This is a series of events I was not prepared for.
But how did I get here?
Oh yeah.
Because after the fight, my dad decided I needed to learn to defend myself.
It’s his most recent attempt to make me a man. Like an actual man. Not a shrimpy, artsy, knitting elf child who dabbles in photography.
He didn’t actually call me those things, but he has this look he gives me, and believe me, that’s what the look says.
But he is the one who uses the word dabbles when he talks about my photography, because he doesn’t want me or anyone else to confuse it with something that makes money. Or something that matters.
Guess it only mattered when Mom did it.
Photography. Cameras. That was Mom. The only memory I have that’s real and not based on a story from Yia Yia is one of me holding Mom’s camera and her teaching me how to shoot.
Her pictures were a way for me to remember stuff. To remember her.
Dad is right to some extent, I guess. I’ve never taken a photography class. Everything I know about cameras and taking pictures is from books I’ve read at the library and documentaries I’ve watched on Netflix. All of my technique and everything I’ve learned about exposure, angles, color, lighting, etc.—it’s mostly stuff I’ve had to mess up and figure out on my own.
But when I look through a lens, I know exactly the kind of photo I want to take. I know what needs to be captured. I know how to make the camera do what I want.
Yia Yia encouraged me, but none of that matters to Dad. The photography and the knitting are embarrassing to him, which became even more obvious when last night he enrolled me in a self-defense course. Not even a normal self-defense class that teaches you how to flip a guy if he comes up behind you. A hard-core teach-your-students-how-to-bite-off-a-chunk-of-their-assailant’s-neck course taught by some guy named Brad Hardwick, because of course that’s his name.
Dad said, “Leo, I’ll be waiting in the car. Go to class. I’ll be out here when you’re done.” Then he used the full force of his eyeballs. His eyeballs always protrude a little bit when he’s mad.
That’s how I learned what the word protrude means, when I was little. Because I needed to explain what my dad’s eyeballs did when he was angry. They bulge. They swell. They look cartoony. He thinks the more he shoves his eyeballs out of their sockets, the easier it’ll be for other people to take him seriously.
After ordering me inside and using the eyeballs, he turned on classical music like a serial killer and leaned back in his seat with a newspaper. An actual newspaper because he still refuses to read the news on his phone.
I had no choice but to get out of the car. I walked into the gigantic, sterilely clean lobby of the gym and stood in front of the glass window, watching two guys throw practice punches at each other for exactly fifteen seconds before I realized I was never going in that classroom. Ever.
But my options were limited. I couldn’t go back out to my dad; he’d walk me into class himself. And I couldn’t just stand in the lobby, because my dad could see me through the glass door from the car. So I walked up to the front desk, ready to confess my shame, and figured I would be honest.
“Look,” I said to the girl behind the counter. “My dad enrolled me in that military self-defense class.” I nodded toward the guys who were now beating the shit out of a weird plastic dummy. “But I need to take ANY CLASS BUT THAT.”
And I wish I had noticed who she was before I started talking.
The girl was leaning on a stack of magazines and wearing a midnight-blue exercise headband over shiny dark brown hair. When she lifted her black eyes to meet mine, I realized exactly who she was. Yia Yia’s voice came floating out from the great beyond with the only other rule she’d ever laid down: Leave the Paros family alone.
And yet here she was, Evey Paros. The youngest daughter of Costa and Maria Paros.
And for half a second, I wondered if she’d been told the same story I’d been told my whole life. If she had any idea that her family had cursed mine.
I felt like an idiot for thinking this.
Of course she didn’t know about the curse. Of course she didn’t believe in that crap.
I shook the thought off like I was afraid she might see it as a thought bubble above my head.
She pointed toward another room and said, “This class meets at the same time every day. It’s Hot Yoga Teacher Training. We just had someone drop out. You can switch and nobody has to know.” She whispered, “I won’t tell a soul.”
The room was filled with steam that was creeping out the door like mist in a horror movie. And the heat was already threatening to suffocate me, reaching out into the hall. It was like the portal to hell.
“Are you in?” Evey asked. She leaned forward, and it was difficult to focus because despite the obvious awkwardness of the situation and my promise to avoid her family, I couldn’t look directly at her. And it wasn’t just because she was beautiful, even though she was. God, she was. She had this look like she’d just risen out of the sea with her dark hair flung wildly over her shoulder, dragging the corpses of her enemies behind her. A perfect combination of beautiful and scary.
So yeah, it was more her confidence than anything else.
I turned back to the fight class, where all the guys had started chanting, and noticed Drake had just walked in as well.
WTF.
It would be kinda awkward for me to take a class to defend myself against someone else currently taking the same fucking class, no?
The chanting got louder.
WE ARE WARRIORS.
WE ARE WARRIORS.
WARRRRRRRRIOOOOOOOORS!
So yeah, I was in.
Because, holy shit, what choice did I have?
But then Evey gave me a look that made my Yia Yia’s warnings about Greek women seem like logical, real-world advice.
She entered a few things into her computer to transfer me from one class to another, then said innocently, “All done. There you go.”
It seemed so simple. I said “Thanks” and moved awkwardly toward the festering swamp that was the yoga room.
But then she called out, “For the record, I don’t believe in curses, but you do owe me now. I bet we can work something out for the class switch.”
I skidded to a stop and swung back around to stare at her, thinking maybe she was kidding. There was no way she’d actually just said that. The curse was something my Yia Yia just made up, right?
Then her black eyes darkened, and I swear the room got colder as she inclined her head toward the parking lot, where my dad was sitting in his car. She put her finger to her lips and whispered, “Shhhhh.”