Page 42 of Willow in the Wind

Once back at the dock, the owner of the sailboat, Kostos, approached wearing a funny smile. He could see they were sunburnt, and he probably thought it was funny. He handed James something—his prized possession, which was a dramatic secret, apparently—and then watched James and Stella walk back down the dock. Stella felt so innocent that she took James’s hand and told him, “I need to go to a pharmacy. I need sleep.”

James nodded and touched her hair. “We’ll do that. Don’t worry.”

James led her to a little hotel not far from their celebratory bar crawl last night. The city felt dead beneath the sinister summer heat. James explained that most people took the afternoon off as it was too hot to do anything but rest. Stella said she understood. They checked into the hotel to make sure they got a cheap room, then went out again to buy aloe for their sunburns. When they returned to the hotel, James stripped down to his underwear without asking if it was okay. Stella laughed nervously, then helped him apply the aloe where he couldn’t reach. It felt so intimate, her hands through the hair onhis chest, over his shoulders. He looked at her with soft interest as though he was really seeing her again for the first time. They hadn’t even known each other for twenty-four hours yet.

Stella bit her tongue from telling him she loved him. It couldn’t have been true. She was just exhausted.

Stella put aloe all over her body in the bathroom, then realized she didn’t have any clothes save for the ones she’d been wearing when she arrived. She didn’t want to put them back on. She wrapped herself in a big white towel and got into bed. James pulled the curtains, and the room went dark. Under the covers, he took her hand, and that was it. Stella fell back asleep immediately.

Stella woke up alone. The air-conditioning was on full blast, and she was freezing. She hurried to open the curtains and discovered it was just as dark outside as it was in, save for the lights from the restaurants and bars lined the street. There was the sound of an accordion; there was singing. Stella checked around the bed for signs of James, but it looked as though he’d taken everything he owned and left her in the dark. Stella suddenly felt like the loneliest woman in the world. How could he leave her like this? Then again, he didn’t even know her! They owed each other nothing!

Stella checked her sunburn in the bathroom and found it had gone down a great deal, thanks to the aloe. She had no makeup but looked well-rested and pretty with her dark hair against her tanning skin.

She checked her watch. It’s eleven thirty at night. She keeps losing time.Will I ever escape this jet lag?

She made a promise to herself to get her suitcase from the airport the next day. She has to get back on track.There’s still time to go to the Acropolis. There’s still time to be a normal young female tourist.

But Stella was suddenly ravenous. She couldn’t fall back asleep after an entire day of sleeping. So she put her old clothes back on and stepped into the night to grab a meal with the little money she still had. She imagined herself at a Greek taverna all by herself, eating moussaka and drinking wine. She imagined telling someone at the restaurant thatMy lover abandoned me in Greece!Because it sounded so dramatic. She was twenty-one and old enough to say something like that. She was living.

But when she walked past the taverna directly outside, she heard the familiar twang of a guitar and turned to find James in the center of a horde of Greek men. James played as they tried to teach him a Greek song, throwing their arms around him, laughing, pouring him more ouzo than he could possibly drink. Stella’s heart jumped into her throat. She’d thought he’d left, but he was just here, waiting to serenade her.

James’s eyes were alight as she approached. His voice grew louder. Stella didn’t recognize a single word he sang, but she felt the passion behind it, and that was enough. Tears welled in her eyes. Someone handed her a glass of red wine; another person pulled up a chair. And suddenly, she was singing along with James, words she’d never pronounced before. She wasn’t making sense. But she was laughing.

He waited for me!

He would never leave me!

The song finished, and James set the guitar to the side and pulled Stella into his arms. The Greek men adored it. They cheered. Suddenly, James kissed Stella for the first time, overwhelmed with the song and the life around them. The kiss was the most passionate Stella had ever had. It left herbreathless. They looked at one another with big eyes as though they couldn’t believe the other existed.

“I thought you were gone,” Stella whispered.

James touched her hair and then gestured for her to look behind him. Stella peered around his head to find her suitcase tucked against the wall, waiting for her. It was the same suitcase she’d packed in her parents’ place on Nantucket Island.

He’d taken her luggage ticket to the airport.

He’d gone out of his way to help.

Stella thanked him and kissed him again. She had her bank card back! She could change her clothes!

But all of that paled compared to what she had right here.

“You must be starving, darling,” James said, waving over one of the servers. “Let’s order everything off the menu.”

Stella laughed. “Let’s order everything twice.”

In her wildest dreams, Stella never imagined feeling this way. She thought life was supposed to be a mundane sequence of events. Even travel was a part of that sequence—something you were supposed to do at a certain age in order to tick off the boxes of your life.High school, college, a bit of travel, marriage, children, death.

But James had opened a portal to another idea of life.

Stella wanted to stay in that other idea forever.

Chapter Sixteen

August 2024

The book signing went on for another three hours. Stella felt her hand cramp from signing her name; she felt an ache in her jaw from smiling, smiling, smiling. She’d wanted to put her art into the world all her life. She was grateful to her fans, thankful to her agent, and appreciated this strange and exhilarating life she’d built.

But everything had cratered in on itself today. James Atkinson had stormed back into her life and then run away.

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