Wasn’t that the question of the hour?
He realized in that moment that he wasn’t done. He might have finished what he’d started out to do, what the biggest goal of his life up to that point had been, but he was nowhere near done.
“What is the difference, do you think, between love and lust?” he asked his sister, ignoring her questions.
“I think one is with the heart and one is with the body.”
“Which is which?” He smiled, even though she couldn’t see.
“You know,” she teased him. “Why? Have you fallen into one of them?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was lust, but…I can’t stop thinking about him.”
“Can’t stop because…” He heard a rustle of clothes and his sister whispered something to their mama. “Hold on. That’s better. So you can’t stop thinking about him because of the body or the heart?”
“It’s all tangled,” he admitted.
“Is this the man from Paris?”
“How did you know about him?” Leonidas rubbed his chest, rubbed the ache in his heart.
“Mama told me, of course.”
“Of course.”
“So is it him?” she asked again.
“His name is Andy.”
“So, yes.”
“Yes,” he agreed.
“Have you slept with him?”
“Does it matter?”
“Maybe,” she said. “Maybe if you have, then it’s not so much your body thirsting for things you miss, but your heart.”
He frowned.
“We’ve…we’ve been intimate, but not…not that.” He let out a rattling breath. “Aeliana, it’s weird to talk to you about this.”
“I’ve had sex, Leonidas,” she said.
“Obviously.”
“And I’ve been in love, been in lust.”
“Still weird.”
“If you don’t know the answer to the question, then go find it.” She sighed. “That’s what Mama wanted you to tell me, though, isn’t it? That you’re not coming home.”
“Yet,” he whispered.
“Yet.” She scoffed at him. “You’ll never live in Greece again, Leonidas.”
“You don’t know that.”
