Page 69 of Holding Out for a Gyro
On the other hand, I’d get to connect with a whole other part of my identity. My parents had shown me photos from where they’d grown up, and my yia yia rhapsodized about the beauty of the beaches. A neglected part of my soul wondered whether I might find myself in my cultural heritage. Or would I just feel more adrift, estranged from my own family? There was only one way to find out, but it felt like an admission of failure.
“Can you send me more details?” I said, opening my mind to the idea finally. “It sounds like a great opportunity.”
Theo Kostas beamed, pounding my dad’s back. “Ah, Zander, you have raised a good son.”
My dad puffed up. “Το μ?λο κ?τω απ? τη μηλι? θα π?σει.”Theapple will fall right below the tree.
My chest swelled with pride.
With a bounce in my step, I headed toward the kitchen, hoping to make my excuses to my mom and flee. But when I entered, I found my sister Zoe sitting at the kitchen table, sucking her teeth, clearly waiting for me to appear. My family was a never-ending soap opera.
Zoe knew all about my dating frustrations, and she arched a brow, all smug as she said, “This can’t be good.”
“What?”
“Sit.” She gestured to the chair beside her. “What did you do wrong?”
I paused halfway into the seat. “Why do you assume anything is wrong?”
“Because you cooked an extravagant meal to impress a girl and you’re now here. So you must’ve done something wrong.”
“Maybe nobody did anything wrong.”
“Ω Θε? μου.” Greek forohmigod. She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “So somebody did something wrong. And that somebody was you. Did you burn the turkey?”
“Squab and no.”
She threw her hands up. “So what happened?”
“I’m honestly not sure. I think she dumped me.” I cringed at the confession, but Zoe was my closest sister, in age and in temperament. She’d always been more like a friend, even when she gave me a hard time. Especially then. “I thought things were going so well, but it was all a game for her, I guess.”
“Oh, no. She didn’t get on the Bas train?”
I shut my eyes for two seconds and shook my head, clearing it of static noise. “What are you even talking about?”
“It’s always so easy for you. You expect everyone to love you, and you can’t stand it when people don’t fall for you immediately.”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you remember when you were in high school and you didn’t get invited to Sophia Papadopoulos’s birthday party?”
I sighed. My family loved to recount my past idiocies. “Really?”
She shot me a pointed look. “You followed her around, trying to befriend her.”
I shrugged. “It worked. I got invited to her party.”
“But it worked too well, and then you were stuck dating her until you worked up the courage to let her down.” She snorted a laugh. “Even then, you couldn’t just break up with her because you can’t stand to be unliked.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“No? You’ve been chasing after a girl who told you from the start she wasn’t going to fall in love. Am I getting that wrong?”
“You think I’m only interested because she doesn’t want me? You think she’s a challenge?”
“Yeah.” She fell back in her chair, like she was dropping a mic. “I think you’re in love with the chase. You’ve always been this way. So extra. Always believing you could win anyone over with your charm.”
My knee-jerk reaction was to always argue back, but I closed my mouth, processing her words. She wasn’t wrong that I liked the pursuit. It was romantic to woo someone. And if I lost interest before they did, well, that wasn’t because I’d satisfied the challenge, was it? Evan had said something similar, accusing me of being immune to pain because I was long gone before I had to pay that bill. Was the fact that Chelsea had hurt me proof that Evan was wrong? Or was Zoe right, and only my ego was bruised?
