Once they’re in the car, Xavier hands her the rice pudding and pulls away.
“I need to ask you something,” he says as they pull out onto the street, “but before I do, I want you to know that whatever your answer is, that’s fine with me.”
“That’s ominous,” she mutters, turning toward him as much as her seatbelt will allow.
“Are you . . . are you sure you want to keep this up?”
“You mean . . .”
“The engagement,” he finishes for her. “This is serious stuff; your parents just gave you a shit ton of money and it’s because they think we’re getting married, and fuck . . .”
“Doyouwant to call it off?”
She watches as his hands shift against the steering wheel, fingers tightening, then loosening and then tightening again.
“No, no, I don’t. Not if . . . not if you want to keep it up. I just . . . I just had to check.”
“I appreciate that,” she says, “but no, I don’t want to call it off.”
He doesn’t ask her why and thank God for that, because she doesn’t have an answer, not one that has anything to do with the lesson she’s supposedly teaching her friends and family.
“Okay,” he says, his grip loosening again and staying loose. “Okay. Your parents said that they’ll call you when they get back home tomorrow, by the way.”
She just hums a response and then they drive in mostly silence back to her apartment. She doesn’t want to rehash what just happened. She doesn’t even want to think about it. When they get back, she kicks off her shoes, moves into the kitchen in her bare feet, grabs a spoon from the drawer, immediately cracks open the container of rice pudding and dives right in.
Her eyes drift shut as she lets out a soft moan around the spoon. “That’s good shit, right there.”
“I don’t get to try?” he asks, coming up behind her.
She scoops some up and holds it out to him. “Here,” she says, but he doesn’t take it from her, just leans down and wraps his mouth around the spoon.
As he pulls away, he groans in satisfaction. “You’re right. That’s amazing.” He stares down at her and then clears his throat before looking away. “You want a glass of wine? Or something. I want a glass of wine.”
“Uh, sure.”
Shaking her head at the constant enigma that is Xavier Byrne, she puts the rice pudding into the fridge, away from Amelia’s curious nose, and heads to the corner where her record player is sitting, untouched for too long. Some music, that’ll help. Just some music to take her mind off her family and her job prospects and even, to an extent, the man just a few feet away pouring her a glass of wine. She quickly flicks through her vinyl collection and stops at one her dad gave her years ago. And despite the absolute whirlwind she went through tonight, it feels like the right moment to play it, especially with the taste of the rice pudding on her tongue.
The scratch of the record echoes through the room for a second before the opening twang of the bouzouki accompanied by a tinkling piano.
Xavier’s warm chuckle releases the tension in her shoulders. “Zorba’s dance?” he asks.
“The syrtaki,” she corrects.
“Syrtaki,” he repeats, putting the emphasis on the first syllable.
“And hasapiko. They’ve sort of become mushed together over the years. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
“Syrtaki and hasapiko,” he says, testing the second word on his tongue before he shakes his head. “If I’m gonna dance, I need ouzo not wine.”
“It’s not that bad, it’s barely dancing.”
“I’m supposed to follow steps?”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“That’s dancing, boss.”
“Oh, please. Besides, how are you gonna impress all those Greek girls without knowing how to dance to the song of our people?”
