I giggled and gave her a peck on the cheek. “I’ll be good.”
“Good-schmood. You’ll know the minute you kiss him.”
“Teri!” Isabelle yelled for her maid of honor.
“Look.” Naani pointed to the Christmas tree dashing toward us. Teri’s arms were laden with gifts from Thomas’s relatives in Mykonos. “That would’ve been you. Aren’t you glad things worked out the way they did?”
“Wait.” Isabelle intercepted Teri and threaded another gift bag through her arms. “Oh, there’s the boat. Let’s go, Naani. Dolly, watch your step.” She rounded everyone up before cornering me. “You’re going to be okay, right? No offense, but all your dates have been pretty mild so far. This is the big leagues. Nikos is intense. Smooth but intense. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. Like a hungry wolf. Just say the word and I’ll throw a tantrum to get you back on the boat.”
“Oh my God, stop, will you? Maybe Iwanta hungry wolf.” I pushed her toward the boat. “Goodnight.”
Then it was just Nikos and me. You know the feeling when you’ve thought about something forever and it finally happens, and you want to say something witty or funny or cool, but you also really, really want to puke, so you keep your mouth shut because you don’t know which will come out? Yeah. That.
Nikos had a whole different way of dealing with nerves. He morphed into an octopus the minute we got into the limo—one hand around my shoulder, the other on my thigh, a third wrapping around my waist. All the while, he was on the phone with the club, arranging a private booth.
We pulled into an alley behind the club and were ushered in through the back entrance.
Two burly bouncers escorted us through a dimly lit hallway.
“We get a lot of celebrities dropping in,” Nikos said. “The back entrance keeps them happy.”
“We?” I raised my voice over the music. The whole place reverberated with a pulsating beat.
“My family and I. We own the club. And a few others in Athens, Rhodes, Corfu…” He waved his hand, like he was talking about apples and oranges scattered under the trees.
So, Nikos is a nightclub owner,I thought, as he guided me into a reserved section overlooking the dance floor.This is what happens when the person you’re stalking on social media keeps some parts of his public life private. You get bits and pieces, never the whole picture. So inconsiderate, Nikos.
Retro music blared around us—Boom, boom, boom. Let’s go back to my room—while a guy in an LED suit shot streams of cool, white mist into the crowd with a smoke gun.
Nightclubs weren’t really my thing. A lot of people packed really close, squirming, moving, drinking, and making out. And let’s face it—clubs had nothing good to eat.
But maybe I’d been doing nightclubs wrong all this time. Maybe I needed to do them with Nikos, because an impeccably clad hostess placed a platter ofmezedesbefore us—cheeses, dips, cured meats, olives, pickles, salted fish. She returned with a carafe, two shot glasses and a bowl of ice.
Nikos dropped a couple of ice cubes into the glasses and poured a clear liquid from the carafe over them.
“Cheers.” He held up his glass.
I raised mine cautiously. “What is it?”
Apart from the occasional cocktail on vacation and a bottle of Ny-Quil that I downed while dying with the flu, I wasn’t much of a drinker.
“This is tsipouro.”
“Sip what?”
“Tsipouro. It’s made from grape residue. This batch is from a Greek monastery.”
“Ah.” I smiled.
Grapes, meaning wine.
And monks, meaning blessed wine.
I followed Nikos’s lead and downed my drink.
Holy Mother of All Fucking Firewater.
“Oh-hwah!” I thumped my chest to jump-start my lungs.
