Seven Days of Friday (Women of Greece Book 1) (7 page)

M
elissa is making
progress
of the backwards kind.

Regress?

If anyone pointed that out to her, she’d say, “Whatever,” and keep on cutting.

Nobody her age wears a watch anymore. They’ve all got phones to give them life’s Cliff’s Notes. Time, date, number of “friends” at any given moment. Bored? Your cell phone’s got that covered, too.

But Melissa dug out her watch from three years ago, strapped the silver-on-white face to her wrist, risked being uncool. And – voila! – it’s the perfect hiding place. So what if leather on shredded skin stings? That’s kind of the point. It’s a modern day take on the hair shirt. Things start rolling down that slope, her head gets muddled, all she has to do is rub, press, and everything floats away, courtesy of fresh pain.

Three days to go.

She saw Dad last night and she’s seeing him again tonight. He promised Ian wouldn’t be there, but he promised that last night, too.

Ian can’t help himself. He’s desperate to be friends.

Well. Was.

Last night he was playing at being her BFF, asking too many questions about stuff Melissa doesn’t want to talk about. Boys, friends, blah, blah, blah. And all the pressing and rubbing on her wrist wasn’t making him go away. So, she stalked off to the bathroom and made an old cut new.

She came back ready to deal. Said, “Did Dad tell you how a guy from my school saw him sucking dicks in the park?”

Melissa expected:

An explosion.

A fight.

Screaming, tears, and one last look at Ian’s back as he stormed out of the house.

Yeah, none of those things happened.

Ian gave her a steel smile and said, “John and I love each other very much, but we don’t chain each other to the bed. Much.”

Dad said, “Ian!”

Ian said, “What? Your kid was asking for it.”

While they were bickering, Melissa puked two slices of pepperoni and twelve ounces of Fanta onto Ian’s plate.

Now Melissa can’t wait to fly away to the Ian-free zone. Her safety pin is all packed.

V
ivi is
the Titanic
and Eleni is the iceberg. But the way Eleni’s behaving, anyone would think she’s the doomed ship. This time, the ship’s not going down; if it does, Vivi has lifeboats. Chris and Trish are at the airport with them. They’re all hovering in a small, noisy cluster near the security checkpoint.

Time marches to the right. Nobody says goodbye.

“Is Dad coming?” Melissa wants to know.

“He said he'd be here, Honey.”

Eleni makes a face. “Some nerve he has, showing his face to this family.”

“Chill out, Mom,” Vivi says. “He's Mel's dad.”

“And that's as it should be,” Trish says, hugging her around the neck. “I know you need to go, but I don’t want you to.”

“She does not have to go.” Eleni cups Melissa's cheeks in her hands and kisses her forehead over and over, until it’s Revlon orange. “She is deserting me, depriving me of my beautiful granddaughter.”

Vivi wants to scream, but the TSA guys already look jumpy.

“Eleni, they need to go,” her father says.

The line is growing exponentially. Harried travelers, annoyed and tired before they even take off their shoes and dump their belongings into those plastic tubs, are being sucked into the security vortex.

“Dad's here!”

Vivi looks up, and sure enough, John is striding their way in his dark blue pinstripe. She must have taken that thing to the dry cleaners’ a hundred times. But as he gets closer, she sees the slightly different cut of the lapels, the shinier buttons. It’s new – a post-Vivi suit.

“I got caught up with a client.” He drops an awkward kiss on Vivi’s cheek before scooping Melissa into a bear hug.

Next, John shakes hands. Trish gets her usual peck, and then he closes in on Eleni.

Eleni is glowering, a dangerous shine to her eyes. They’re all skating along a paper-thin line. One wrong word and she’ll explode.

Vivi holds her breath.

He leans closer.

Eleni’s hand shoots up, steel trap gripping his mouth. He looks like a shocked goldfish. Fresh Botox amplifies his distress.

“Wha – ?” he starts, but her other hand clobbers him around the ear.

“Do not touch me with that mouth,” she says. “Your breath smells like a man's penis.”

“As opposed to a woman's penis,” Chris says for everyone's benefit. Melissa’s eyes bug. Trish elbows him.

“Go and wash the penis off your mouth, then you can come back and kiss me. Go!” Her fingers unclamp, she shoves him in the direction of the men's room. John walks away, dazed.

“Mom,” Vivi says, into her hands.

“Eleni, enough,” her father says.

“What? He smelled like a penis. I do not want that on my face. Who knows where he has been?”

Vivi covers Melissa’s ears. “Mom, enough. Don't make this unpleasant.”

Hands in the air. “Unpleasant? This is already unpleasant. You think I want to be here sending my child alone into the snake pit? Greece will eat you alive. You will come crawling back bleeding, crying, 'You were right, Mama,’ and, ‘Why didn't I listen to you when I had the chance, Mama?' Trust me, you will be back.”

“Hey, Mel,” Trish says cheerfully. “Let’s go get some magazines for the trip.”

Mel’s face says that’s a great idea.

Vivi wags her finger under her mother’s nose. “Don't make this harder for my daughter. Do you think this is easy? I packed up our whole lives because I want to make something better. I don't want Mel to grow up with one of those weepy divorcees for a mother, who just lies around the house watching soaps and reading magazines, wishing she had a life. Don't you want more for me than that? Aren't you supposed to want me to make my life better?”

Olympic-level eye rolling.

Her dad reels her in for a hug. She holds him tight. “Thanks, Dad.”

“If you need anything, you call us, okay?” he says into her hair.

Chris says, “Ditto, Sis.”

John is on his way back from the bathroom. The minty fresh mouthwash reaches them before he does.

“Good boy,” Eleni says. “Much better. Did you wash your hands, too?”

“What did I say, Mom?”

She ignores Vivi, offers her cheek to John.

Trish and Melissa return with an armload of magazines. Her sister-in-law slides a couple into Vivi’s carry-on bag. “It's a long flight. Celebrity gossip will either keep you amused or put you to sleep. You can't lose.”

Hugs. Tears. I love yous.

“I'd give you a tissue, but I'm not sure which compartment they're in,” Vivi says. Their half-hearted laughter is damp. The security line is waiting. “We have to go now.”

John hugs her again. “Don't be a stranger,” he says.

Like you? But she’s beyond that now; time for a clean slate, and that means letting go. “We'll call you when we get there.”

Chris goes next. “Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

Trish scoffs. “That's like giving her an open checkbook. If you decide to stay for good, we're coming for Christmas.”

Eleni is horrified. “And who will I have Christmas with? Everyone is leaving me.”

“What, I am chopped gyro meat now?” her husband asks. He hugs them again. “Remember what I said. You need anything, you call.”

“I will.”

And finally, it’s mother and daughter, staring each other down.

“You will regret this,” Eleni says.

“I'll regret it more if I don't go.”

“Do as you please.”

“Mom . . .”

“Fine, go. Your aunt Dora will pick you up in Volos. She is less of a snake than the others, but she is still a small snake. Never forget.”

Snakes. Got it.

Then she and Melissa are wending their way through the paranoia zone.

“Mom?” Melissa inches closer. Vivi wraps an arm around her shoulders. Melissa doesn't flinch, thank God.

“What, Honey?”

“What's that?” She points to a TSA guy brandishing a handheld metal detector.

“Don't worry, it's not for a cavity search.”

“A what?”

“Never mind,” Vivi says. “When we get to Greece, you call Dad, ask him to explain it.”

Okay, so it’s going be a while before the bygones are, well, bygone.

E
verything about Anastasia is
a mystery
, except what’s between her legs. She sizzles one moment, freezes him the next.

Sometimes she makes him beg to come. Next day, she claws his clothes off, like fucking him is going to keep her alive.

It’s a new game – her game.

She’s playing, playing, and he’s eating her up like a starving beast. He doesn’t care, he just wants more.

Tonight:

She peels her skin off his, skin damp and glowing with light sweat. “Was that good?”

His heartbeat takes its time finding normal. “Always.”

“Do you mean that?” She drags a fingernail across his chest, carves her name there.

“Mmm hmm.”

Max,” she says, in a petulant girlish voice. “Are you going to marry me?”

Okay, should have seen that one coming. Now what?

He kicks the covers aside, ditches the condom. “If I ask you, you’ll know.”

Kaboom!

Anastasia takes the top sheet with her. Wrapped from head to toe in cotton, she gathers her clothes, stalks into the bathroom.

The door slams and clicks.

This is his cue: Anastasia wants to be pursued, cajoled. Won.

And Max doesn’t like games.

He takes his time. Pulls his boxer briefs on. Sits on the edge of the bed and scratches his head, while he thinks about his current crop of patients, thinks about scheduling the Jeep for maintenance.

Eventually he gets up, knocks on the bathroom door.

“You don't love me. What else could we possibly have to talk about?” The door muffles her voice.

“You're putting word in my mouth. I never said that.”

“If you're just using me for sex, be a man and tell me.”

They’ve had this argument before – at least twice. “Anastasia, just come out and talk like an adult. You’re making something out of nothing.”

“No! You don't tell me what to do!”

The familiar hiss of the shower tells him the conversation is over. He stands there until it stops.

“Do you want me to tell you if I'm going to propose? Wouldn't you prefer a romantic surprise? Isn't that what women expect?”

Anastasia is driving him crazy. At this rate he’s going to end up marrying her just to stop the insanity.

“Maybe,” she says, after a short pause. “Leave me alone now.”

Back to the bedroom. After five minutes of pacing, he flops on the bed and groans. He really needs to piss. His apartment has only one bathroom.

Decision time about his future with Anastasia has come sooner than he anticipated. He was hoping for some prolonged fun and games while he sorts out his feelings – if he even has any for her.

Shit, he has no idea what he wants.

Anastasia’s controlling him with that pout and that hard-soft body.

Is that enough?

She has a point: They have nothing to talk about. That’s not what she meant, but doesn’t make it less true. She has no interest in his work, resents his patients, hates the Jeep, and never opens her own purse to pay for anything.

Not that he minds spending money on a woman – he’s spent all kinds of money on girls and women over the years. But an offer would be cool.

Then there’s that body, that face, that heat.

Anastasia is electric.

But there have been plenty of other women, many of them electric.

Question is: Is she special?

The bathroom door creaks. Anastasia comes out, skin damp, firm breasts bouncing, smile on her face as if their argument never happened.

Her towel hits the floor.

She pins him to the bed, and Max, he just lies there, faking helplessness, waiting to see what she’ll come up with next.

Anastasia doesn’t say a word. She wiggles her way backward and downward, until he’s buried in her throat.

He moans – he can’t help it. She’s good. She elevates sex to art.

Max, you’re a fucking idiot. Walk away, man. Walk away.

Run
.

T
he long arm
of
the Mediterranean curls northwards, past the east coast of Greece, to form the flat palm of the Aegean Sea. Its fingers twist and turn around the islands between the mainland and Turkey, and the crook of one digit holds the calm seas of the Pagasetic Gulf.

Vivi knows this because Google Maps said so.

Now she’s getting a load of the real deal in tiny oval-shaped chunks. A hundred swirling shades of blue. Cerulean bleeding into aquamarine bleeding into cyan bleeding into ultramarine.

Melissa is missing it all. Eyes shut, ears clogged with white buds, she’s busy being fifteen. When Vivi leans over her to get a better look, Melissa frowns, buries herself deeper in the seat.

The plane dips closer to land. Grey and brown buildings with their red roofs materialize out of the blips and dots. The Acropolis rises, a goddess above her subjects, Parthenon forming the crown upon her head. The crumbling ruins look whole. Easy to imagine how it looked on opening day.

Vivi tugs one of Melissa’s buds out. “You’re missing the best view ever.”

It’s a big burden – huge, but Melissa indulges her mother. Her nose wrinkles. “It looks like a big dirty city.”

Yeah, it’s a big dirty city. It’s obvious the shades of brown and gray are buildup from smog and dust, and the streets are jammed with thousands of bug-sized vehicles. But Vivi isn’t about to let a little dirt overshadow the adventure.

“Look. There's the Parthenon. Remember during the Athens Olympics when we saw it all lit up? You said you wanted to see it in person more than anything in the whole world. Everything back home is so new and shiny compared to this. This is living history. This is where you came from.”

“You're worse than Grams. Greece this, Greece that. I'm going to the restroom.”

“Forget it, Kiddo.” Vivi nods to the lighted Fasten Seatbelt sign. “We're stuck here until we land.”

“Figures,” she says, jamming the bud in her ear. But she doesn’t quit looking out the window.

The airport shows up with its miniature runways and toy blocks. Time to get the plane into position.

The ground charges.

They don’t crash.

An electrical current zips through the crowd. Phones out, texts sent. Mostly tourists onboard, weighted down with the requisite morbidly obese travel bags. The plane jerks to a stop at the terminal and passengers rise from their seats like the walking dead. An army, lurching towards the doors, wielding their belongings.

Vivi waits until they’re no longer in the decapitation zone, then they work their way out.

Hot on the jet bridge. Breathing is like kissing a handful of molten sand. Eyes everywhere; a security guard carrying a machine gun looks through them, constantly on the lookout for the next potential terrorist.

Vivi grabs her daughter’s hand. “These guys mean business. Stay close to me, okay? I don't want to lose you in this place.”

Signs in Greek and English all over the place, arrows pointing in a million different directions. “Let's get our bearings and figure out where we're going.”

Melissa shrugs. “Shouldn't we just follow the rest of the people from the plane?”

Great plan. They do that.

Until Melissa has to pee.

In the restroom, Vivi stifles a scream. She has carry-on luggage under her eyes, and she’s wearing a Shar Pei.

There’s a whoosh and Melissa appears in the mirror. In flats she’s almost Vivi’s height. “Carnival mirror?”

The hag in the mirror says, “Nope. That’s how we really look.”

“Wow. Not cool.”

Immigration is a breeze. The immigration officer is one of those new-fangled robot people who work in airports now. He asks wooden questions and scans their faces for lies. With a stamp to their passports, he waves them on; time to process the next body in line.

Their luggage isn’t lost, and they have nothing to declare. And they must look okay, because customs waves them through.

They are almost charmed.