Alex, who had resumed scrolling through her phone while Lydia gave him a detailed rundown of all the cliques and alliances within the team, let out a yelp so loud and sudden it halted all conversations mid-sentence.
“Oh my god. Niko,” she said, in a tone both breathless and accusatory, “why didn’t you tell me you know Grey Brooks?”
Niko’s brow furrowed. “Who?”
“She’s an actress,” said Alex, theduhonly implied.
He racked his brain. The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it to any of the people he’d met in LA. “I don’t think I do,” he said.
“Then why does she have a painting you did in her house?”
Niko blinked, sure he’d temporarily gone deaf. “She what?”
Alex turned her phone toward him, holding her thumb down to pause the video playing. Sure enough, one of the paintings he’d donated to the auction was hanging on the wall, tagged with his username. He jolted at the shock of seeing it. It had been months since he’d last checked his social media, let alone updated it—he only had a few pictures on it, none of which featured his artwork.
With shaking hands, he pulled out his own phone and opened the app, but he was so overwhelmed by notifications he immediately turned off the screen and placed it face down on the table.
By now, the rest of his family had crowded around Alex’s phone and were staring at him with matching dumbfounded expressions.
“You painted that?” his mother asked.
“Uh…yeah,” said Niko, his brain sluggish, desperately trying to wrap itself around what any of this meant.
“When did you start painting?” By now, the stunned look on his mom’s face had taken on shades of hurt.
“Um, I always have, kind of,” he said slowly, and he saw her brow crumple further. “But I stopped once I…when I came back to Florida. Except in school. But I picked it up again once I moved to Colorado.”
“Oh. Okay.”
A tense silence settled over the kitchen, Alex and Lydia immediately burying themselves in their phones again. He watched his mother visibly pull herself together, then turn back to the refrigerator. As she passed behind him, she put a hand on his shoulder, bending down to kiss the top of his head.
“I’m so proud of you, agápi mou,” she said softly. “Do you take commissions? I want one for the office.”
He laughed, but it was more of a sigh of relief. “For you, mamá? I think we can work out a deal.”
He had a week before he left for Greece, and he would be starting his new job at his stepdad’s insurance firm as soon as he got back. Based on the interview, it would mostly be data entry to start, and even though he wasn’t great with computers and got restless from sitting too long, it seemed simple—and mindless—enough.
But until then, he had the days to himself, with his sisters busy and his mom and stepdad at work. He spent most of that time driving aimlessly around the suburban sprawl, trying to familiarize himself, wondering how long it would take before he began thinking of it as home.
He’d never struggled with insomnia before, but he spent his nights staring blankly at the glow-in-the-dark stars Alex had stuck above her bed.
He should’ve said a real goodbye to her.
He should’ve told her how he felt.
But would it have changed anything? Was it what she even wanted?
Every day, he saw something that made him think of her, mindlessly reaching for his phone to text her before remembering. But he knew it would fade. It wasn’t his first heartbreak—although he couldn’t remember it ever feeling quite this intense. With Helene, there had been the distraction of the humiliation, the betrayal, but this was just pure, unfiltered loss. It felt so overwhelming that it had to be visible just by looking at him. Something integral to his very being was gone, like his arm or nose.
But no, nobody commented on any missing appendages, so he didn’t bring it up.
A few days before he left, he finally had a moment alone with his mother, since her office closed early on Fridays. He offered to help her make dinner, so she put him to work chopping vegetables for sheet pan–roasted chicken as she mixed up the vinaigrette.
He straightened his spine, gathering his courage. “You know, it’s not too late for you to come with me. I could still buy you a ticket, if you wanted.”
He didn’t look at her as he said it, but the sound of the fork clanging against the metal bowl abruptly stopped. “Why are you so hung up on this all of a sudden?”
She didn’t sound angry, though, just tired. Like she’d already been having this argument over and over with herself and was sick of hearing about it.
