A knock on the door shook Anna out of her reverie as she stared out the bathroom window over the island she had fallen in love with these last few weeks. She dried her hands and walked to the door, opening it to Nikos, who was standing on the stoop with a large, flat present.
“Well, hello,” Anna said. “You should come around like this more often.”
Nikos laughed. “Just a little housewarming gift, now that the place is done.”
“Do you want to come in?”
Nikos pointed over his shoulder. “It’s so nice outside. Should we just sit outside for a bit?”
Anna nodded and pulled the door shut behind her. They walked over to the porch swing that had been installed the day before.
“The patio looks amazing,” he said, raising his hand to the trellis running over them as they sat. “I can’t believe you did all of this in the last three days.”
Anna had been very busy indeed. The porch swing had been easy compared to the trellis, which had been a walk in the park compared to the flat pack desk she had ordered. But now everything was finished, every little detail put together. She had wrapped things up, as Elena had said.
Elena seemed to be giving her the benefit of the doubt that she would make a decision by tomorrow, offering to help with the last-minute party preparations. But Anna had wanted to finish the other things herself.
“Yeah, it took me all night last night to get it finished. But now I just need to decide what to do with the wall over the desk.” She looked through the window at the blank white space.
“About that,” Nikos said, handing over the gift. “Maybe this will help. It’s from Elena and me.”
Anna unwrapped the present carefully, excited but not wanting to seem like a child on Christmas morning. When she peeled back the paper, she saw her own face staring back at her. And not just hers, but her father’s as well. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Nikos, this is incredible.”
“Kostas’s girlfriend did it,” he said. “She takes commissions for people, so we sent her a picture of you, and she painted your dad from memory. We thought it was about time you had a picture together, even if it is just a watercolor.”
Tears fell on the protective glass as Anna looked at the painting. Her dad looked so much older than she remembered him, which made sense. She had missed nearly twenty years. But yet, somehow, he seemed just right, too. Finally, she had a picture of him.
“We weren’t sure for a while if it was a good idea, based on how you felt about him when you arrived, but we thought maybe things had changed.”
“They have,” she said quietly. “Everything has changed.”
For a short moment, Anna and Nikos sat silently on the swing, rocking back and forth, just enjoying each other’s company. The last few weeks had been hard on both of them, but they had come out the other side. They were alright. Anna knew that whether they would stay alright probably depended on what she chose to do, but she had decided to embrace just a little bit of hope. She scooted a bit to the left, closing the gap between them, and lay her head on his shoulder.
First, she felt him stiffen for a moment, caught off guard by the advance. Then he relaxed, moving his arm to the back of the swing so her head came to rest on his chest. A few moments later, she felt him gently kiss the top of her head. They stayed like that, cuddling on the swing, until the sun set.
They headed inside, and Nikos cracked open two beers from the fridge, handing one to Anna. The simple domesticity of the evening made her smile. Something had changed when she had read her father’s letter to her. She saw Marcus’s offer for what it truly was: an excuse. It was the easy way out to go with what she had always thought was right for her – status, clout, recognition. It was much harder to admit that she had been wrong.
Now she knew what she wanted to do. What she needed to do. She just hoped Nikos still felt the same way.
“What’s all that food in there?” Nikos said, gesturing toward the very full refrigerator.
“Eirini brought it,” Anna replied, her voice shaking a bit. “She’s making a ton of food for the party tomorrow. I think that’s about half of it. I have to cook it all in the morning.”
“I can’t believe there’s more to come. If she brings this much food again tomorrow, I feel like we could feed the island until—”
“You were right,” Anna interrupted. As Nikos looked up at her, she felt her face go red and her breathing go shallow.
“I usually am,” he said, taking a couple of tentative steps toward her. “About what exactly this time?” He was trying to play it cool, but she could tell from the way his brow kept knitting together that he knew exactly what she was saying.
“Everything,” she said, smiling, and she felt like she was going to start crying. “About my dad. About this place. How I feel about it. How I feel about…” she trailed off, gulping as she started to tear up.
He stepped closer still. “About what?”
Her response came out in a whisper. “About you.”
He was standing in front of her now, toe to toe, both her feet firmly in this future. This opportunity. He put a hand on her waist as he lowered his forehead to hers. “Are you sure?” he asked, and she could feel how shaky his break was.
“No,” she said honestly, the tears starting to fall. “At least not about anything else. I never have been. I could fail at my dreams just as spectacularly here as I did back home. But I am…” He met her gaze as she paused, and she felt certain of what she wanted, not just in that moment but every moment after. “Nikos, I—”
“I love you,” he blurted out, and immediately his eyes went wide, as if he’d shocked himself. She laughed softly.
“I love you, too.”
Almost before she could even get the words out, his mouth closed around hers, and he was kissing her. He was kissing her, and he was pressing against her, and he was pressing her against the kitchen cabinets. She reached behind herself and put a hand on the counter, jumping up so that her face was even with his. She wrapped her legs around his waist as his hands grabbed at her back, at her sides, at her clothes, fistfuls of hair and fabric and flesh.
He lifted her up and carried her to the bed, and she wrapped around him as tightly as if her life depended on it. And she felt like it did. Like everything had been hinging on this, and as they came unhinged together everything else was falling into place. Her hips rose to meet him as they kissed, his hunger for her evident in more ways than one. She sat up as he peeled off first her shirt and then his. She pressed up against the skin she had been admiring all this time, feeling his warmth seep into her. He kissed down her neck and her belly, unbuttoning her shorts as he reached them. He brought himself back up to her face and kissed her lips gently.
“Are you sure?” he asked again, and this time she knew there was no turning back. But she was done going back. There was only forward. Only him. Only her. Only now.
“I’m not sure about anything but this,” she said, kissing him back. And as he made his way back down her body past the point of no return, she sunk her head into the mattress and smiled.