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His eyes lit up. “Tree-trekking?” I screeched.
Alex laughed. “Thia! It’s safe! They have harnesses and everything!”
“Oh, my God!” I glared at them both, half-serious. They talked about this adventure group incessantly, and I wished they would pick up knitting instead. “I was joking when I guessed tree-trekking. If God meant for you to be up in trees, He would have given you wings!”
“They are boys, poulaki mou,” Yiayia loudly interrupted my tirade in a well-rehearsed improv. She pinched their cheeks, one in each hand, and pulled. I winced in sympathy. Greek love hurt. “They going to be men, strong men.” She released them, lightly smacking the same cheeks she had just pinched, and both boys rubbed their faces and laughed.
“So, can we go, Momma?” Jace asked, and they both looked at me hopefully. This boy would be the death of me. He had always pushed his limits. He loved the adrenalin rush.
I narrowed my eyes on my nephew. “Does my sister know about this?”
He smiled his most charming smile and put his arm back around me. “See, Thia, I figure if you’re okay with it, she’ll definitely be okay with it. We decided to work on you first.”
I glanced at my boy to catch him rolling his eyes at his cousin. “You weren’t supposed to say that part, Alex.”
Alex grinned at me. “Naw, Thia’s cool. She knows how we operate.”
I chortled and hugged him. “I’ll talk to your mom. If she’s okay with it, I’m okay with it.”
“Yiayia is okay with it!” Yiayia interrupted testily. “Why you no ask Yiayia?”
Both boys kissed her cheek, but only Alex answered. “Because you don’t drive, Yiayia, and you’d snitch on us.”
She barked out a laugh while reaching again for their cheeks. They successfully dodged her pinching fingers on their way to the front door.
“Don’t go far. We gonna eat soon!” She bellowed after them.
They took their noise with them but left their happy vibe. I smiled.
“Good boys, poulaki. I’m proud,” Yiayia said, returning to chopping the salad for dinner.
“You want help, Yiayia? What time is Amber coming?”
“She be here soon, koukla. You sit and have rest. You work too hard. You want coffee?”
“Maybe you should sit, Yiayia.”
At eighty-five years old, Yiayia had slowed down. A lot. She still cooked every day. She claimed it gave her happiness to cook for us, and it kept her active.
“What else I’m going to do, poulaki? Go dancing? Dig ditches? Ech, I’m old lady but I can cook.”
“I’ll get a cranberry juice, Yiayia,” I answered, moving to the fridge.
“Sit down, poulaki. I get it for you.”
I took a seat and sighed, knowing the interrogation was coming.
Once she set the glass down in front of me, she sat down as well, pulling her chair to face me, so close that her knees bumped mine.
“Listen to Yiayia.” I opened my mouth to protest, but she shut me down. “Ach! You listen to Yiayia, poulaki. Your lives took you apart, but your hearts are still one. Sometimes God is giving us second chances. Don’t throw it away.”
“We’re different people, now. It doesn’t make sense, Yiayia.”
Yiayia sat back in her seat and her eyebrows hit her hairline. She pointed to me, then herself. “You telling me life don’t make sense? You think I don’t know?” She pointed back at me. “You need to learn this lesson. The world is yours, poulaki mou,” she beseeched, then she leaned forward and grabbed my hand, closing it into a fist. “You must take what you want from it, or you gonna take what it gives you.”
I looked down at her wrinkled and age-spotted hands, her fingers gnarled by arthritis. I smoothed the pad of my thumb over the smooth stones of her ring. She immigrated to Canada, newly married to my pappou, with no money, no English, no job, and pregnant with my father. She knew all about grabbing hold of life.
She lost her son, then her daughter-in-law, then her retirement, then her husband. She knew all about taking what life gave her just as well.
I wrapped my other hand around hers and looked into her bright eyes. “I’ll think about it, Yiayia. I promise.”
She grunted, using the table to push herself up. “Good. Now I feed you. You look skinny. How you work at Spuds and be so skinny?”
In fact, I was not skinny. At best, I was average. I could even stand to lose twenty pounds. Twenty pounds that snuck up on me bit-by-bit over the past decade. I didn’t usually mind. I was fit and healthy, I just liked my food, so my muscles were well-padded. I wondered if Vander noticed the difference.
I shook myself mentally. What did I care? If I disappointed him, he didn’t have to stick around. I got up to put my glass in the dishwasher. He excelled at leaving, I thought meanly. I pressed my lips together. I knew that wasn’t fair, but I wasn’t about to turn my life upside down for someone who wouldn’t do the same for me.
A small voice in the back of my head whispered that he moved his entire life across the country just to be close to me, but I shut it down.
I wasn’t ready to be logical.
