She rolled onto her side so she was facing him, her head still on his stomach. “Now, if you were a big music snob, this is where I’d be tempted to pretend to like it less than I do because it’s her most popular album.”
Niko’s brow creased. “Why would you do that?”
Merritt paused. “I don’t know,” she said, more contemplatively than she expected. She stroked a hand languorously up his stomach. “Do you get back there much? To Greece?”
He nodded. “I try to go at the end of every summer, for a week or two. I’ll probably go once I’m done with the house and I’m all moved out.”
Merritt tried to ignore the twinge in her gut at the reminder he was leaving soon—as if that weren’t the reason she was lying on his stomach in the first place. “I bet it’s beautiful.”
“You’ve never been?”
She shook her head. “I had such a bad time touring that itkind of ruined my desire to travel for fun. And I’m still not crazy about flying. I want to, though.”
“You should. Most of my family lives in Athens, which is the least beautiful part, I think. But my grandparents live in this tiny village in the mountains. Even smaller than this one, if you can believe it. I actually ended up living there with them for a while, when I was a kid. Maybe that’s why I like it here so much.”
“Oh,” said Merritt, a little taken aback. “I didn’t realize you ever lived there. For how long?”
His fingers twitched beside her, like he was counting. “Eight years?”
“With your parents, too?”
He shook his head. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“I don’t know about you, but I have nothing but time.”
His stomach moved with a heavy exhale, her head along with it. She met his eyes, placing a gentle hand on him.
“So, I told you my mom got pregnant with me when she was a teenager. She’d gone to the States for high school, to live with some family friends. It was a huge fight between my grandparents, letting her go over there alone. But she and Yiayia wore him down eventually, so she went. She was really smart, super good in school. It would’ve been a waste for her to stay in that little village. This way, she could get a real education, have a real future.” He paused. “She was fifteen when I was born. My dad, too.”
His voice had grown more serious as he went on, a low rumble against her cheek. She rubbed her hand over him comfortingly. “So she went back when she got pregnant?”
He shook his head. “My grandparents wanted her to, but she was stubborn. She moved in with my dad’s family for a while, and they tried to make it work. They both dropped out of school and got jobs. I think I remember the three of us havingan apartment alone together at some point, when I was really little. Anyway, they ended up breaking up for good when I was four, and she brought me back to Greece. And, um. Left me there. I didn’t see her again until I was twelve.”
It was clear how hard this was for him to talk about, his words slow and halting. Her stomach twisted in sympathy—for him, for his mother, for everyone involved.
“I’m so sorry,” she said quietly. “That must have been so hard, and confusing, and scary. You didn’t deserve that.”
“It was the right thing for her to do. I know that now. It’s expensive, flying back and forth. It would’ve been a waste of money to visit. She went back and got her GED and her bachelor’s. She waited until she was stable enough to take care of me and then brought me back to Florida.”
She could tell from the defensiveness threaded through his tone that he wasn’t ready to go down that road, so she took his lead and backed off. “That’s really impressive, the way she was able to turn things around for herself.”
He nodded. “She’s the strongest person I know. Well, besides my Yiayia. But…” He hesitated, and she could tell he was trying to find the words. “The way the rest of my family talks about her…she was some kind of math genius, I guess. She should be working at NASA, or Google, designing space lasers or something.”
“What does she do now?”
“She’s the office manager at a pediatrician’s office. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but…I don’t know.” His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Even if things turned out okay in the end, having me did still derail her whole life. And it ruined her relationship with my grandparents. They don’t talk anymore.”
“That’s a pretty heavy responsibility to put on yourself,” she said gently. “No one actually told you that, did they?”
He shook his head. “They didn’t have to. Especially once I moved back to the US. I…really didn’t get along with my stepdad.”
“The one you’re about to go work for?”
“No, she got remarried six or seven years ago, that’s why she moved to Tucson. He’s great. The guy she was married to back then, though…they had two daughters together, my little sisters, and he made it pretty clear that he didn’t think of me as part of their family. He and I clashed all the time, and I was just acting out a lot in general. Teenage shit, you know how it is. I didn’t make things easy for her.”
“What about your dad? Do you ever see him?”
He shrugged, but it was stiff. “He calls me every year on my birthday. Or, what he thinks is my birthday. He got married and had more kids, too, but I’ve never gotten to meet them. I think the last time I saw him was my high school graduation.”
