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Lena strode around her room, her face burning. Kostos was here. Kostos was here in her house. Kostos, in three dimensions. Living, breathing Kostos.
Was it real? Was she having a psychotic break? It wasn’t that hot, was it?
She had dreamed it. She had dreamed him. Her knees swayed with the disappointment of that idea. God, how she wanted him to be real.
He looked the same. He looked much better.
He’d seen her in her bra! Oh my.
Nobody in the world besides her mom, her sister, and her three best friends ever saw her without her clothes on. She was a modest person. She was! She didn’t even like fitting rooms unless they had doors that closed all the way. Kostos had seen her twice!
Kostos was downstairs in Lena’s house! Effie had brought him downstairs. They were in the kitchen. That is, if he really existed and this whole thing wasn’t a dream, they were in the kitchen.
He had come to see her! All this way! What did that mean?
But wait! He had a girlfriend! What did that mean?
Lena was walking in such a tight circle she was making herself dizzy. She straightened out her path and sent herself to the door.
Oh! Get dressed. Oh, yeah.
The Traveling Pants were sitting on her desk chair, waiting patiently. Did they know about this? Had they seen this coming? Lena eyed them suspiciously before she pulled them on. What exactly were those Pants up to? Were they going to make her miserable before they made her happy? Oh, please, no.
She pulled a white T-shirt over her head. She took a quick peek in the mirror. Her face was shiny with sweat. Her hair was dirty. She had a stye in her eye. Oy.
What if Kostos remembered her as beautiful and when he saw her now he thought, God, what happened? And here I traveled all this way? Her face had launched at least one ship, and now the ship was going to turn right back around.
What if he wasn’t even waiting for her in the kitchen? What if he was leaving town in a hurry, thinking, Wow, how things change. He was probably waiting for the bus at Friendship Station.
In desperation Lena drew on some lip liner. It was orange. Her hand was shaking too much to stay in the lines. It looked horrible. She ran into her bathroom and washed it off. She washed the rest of her face too, so it wasn’t so shiny. She pulled her dirty hair back into a knot.
Fine. If he thought she’d gone ugly, fine. If that was what he cared about, then too bad. Besides, he had another girlfriend!
Lena looked at herself in the mirror despondently. Grandma thought she was prettier than Kostos’s new girlfriend. What did Grandma know? Grandma thought Sophia Loren was the hottest thing going. It didn’t matter what Grandma said; Lena was certainly not prettier than Kostos’s new girlfriend!
Lena made herself stop pacing. She forced herself to take a breath, possibly her first in the last ten minutes.
Calm. Calm down. She needed to quiet her mind. Shut up! she screamed at it.
Ahhh. Okay.
Kostos was downstairs. She would walk downstairs. She would say hello. That was what she would do.
Deep breath. Okay. Calm.
Lena stumbled at the top of the stairs and grabbed the railing before she fell down the whole flight. More breaths. She walked into the kitchen.
He was sitting at the table. He looked up at her. He was even more … how he was before.
“Hi,” he said. He gave her a small, questioning smile.
Was her entire body shaking or did it just seem that way? Her bare feet were sweating profusely. What if she slipped and fell in a puddle of her own foot sweat!
He looked at her. She looked at him. She imagined a cloud of romance washing over her and embracing her in its grace and flattering light, giving her good ideas for things to say. Any moment now.
Come on! He was a boy, she was a girl. He was a boy with a different girlfriend, but still. Wasn’t fate supposed to take over sometime around now?
She stood. She stared.
Even Effie looked worried on her behalf.
“Sit down,” she ordered Lena.
Lena obeyed. She was safer off her feet.
Effie passed her a glass of water. Kostos already had one.
Lena didn’t dare touch the glass in case her hand shook.
“Kostos is working in New York for a month this summer. Isn’t that amazing?” Effie said.
Lena’s heart went out to her sister. Effie knew how to take care of her sometimes.
Lena nodded, trying to process this information. She didn’t trust her vocal cords with the job of saying anything yet.
“An old school friend of my father’s runs an advertising agency there,” Kostos said. He was answering Effie, but his eyes stayed on Lena. “He offered me this internship months ago. My grandfather’s health is much better, so I thought I’d give it a try.”
There were too many thoughts for Lena to contain in her head. She wished she had a separate head for each of the thoughts. First, there was Kostos’s father. Kostos had never spoken of him before this. He was so forthright and brave about it, it gave Lena an aching feeling.
Then there was the thing about being in New York. Why hadn’t he told her? Had he been planning it before they had broken up? Had any thought of her figured into his plans?
“I’ve always wanted to see Washington,” he went on. “I grew up on Smithsonian magazine.” He smiled more to himself than to them. “Grandma thought it would connect me to my American heritage.”
So he hadn’t come to America to see Lena, obviously. That was disappointing. He hadn’t come to Washington to see Lena. But he had come to this house to see her. He’d at least done that, hadn’t he? Or had he stumbled over their doorstep on his way to the subway? Was his girlfriend going to pop out of the pantry or anything?
“I hope it’s okay, just dropping in like this,” he said. “It turns out you live right near the place I’m staying.”
Figures, Lena thought bitterly.
“I’m sorry if I caught you at a … bad time.” He said that to Lena, and his eyes had a mischievous look. Even a sexy look, she would have thought if she hadn’t known that he didn’t care about her anymore.
“Where are you staying?” Effie asked.
“With another family friend. You know how Greeks are—a port in every storm. Do you know the Sirtises in Chevy Chase?”
“Yeah. They’re friends of our parents too,” Effie said.
“They’ve made it their mission to show me everything in D.C. and introduce me to every Greek family in Washington, Maryland, and Virginia.”
Effie nodded. “How long are you here?”
“Just till Sunday,” he said.
Lena wanted to throw a plate at his head. She felt as though she might cry. Why was he acting as if they didn’t even know each other? As if they weren’t even friends? Why hadn’t he even called her to say he was coming? Why had she stopped mattering to him?
Lena felt tears sting her eyes. They had kissed each other. Kostos had told her he loved her. She had never, ever felt about anyone, anyone, the way she felt about him.
You broke up with him, a combination Effie-Carmen voice in her head reminded her.
But that didn’t mean you were allowed to stop loving me, she felt like saying to him.
Was she so deeply forgettable?
She felt like running up to her room and pulling all his letters from their shoe bag and shoving them in his face. See? she’d shout. I’m not just nobody!
Kostos stood up. “I should get going. I’m due at the National Gallery before it closes.”
Lena realized she hadn’t yet said a word.
“Well, great to see you,” Effie said. She looked plaintively at Lena, as if to say, Just how big of a loser are you, anyway?
The two girls trailed him to the front door. “Take care,” he said. He was looking at Lena.
She looked at him in pure agony. She felt that her eyes were blinking at him from deep, deep inside her head. They’d spent months apart, lon
ging for each other, wishing fervently for a letter or a phone call or a snapshot, and now he was here, close enough for her to kiss, so heartrendingly handsome, and he was just going to go and leave and never see her again?
He turned. He walked out the door. He headed down the walk. He was really going. He looked back at her once.
She ran after him. She put her hand in his. She let her tears fall; she didn’t care if he saw. “Don’t go,” she said. “Please.”
She didn’t really do that. She ran up to her room and cried.
Please give me a second grace.
—Nick Drake
Tibby couldn’t face another hour in her room. There had been almost twenty-four unbearable ones since she’d returned from D.C. late the night before. She hated this room. She hated everything she had thought and felt and done inside it. She couldn’t make herself get into her bed. There was no safe place for her to be, least of all her own mind, where her conscience had overthrown the normal government. It ranted at her and harangued her and would not shut up no matter how cruelly she threatened it.
