I was a sweaty mess, my bathing suit sticking to me in all the wrong ways and my bangs plastered to my forehead. Theo, of course, looked amazing. Skin glowing, eyes bright, bare chest heaving. He was apparently made to be chased through Santorini’s cliffs in a pair of swim trunks.
His shoulders were tan and smooth and…
Never mind.
“Thief!” the man yelled in a thick accent. He was really close now, maybe twenty feet away. At some point he’d figured we weren’t locals, switching from yelling in Greek to yelling in English. “Swim in my pool? Americans! Thief!” Had the man seen us duck in here? And if he did find us, then what?
I reached out and grabbed Theo’s hands, squeezing them tightly. Even though we were caught in a panicked game of cat and mouse, I had the sudden, inexplicable desire to laugh.
Theo and I locked eyes. His face was red, and I could feel that his chest and shoulders were still wet as they grazed my skin. My heart bounced against my rib cage.
“Don’t laugh,” I whispered.
“Huh?”
But it was no use. We were silent laughing, the kind of rolling laugh that absolutely cannot be controlled. The both of us with our shoulders heaving, faces buried in our knees. I don’t even know what we were laughing at. The death sentence coming our way? The tickle of our breath on each other’s knees? The fact that we smelled like two enormous chlorine tablets? At one point I snorted, and that made things much worse.
Stop, Theo mouthed. Stop. He buried his face in his knees, his shoulders shaking.
“I see. I see you!” the man yelled, but he sounded farther away now. “There it is now.”
My stomach hurt from holding in laughter. Tears were running down my face.
“I find you.” His voice was an echo, the sound fading under the noise of the ocean.
“He’s leaving,” I whispered, wiping my eyes.
My legs were starting to feel cramped, but I pulled them in tighter, resting my chin on my knees. Cold water dripped rhythmically from our hair and bathing suits, and when Theo looked up, he had a big smile on his face too.
“Outsmarted the pirate,” Theo said, his mouth all of four inches from mine.
“Thanks to you.” It was time to look away, but neither of us did. I could feel his breath on my cheeks as the water from his hair rolled down his arms and onto mine. Whatever was going on this moment, it was picking up speed, gathering momentum. I couldn’t stop looking at his lips, and he couldn’t stop looking at mine. Our breath was hot between us, my legs slippery on his. Was he about to kiss me?
Worse. I was about to kiss him.
A small string pulled me toward him, and then he reached up and touched my lower lip with the pad of his thumb and I was leaning in and every single one of my cells was on fire and I closed my eyes and—
Theo suddenly yanked backward, hitting his head on the hot tub cover with a loud thud and effectively ruining whatever trance we were under. A rush of conflicting emotions crashed through me—confusion, disappointment, relief, panic. But “Ohmygodareyouokay?” was all I was able to get out.
“Fine. You? I’m… uh, sorry about that.…” I’d never seen Theo stumble for words before, and I attempted to get to my feet but succeeded only in falling back down, scraping both my elbows in the process and managing to wedge myself in even tighter. What was happening right now?
“Ow. My fault.” I tried again, this time managing to get to my feet relatively unscathed. I was so embarrassed and exposed that I may as well have been fully naked instead of half naked. Had we really almost… ?
What was wrong with me? Theo pulled himself to his feet, his hand on the back of his head. “I think I’m going to have a bump on my head. What are those called in English? A duck egg?”
“A goose egg.” I grimaced. “Theo… wow. I think it was, like, the excitement of it all? You know… being chased and then this tight space, it was kind of unavoidable.”
Unavoidable? Had I really said that? A slow, knowing smile spread across his face, the sight of which made me want to throw myself off the edge of the cliff. “I mean—not unavoidable, just… understandable? Or—” This hole was just getting deeper. And his growing smile was not helping at all. Not one tiny bit.
My cheeks were like the fiery gates of hell. “Never mind. Forget I ever said it.”
He crossed his arms over his chest, the teasing smile still firmly in place. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to forget that you said that, but it’s not a big deal, Kalamata. Don’t worry about it.”
Not a big deal? To whom? I crossed my arms too. The night air was warm, but not enough to keep me from shivering in my wet bathing suit. “Well, it’s a big deal to me,” I blurted out. Why, oh why, can’t I stop talking?
“Kalamata…” He reached out to touch me, and I quickly darted away.
Run! my brain yelled. Before you try to kiss him again.
“I’ll see you up there.” I hurried to the edge of the porch but was immediately confronted with three different paths, all of which branched out into even more options. This place really was a maze. So much for making a clean exit.
“Staircase on the left,” Theo supplied from behind me. “Then the second right. I’ll guide you up.”
“Thanks.” I kept my eyes glued to the steps, ignoring his gaze on my back. My lips were still tingling from where he’d touched me.
This was not going to end well.
Chapter Seventeen
#17. TV GUIDE MAGAZINE, EMMY PREVIEW EDITION
We’d moved again, into an apartment that had apparently once been leased by a woman named Rose Walker, judging by the TV Guide magazine that arrived in our mailbox every month. My mom laughed when she saw the first one on our coffee table. TV Guide magazine was still around? But instead of putting them in the recycling bin and relying on the internet like the rest of the world, my dad started using them.
My dad wasn’t a TV watcher. He was a reader, and an explorer, and an artist. But some days he’d turn on the television. It never lasted long. Five, six, once seven days, and then he’d stand up from the couch and ask about my homework before we’d go out into the sunshine again. I always knew not to talk about Atlantis on those days. It’s funny what you don’t know, but what you understand in your gut.
THERE’S AWKWARD LIKE, CAN WE continue on our merry little way and pretend this never happened? and then there’s awkward like, Do you happen to know of any nondormant volcanoes that I could throw myself into, because that seems to be my only remaining option? The walk back up to the bookstore was definitely hovering near option two. Or at least it was for me. Every time I looked at Theo, he was still smiling that horrifying smile. Good thing someone was endlessly amused by this whole scenario.
Once it had been established that I would not be fleeing the scene, it took us about twenty minutes of hunting to find all the shoes and clothes we’d strewn along the path and then another fifteen to sneak past the cave house and get back up to the bookstore so we could pretend to be asleep while listening to our French rap. And the whole time I could barely look at him because WE HAD ALMOST KISSED.
But having plenty of time to analyze it during our silent walk back to the bookstore, I told myself that I had been so tangled up after the cruise with my dad that I’d let my guard down and lost my head. Or maybe it was because Dax still hadn’t called me back and I was getting more and more nervous about the thought of telling him about RISD. Or maybe it was the trifling fact that Theo made me feel like I was swimming through champagne bubbles. It was an extremely inconvenient realization, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. All I knew was that I really didn’t need this extra complication in my life right now. All I wanted to do was fall asleep.