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Chapter One Dreaded Return

Dreaded Return

Present Day

“Oh, my God!”

Jesse flung his eyes open to darkness. Too dark, he couldn’t make out who had blasphemed with such vigour. Heart pounding with not only the rapid wake up but also the strange voice carrying over from his dream into his reality.

“Are you going to turn that thing off, or what?”

Not a dream, then.

Nor was it romantic, rippling tones telling him how beautiful he was.

Jesse rubbed his eyes. It didn’t help. Not only was it pitch black, but he didn’t have his glasses on and he was practically blind without them. Rolling over, he tapped along his bedside table, found the phone singing a delightful classical rendition also known as his alarm, and squinted at the blurred green text to find the off button. He pressed it.

Silence.

Wonderful, calming silence.

Pulse levelling, he fell back on his pillow, threw an arm over his face, and tried to get back to dreamland. It was better there. Less noise. Less commotion. He’d been in one of his recurring reveries. Where sparkling blue waves lapped over a golden sandy beach and a stunning, tanned male in nothing but snug-fitting Speedos a la Tom Daley kicked the froth at him with a smile delightful enough to wipe away the sudden dread creeping into his reality.

“Is this what time you get up for work?” a voice mumbled, sleep-filled.

The voice wasn’t coming from the man on the fantasy beach. He had a melodic accent, oozing soft tones and depicting nothing but romance. The accent coming from somewhere beside him was harsh. Multi-cultural London English. Crap. Jesse wasn’t alone. He was in his own bed. That he could tell. It had his scent and the familiar feel of soft cotton sheets, but he didn’t have the entire thing to himself as per the norm. Today, another man occupied the other side and was yanking the duvet to cover his…oh my God…naked body.

Jesse wished he could see.

Man turned his back on him, curling up to sleep.

Jesse’s head pounded and his tongue was as dry as a shrivelled up desert cactus. He attempted to roll it around his mouth and produce enough saliva to form words. Or at least swallow the horror building within. Too scared to inhale his own bought and paid for oxygen, he raised his head from the pillow, checking it was a complete stranger next to him and he hadn’t ended up in bed with the bloke from work. Again.

He dropped back to the bed, the whole act way too much effort. Not that he needed to see to know if the bloke was a stranger. He sensed it.

And he wasn’t sure which he’d preferred.

Headache worsening, he pressed the heels of his hands onto his temples and massaged to calm the intense throbbing. Dry mouth more pressing, he grabbed the convenient pint of water on his bedside table. At least he’d had some forethought when he’d clearly been three sheets to the wind last night and prepared ahead. Downing the water, he gagged. It was stagnant, stale, and spilled out of the corners of his mouth to drip down his chin and onto the bed. It hadn’t been a fresh pint. Couple of days old, if he had to guess. Still, it did the job.

His phone lit up with an incoming notification and he dragged it closer to him, barely making out the numbers. Five thirty. In the morning. Why had he chosen to wake himself up at five thirty a.m. on a Saturday? He didn’t even need to wake up that early on a weekday. Working from home most days, he had the luxury of rolling out of bed whenever the light seeped into his room or whenever his flatmate, who had to go into her job at the local theatre, banged around downstairs.

He squinted at the notification, the icon of a plane stirring his subconscious. EasyJet.

Fuck!

Throwing off the duvet, he cursed at his scrambled mind, jostled out of the bed, hitting the guy’s ankle next to him.

“Oi!” the man muffled into the pillow.

“Sorry.” Why was he apologising? He didn’t even know the bloke. And this was his room. His house. His bloody alarm.

Stark naked, he searched the floor for his clothes.

“What the fuck are you doing?” The man lifted his head from the pillow.

Jesse needed his glasses. “Um…” Even the muttered syllable threatened to spill out in vomit. “I have to…” He tapped around on the floor for clothes.

There were too many of them. Some, obviously, didn’t belong to him. He held a pair of jeans up. Way too big. Chucked them away. Found a shirt. Not his. Got rid. Then scrambled along the floor scattered with he didn’t want to know what trying to find something that might belong to him in his own sodding bedroom.

Then, crack.

Jesse closed his eyes. Please, God, no.

He lifted his bare foot, the arm of his Ralph Lauren ultra expensive prescription glasses stuck to his arch. No, no, no! He crouched, finding the lenses shattered. Could this morning get any fucking worse?

“Oi, mate, are you, like, all right?”

Ah yes.

Jesse stood, tapping his way around his bedroom to his desk and rummaged through the various bits of leftover art paper, pens and other shit he kept on there, opened the top drawer to produce his spare pair of glasses. He popped them on. Blinked. They were the NHS standard ones he’d had since he was a teenager when glasses had been free. Thick frames, round lenses and one arm taped on with brown masking tape. But at least he could see the sun poking through the blinds and illuminating the pre-picked and folded clothes laid over the armchair below the bay window. His cabin case was there too, highlighting his judiciousness before he’d, clearly, had a skinful down West Five Bar in Ealing and brought home a stranger.

He shoved on his boxers.

“Uh, sorry.” He twisted to face the bed and peek at his conquest.

The man had a mop of curly dark hair, a skin colouring suggesting he descended from a tropical location or enjoyed a sunbed, and a tattoo covering his entire chest. A decent piece of artwork. Twin roses on each pectoral. It wasn’t out of character for Jesse to fixate on the art rather than the man.

He blinked. “I have to go.”

“Oh.” The man scrubbed his face. “Do you work on a Saturday? Cause that’s, like, something you should have mentioned last night when we decided on your place, not mine.”

“Yes, I can see that it would have been. But, no, it’s not work.”

“Oh.” The man got out of bed and Jesse widened his eyes. He had scored well last night. Gym honed, sturdy, the man might be a model. How had that happened?

Man fluffed out his shirt to slide his defined arms into it. Tattooed sleeves too. Jesse cocked his head to check the ink. The bloke caught him staring, so Jesse turned back to his chair and his own clothes.

“So what is it?” the man asked.

“Hmm?” Jesse pulled on a T-shirt and hoped to God it wasn’t one of his embarrassing Marvel ones. He checked the emblem. Stark Industries. Shit. Iron Man. Luckily, there was a zip up draped over the back of his desk chair and he put it on, doing as the garment intended by closing it up. It was June. The temperature was already hitting the twenties at five a.m. in London and where he was going, it would be scorching. He wouldn’t need the jacket. But he’d just seen the body of the man he’d woken up with and he in comparison was pasty white and hadn’t seen a gym in…ever.

Jesse pulled on his chinos.

“Why are you up at…?” The man pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and lit up the screen. “Jesus. Five a.m.!”

“I have a flight to catch.”

“Seriously?” Bloke ruffled his hair. “Should have mentioned that last night, too.”

“There are a lot of mistakes I made last night,” Jesse mumbled to himself. One was going out at all, knowing he had this flight to catch.

The man stared at him across the hazy darkness and Jesse winced. He’d clearly heard him, and the bloke didn’t look as though he was used to being chucked out of bed at any time of the day, let alone such an inhumane time as dawn. Nor being called a ‘mistake’.

“Sorry,” Jesse said, grabbing his phone from his bedside table and shoving it in his trouser pocket. He retracted the handle of his cabin bag and flicked the strap of the satchel over his shoulder. He trusted his sober self that his passport and other such essentials would be inside. “I can’t miss this flight.”

No. He couldn’t. In some twisted way, getting drunk might have been his subconscious trying to make him. Because as much as he couldn’t miss the flight, it didn’t mean he didn’t want to.

“Whatever.” The man finished dressing.

Jesse nodded, smiled an awkward smile, then rolled his cabin case past the stranger to his bedroom door. He hesitated, wondering if he should ask. Then scanned the room. No telltale signs of a night well spent. The bloke raised an eyebrow. What would be the point in asking for confirmation? So Jesse yanked open the bedroom door and stepped out onto the landing.

“I was gonna knock!” Jade stood outside her bedroom door, wrapped in an over fluffy polka dot pink dressing gown, dark pink hair scrunched up into a bun. She checked his face. Gasped. “What time did you get…?” She didn’t finish the question Jesse wouldn’t have been able to answer as her focus landed on the strange man stepping out beside Jesse. “Oh.” She folded her arms. It wasn’t a disappointed ‘oh’. Or even a knowing ‘oh’. It was an ‘oh’ full of surprise.

Jesse rarely picked up strange men and brought them back to their place.

“No need to knock,” Jesse said, wrapping one arm around his housemate and giving her a humorous hug. He didn’t bother with introductions because he didn’t have all the information to do so. Instead, he stomped off toward the stairs.

“Hi.” He heard the man say.

“Hi,” was Jade’s stunned reply. Then, to him, “Call me when you get there! Hope you’re okay!”

Jesse bumped his cabin case down each stair to drown her out, then leapt to the front door at the end and opened it. None of the safety latches were on. His intoxicated self was as lackadaisical as Jade usually was, despite them living in a neighbourhood rife with late night burglaries.

He flew out onto the street. Man followed, closing his door behind him. It was too late to catch the tube to Heathrow now. Jesse would miss the flight. With no choice but to book an Uber, he fished out his phone, tapping into the app. The man beside him was doing the same thing. Uber booked and on its way in five, Jesse peeked over at the stranger.

“Where are you heading back to?” he asked, hoping to ease the awkward silence.

“Enfield.”

Jesse nodded. That was a fair distance from where they were in Ealing. No wonder he’d suggested his place last night.

“Where are you flying to?” the man asked, feigning the interest.

“Greece.”

“Nice. Lad’s holiday?”

“No.” Jesse didn’t elaborate, and the man said nothing more, shunting them into an awkward silence again. Never a good thing, as Jesse always felt the need to fill it. “Um…” But what should he say? “Thanks for last night.”

Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

Who says, ‘thank you’?

There was a pause, an anxious, all-consuming delay, then the man laughed. “You hook up often?”

Jesse adjusted his glasses, praying they wouldn’t fall apart. “Occasionally.”

“Yeah?” The man regarded him up and down. “You look the boyfriend type. Recent break-up?”

“No.” Jesse shook his head. “I’m as far from the boyfriend type as there is.”

“You’re not a player.”

“I’m a forever bachelor.”

“Recent break up then.” Man nodded as if he’d figured Jesse out on minimal conversation. Jesse had no recollection of what they’d discussed last night. For all he knew, they might have spent the entire evening chatting about politics, the arts, culture, and, of course, his love life.

“Don’t believe in relationships,” Jesse said for no other reason than he might have to explain his weirdness.

“Because you got your heart broken.” The bloke didn’t frame that as a question.

Jesse was about to dispute again when a car pulled around the corner into the street and swerved in beside the stacked up parked cars aligning the row of clumped together town houses. Jesse pressed his thumb on his phone to check the app.

“It’s mine,” the man said and leapt off the curb to open the back passenger door of the arrived vehicle.

This bloke doesn’t have anywhere to be and his bloody Uber comes first? That summed up Jesse’s life.

His mouth spoke before he could stop himself. “Did we exchange numbers?”

The bloke peered over the open car door. “No. We didn’t.”

“Do you want to?”

The man laughed again. “Have fun in Greece.” Then he jumped into the car and off it drove.

Jesse’s Uber pulled up shortly after and he clambered in, scrolling through his phone and pressed down on call. The phone on the other end went straight to voicemail.

Jesse left one. “I hope this means you’re on your way. I’m running late, but I’ll be at gate…” he checked his app, “nineteen. Be there. Don’t flake out on me. Please. I need you.” He hung up and sent the same in text.

Arriving at the airport, Jesse zoomed through fast track, running to the gate for the final boarding call. He was the last one there. No one was waiting for him. Panting, he scanned both ways along the airport for anyone else rushing to catch the plane.

“Sir, we must ask you to board now,” the gate attendant called.

With no choice, Jesse did. He found his window seat, the middle one next to him vacant, and Jesse resigned himself to doing this alone. To being let down. Again. And spent the rest of the flight staring out of the window, stomach in knots.

The touchdown at Athens didn’t ease it. Dread churned in his empty stomach, and he lumbered off the flight, finding the connecting one both angry, fearful, and so very alone. He tried his phone again. This time, his dad picked up.

“I’m sorry, son.” Richard sounded drained. As though every molecule within him had seeped out and all that remained was skin, bone, and an echo on the other end of the line. “I can’t do it.”

Jesse shuffled forward, clambering onto the small plane taking him to the island that had caused his father’s breakdown. He wasn’t angry at his dad. He never had been. Even if his actions had had massive ramifications for Jesse. It wasn’t his fault. “Take care of yourself,” he told his dad and cut off the call.

The small plane he boarded held a handful of people and they piled on like cattle. It took off and brought Jesse ever closer to the place he both hated and treasured.

Naxos. The island of heartache.

He trembled as the small plane landed and he debarked, walking over hot tarmac toward the exit. The horizon blurred before him, Aegean sun burning down as though he’d stepped into the fires of Hell.

In a way, he had.

Outside the airport, he found the right bus with the large lit up letters of Aegleia Beach along the front, his limited-to-none Greek coming in useful. Not that it mattered. Everyone spoke English. He remembered that relief from his yearly visits here as a child. There was only one phrase in Greek he could recall from memory, and that wouldn’t get him very far here.

Plus, he couldn’t bear to hear it.

Couldn’t bear thinking about it.

The packed bus drove off and Jesse shoved in his AirPods hiding from the passing glorious landscape as they trudged on closer to the small beachside resort of his final destination. Aegleia Beach was a traditional Cycladic village built around a bay, made up of whitewashed cubic houses and blue-topped tavernas stretching along an idyllic golden sandy beach next to a cosy marina. It was a sun worshipper’s dream and a holidaymaker’s prime destination. Secluded by coves and set between two hilltops, Aegleia Beach was intimate enough for those wanting a low fuss holiday away from the city of Chora, but had enough bars and restaurants not to feel boxed in.

It was the place Jesse’s mum had fallen in love with.

Then fallen in love in.

So had Jesse.

And as he vacated the bus, rattling the wheels of his cabin case over cobblestones, he drank in the familiar scattering of colourful wooden chairs dug into sand, seafood and meze served to customers as Aegean waves splashed inches from their feet.

It hadn’t changed.

Not one thing.

Except for the added apartment block above the taverna, painted in its blue and white to be part of the Kallis Enterprise.

Jesse dripped with sweat as he stopped and drew in a breath. Because there, in the distance, over the deck and on the beach, a man stood beside a table for two, notebook in hand, pencil at the ready to take down an order, a smile so sincere it melted even the most frozen of hearts. Tanned, almost black hair, tall and defined, with a body not dissimilar to the one Jesse had woken up with that morning, the man was stunning. Beautiful. A sight more tantalising than the sprawling golden sand aligning the bluest of blue seas.

Demetrios Kallis had grown up.

He’d grown all the way up.

And he’d grown up fine.

In a simple pink T-shirt thrown on over khaki shorts, flip-flops buried in the sand, Demetrios was as effortlessly gorgeous as he had been when Jesse had last laid eyes on him eight years ago.

Jesse’s heart skipped.

He hated that it still did that.

Jesse’s name was called from behind and it made Demetrios glance away from his customers, eyes darting along the veranda and landing on him. His smile fell. Not into a frown as such, more into a parting of stunned lips, and his dreamy dark eyes widened. They stayed that way for a while. Gazing at each other across the beach, stuck in memories that chipped away at Jesse’s resolve.

Until Demetrios mouthed a wary, “Hi.”

Jesse was unable to respond with anything, silent or spoken. His racing heart was enough to prove he hadn’t forgotten. He wouldn’t ever forget. No matter how hard he tried, how long it had been, how broken and bruised and against the whole falling-in-love thing he was. Because there he was, and there Demetrios was, after so many years and so much pain, tongue-tied and evoking memories of every tumultuous heartbeat, every saddened tear shed, and every taste so irrevocable as if they’d shared it together yesterday. Like two glimmers of hope lost in time, unable to touch what had once been as tangible as the grains of sand beneath Jesse’s feet, they were suspended in the moment.

Then Demetrios was gone.

Pulled from Jesse’s reach by a stunning brunette in a bikini, he was shunted back to the now. And that, right there, was why love didn’t exist.

But before Jesse could flee, a stout older man drew him into a hug, tears smearing his neck, and, in a Greek accent, sobbed and repeated, “Jesse! Oh, Jesse. Thank God you came!”

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