I did after that?” The recklessness with which he told his story seemed to capture the recklessness of what he had done.

She shook her head again.

“I broke into the house of my former wife and I stole the ring I had given her and I also threw that into the sea.”

Lena just stared at him.

“It didn’t mean anything compared to your ring, but it gave me a feeling of ending.”

She nodded.

“But then Mariana called the police, and so I confessed to the crime and spent a night in jail in Fira.” He told it very matter-of-factly.

“No,” said Lena.

He nodded. He actually looked pleased with himself.

“I have a mug shot,” he said, almost cheerfully.

She thought of it. Lovable Kostos in a mug shot. It was insane. It was funny. But she couldn’t help being impressed by him. She’d credited herself with the capacity for destruction. She had underestimated his.

“My grandfather picked me up. Thankfully, I was released without fines.”

“What did he say?” It was hard to picture.

“Well.” Kostos’s face returned to solemnity. “He pretended it hadn’t happened. We never talked about it.”

Lena made the humming sound again. She realized this confession was part of Kostos’s penance. It was her penance too.

The sun was beginning to set. The pink light on the silvery olive leaves was as lovely as anything she could remember. She knew Valia would be putting dinner out soon.

“You are leaving for somewhere,” she said.

“I take the first morning ferry. I’m flying to London tomorrow.”

“To London?”

“Back to the School of Economics. They held a place.”

“Oh. Of course.” That was the difference about him now, she realized. He was undaunted. He was sturdier than he had been before. His anger at her had burned away the guilt. He had forced himself to get over her.

How powerful it was to give up your desires. It was like bargaining for a rug. Your only leverage was being able to walk away.

“I can start where I left off. I even got a room in my old flat.”

Her throat ached. “God. It’s like the clock turned back. It’s just like we’re back to the summer we met. It’s late August and you’re going off to London and I’m going back home for school.”

He nodded.

“You can almost imagine away all the things that happened in between,” she said.

He was thoughtful as he looked at her. “But you can’t, can you?”

“No, you can’t.” She saw the fair orange circle of sun in the still water. She put her hands in to fur the edges. She brought cold, watery hands to her warm cheeks.

He stood up and so did she. He put out his hand to shake. Hers was still wet. “I guess we should say good-bye,” he said.

It was easier to be together, to talk, now that they had both given up.

“Yes. I guess it is.”

“Good luck with everything, Lena. I hope you will be happy.”

“Thanks. I hope you’ll be happy too.”

“Well, then.”

“Good-bye.”

He cleared his throat a little bit as she walked away. She turned around.

“There’s a full moon tonight,” he said before he walked a separate way.

As soon as he was out of sight, Lena felt that old feeling of missing him. It didn’t cut like a raw wound. It was the ache of a flu coming on.

Had they really gotten over each other? she wondered. It seemed more like they had gotten over themselves.

Lena was quiet through dinner, watching the tanned, beloved faces of her friends, enjoying their banter. She loved how Valia laughed when Carmen teased her.

As soon as she’d gotten home they’d wanted to know everything that had happened with Kostos, and she’d told them. But she hadn’t yet figured out how to tell them how she felt about what had happened.

She crawled into bed early. She half listened to the laughter downstairs coming from Bee and Carmen and Valia. She heard Tibby talking to a series of international operators, trying to reach Brian on her cell phone.

Lena’s head was so full she expected she would toss and turn for hours, but instead, she fell asleep almost immediately. And then she woke up with a jolt. She felt there had been a dream, but it receded too quickly for her to grab even a string of it.

She heard Carmen’s slow breathing beside her. The particular look of Carmen’s sleeping face reminded her of a hundred other nights, a hundred sleepovers through the years. Here, in Greece, it made her feel happy. So often the world was made of jumps and starts, but tonight it was round and continuous.

She looked out the window and saw the proud full moon hanging over the Caldera, seeming to enjoy its own perfect reflection below. She knew what Kostos had meant.

She spent another minute looking at the moon, and suddenly she really knew what Kostos had meant.

She crept out of bed gingerly so as not to wake Carmen. She pulled on a pair of jeans and a faded green T-shirt. She brushed her hair and padded on soft toes out of the house.

Who knew what time it was? Who knew if he’d be there or when he’d be there? But her big feet had faith as they pulled her up the hill.

He was there. Maybe he’d been there for hours; she couldn’t know. He stood up to greet her, happy, not surprised. He needed to look at her face for only a second to know it was okay to hold her.

She cried in his arms. They weren’t sad tears at all, just ones that needed to get out. She cried in his shirt. She cried for her Pants. He held her as tight as he could without crushing her.

She had willed her heart to stay small and contained, but it wouldn’t be. Oh, well.

The neat leaves wrinkled under the moon. The pond made slapping, watery noises. It felt so good to be right here. These were arms that felt unlike other arms.

“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” he asked her. There was no demand in his voice. She felt like she could answer yes or no and he wouldn’t hug her less.

“Maybe,” she said faintly. “I think maybe so.”

“Do you love someone else?” he asked. It was important to him, clearly, but he let it float.

“I tried,” she said. “I don’t know if I can.” She talked to his chest.

She could feel him nod on her head. She could feel his relief in the way his body found more surfaces to connect to hers.

“I know I can’t,” he said.

She nodded at his chest. They stayed like that for a while. She realized the sun was already pushing up light at the farthest edge of the sea. It was later than she thought. Or earlier.

He unbound himself from her slowly, regretfully.

She felt cold air replace all the parts he’d been touching. Before he broke away he put his hands on either side of her face and kissed her, strong and sturdy and full of lust. It was a new kind of kiss. It was grown up and decisive. She knew without thinking how to kiss him back the same way.

The last thing he said to her was something in Greek. He said it with emphasis, as though she would know what he meant, but of course she didn’t.