Page 46 of Willow in the Wind

Chapter Seventeen

Athens, July 2001

It was hard to believe Stella and James had already been in Athens for three weeks. But sometimes, it felt as though they’d lived all their lives in that wild and historical city, eating feta cheese and olives and drinking divine wine every night after the heat faded away.

James was incredibly charming. That was rule one of knowing James. It was how he ensured they were able to stay at the same hotel for just eight dollars a night—a steal. They split that; they split everything. And they were falling deeper in love as the days went by, so much so that they’d actually both said it. “I love you. I love you. I will love you for all my days.” They hardly spent a moment apart.

But Stella was aware from the very first week that James flourished in Greece in ways she wasn’t. Stella had imagined herself writing silly things while there. She’d imagined churning out a novel and a bunch of short stories. She’d imagined returning to the States with something to publish. But it was as though her love for James, for Greece, and for Grecian whitewine had clouded her mind. All she could do was read, watch, and listen to James play music. It was true that James was sensational with his guitar and incredibly clever when it came to songwriting. Within that first week, he’d written three songs that he tried out at the taverna to much acclaim. The old Greek men had fully taken him on as their own. They adored Stella, too, but they hardly spoke to her. James was picking up the language. He fit in anywhere. To Stella, the Greek language was garbled and strange in her mouth.

“You will be famous one day,” a Greek man told James late one night, tapping him on the nose. “You and your bride!” He wagged his eyebrows at Stella, and Stella’s heart broke.

James was also able to make money while in Greece through busking. Every other day or so, he set himself up in a famous square and sang famous songs that tourists loved. He was handsome and eager to please, and he brought in more than enough for dinner and drinks for the night ahead and then some. Stella felt meek for not being able to contribute. She did what she could for him while he busked. She fetched water. She sat at nearby coffee shops and scribbled in her journal, waiting for inspiration to come.

But really, all she wanted right now was to follow James to the ends of the earth.

One afternoon, Stella called her parents in Nantucket to say hello. She’d only called one other time early on to say she’d made it. She was sure that, to them, it felt as though their daughter had dropped off the face of the earth.

Her mother answered. “Stella?” She sounded surprised and slightly angry. “Where are you now?”

“I’m still in Athens, Mom.”

“But it’s the end of July,” her mother said. “I thought you’d be in Italy or France by now.”

“I fell in love with Athens,” Stella explained.

Her mother made a strange noise in her throat. “You’ll still be back by September to look for jobs? Like you planned?”

Stella rolled her eyes into the back of her head. Ever since her graduation in May, her parents had been asking her how she planned to use her degree in creative writing. To them, she was only worthy if she made real money via a company that gave her a desk and a computer. They didn’t care if that job took her away from Nantucket.

“I’ll be back soon,” Stella said. She didn’t want to commit to a time. “Soon” was anywhere between tomorrow and next year.

She got off the phone shortly after that and fell back into James’s arms.

That night after they drank through a bottle of wine and James played another collection of songs, they went back to the hotel earlier than normal. James opened up his backpack to show her the money he’d stowed away from his weeks of busking.

“It’s enough for a small sailboat of our own,” he said, his eyes alight. “I need to get out of Athens. I need to see the islands. Come with me?”

It was all Stella wanted to do.

It was easy to find a sailboat nobody wanted. After a brief negotiation in Greek, James secured the right price and brought their very own boat to the port to prepare. Once there, he asked Stella to buy some paint so he could christen the boat. He’d stay behind and clean it.

All the way to the store to buy paint, Stella alternated between euphoria and fear. She was strangely frightened that James was going to meet another woman while she was off buying paint. She imagined returning to the port just as James and that woman sailed out for their next adventure without her. Her heart ached. She’d worked herself into a frenzy by the time she returned and even lost her way a few times. It was the firsthour they’d spent apart in weeks, and she felt as though she’d lost a limb.

Being in love makes you pathetic,she thought. And then, she considered writing that down but decided there wasn’t time.

When she reached the port, James was still there, his shirtless chest and back glistening. He waved and smiled, and all her fears drained away.

“I know what we should call her,” he said as he took the paint and brush.

Stella watched from the dock as he painted STELLA across the side.

She thought:this is the happiest day of my life.

They left three days later. They packed groceries and charted a course to a neighboring island called Agistri. Out there in the turquoise blue, Stella helped James with the boat, surprising him with how capable she was. She tried to explain that that first day on Kostos’s boat, she’d been discombobulated so far from home that she’d forgotten how to sail. James hardly listened. He was so pleased that he picked her up, swung her in a circle, and kissed her. “This beautiful woman can do anything!”

When they reached Agistri Island, they tied the sailboat to the dock and went to a nearby cove to swim. They were the only tourists around; everyone else was Greek. Stella wrapped her arms and legs around him in the deep blue, and they dunked under into the salt water. They kissed beneath a shimmering sun.

That night, they slept on the sailboat for the first time. There was a sleeping quarter under the dock that was tight but cozy. They bought blankets and pillows at a little shop and wrapped their arms and legs around each other as the boat shifted gently beneath them. Stella was full from spinach pies and wine. She traced James’s chest with her fingertips and thought she might cry with happiness.

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