Page 36 of Willow in the Wind

Stella had the sensation of sand falling through her fingers.

“Wait!” Stella hurried after him to thank him. She wanted to look into his eyes again. She chased him to the bus stop outside the airport’s double-wide doors and touched his shoulder.

He turned and gave her a crooked smile. “Where’s your suitcase?”

Stella wanted to say she didn’t care about her suitcase. They could throw it into the Aegean for all she cared.

What’s gotten into me? I’m not a romantic person!

“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “I’ve never felt more ignored.”

“I imagine people don’t ignore a pretty girl like you so often,” the man said. “Not like they do the rest of us.” He winked.

Stella’s cheeks were hot. She gestured toward his guitar. “You’re a musician.”

“I try to be.”

“And you’re from?”

“London,” he said. “And you?”

“America.”

“Well, I can hear that, darling. But from which of the fifty colonies do you hail?” he asked.

Stella found it difficult to breathe. She laughed a little too long. “Right. I’m from Nantucket Island. Massachusetts.”

“An island. Well, you’re a long way from home,” he said.

“Aren’t we both?”

Suddenly, the airline clerk burst through the doors to announce, “Your suitcase is not here. Come back tomorrow to check.” She handed Stella her ticket back and disappeared again.

Stella looked dumbly at the ticket and thought about what she’d packed in that suitcase. She couldn’t remember a thing save for the lotion her mother had given her for her birthday. It all felt deep in the past.

The bus pulled up with a gasp. “You going to the city?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Stella said. She prepared to tell him about the hostel she’d booked and her plans to see the Acropolis tomorrow but then stopped herself.

She had a hunch that “plans” were inherently uncool.

“Follow me, ma cherie,” he said with a wink.

Stella got onto the crowded bus and grabbed a seat next to her handsome acquaintance. He carried the guitar on his lap with the neck striding along his neck. Behind them was a couple who couldn’t stop kissing. Already, Stella wondered what it would be like to kiss this stranger.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“James Atkinson,” he said, cutting his hand across his body to take hers.

He didn’t ask her name, though. Did that mean he didn’t care?

Stella decided to give it to him anyway.

“I’m Stella Sutton,” she said. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Silence fell on the bus ride. James wrote something in a leather-bound notebook, a sight Stella found to be entirely romantic. She didn’t have anything to write about. Her head was clogged with thoughts about her trip—the first she’d ever taken across the ocean, her first all by herself. But she’d left her notebook and pens in her suitcase. Wasn’t she supposed to be some kind of writer? Maybe James was a more natural writer than she was.

Maybe he had a girlfriend back in London who was a better writer than Stella was.

---