Chapter Ten Closing Pandora’s Box

apter ten

Closing Pandora’s Box

Jesse woke the next morning to shouting pervading through the walls.

He rose from the pillow and listened. The heated discussion below his floor was in Greek. He couldn’t understand any of it. All he could make out was one voice belonged to Yiannis and the other to Demetrios. Not an inhalation taken by either as they flung fierce words back and forth, raising voices, and shrieking, growling and snarling.

Jesse grappled around for his glasses, finding them on the bedside table. At least he’d taken them off. The arms wouldn’t take another crash face down on the bed. He found his phone in the trousers he hadn’t taken off and checked the display. Nine a.m.

The number one highlighted on the message app. Had Demetrios got back to him? Or had Castor responded to the various messages he’d sent since being here? He opened it.

Can you come? Want to say sorry. And see Freya.

Dad. Jesse threw the phone onto the bed and hauled himself up, scrubbing a hand down his face. He listened to the heated argument for a moment, hoping he could somehow understand Greek. He couldn’t. Eavesdropping was pointless. So he stripped, showered, dressed in shorts and a tee, and shoved his feet into canvas loafers. He grabbed his phone, dropped it in his satchel, put his glasses on, and made his way out of the bedroom.

Demetrios’ door was still ajar. As if he hadn’t been there at all.

Jesse’s jaw clenched.

The argument tempered to whispered voices filtering up the stairs. Jesse had no choice but to creep down them, fingers crossed that Yiannis and Demetrios would be in the kitchen, and he could sneak out unseen. They weren’t. Yiannis sat on the sofa in tatty sleeping shorts and a t-shirt, with unkempt hair and dishevelled sliders as if someone had raised him from the dead. Demetrios stood in front of him, on the other side of the coffee table, his funeral suit creased.

Demetrios stopped talking, turned his head, met Jesse’s gaze.

God, he looked fucked.

Totally fucked.

And in yesterday’s gear.

Was he honestly doing the walk of bloody shame? When he’d known he would be here? On the night of his mother’s funeral. Did he really not care at all?

Yiannis stood. “Jesse.”

Jesse tripped down the next step, glasses tipping to the end of his nose. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“No, no!” Yiannis beckoned him down. “Come, come. Would you like something to eat?”

Jesse adjusted his bag on his shoulder, pushing his glasses back up. He cautiously stepped the rest of the way to the bottom, Demetrios’ eyes focusing on him. He seemed stuck. Body and mind. As though he couldn’t think of what to say. Jesse wasn’t sure he wanted him to say anything. Sorry couldn’t cut it. Whatever he said would only hurt him more. So he avoided him. How could he look him in the eye if he’d just come back from having fucked someone else?

“I want to know you want me, and not just someone.”

Had that someone else proved they wanted Demetrios more than Jesse had?

“No, no, don’t worry.” Jesse headed to the door. “I have to go see my dad.”

“Uh huh.” Yiannis dumped his hands on his hips, and whatever Jesse had walked in on had Yiannis flustered. Out of breath. Unsure of himself. So unlike the Yiannis Jesse had known from his youth. The man who’d captured his mother’s heart and had encouraged her to leave her family. “I’m sorry, Jesse.”

“For what?”

“For what I said to him.” Yiannis wiped his forehead free of the gathering sweat. “I wasn’t kind. Emotions running wild, you understand?”

Jesse nodded. “I know. And I’m sorry for him too. He’s…not taken it well.”

“The death?”

“The divorce.” Jesse gave a despondent smile and reached for the door handle.

“Jesse…” Demetrios came to life then, lurching for him.

But Yiannis barked ferociously in Greek, jolting Demetrios away and back to his father, returning a scathing attack on him. In Greek. Yiannis waved his arms, gesticulating furiously as he shot more words back and Demetrios responded. Neither could be listening to the other. They were yelling over each other, as though in a ‘who could shout the loudest’ competition.

Jesse snuck out.

The morning sun hit him, warming his face and gently easing away the lingering worries from last night. He could deal with the heat in the morning, it was midday when he burned from the inside out. As he retraced his steps from the previous day, he strolled down the bustling main strip where tavernas were opening to serve breakfast. Scents of fresh bread and sizzling meats filled the air, and early risers already sat on the terraces, enjoying coffees before grabbing a sun lounger to while away the day on glorious golden sand.

Demetrios lived in paradise.

The Kallis Taverna, however, remained closed. Had that been what the argument between Demetrios and Yiannis had been about? Had Demetrios’ walk of shame meant he hadn’t done his duty and opened up? Jesse willed the sordid images rushing through his mind to go away. All he could think of, all he could see, was Demetrios pressed up against someone else. Entangled with someone else. Inside someone else, with his thick lips parting as he moaned, crying out the name belonging to someone else.

Someone who’d wanted Demetrios.

Hehad wanted Demetrios.

His dad waited for him outside the Konstantin apartment, smiling for Jesse’s arrival. It was the smile Jesse had met with so often. Filled with regret and remorse. Embarrassment over his actions. Shame that he’d spiralled out of control. Again. It was the smile that said he wished he could do better. But the demons had a firmer grip on him than Jesse did. Jesse wasn’t even mad at him this time. How could he be? His wife had an affair on this island, left him, then died here, leaving him a broken shell of the man he’d once been.

How could Jesse be mad when all he felt was sadness?

Richard clutched a bunch of paper wrapped flowers. Roses. Dusty pink. Freya’s favourite. “Hi, son.”

“Hey, Dad.” Jesse adjusted the bag on his shoulder. “How you feeling?”

“Miserable.” Richard chuckled through his despondency. “But I’m going to do better. Starting now.” He held up the flowers. “I’d like to lay these on the grave and have my moment with her.”

“Okay.”

“Can you take me?”

“Sure. We can walk. Where did you get the flowers?”

“There’s a midweek market up the way. Apparently gets busy on a Wednesday.”

Jesse nodded idly, motioning for his dad to follow him. He always marvelled at how his dad could morph from the angry drunk, the depressive brute, to the man he was in these moments. Back to being his dad, albeit a fragile version. Tired and weary and hurting. Jesse understood why his dad had taken to the drink when his mum had left him. It was a substitute. A way to drown out the pain. Jesse had tried to get him sober, attending AA meetings with him, moving in with him back in Kent for a while to monitor him. Nothing had worked. He always found himself at the bottom of a bottle, eventually. And when he did, he couldn’t control himself. He either cried with grief or got angry and trashed a room. Jesse soon realised that it didn’t matter if he lived with him or not, Richard would always be a slave to his demons. Jesse needed to live his own life.

So he’d left him to cope alone.

The walk up the hill toward the church brought on a sweat, both of them still reeling from a night of drink under a forty-degree ray of Greek sun. But as they passed through the open gates into the graveyard surrounding the all-white orthodox church, white cross poking into the clouds that weren’t there, the air seemed to calm. Almost as if they’d walked into a lover’s embrace. Freya’s embrace.

Everything was quiet, other than a gentle breeze kissing their cheeks or the occasional footsteps of someone finding their loved one’s grave. An ivory oasis with white gravestones and white monuments, an homage to the orthodox church, with only sprinklings of green or dustings of pink from the flowers. It didn’t feel eerie, like the graveyards back home did. More uplifting, somehow. Spiritual. Jesse could understand why Freya’s wishes were to be buried here, in the place she’d fallen in love.

It didn’t stop his pain, though. Or his dad’s torture, and when Jesse pointed out his mother’s grave, the white bed and marble stone cross, flowers from the funeral placed on top of the stone bed, he feared Richard’s reaction. It could go one of two ways. He had to hope that his sobriety meant he would grieve rather than retaliate.

“Go on,” Jesse said. “I’ll stay back here. Go have your time.”

Richard nodded his thanks and stepped forward. Jesse hovered away, finding a wooden bench to sit on while he watched his dad stare at the grave, sullen and forlorn. After a while, to give him privacy, Jesse slipped out the drawing pad his mother had left for him, along with a pencil, and, crossing his ankle over his opposite knee, he rested the pad on his leg and sketched.

He wasn’t sure how long it was, enough time to have filled three pages of the pad, before his dad sat down next to him. Richard peered over his shoulder at the pencil drawing of Freya smiling widely and holding onto her straw sun hat as the breeze ruffled her curls away from her face. Jesse had drawn it from memory. A moment from here. Greece. Naxos. Where she’d been her happiest.

“You’re a talented artist, Jess,” Richard said, linking his fingers between his legs.

“Tell my agent that.”

Richard narrowed his eyes. “You not getting much work?”

“I’m doing okay. We’d all like to be bigger and better, though, right? Waiting for the next big thing to illustrate is taking its time.”

“Saw one of your books in Waterstones at the airport on the flight over. That Dino Takes Flight? Bought it and told the cashier my son drew the dinosaur.”

Jesse smiled, rubbing in the edges of the drawing with his finger. It was nice to hear his dad was proud of him. Even if he said it less, showed it more. “Doing well, that series. Hoping the author will want more soon. Paid for this holiday at least.”

“Not exactly a holiday.”

Jesse shrugged. “We got sun. We got sea. What else is there?”

Richard bowed his head, twisting his fingers in his lap. “Sex is usually the next in that sequence.”

“Not in my experience.”

Richard tensed beside him. “Jesse?”

Jesse hovered his finger over the shading around his mother’s face, the way his dad had said his name prickling his nerves.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“It’s a bit late for the birds and the bees talk, Dad. I know what sex is. I’ve done it.” Jesse shrugged one shoulder, self-depreciatively. “Once or twice.”

“I meant about Demetrios.”

Blood drained from Jesse’s face, and despite the blistering sun burning down on him, his body temperature plummeted. He couldn’t hold his pencil and so dropped it on the page. “What about him?”

“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, or to get upset. I’m saying this only out of love for you.”

“Get to the point.”

“You know he was using you.”

Jesse pushed his glasses up his nose. “I don’t follow.”

“Your…friendship. I know you were close once.”

“Once.”

“I’m glad you drifted apart. I couldn’t have you coming back here all the time, too. But seeing you inside the taverna with him yesterday…then having him walk with us to the villa last night—”

“He was helping.”

“I know. But what I mean is, I don’t think you should trust him.”

Jesse dropped his foot down on the concrete and stared at his mother’s grave, the bouquet of fresh roses lying atop the white bed. He didn’t want to have this conversation. He didn’t want to acknowledge it. Certainly not with his dad. Not when his mum lay right over there, listening in.

Richard laid a hand on Jesse’s knee, forcing the pad to fall to the ground. “I know you had a crush on him when you were a boy. But you do know that Yiannis asked him to be your friend? To coax you away so he could be alone with Freya.”

No. Jesse hadn’t known that. Not at all. But, somehow, in his mushed up mind and his grief and his torturous reeling from last night, it made sense.

Horrible, life altering sense.

“I want to know you want me, and not just someone.”

Was Demetrios just really good at romancing? How many others had he said those things to? Those girls at the beach? Had he wooed them with his accent and dark, sultry eyes?

Jesse picked up his sketch pad, opened the flaps of his satchel, and shoved it in with the pencil. “It doesn’t matter if he did.”

“I would hate for you to get hurt in all this, too. Let this be our goodbye to this godforsaken island. Let it be over.” Richard draped an arm around Jesse. “I’m selling the house.”

“Are you?”

“Starting over. Too many memories there. It’s not…good for my mental health. Like the AA meetings say, remove what triggers you. It’s her. This place. Anything bloody Greek.”

Jesse fluttered his eyes closed.

“I’m putting it up for auction. I’ll be moving to London.” He squeezed Jesse closer, kissing his temple. “I’m starting up an investment firm, going to get some old clients back.” He inhaled the fresh air that, to Jesse, was sour and bitter and cloying. “Starting fresh. Us boys, eh? We don’t need sun, sea and sex.”

“I don’t know, Dad. I quite like sex when I have it.”

Richard chuckled. “Fair point. As did I. From what I can remember of it. Okay, a life of frivolous dalliances. Our motto: don’t get attached. Because, Jesse, you have no idea how much it hurts when the person you’re in love with has been with someone else.”

Oh, Jesse did.

He did all too much.