Chapter 18

CHAPTER

18

PRESENT

A heavy rain on the day before the gala forces a last-minute change of plans. I checked the forecast for weeks beforehand, with consistent results: we were due to have a big storm roll through on Thursday, the night of Halloween, but the Saturday before was predicted to be partly cloudy and mild. So it made a lot of sense to set up tables and chairs on the sprawling lawn in front of the Alumni House. Especially taking into consideration the unexpected but enthusiastic response rate on our event page on Facebook. The house itself simply isn’t large enough to host this many people, but with the weather forecast uncertain for tomorrow, it’s looking like the house won’t have much of a choice.

“Mack, listen to me,” I say, phone pressed between my shoulder and my ear as I try to disentangle myself from the fall foliage garland I’m pulling down from the pediment. We decorated the outside just two days ago. If the weather app could’ve been a bit quicker on the uptake, it would have saved me a whole heap of trouble, but…

“Would you please stop inter—” The stepstool teeters beneath me and I break off mid-word to steady myself. “For two seconds, please, please just hear me out without cutting me off,” I beg, because the last five minutes have been a constant stream of complaints and vague threats like keep your scholarships. I’m on the verge of hanging up. “I know rolling out the food truck was part of your reason for agreeing to this gig”—make them feel heard, that’s the first step—“but people aren’t going to want to stand in line for a food truck in the rain.” I step down from the stool, gathering the garland in my arms and carrying it inside.

Teddy is in the great room with Bel, who has the orange twinkle lights spooled around her arms. She enlisted him to drape the lights around the hooks in the crown molding. Mack’s ranting in my ear about how this isn’t what he agreed to.

“I understand that,” I say. I deposit the garland on the coffee table and switch my phone to the other ear. Teddy arches a brow and I return the expression, blowing out a breath. “Well, if that’s the case, then I’ll just have to—” I’m interrupted by a fresh string of curse words. “I’m not sure that sort of language is necessary.” Teddy abandons the twinkle lights and moves toward me. “If you could just—”

The phone is snatched from my grasp before I have a chance to react. Teddy holds it up to his ear. “Hello, Mack?” he says. There’s that authoritative voice again. “I’m on the scholarship committee with Clara. What seems to be the problem?”

Everything goes quiet while he listens with his brow knit. I look over at Bel. She shrugs and pulls a face like at least you’re not having to deal with it.

“Uh-huh.” I can’t make out exactly what Mack is saying, but whatever it is, it doesn’t sound polite. A muscle twitches in Teddy’s jaw. “Fine by us. We’ll just have to remove your logo from the banners.”

The phone’s not on speaker, but there’s no mistaking Mack telling him exactly where we can shove those banners. Teddy draws the phone away from his ear, frowning at the screen.

And then he presses the screen to end the call.

I toss a hand in the air, dropping it with such force that it slaps my thigh. “Great. So we’re down a caterer.” I spin on the spot like I’m going to walk off, but then immediately spin back again. I don’t know what to do with all this pent-up frustration. I plant my hands on my hips and fix him with a glare. “I was trying to talk him down.”

“Very professionally, I might add.” Teddy hands me my phone, all easy posture, his other hand tucked into the pocket of his sweatpants. We all dressed comfortably today, but whereas my threadbare Phi Alpha Theta hoodie and black leggings make me look like I’m desperately clinging to my college years, he manages to look good in sweats and a T-shirt.

“What do you want me to do, cuss the guy out?” I ask.

“He seemed to have no problem cussing you out.”

“Which I was willing to overlook because he was doing us a favor. It’s not like we were paying him.”

Teddy scoffs. “Guys like that don’t work for free. He was doing it for the exposure.” He flings a hand at our surroundings, stacks of colorful flyers and scattered autumn decorations, like a tornado ripped through a crafting store. “The scholarship and the banners.”

“The banners!” I slap a hand to my forehead, rounding again to where the vinyl banners lie in a haphazard pile, waiting to be hung. I lift one by the corner like it’s contaminated, a used napkin or a dirty dishrag. The oversized Bucky’s logo is printed among our other sponsors. “We don’t have time to get them reprinted.”

“I’ll paint over them,” Bel volunteers. Teddy and I both turn to look at her. “What? I have white paint. It’ll be like using Wite-Out, only bigger.”

“What about the food?” I ask.

“Let me make a quick call,” Teddy says before excusing himself and cutting across the hall. His deep voice carries from the other room, too muffled by the old horsehair plaster to hear what he’s saying.

I look over at Bel. “Do you think ordering pizza would be tacky?”

She shrugs. “No tackier than burgers and dogs.”

“Touché.” I search for local pizza places on my phone, to get a feel for my options. Without the full scholarship committee backing this decision, I’ll have to pay out of pocket.

A moment later, Teddy steps back into the great room, pocketing his phone. “All right,” he says on a sigh. “So I found us a caterer.” I open my mouth to ask who, and where, and how, but he cuts me off, holding up a finger. “On one condition.”

I’m pretty sure I’d accept any condition, right about now. But there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eye that makes me wary. “What’s that?”

The corner of his mouth quirks, like he’s holding back a smile. “I have to bring you to meet her.”

An hour and a half later, I’m parking outside a restaurant in a town just south of Pittsburgh. The lot is empty, but the building is lit from within, Taverna Eliopoulos glowing in neon blue cursive above the entrance. Teddy’s Datsun creeps into the space next to mine. He shuts off his headlights before stepping out into the brisk evening. We agreed to drive separate so that he can check up on his apartment in Pittsburgh and drive back down with the food tomorrow morning.

“So when you said ‘put down roots,’” I say, coming around to meet him at the curb, “you meant that she finally did it. She got her restaurant.”

Teddy stares up at the white brick building with black-framed windows, the boxes trimmed with greenery that probably flowers in the spring. The lights in the dining room are dimmed, but a warm glow emanates from what I assume is the kitchen. “She sold the auto body shop after my dad passed,” he explains. “Didn’t seem like I was very likely to take over, given—”

“Given your impressive post-doctoral career,” I say, tossing him a sad smile.

He laughs under his breath. “I don’t know about all that.”

“Is she here? There aren’t any cars.”

“She parks around back. Come on.”

He opens the door, unlocked despite it being after hours, and steps aside to usher me in. Faint music carries from somewhere deeper in the building, and he ushers me toward it, past square tables set with wineglasses. The dining room is stylish and modern, with sleek light fixtures hanging from a coffered ceiling. Either the heater’s cranked or someone’s baking. It’s warm enough that I shed my hoodie, folding it over an arm. I’m not exactly dressed to impress tonight, but I don’t have any time to worry about whether or not I look presentable, because we’re rounding the corner into the kitchen.

The kitchen is all gleaming stainless steel. Amidst the assortment of half-chopped vegetables lying on the prep table, a portable speaker blasts “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell. A woman in perhaps her mid-fifties hovers over a metal stock pot, a black apron thrown over her double-breasted chef’s jacket. There’s a familiar furrow to her brow as she lifts the lid, steam billowing around her. Her thick brown hair is knotted away from her face and streaked with wiry grays.

In a blink, I know that Dimitra Harrison is not the meek housewife I’ve always imagined.

“Ah!” Noticing us, she pops the lid back on the pot and wipes her hands on the apron. “There you are. I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Can’t hear anything when you’re blasting the music like that,” Teddy says irritably, gesturing at the portable speaker. “And what have I told you about leaving the door unlocked after hours? It could’ve been anyone walking in here. You wouldn’t have heard a thing.”

She makes a pfft sound and pats around her apron. “I only unlocked it because you said you were coming.” She pulls her phone out of the front pocket and pauses the music, but the kitchen doesn’t quiet—it’s filled instead with the bubbling of pots, the ticking of an egg timer. She pockets the phone and fixes me with a broad smile. “Hell-o!”

“Mom, this is Clara,” Teddy says. “You remember, she’s the one—”

She interrupts with an impatient wave of her hand. No rings, her unvarnished nails cut short. “I know who Clara is.”

I extend a hand, businesslike. “It’s lovely to finally meet you.” I’m not sure how to address her. If she were a stranger, I’d have no problem calling her Dimitra, but somehow, even at thirty, calling my former best friend’s mom by her first name feels too familiar. But Mrs. Harrison feels too formal.

She clasps my hand in both of hers, not shaking it, merely holding it. There’s a warmth to her expression that’s a little disarming. She leans in, conspiratorial. “You know”—she casts a glance at Teddy as though checking to see whether he can hear us, even though she’s stage whispering—“I had almost given up on meeting you. So many years of Clara this, Clara that, but he never once asked to bring you home.”

I laugh. “Was he supposed to?”

Teddy drags a hand down his face, but by the time he pulls it away, he’s barely containing a smile. “Do we have to do this right now?”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re on a schedule.” She rolls her eyes at the drop ceiling. I get the impression that she’s the sort of woman who operates on her own time. For a commercial kitchen, this whole place is immaculate. And here she is, working alone after hours. “Aprons are hanging over by the walk-in. Let’s put you both to work.”

I wasn’t expecting to help prep the food, but who am I to complain? This is an unexpected window into Teddy’s life. I grab one of the black aprons off the wall next to the walk-in freezer and tie it around my waist, double-knotting for good measure before joining Dimitra over at the prep table. She suggests moussaka and pastitsio for the entrees, both casserole-type dishes that would be easy to store in serving trays and reheat, and instructs me on how to slice and rinse the eggplants before soaking them in a colander.

Teddy’s already prepping ingredients for a vegetarian pastitsio like it’s second nature, and I suppose maybe it is. He wasn’t always forthcoming about his parents. His relationship with his dad was strained at times, I knew, and I always got the impression that his mom was overbearing. But maybe that was a side effect of her circumstance—having so little control over her own life that she felt the need to exert control over the one person she could.

“I was so sorry to hear about your husband’s passing,” I say in the middle of peeling potatoes for the moussaka. I’m not sure what else to say— I wish Teddy would’ve reached out to me. I wish we never had our falling-out, and then maybe I could have been there for him.

She sucks her teeth, a sort of sympathetic tsk, and touches my elbow as she moves around me to grab the colander of sliced eggplant. But she doesn’t say anything, none of the usual platitudes about how she misses him but knows he’s in a better place. I imagine it’s complicated. They weren’t exactly happy, the way Teddy relayed it. But they still shared a life together.

We work in silence for a while, and when we get tired of that, to a soundtrack of eighties synthpop, which Dimitra blasts so loud, the little speaker rattles the stainless steel. “Helps me concentrate,” she shouts over Depeche Mode. I meet Teddy’s eye from across the prep table, both of us chuckling. His eyes crinkle at the corners and even after he looks back down at his work, the smile lingers. And I’m suddenly, acutely aware of just how much I’ve missed him.

How many moments like this, how many late nights and shared laughs have we missed out on? I don’t have to do the math to know that it’s too many. But somewhere between him showing up here at the start of term and now, I’ve started to think of him as a friend again.

Dimitra’s speaker has run out of battery by the time we finish up for the night. I’m not sure how many hours of work we put in, but Teddy promises he’ll come back first thing in the morning to finish up any prep work.

Dimitra serves a small cup of espresso to help me stay awake on the drive home. “Best of luck with your gala.”

“It was really lovely to meet you,” I say again, but it’s less of a formality this time. I didn’t expect to stay up past midnight tonight, but it’s been a delight.

She winks. “I hope I’ll be seeing more of you.”

With that, she slips out the back. Teddy excuses himself to the dining room to lock up for the night. “We’ll leave through the back, too,” he explains, walking backward out of the kitchen. “Front door always sticks when you try to lock it from the outside.”

I nod and watch him go, my hip leaning into a prep table that’s covered in flour, bits of onion skin, and dirty knives, which Teddy insists he’ll clean in the morning. I’m wired enough that I’m not even sure I need the espresso, but I sip it anyway. It’s thick and bitter and a touch tart, nothing like the coffee I brew at home. But I like it.

Teddy returns a moment later. His glasses are hooked on the neck of his black T-shirt, which is dusted in white. “You are covered in flour,” I inform him, brushing off his shoulder with a hand, but it’s a fruitless effort.

He reaches into a measuring cup and pinches out some flour, swiping it across my cheek. I scrunch up my face. “So are you.”

I laugh, setting down my espresso, and swipe my cheek.

“Ready to head out?” he asks.

“Yes,” I lie.

His gaze sweeps over me and he quirks a brow. I look down. I’m still wearing my apron. With a snort, I push off the table and reach behind my back. I fumble trying to undo the double knot. Funny how the simplest tasks are complicated by the smallest shift in perspective. Like reaching for the shifter when you’re seated on the right side of the car, or trying to tie someone else’s shoe.

“Here, let me.”

Teddy steps up behind me, his fingers brushing against mine. I clasp my hands in front of me and stare down at the breast pocket while he works, my cheeks heating. Taverna Eliopoulos is embroidered there in sleek black thread, camouflaged on the dark fabric. “Who is Eliopoulos?” I ask, just to break the silence.

“That’s her maiden name.” His fingers work the knot loose and I duck out from under the apron, turning to face him. We’re standing quite close, but he makes no move to back away. I can feel the warmth radiating from him, see the flour dusting his hair, tinting the brown white.

I fold the apron and set it on the table, my hand resting there. “So you must’ve been raised really Greek.”

“Define ‘really Greek.’”

“I don’t know.” Really, I have no idea what I meant by that. It just came out, something to fill the silence. “Like the family in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. ”

He laughs under his breath. “Ah, no.” I peer at him, questioning, and after a few seconds he deigns to elaborate. “My mom was kind of isolated from her family, to be honest. I didn’t meet her sister until I took the trip to Europe that one summer.”

His hand rests on the table next to my apron, fingers splayed wide. His dad’s ring is on his finger, flour and dough packed into the hairline engraving. I wonder why he wears it, what was said before his dad passed. Maybe it’s because he shares his dad’s name; sometimes things are as simple as that.

I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to drive home, suffering through an hour of silence, or cranking up the radio in an attempt to drown out my thoughts.

“This was nice,” I say. “Unexpected, but nice.” I drag my gaze back to his, willing myself to just say it, to get it out in the open, because denying it hasn’t done me any favors. And he did invite me here, tonight. That has to count for something. “I’ve missed you. I think—” I hesitate when he doesn’t immediately say it back, but he doesn’t cut me off, either. His Adam’s apple jumps in his throat. “I think more than I realized, if that makes sense. It was easier to pretend I didn’t miss you when I barely even remembered what it was like having you around.”

After a heavy pause, he speaks, his voice gravelly. “You keep calling me Teddy. No one’s called me that in years.”

It’s not quite the response I was looking for. I stare at my hand, curling my fingers in the fabric of the apron. “You know what they say about old habits.” I try to force my voice to sound light, airy, but it comes out a bit shaky. I’m nervous. I’ve just put myself out there a little and it feels like he’s trying to change the subject. I shouldn’t have said anything.

His hand moves and his fingers brush against mine. “I like it,” he says. “I’ve missed hearing it.”

Our fingers intertwine. I tear my gaze from our hands and meet his eye, my blood pumping. Without his glasses, he seems more exposed, in a way, nothing between me and his emotions, which are on full display. Right now, his pupils are wide, brown swallowed up by black. He shifts, angling his body closer to mine. I give him a tiny nod, permission, and he bends to kiss me.

It’s slow and longing at first, remembering each other, trying to find our footing. There’s something so surreal about this—kissing him again. It’s not like it never crossed my mind, but I’d filed it away as an impossibility. But this is happening. His hand finds my lower back and drags me against him so that our bodies are flush. His tongue moves against mine and a whimper escapes me.

Desire crashes through me like water broken from a dam, a hard rush of something I’ve held back for years. I reach for him on instinct, my hands raking over his chest, broad and firm beneath his T-shirt. The hand around my back tightens, crushing my hips against his. It’s almost too much, the flood of emotions and lingering questions and just pure need. Maybe we should stop and think this through, but instead, we’re stumbling, and then the cold steel of the prep table presses into my backside. Teddy hoists me up onto it and I spread my legs, dragging him between them. He’s hard, straining against his sweatpants where his hips settle into the apex of my leggings.

Any semblance of coherent thought is ripped up and scattered to the wind. I should scramble after the pieces, try to make sense of them, but Teddy’s hands are skating up my sides, over my ribs, brushing against the thin cotton bra beneath my shirt. He groans into my mouth as I move my hips against him, wanting him closer. I reach for the hem of my shirt to tug it over my head, needing to feel his hands on me—

And then the back door bangs open.

It’s as though we’ve been doused in a bucket of cold water. We spring apart—or rather, he springs back, almost crashing into the gas range stove. I slide off the prep table, tugging my shirt back down, my pulse still pounding through me.

“Made it three blocks before I realized I left my purse,” Dimitra calls from somewhere, her voice echoing off the tile. Her movements are partially obscured by the heating lamps hovering low over the prep tables. “Don’t mind me.”

I’m not sure she saw anything, but I’m flooded with embarrassment anyway. It’s like I’m experiencing déjà vu, transported to a night thirteen years ago, when we were similarly interrupted. Compelled to busy myself, I snatch the apron off the table and go to hang it by the freezer. My stupid leggings are caked in flour now, like I’m bread dough someone rolled around to give a good dusting. Dimitra bids us good night again before stealing away through the back door.

“I should probably get going,” I announce, without looking at Teddy.

He clears his throat. “I’ll walk you out.”

I wait outside while he double-checks that everything’s put away in the fridge and shuts off the lights. It’s a cold, clear night and the moon is a small sliver like a fingernail. I hug my sweatshirt close, lost in thought. Teddy steps outside and gives the handle a good tug to make sure it’s locked.

“I’ll text you when I’m heading down tomorrow,” he says as we walk around to the front of the building, where we parked our cars.

I manage a tight nod. “Sounds good.”

He lingers, frowning off into the middle distance. The traffic lights at the intersection change from yellow to red, but there are no cars. “Something’s bothering you,” he says finally.

I’m not sure I want to talk. But there’s this feeling, words bubbling up in my throat. Less word vomit and more confessional, because if tonight is a night for getting things out in the open, then I want to do it right. I want him to know the truth.

“I loved you.”

The words spill out, the circumstances so different from all the times I’d imagined telling him. I never said those words to him, not even as friends, but they were always there, just beneath the surface. In the little things: phone calls at Christmas and counting the days until summer. Long drives to meet up in the middle of nowhere and history books with annotations in the margins, neat square handwriting beneath my own slanted scribbles. Drinking Pepsi because it reminded me of him, of that first summer, skipping stones by the lake with crutches tucked beneath my arms.

But the whole is lesser than the sum of its parts. There’s nothing to show for it, all this wasted love with nowhere to put it.

He just looks at me, his eyes sad.

“Why didn’t you follow me?” I ask. “Stop me? That day in the sandwich shop. You let me walk away.”

He bows his head, staring at the ground. “I was seeing someone. You know that.”

“We could’ve been friends,” I say with a weak shrug.

“You didn’t want me to follow you. Not as a friend.”

I hate how well he knows me, that he could read me like that even when we’d gone years without talking. But there’s more to it than that, more that I wanted out of him, then and now. “I know that I hurt you,” I continue, trying to keep my voice steady, “and I’m sorry for that. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.” I pause. I want to give him time to absorb the words, to feel the full impact of what I’m telling him. Because I can’t let myself fall for him again until I get it out in the open. Lay all the cards on the table, so that we both can make an informed decision.

I take a deep breath. “But I need you to understand that you hurt me, too.”

He reaches for me. “Clara—”

“No, don’t ‘Clara’ me right now.” I step out of his reach. “You were supposed to be my best friend. And you abandoned me, like I was trash, like I didn’t mean anything—”

“You abandoned me !” he cries, throwing his arms wide. He turns like he’s about to walk off, then rounds back, chopping his palm to emphasize each point. “My dad had just had a stroke. All of my goals, everything I worked for, I had to put it on hold. I needed you. And you weren’t there for me.”

An incredulous laugh escapes me. “Oh, I was there for you. I answered all your calls, all your texts, I probably blew a thousand dollars on my cell phone bill alone—”

He tries to talk over me, but I don’t even hear what he’s saying, because now I’m on a roll.

“—but none of that matters, apparently. It only counts if I was there for you on your terms.” My laugh morphs into a sort of dry sob, my voice quivering. “I would’ve still been there, Teddy. Through everything. I wanted to be. You’re the one who shut me out.”

A muscle feathers in his jaw, but he doesn’t argue, doesn’t even try to contradict me. He rips his gaze from mine, staring off again like he can’t bear to look me in the eye.

I swipe a stray hair from my cheek. I already regret bringing this up. I don’t know what I expected. “Right.” I sniffle. “It’s late. We can talk about this tomorrow.”

I walk around my car and shove the key in the door, my eyes burning.

“I’m not sure you should be driving right—”

“I’ve been making my own decisions for nine years without your supervision!” I cry before ducking into the car. “No need to start worrying about me now.” I shut the door with a snap, my punctuation mark on this whole conversation.

He just stands there as I back out of the parking spot, flip the car around, and pull out onto the street. Tears blur my vision, the streetlights spreading into starbursts. I wipe my eyes on the back of my hand. It takes every ounce of my willpower not to look back.