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I’m still standing close, too close. Our mouths are a few inches away from each other. I could just lean in and taste those full, delicious lips. I could get lost inside her kiss, I could turn to putty in her hands. Or I could turn savage, pulling her waist to mine, holding on to her for dear life, tasting every bit of her, running my tongue, my teeth against her skin, as I’ve wanted to do these past four years…No.
No. Don’t go there.
Stop it right now.
I’m weak around her.
I’d forgive her in a second.
I have to be strong.
I have to invite the hatred in. That thirst for revenge. I’m way past indifference, there’s no hope for that. The minute I jumped into the water for her, I knew: I’m still not over her.
I never might be.
But if I teach myself to hate her, to be cold, maybe even cruel… Maybe, just maybe, I might get out of this hell of wanting her and not being able to have her. It’s the only thing that might just save my sanity. But in the process it might destroy my soul. Well, what she’s left of it. And that isn’t much.
Her cheeks are still wet with tears. My skin is burning, and I’m not even touching her.
“But we do have to work together. Or at least, to give it a try. But if you do stay, you can’t ever say anything like what you just said to me. Ever.”
“That I wanted to be friends?” Her voice cracks and I grab the back of my neck.
I need to stay strong. I’m this close to giving in and telling her that I can be her friend, I can be her dog, I can be whatever she wants, just to exist in a little piece of her life.
“No. That you don’t think you deserve things.” I sound angry again.
If anyone else had suggested I be ‘friends’ with her, I’d have blackened their eye. And it’s not like I can be anything else to her. But if it’s been torture to be nothing to her, I can’t imagine the fresh hell it would be to be her friend. No. I’d die. I’d literally die.
She nods wordlessly, and we start walking side by side, not touching. We reach the quay without exchanging another word. Before we turn round the corner to the yacht, she lifts her soaked sleeve to wipe the tears from her face, turning away to hide it from me.
Dammit.
Before I do the hundredth stupid thing of the day and wipe her cheeks with my own two hands, someone blocks my path. My gaze, fixed on the ground, stops at the sight of a pair of well-worn Chuck Taylors, and I almost step on them, but manage to stop in time.
Dimitris is standing in front of me, holding Yiannis’ guitar. He’s got his jacket draped over it, almost like I had my jacked draped over Eden. Yiannis is running behind him, his sneakers splashing to a stop in front of us. Their gazes go from Eden to me, and they peer at my face, trying to see what’s underneath the hat and the darkness.
“You’re him, aren’t you?” Dimitris smiles. “You’re Issy Woo.”
….
Well, this is going great. I have barely been on the island two days, and already I’ve managed to out myself to two crazy fans.
Actually, not true: Dimitris and Yiannis are not crazy fans. Well, they are fans. And they are crazy. But their crazy is a whole lot like my crazy: music crazy.
Yiannis is studying to be a choir conductor in the Ionian University and Dimitris already has one university degree and is studying towards another. We talk music and songs all the way back to theL&H, half in English, half in Greek—that part I don’t really understand—and mostly in gestures and songs. I get so excited that I kind of forget the searing pain in my heart.
But not completely.
I keep an eye on Eden as we walk, making sure that she doesn’t fall behind. She is just a warm, safe presence beside me, the one thing that keeps the world together. I could almost forget myself. I could almost lie to myself and think she was mine.
She is nothing to be in pain about.
Oh but she is. She is.
I remember her and forget her all at once.
“This isnotwhere you live,” Dimitris says, eyeing the green waters around the yacht, lit by its marine night lights. Oh. We’re here.
