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They showered, giving themselves a bit of playtime. Until Xandros had her breathless up against the wall, pushing her over the edge with exquisite ferocity.
Once they’d dressed and gone outside, he announced, “We’ll take the quad bike. Much easier to park.”
True to his word, he found a narrow spot between two cars and backed the bike in.
Like the crows in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, the crowds were already roosting, filling up walkways, sitting on stairs, lining railings, leaning over balconies, and enjoying restaurants.
“There’s not a single spot,” she complained, but Xandros grabbed her hand, wending his way through the crowd, forcing breaks in the waves of people with his big body. He found a perfect spot and turned his back to the wall, pulling her in front, his chest warm and muscular against her.
Nature’s light show began as the sun fell toward the horizon, its rays streaming across the sky, yellows and oranges, streaks of purple. The facades of the houses lit up with a yellow glow, as if spotlighted by the sun. The windmills turned lazily, picking up speed as the wind blew while the sun set. As it hit the horizon, the colors intensified, and the oohs and aahs of its audience rose to a frenzy.
She’d often come to Oia with Xandros to watch the sunset. The crowds had been just as thick, the cries of delight just as fervent, and the brilliant colors threw her back to all those evenings with his powerful arms around her. With his sea-salt scent drifting over her, she understood he’d wanted to come here now for all the memories they’d left behind. Memories of magnificent sunsets, of their lovemaking, their laughter, their love for each other.
She imagined that the Santorini sunset, with its brilliant colors from yellow to orange to pink to purple to red, must be like what the northern lights were to the people in the north.
They stayed until the very last ray faded, until the fingers of light darkened into the twilight sky, until stardust sparkled on them and the man in the moon smiled.
The crowds dispersed, clogging the pathways out of Oia as if they were leaving a stadium after a Super Bowl win.
Xandros took her hand so they didn’t lose each other in the throng. “I know a trick to getting out of here.”
She followed him like a woman besotted or obsessed. Or both.
He entered the back gate of a packed restaurant, leaning down to her. “I know the owner. He won’t mind if we slip through.”
An older man, with perhaps ten years on Xandros, waved at them, and Xandros made hand signals to indicate their intentions. Yet the man came down the tiered patio, slapping Xandros on the back, then man-hugging him.
It was then that she saw them, Sienna and her new friends, Carter seated beside her.
Tamryn’s gaze pierced Angela, as if she could see all her secrets. The girl pointed, skewering her like the Grim Reaper’s bony finger. Carter turned then. And finally, Sienna did, her mouth an O of surprise, before she waved.
Angela took a step toward her, then a step back to Xandros, hissing to him, “I have to go. Talk to you tomorrow. Will you be at the café?”
As hard as she tried to get rid of him, Xandros had already picked up on the stares directed at them. “Is that your daughter?”
“Yes. I don’t want her to know I had dinner with somebody else since she asked me to go with them.” She threw the words at him as if yet another lie didn’t matter. Pleading welled up in her eyes. “Tomorrow?”
He nodded. She thought for a moment he might try to kiss her, and she flinched away.
She left him behind without looking at his face, feeling as awful as she had the day she’d boarded that ferry thirty-one years ago, as if she was leaving pieces of herself behind. She hadn’t known about Sienna then, but she knew now. And she was running from him all over again.
“Who was that?” Sienna asked.
Angela’s throat was parched as she waved a hand nonchalantly behind her. “Just a man I met when I came here before. He saw me and cleared a place to watch the sunset. There were just so many people blocking my view. Amazing to see him, isn’t it?” Feeling all eyes boring through her, she flushed with guilt.
“So,” Tamryn said, winking exaggeratedly. “You blew off dinner with us for a sexy silver fox you used to know?”
In that moment, Angela hated the girl. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but she hated her for saying aloud what everyone else was thinking.
Carter laughed, breaking the tension. “What an awesome coincidence.”
He looked at Sienna, and she smiled, though Angela thought suspicion glinted in her eyes. Then her daughter asked the most innocuous question. Or maybe it wasn’t. “How did you get here?”
“The bus.” The lie tripped off her tongue. “It was packed with tourists.”
“You should have texted me.”
“I’d have come to get you,” Carter added.
