“Yiorgos.”
“Your whole family is in Greece still?” Andy presented him with the bite of cupcake.
“Yes.” He opened his mouth and Andy set the treat on his tongue, but unlike last time, he wasn’t quick to pull his hand away.
“Do they miss you?”
He nodded, and Andy took his hand away. Leonidas ate the second bit of cupcake.
“I would miss you,” Andy said softly. “I did miss you.”
“I missed you,” Leonidas agreed, licking a stray crumb from the corner of his mouth. “That’s why I’m here now.”
“I know.” Andy swiped his finger through the frosting. “What is your favorite color?”
“Blue.”
Andy dragged his frosting-covered finger across Leonidas’s lips.
“What shade?” Andy asked.
“Like the ocean.” He licked the frosting from his upper lip and swallowed. It was sweeter than the cupcake and the taste of chocolate exploded in his mouth.
“What do you want from life?”
“That’s not something that’s easy to answer.” He stretched his arm toward the wine. “Can I have a drink?”
Andy handed him the bottle and set the cupcakes down on the table with a small sigh.
“I used to think I knew what I wanted,” Andy mused, a tight frown forming on his mouth. “But then my dad died.”
“Were you close?”
“No.” Andy scoffed and shook his head, his expression turning more thoughtful. “We weren’t close at all. He didn’t know what to do with all of us boys, and there was a lot of shit he should have done differently.”
“I don’t know what that’s like,” Leonidas said, giving Andy back the wine. He took a big drink and used the back of his hand to wipe the droplets from his mouth. “My parents are still together, still alive. Still in love.”
“I wonder a lot how things would have been different if my mom hadn’t died.”
“How old were you?” he asked.
“Not even eighteen. Sixteen or seventeen,” Andy answered.
“More than half your life, then?”
Andy nodded.
“My dad got into the hotel business before my sisters and I were born. It’s the only life we’ve ever known. It’s hard. He’s a good parent, but he’s absent.”
“I know all about absent parents.”
“Weren’t you kind of a parent, though?” Leonidas angled his head toward his shoulder. “Your brothers are younger, yes?”
“Most of them.” Andy shrugged. He picked the banana chip off the top of the other cupcake and dropped it into his mouth. It crunched as he chewed, and he rinsed it down with another big swallow of wine. “Charlie was the paternal one.”
“Tell me about your last relationship,” Leonidas pressed.
Andy’s head jerked up sharply and he focused on Leonidas with narrowed eyes. “Why would you want to know about that?”
