“You would know something like that,” Ana said. Her voice was soft and sweet, and when I turned to see the admiring smile she was aiming at him, my senses were suddenly on the alert.
Was Ana his girlfriend?
I felt a pang in my chest, followed immediately by frustration. A part of me had believed that despite the fact that he had left us, there was no way my dad had moved on from us. But of course he had. It had been nine years. Who knows how many other relationships he’d been in?
Either way, I needed to know. I walked over to a bookcase, trailing my fingers along the spines. “So you two know each other from… ?”
“Childhood,” my dad said. “We both grew up on Santorini.”
“And now you’re… friends?” I laced the last word with a question, but my dad didn’t bat an eye.
My dad nodded. “Yes, dear friends.”
“We are friends and business partners,” Ana said, looking pointedly at me. I glanced at her and she gave me a little wink.
My dad chimed in. “We reconnected a few years ago. Ana had been away from the island for many years, but she came back to care for Bapou and we devised this plan. She used to work for a design company, but she said her job didn’t have enough soul. She wanted to spend the rest of her life around books.”
“Romance books,” she clarified. “I wanted it to be an all-romance-novel bookstore. I even had a name for it, ‘The Red Knickers.’ Luckily, your father talked me out of it. He said a Greek island bookstore catering to English-speaking romance readers might be a bit too niche.”
She tossed a handful of papers into a small metal trash can, then turned to me. “Do you know what I love the most about this place? You are never quite alone when you are in a bookstore. So many voices are jammed into one place, it is impossible to feel alone. While you stay at the bookstore, feel free to read anything you’d like.”
“Wait, while I stay at the bookstore?” I spun around, looking at the tiny space. “Is there an apartment or something?”
“Better,” Ana said, her red lips stretched into a smile. “Nico, show her.”
My dad reached up and under a long bookshelf lining the upper edge of the ceiling, and I heard a little click. The shelf swung forward, revealing a hidden pocket of space just large enough to house two suspended platforms, each featuring a twin bed with a set of shelves at its foot. A dinner-plate-size window sat in the middle, and an attached ladder lay folded in the space between the beds.
“A hidden bedroom?” I said.
“Guess who designed it,” Ana said, but there was no need to respond. Only my dad would come up with something like this.
He unfolded the wooden ladder, bringing it down to the floor, and I clambered up until I was at eye level with the beds. Both had been neatly made with crisp white sheets and hand-knit blankets, but the wall space above the one on the left was covered with maps and handwritten notes, most in Greek. Thick, scientific-looking books in French, Greek, and English had been shoved into the shelves, alongside a small stack of black T-shirts and jeans. A worn pair of Adidas sat on top, identical to the pair Theo was currently wearing. My heart drummed in an infuriating way.
I pointed to the opposite side. “Is that bed for me?”
My dad nodded. “Well, it could be. I rent out a room from a local family—”
“Room? It’s more of a shoebox.” Ana’s voice was disdainful, but she smiled affectionately at him.
“—and you are welcome to stay there with me,” he said, “but I think this may be more comfortable.”
The inflection on the last word made me zero in on his expression. He’d jammed his hands awkwardly into his jacket pockets, and he rocked back on his heels, his face wiped clean of emotion except for a faint hint of worry. I was clearly supposed to be reading between the lines of the situation, but whatever was there was completely illegible. Which one did he want me to choose?
“You are also welcome to stay with me,” Ana said. “But Bapou is also there and insisting on treating our apartment like the industrial kitchens he used to work in. It makes for a rather chaotic environment. Theo likes it here best. It gives him some quiet time to think. And with all the work you three will be doing, you will likely want some space to rest.” She raised her eyebrows at my dad, and a small smile broke through the worry on his face.
Right. The work.
The birthday party and all my jumbled feelings had distracted me. I jumped off the ladder, landing with a thud on the bookstore’s woven rug. “Dad, what’s the project? Mom wouldn’t tell me.”
My dad’s face lit up again, forcing me to avert my eyes. He was the sun and I was Icarus. If I flew too close, I’d get burned. “Like I said earlier, we have a lot to talk about. But tonight you need to rest. Ana, could you give us a moment, please?”
“Certainly.” She scooped up a pile of paperback books, then scurried into the next room. “I am here when you need me.”
I doubted that anywhere in the bookstore was out of earshot, but my dad waited ceremoniously until she had disappeared into the next room before speaking in a low voice. “I understand you have only just met Theo, but I’ve known him for a long time, and I trust him completely. If you feel at all uncomfortable, I am happy to make other arrangements. But I thought this might be… fun.”
I hesitated. Sharing a bedroom—er, platform—with a boy I didn’t really know was not exactly comfortable, but what about this situation was? And no, Mom would probably not be happy with this, and Dax would definitely not be happy with this, but technically it did not violate my mom’s rules. She had never said Do not share a bunk room with a Greek boy you meet at the airport.
Also, the bookstore felt like a friend. A harbor in the proverbial storm I was about to pass through. I wanted to stay here, and it had nothing to do with my bunkmate.
Okay, it had a little to do with my bunkmate. But mostly because I wanted to pepper him for information about this mystery project and maybe look at the way his eyelashes fanned out over his face for a few seconds longer.
Completely joking about that last part.
I turned to my dad, resolve lacing my voice. “I’ll stay at the bookstore.”
His relieved smile felt like a punch to the gut.
Mystery solved. He’d hoped I’d choose the bunk room. Meaning, we were both more comfortable with the idea of me sharing a bedroom with a stranger than we were with the idea of sharing a roof over our heads. Eight-year-old me would never have believed how far my dad and I had drifted apart.
Chapter Seven
#7. ADJUSTABLE VENDING MACHINE RING, AKA MY MOM’S ENGAGEMENT RING
When my mom’s internship ended, she left NYC, and my dad did too. He found a room in an apartment and a job waiting tables at a restaurant in Chicago’s Greektown. He spent his days working on his English while serving tourists spanakopita and dolmades, and his evenings with my mom. She was studying all the time, so he went with her to the library, where he drew or practiced English.
He proposed to her on the last warm day of October. They’d decided to take a walk to the Navy Pier and stopped to watch the Ferris wheel next to a cache of vending machines. My dad put a quarter in, and when a ring popped out, she said yes. They’d only known each other 139 days. She was pregnant with me by then.