He raised his eyebrows. “I can un-agree.”
Merritt laughed. “You would never.”
“I’m leaving, remember? I don’t care about my reputation anymore. I’ll let everyone down. Just watch me.”
She stretched her arm all the way across his chest, pulling him close, until they were nose to nose. “I think that’s the only thing you’d rather do less than sing onstage.”
He cupped her jaw in his hand, nudging her lips to his, but when he pulled away, he was still looking at her expectantly. Clearly, he wasn’t going to let this go.
She considered brushing it off with an “I’ll think about it,” and she knew he wouldn’t push it further if she did—but to her surprise, there was a strange release in her chest. Gratitude, maybe, that someone had finally given her permission to say yes, after a decade of no. Someone she knew cared deeply for her, someone she could trust wasn’t just motivated by their own self-interest.
She’d felt a similar sensation when she’d picked up her guitaragain at his coaxing: a tendril of green breaking through ground that had long seemed parched and barren.
“Okay,” she said, reaching out her hand. “Deal.”
His eyes went wide with surprise, but for only a moment before he wrapped his hand around hers to shake.
She pressed their joined hands to his chest, pushing herself upright. “Well, if you’re not going to let me hear your little crab song, I should probably go.”
He caught her wrist and pulled her back against him, burying his face in her hair. Softly, he began to sing to her in Greek, a lilting folk tune at a brisk tempo.
She closed her eyes, letting the song wash over her as he stroked her hair. She felt suddenly connected across time and space with tiny Niko, parentless and terrified in an unfamiliar country, soothed to sleep by this same melody. Unexpectedly, tears sprang to her eyes, and she quickly blinked them away.
“What does it mean?” she asked quietly, when he was done. His hand moved from her hair, and she heard him scratch his jaw.
“It’s something like…two baby crabs are crying on the beach. They’re crying because their mother’s gone. She abandoned them to go party with a fish in another town.”
“Naturally.”
“Then the father crab comes home, and the house is a mess, and he’s really worried because he can’t find his family. So he sets sail after her, leaving the baby crabs still crying there alone.”
“Wow,” Merritt said. “That’s pretty upsetting. You said this is a children’s song?”
“Well, what about the one about the baby falling off the treetop?” Niko said, a little defensively. “That’s upsetting, too, you’re just used to it.”
She laughed, pulling him in for a final kiss, then afinalfinal kiss, dragging herself reluctantly out of his arms a few minutes later.
This time, she had a text from him waiting for her before she even got home.
22
Over the next week, Nikocalled in every favor he could think of to help him prepare for the pageant.
When he tried on his only suit for the first time in a decade and found it barely fit, he went to see Marie, the seamstress who’d had a shop off Spring Street for the past thirty years. He’d been doing minor repairs for her for years, usually “forgetting” to send her an invoice (and sometimes legitimately forgetting). In return, she turned around the alterations overnight. His regular barber squeezed him in for a last-minute haircut, despite being fully booked, waving away Niko’s credit card. And, without asking, every single one of the other contestants independently reached out to offer to help him get up to speed.
Through it all, though, he couldn’t bring himself to spread the word he was leaving, even though it would’ve been the perfect opportunity. He justified it by telling himself he wanted to focus on one thing at a time, but he knew deep down he wasn’tready for it to feel that real yet. So for now the only people who knew were Jo, Simon, and Merritt, none of whom seemed eager to bring it up—which was fine by him.
Between that and his budding relationship with Merritt, he felt so overinflated with secrets he was worried he’d pop if he bumped into a corner too hard.
He did tell his mother he was leaving, though, who immediately burst into happy tears. The words were barely out of his mouth before she was assuring him that his stepfather would be able to easily find Niko a job at his insurance firm, and since his sister Alex was about to start her freshman year at the University of Arizona, he could stay in her room until he got on his feet.
Even though moving back in with his mom wasn’t exactly the step he’d hoped to be taking at thirty, he was filled with gratitude for her all the same. He was lucky, having a mother who wanted him to be close to her, who would do anything to give him a soft landing. This was absolutely the right thing to do. Of course it was natural to have conflicting feelings about this chapter of his life coming to an end, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need to.
After briefly catching up with both his sisters—Lydia, the youngest, was still living at home, going into her junior year of high school—his mom came back on the line.
“When can we expect you, agápi mou?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard her speak Greek other than the odd word here and there, but there was still a slight lilt to her syllables that had never gone away.
Niko scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “The last weekend in August, I think. But I was planning on visiting Yiayia and Papou for a couple of weeks, so I can’t start the job until after I get back.”
