“I didn’t hear all that,” he grumbled.
“My stubborn son.” His mama set her knitting on her lap. “You’ve always been here and there. Thinking with your heart and not your head.”
“I’m here,” he reminded her.
“But not for long. You can have a promised life here. No worries.”
“I didn’t tell you,” he laughed to himself. “His family owns a hotel, too.”
His mama’s eyes widened, then her face twisted into a teasing grimace. “No hotel is nicer than the one yourpateraowns. Just stay here with us.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, resting his head against the side of hers. She patted his leg with an ever-exhausted sigh.
“Will you bring him home to visit?” she asked.
“If he’s worth it.”
“If he’s not worth it, why would you be going to him?”
“Stop making sense, Mama.”
She reached for her coffee and took a sip of it. Leonidas could smell the cinnamon she favored in the brew wafting in the tight space between them. His mama made the best coffee. He closed his eyes, committing the memory of the smell of her in his sister’s house and the feel of her hand against his leg.
“Leonidas,” she said, the coffee cup clanging quietly as she set it back down on the table. “It’s okay for you to go to him.”
“Mama.” He opened his eyes and stared at Aeliana’s coffee table.
“I know you only came home because we asked. Because we love you and we missed you, and thank you for that. But it’s okay for you to go to him.”
“I’ve known him a week,” he whispered.
“After your sister had her first date with Alexandros, she called me, she was away at school, remember? She called me and said, ‘Mama, I found the man I’m going to marry.’ And she did.”
Leonidas remembered his sister recounting that story years later after Alexandros proposed, as if she’d somehow turned her life into a self-fulfilling prophecy, setting her future into motion by speaking it into the void. He’d always secretly admired her dedication to a solid and steady future, knowing so far in the past what she would want so far in her future.
“I remember,” he said.
“Less than a week.”
“I know,” he mumbled.
“What then?” she asked. “Do you think you don’t deserve that?”
“I think I don’t know what to do with that,” he admitted.
“No one knows what to do with it. For as wild as you’ve always been, you sound like you’re scared of taking a risk.”
“Stop being so observant.”
“You’re my only son,” his mama reminded him. “I know you better than you know yourself, and I know that it will be the most difficult thing in my life to say goodbye to you tomorrow because I don’t think you’ll ever come back once you go get that man of yours.”
Leonidas nestled in closer to his mother, not sure if he wanted her to be wrong…or right.
17
Andy
“Get in,loser. We’re going to pet some pussies.”
