My face went hot. “No one had to tell me. It’s pretty obvious when someone leaves and doesn’t come back.”
“Hmm.” Theo went back to studying me, and I felt the overwhelming need to defend myself. Who was he to ask me all these personal questions?
“Where’s your dad?” I blurted out. Instantly, I was horrified. What if Theo’s dad was dead? What if Theo didn’t have a dad at all?
But this didn’t disturb him either. He shrugged casually. “In Singapore, probably making his new fiancée as miserable as he made my mom.”
I instantly deflated. I wanted to tell him that my parents were divorced too, but he obviously already knew that. There was another long moment of silence. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “It’s fine. He wasn’t very engaged in my life even when I did live with him, so it isn’t all that different. He’s from Le Bugue in France.” The French name rolled off his tongue as easily as Greek did, and I felt a stab of jealousy. The best I could do was sort of understand some Greek words, and here he was fluent in at least three languages. I was beginning to think his English might even be better than mine.
“Which language do you speak the most?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “Well… I swear in French, talk to my grandfather in Greek, but feel most comfortable in English. Whenever my dad was around, he insisted we speak English together.”
My cake was down to crumbs. Theo noticed and passed his plate across the gap to me. I didn’t have the dignity to refuse.
As I dug in, a smattering of a language I didn’t recognize floated through the window. Croatian? Russian? I leaned toward the window to see a group of people taking photos of the bookstore. If I’d stumbled across it, I would have taken photographs of it too, or pulled out my sketchbook and recorded as many details as I could. I turned back to Theo. “Is Singapore where you lived before Santorini?”
“Briefly. My dad’s a management consultant for multinational corporations, so he moves every few years. We’ve lived everywhere.”
I stopped eating. Intrigued. “Everywhere where?”
He looked up at the ceiling. “Singapore, Melbourne, Tokyo, London, Munich, Amsterdam, and LA. We were in LA the longest. Almost three years. Then we were in London for two. My mom and I moved to Santorini after they got divorced. We’ve been here for a year.”
I was impressed. I couldn’t help myself. “So that’s what your maps are about. Those are all the places you’ve lived!”
Oops. Busted myself on snooping. But he didn’t seem to mind. “Plus all the places I want to live. My ultimate goal is to be an adventure filmmaker. Travel around and make films of it all.”
Well, that explained the camera. I felt my view of him shift ever so slightly. He may be a little pushy, but he was adventurous, and he had a plan. I couldn’t help but admire his confidence. It made my wishy-washy art school plans look kind of pathetic.
“Interesting.” I took one more bite of his cake, then set it aside. “LA. So, besides your dad speaking it when you were together, is that why your English is so good?”
“My English isn’t good. It’s perfect, Olive,” he said, dropping a heavy Greek accent on the last word. “Also, I watch a lot of American TV. If you want to learn English, all you have to do is watch nine thousand hours of situation comedies.”
“It’s Liv,” I corrected him.
Theo shook his head. “Sorry, but I don’t think I’m going to remember that. Olive has been imprinted on my brain, and besides, you don’t look like a Liv.”
My head snapped up in indignation. “What? Yes, I do,” I protested.
He shook his head. “No. You really, really don’t. How about a nickname? I’ll call you…”
“Absolutely not—” I started, but he barreled past my objection.
“Kalamata!” He stabbed the air triumphantly.
“Kalamata?” I groaned. “Kalamata, as in the type of olive?”
His eyes widened in mock surprise. “Is it? Oh, you’re right. It’s actually my favorite variety of olive. What a strange coincidence.”
“So what you’re saying is that you’ll still be calling me Olive, but in a different way.” I was annoyed, but not as annoyed as my voice made me out to be. Kalamata wasn’t the worst nickname ever invented.
But this was ridiculous. And so was the fact that I was smiling.
He shook his head. “I won’t be calling you Olive. I’ll be calling you Kalamata. It’s completely different.”
“Well, I forbid it,” I said, trying to sound queenly and in charge. It didn’t work.
“And I forbid you to forbid it. My bunk, my rules.”
“Your bunk?” I said, but now we were both smiling. My stomach did a happy sort of spasm. Was he flirting with me? And worse, was I flirting back? Suddenly I thought of Dax again, and my stomach twisted but for an entirely different reason. He had to have texted by now.
I quickly grappled for my phone, but when I looked at it, the only notification was from my mom. You make it? I turned and glared out our shared window. After the sun’s dramatic exit, night had lowered as swiftly as a stage curtain. Where was Dax?
When I came to, Theo was watching me with one eyebrow raised. I hastily shoved my phone under the pillow, my cheeks hot again.
“So back to your relationship with your dad,” Theo said, like this was a normal conversational jump.
“Are you always this interested in other people’s lives?”
“Always,” he said firmly. “I want to be a filmmaker, remember? Also, you interest me.”
His voice was harmless, amused almost, but then our eyes met over the gap for a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary and heat flushed down my neck. Whatever it was that was swirling between these bunks, I needed to put a stop to it. Immediately.
“I have a boyfriend,” I blurted out.
“Yeah, you mentioned that.”
“I did?”
He nodded nonchalantly. “Yes. When we pulled in to Oia. You said, ‘I don’t run. Ask my boyfriend.’ ”
He actually did a fairly spot-on impression of my voice. Also, he sounded calm, borderline dismissive, which made me feel stupid. I had obviously misinterpreted his intentions. So that was a relief. Or at least I think that feeling was relief. It was definitely at least in the same family as relief.
He pointed to my lap. “Is that why you keep checking your phone? He’s texting you?”
“Uh…” I realized how uncool the truth would make me sound, but I was too tired to come up with anything. “I’m waiting for him to text. We’re sort of… not speaking.”
I waited for some kind of commentary or way-too-personal questions, but nothing. Just more of that curious look. “What’s your boyfriend like?”
“Dax? He’s…” My stomach sank as I thought over the past week. He’d been annoyed, and distant, and honestly, sort of petty. But he’d always struggled with last-minute changes in plans, and besides, he’d really been looking forward to me going on his senior trip with him. Whenever I was terribly disappointed, I felt grumpy too. It was understandable. It also hadn’t helped that I’d clearly let him down on the whole college visit thing. “Well… he’s really focused, and good at everything. Everyone likes him a lot.”