As I cross the line, having dropped five places and finishing in eighteenth, I drop my head into my hands.
“It’s understandable,” Archie says in my ears.
“I’m finished,” I say, but the radio is off.I talk to no one.I do the postrace checks, and I hide away until I can safely escape from everyone and everything.
I know just what I have to do.
The small villa that Stavros has been recuperating in the past couple of weeks sits on the edge of a bay in Cephalonia, a small island off the coast of Greece.I can imagine him a lot happier here than that rehabilitation place in the hills near Geneva.
I stand at the entrance to the villa, the cab still running, and look up through the iron gates toward the white-plastered estate with its wide balconies and stone walls covered in pink climbing flowers.This is it.I hand my cabdriver a hundred euros as I ask him to wait.
“I’ll wait as long as you need,” he says, folding the bills and shoving them into his shirt pocket.
My phone has been buzzing all morning.
Archie.
Then Chloe.
Then Barry.
I message Archie quickly.
Tell everyone I’ll see them in Vegas
Each step up the driveway I get more nervous, a knot forming in the pit of my stomach as I imagine Stavros’s face when he sees me.I’ve already made a deal with myself—if Iget to see him and he tells me to leave, then I will walk away.The heat is almost unbearable; the trees on either side of the stone path seem to be buckling in the parched air.
I see a shiny black SUV with dark glass windows under a tree, and a second farther along poking out of the garage.He’s not alone, not that I ever imagined he would be.
I reach the wood-slat door and knock.
Here we go.
But there is no answer.
I step back, trying to see up to the balcony above, but all I can see from down here are the railings.I pull out my phone and a hit the call button.
Come on, Stavros, pick up.
After a few rings, I pull the phone away from my ear, about to hang up, when I hear that unmistakable Apple ringtone, faintly coming from somewhere nearby.I look up, craning my neck.Yes, it’s coming from that balcony.
“Stavros!”I call out.
Nothing.The phone rings out.
“Stavros!”I say again.
And that’s when I hear the splash of water and the sound of a body heaving itself out of a pool.“Well, well, well,” I hear above me.
I’d know that voice anywhere.
“Stavros?”I call out again, scanning the railing.Surely he can’t ignore me now.
I almost jump backward when I see his face leaning over the railing.His black hair cropped short, the scar visible along his skull, though the hair will cover that soon.That was a surface wound; it’s the injuries to his arms that I worry about seeing.
His face is blank as he stares down at me.“You finally came, motherfucker,” he says at last, in his thick Greek accent.
“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I say.
