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One more stop to make before heading back to the office to work late.
After ringing the doorbell, I took a few steps back and pushed my hands into my pockets to wait.
She opened the door, then skewered me with her eyes. “What took you so long to come see me?”
I chuckled and stepped forward. “You going to invite me in, Thia?”
“Thia? Huh. Since when you call me Thia?” She stood with her hands on her hips.
So feisty. I grinned. I could easily see where Ruby got her fire. I acknowledged the rebuke. “Yiayia. You going to invite me in, Yiayia?”
“Ela, agori mou!” She reached up and smartly patted my cheek, perhaps a little harder than necessary, but at least she smiled into my eyes when she did it. I bent to accept her kiss. “Is good to see you. Come in, poulaki mou. You ate?”
“I’m good, Yiayia.”
The other night picking up Ruby, I’d barely taken in the little house. It had not changed in the twenty plus years since I’d stayed there. It even smelled the same.
Regret hit me solidly in the solar plexus, the blow almost physical. This house reflected Ruby and me, like a time capsule from the past, neither of us moving forward despite the steady shifting of the sands of time.
Being immersed in the home where I’d lost my heart and my future, threw me back into the mindset of the twenty-something kid I used to be, the one who barreled in to reclaim his girl. How much hope I had that weekend! More than hope, I came with a mission I was certain I would conquer.
I had not felt that kind of hope and certainty since.
Was anything different this time? Determined not to make the same mistakes, I pondered the differences between then and now.
“Sit down,” Yiayia ordered. “You want coffee?”
“I’ll take a coffee, Yiayia.” I pulled out a chair at the small table where I could easily see her as she moved around the tiny kitchen.
“Ah, bravo, agori mou. Tell me. Why you here now?”
“I moved here.”
She paused to peer at him. “Why you move here? Why you leave B.C.? Why you no move to Toronto? Or Montreal?” She drilled me with questions as she kept watch over the small pot of coffee on the stove.
I smiled into her bright eyes and gave it to her straight. “Ruby’s not in Toronto or Montreal. I need to be close to Ruby, to be ready for her when she’s ready for me.”
Yiayia quietly attended to the stove for several moments, then placed a Greek coffee and a plate piled high with cookies in front of me. Sitting down, she folded her hands together on the small table.
I took a bite. “So good, Yiayia. No one makes koulouraki like you.”
She smiled. “Ah, bravo. Eat. You come to dinner Sunday, then you taste real food. How long since you had real Greek food?”
I suppressed a grin. “It’s been a while.”
“What you like? Pastitsio? Moussaka? Stuffed peppers? Meatballs? What you want me to make for you?”
“I’ll gladly eat anything you make, Yiayia, but Ruby is not ready for this. She doesn’t want me around Jace yet.”
Yiayia leaned forward. “You see her the first time you left her?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t leave her.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You was here?”
“No.”
“No. You left her,” she reaffirmed.
