I look at Lex from across the couch. His eyes are still half-closed. His head is back against the cushion. He looks like a man who has spent the day getting engaged and is, four hours later, the most relaxed I have ever seen him.
I say, "Lex."
He says, "Yes."
"Did you sleep at all last night, ‘kírie mou.’"
He goes still.
The stillness is the precise Konstantinos stillness I have been learning to read for two months. His eyes open. He turns his head against the cushion and looks at me. The candlelight is in his face. His expression is not one I have seen on him before.
He says, "Don't."
I say, "Don't what."
"Don't call me that."
"Why not?"
"Don't make me cry twice in one day, Maeve."
I smile. I am smiling because I have, in the four hours since I said ‘s'agapó’ on the kitchen floor, been waiting for a moment to give him one more Greek thing. ‘Kírie mou’ is the moment. The phrase is the old-fashioned wifely endearment Eleni told me about two months ago, when she was teaching me to say ‘welcome home’ and I asked her what an old Greek wife called her husband, and Eleni had said, ‘kírie mou. My lord. It is half-ironic and fully sincere. You will know when to use it.’
I am using it.
I say, "I'll call you whatever I want, Lex Konstantinos."
He laughs. Once. The second laugh I have earned from him today. The first was at 9:23 PM on the kitchen floor when I asked him if he was going to keep me there forever and he said ‘yes’ with the dry inflection that meant he had been planning to.
He says, "Maeve."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"For what."
"For learning a word my grandmother used for my grandfather."
I say, "‘Mitéra’ told me. She said you would hate it. She said you would love it. She said both would be true."
He laughs again. The third. He says, "My mother is correct as usual."
He pulls me closer against him. My head is on his shoulder. The ring catches the candlelight as I shift, and I see him watch it catch the light, and his face does the particular thing his face has been doing for the last four hours, which is the face of a man whose wife is wearing a ring that has been waiting days to be on her finger.
I say, "Lex."
"Yes."
"When are we going to the lake house?"
"Whenever you want."
"Soon. I want to take Nora before it gets too cold."
"The weekend after next?"
"Yes."
