Page 29 of Hold Me Today

I wait for Effie to spill her truth, knowing she’s holding back, and it’s only when we hear the music from Hanover that she finally relents. “I feel like I’m failing, you know? I love my tour company. I love storytelling and watching my guests light up when they hear a particular story that creeps them out, but . . .”

I elbow her in the faux-whalebone bodice. “But what?”

“It’s not enough, you know? And I worry that adoption agencies are going to look at my choice of career and knock us down a peg.”

It hurts my heart to hear Effie talk about herself like that—as though living her dream is somehow not enough.

Itisenough. I have to believe that because otherwise I’ve been working toward something all my life, only to feel disappointed in the end.

“You can’t think like that,” I tell her firmly. “Between you and Sarah, you both bring in a great salary. You own your house and you’ve got a rooftop terrace and investments, and even though you’re self-employed, you’re putting money into a 401k.” I nudge her again, wanting to see her smile and lose the stressed-out,my-world-is-caving-inlook. “You’re the most responsible person I know. Don’t ever think you’re not contributing enough when we both know you do just fine. Any adoption agency should feelgratefulthat you and Sarah want a kid of your own.”

The beginnings of a grin curls her lips, and she taps my side with the lantern. “Yeah, you’re right.”

I straighten my back and give a little shimmy of my hips. “Of course I’m right. Now, which pizza place of all the pizza places is calling our name?”

* * *

We endup at a restaurant with the same slate floors I wanted inAgape, and rustic shiplap on the walls. Tapered candles sit in the center of every table and the air is a scented combination of pizza, garlic, and oven-baked bread.

It smells like a food orgasm—if food orgasms were a thing.

“Okay,” Effie says after we’ve broken fast with a deep red wine that carries a hint of blackberry, “unload your burdens.”

We tap wine glasses in a toast. “You told your brother about me.”

She quirks a brow. “You need to be more specific than that. There aremanythings my brother knows about you. Including the fact that you’ve got an outie belly button.”

Along with the precise shade of my nipples.

Those summers spent in Greece were a host of embarrassing moments, one after another, usually with me at the center of unwanted attention.

I swirl the wine in the bowl of the glass and let my shoulders droop. “Heknows. About”—I lean forward after casting a quick glance over my shoulder—“the fact that I liked him. Back in high school.”

Effie’s mouth purses. “You’re shaving off a few years there. Just in high school?”

“Oh, my God, do we need to go into timeline specifics here?”

“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.” Her hands come up in mock-innocence. “All I’m saying is that you were still pining after him in your early twenties.”

My ass slumps farther down on the wooden chair. “Okay,yes, I still—maybe—kinda liked him then too.” Though I never once made a move because he was dating Brynn Whitehead. Slim, blonde Brynn, with her button nose and her narrow hips and her thighs that did not touch. “The specifics don’t matter. Whatmattersis the fact that he knows and I agreed to ‘fake date’”—I throw up air quotations—“him while he deals with the press after that dating show you never mentioned to me.”

Her shoulders hike up sheepishly. “It wasn’t my story to tell.”

“You tell me everything.”

“Did you really want to hear about how my brother wants to settle down with the whole nine yards? A wife and kids and the white picket fence?”

Probably not.

She knows me too well, dammit.

“Anyway,” she goes on, “no one knew besides the immediate family. Myyiayiawas beside herself.” She pauses, then winces. “We may have told her that he was going into an arranged marriage.”

“An arranged marriage?” I down more wine because even the thought has me shaking with empathy. “Remember that time when my dad tried to pair me off with his single friend?Ermione, he said,Stavros is the perfect, nice, Greek man. He goes to ecclesia. Father Valtaros loves him.”

“Oh, the sign of every good future spouse,” Effie drawls, lifting her glass in another toast, “a man who’s in with the priest, has gray hair growing like a second mustache out of his nostrils, and doesn’t speak a lick of English.”

It’s the last one that gets me.

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