Nikos wasn’t there.
It was private, at least – nobody to witness her humiliation. A cool space, shaded by the trees that fringed this end of the beach, and screened off from the Easter festivities by a huge hoarding at the rear of the temporary stage. The ground was strewn with cans, food wrappers, cigarette butts and stinking debris dumped by the tide. A rusted oil can. A used condom. With no one to mock her, their meeting place had taken on the task. Along with the jaunty music and the sounds of dancing and singing.
He stepped out from among the trees.
If he hadn’t smirked, she might not have hit him so hard in the shoulder. If he hadn’t tried to grab her hand, she might not have wrenched herself free and stormed off.
How dare Nikos just turn up like that – late, looking so pleased with himself?
How dare he not notice she was upset, or understand why?
Shiv half walked, half jogged out of there. At the edges of her vision, blurred by tears, she saw people dancing, sitting at picnic tables, standing around chatting and laughing and having a good time – but they could all go to hell.
Nikos was coming after her, calling her name.
She kept going, jostling her way through the revellers outside the tavernas that fronted onto the beach, blind to their glances, deaf to their comments. She broke free of the crowds at last, hurrying along one of the narrow passages that led back to the village square. After the gloom of the passageway, the plaza was drenched in sunlight.
Nikos finally caught up with her by what must once have been an ornamental fountain but which now stood dry, its stonework blotched and flaky.
“Shiv, please. Stop.”
She wheeled round, shaking her wrist free from his grip. “Don’t touch me.”
“I don’t get why you’re angry with me.” He sounded more out of breath than her. He was wearing one of his basketball vests – the blue-and-white one – sweat pooling in the dent at the base of his throat, his chest heaving. “Was I so very late?”
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Shiv said. “And then you just stroll out of the trees with that stupid grin on your face, like everything’s all right now you’re here.”
“I was grinning because I was pleased to see you.”
Shiv refused to be mollified. “And why did we have to meet there?”
“Because nobody would see us,” he said, shrugging. “Your parents.”
“It stank. It was disgusting.”
“Shiv—”
“I didn’t see you anywhere.” She gestured towards the beach. “You didn’t even text or anything.”
Nikos let out his breath, clearly exasperated but trying not to show it. “You were with your family – I didn’t think you’d be OK to check for messages.”
She stood there, glaring at him, only just beginning to calm down. Why did he have to be so bloody reasonable? Tentatively, he stroked her bare arm.
“Shiv, please don’t be like this.”
Her immaturity struck her then. Her wrongness. How childish she must have seemed to him – crying, storming off, acting stroppy. And for what? He hadn’t stood her up, or even been all that late really. She’d simply got herself so convinced he wouldn’t show that, when he did turn up, the relief overwhelmed her. Just then, the age gap between them seemed greater than ever.
“God,” she groaned, “you must think I’m such an idiot.”
He smiled. He hadn’t shaved and his teeth looked so white against the dark stubble. “What I think,” he said, flexing his shoulder, “is you punch really hard.”
He took her to a café down a shady side street. A sanctuary from the blistering sun. They sat at one of the tables lining the pavement, sipping black coffee from tiny cups.
“You like it?” Nikos asked, as Shiv set hers back in its saucer.
“Mm,” she said, trying not to grimace. She’d never tasted anything so bitter.
“English people don’t usually like our coffee.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not skinny latte.”
Shiv took another sip, hoping it might taste better than the first. It didn’t. She glanced at the bottle of chilled water Nikos had ordered for them to share.
He unscrewed the cap and filled their glasses. “Go on, I won’t be offended.”
“Have I failed some kind of test?” she asked, smiling.
“Yes, absolutely.”
She laughed; they both did. It was OK, being here with him like this. It was good. The scene behind the stage, Shiv running off, the quarrel in the square – all of it had begun to recede like an outgoing tide. The street was deserted; she and Nikos might have been sharing a table in a ghost town, the sole survivors of an apocalypse.
“Won’t your folks wonder where you are?”
She told him where they’d gone but didn’t mention that she was supposedly keeping an eye on Dec while he helped to build the bonfire. They fell quiet, settling into each other’s company – learning how to be together.
“D’you miss home when you’re away at uni?” she asked.
“Yes and no.” He ran his finger up the condensation on the side of his water glass. “I like being here but also I like going away again.”
They talked about his life on the mainland – his studies, his friends, his part-time job in a bar, the things he missed about Kyritos. It wasn’t a conversation Shiv could have with a boy at school. And though Nikos was talking about the difficulties of adjusting from island life to city life, the insecurity of living away from home for the first time, he seemed at ease with himself. It was a different confidence to the kind she was used to from guys her own age. Less showy, less needy of her approval.
“Will you move back after your degree?” Shiv asked.
“To Kyritos?” He thought for a moment. “I doubt it. Maybe I’ll leave Greece altogether. No money, no jobs.”
“But what about your family? Don’t you—”
“They are my family, sure, but they aren’t my life.”
“I thought you were close?”
“I am. But…” He left the thought incomplete.
“But what?”
“In such a close family – especially a big one – you are tied up in lots of little knots. Like a prison, but where everyone loves you and you have to love everyone back. And sometimes you just want to … untie yourself.” He gave a shrug. “That’s one reason I was happy to go to Thessaloníki.”
“So where would you go next, if you could live anywhere in the world?”
“America.” Then, plucking at his vest, “All I need is to be twenty centimetres taller and I can play for the New York Knicks.”
She laughed. Took a swig of water.
Leaning back in his seat, Nikos gave her a long, appraising look, a hint of a smile on his lips. She tried not to stare at him or let him see how sexy she thought he was.
“What about you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
“Will you live in another country? Would you? The conditional tense,” he said. “I think the English invented it to make foreigners seem stupid.”
She smiled. “I don’t think so. Live abroad, I mean.”
“Why not?”
“I haven’t really thought that far ahead.” It was out before she realized.
Nikos rescued her. “Yeah, you have college first. Do you start in the autumn?”
Did she? If she was seventeen … “Yes. Yeah, in September.”
“Oxford?” he asked, deadpan. “Or Cambridge? It must be so hard to choose.”
Shiv stuck out her tongue – Jesus, she stuck out her tongue? “Depends on my grades – but, no, neither of those.” She was trying to recall a conversation she’d had with Laura’s older sister. “I’ve applied to Leeds and Nottingham.” Which led to a brief but hazardous discussion about why Leeds was her first choice, and what subject she’d study, and will – would – she have to get a part-time job as well, seeing as how expensive it was to go to university in England?
Shiv winged it. She hated deceiving him. But if you lie about your age you have to lie about a load of other stuff as well.
“So, just a few months,” Nikos said, “and you’ll be leaving home.”
“Yep.” She tried to look excited and apprehensive all at once.
“Would you miss your family?”
“Will you.”
Nikos frowned. “Will I miss your family?”
“No, it should be—” Then she saw he was making fun of her. She laughed. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Nikos, but you really remind me of Dec sometimes. Same sense of humour.”
He nodded. “I can see that.”
“That’s why he likes you.”
“Maybe it’s why you do too.”
Shiv snorted. “I like you because you remind me of my brother?”
“I don’t mean in that way. I mean…” Nikos frowned. “You and Dec seem like good friends. Like you’d hang out with him even if he wasn’t part of your family.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I would.” She laughed, self-consciously. “Is that weird?”
“No, it’s nice. It says you’re an OK kind of person.” Nikos tapped his chest. “In here, you know?”
“In my lungs?”
They laughed. Shiv wondered how his cheesy compliment managed to make her so warm inside.
“I bet he was really glad about visiting the church,” Nikos said.
“Oh, no, it’s just Mum and Dad – Dec stayed behind to help build the bonfire for the Judas thing. He’ll have made about ten new friends by now.”
After a pause, Nikos said, “You’re going to miss him, I reckon.”
“What?”
“When you go to college.”
She lowered her gaze, drank more water. She would miss Nikos. It suddenly hit her – this was a holiday romance, doomed to end when she set foot on the plane in five days. He would return to uni after his brother’s wedding and she’d go back to the UK; maybe there’d be texts and emails – Skype, even – but sooner or later it would fizzle out. Wasn’t that how these things went? Anyway, she’d go back to being a schoolgirl. So even if they were still in touch by September, Shiv would have to explain why she wasn’t starting university. Or go on lying to him, make up a fantasy life for herself in Leeds, Nottingham, wherever.
No. Today, these next few days were all she could hope for with Nikos.
She shivered, as though a breeze had whisked along the street. “Do you have a girlfriend in Thessaloníki?”
She hadn’t planned on asking the question – had known that she shouldn’t – but blurted it out.
He took a moment, his eyes not leaving hers. “No,” he said, at last. “I did have, but not any more.” He continued to hold her gaze. “How about you?”
Shiv shook her head. “Same.”
Just then her bag buzzed, startling her. She pulled out her phone. “It’s from Mum… They’re leaving the church and heading back to the beach.”
He checked his watch. “They’ll be lighting the fire soon. There are fireworks later, once the sun goes down.”
“I don’t know if we’ll be staying that long.”
“I was hoping we could dance.” Nikos finished his coffee.
“Tonight?”
“Just now, when we met. I was going to drag you out onto the dance floor – I won’t care who saw us. Wouldn’t care.”
“You should’ve said something before I ran off.”
She thought he was about to say she shouldn’t have run off in the first place. But, indicating the deserted street, he said, “We could dance now. Right here.”
Shiv laughed. “There’s no music.”
“Listen.” In the quiet, the sounds of the band playing on the beach whispered a melody that floated through the village. “There,” he said. “Music.” He was out of his chair and drawing Shiv to her feet.
In a moment, they would head back towards the beach. They’d say their goodbyes – kiss for as long as they dared – before going their separate ways. Shiv would slip back into the Easter crowds and reach her seat at the picnic table, just in time to be there to greet her parents, hot and sticky from their long walk. When they asked where Dec was, she’d point to where her brother and some Greek kids (she imagined) were playing beach volleyball. They would ask if she was feeling better and she’d say yes, thanks.
All of that was to come though. For now, there was just Nikos and an empty street and the ghosts of distant music.