“Olive, I told you, he’s running late and—”
That did it. “Stop calling me Olive!” I yelled angrily. “It’s Liv. I go by Liv.”
This time Theo stopped, really stopped. His forehead wrinkled as he studied me. Part of me wanted to apologize for yelling, but a bigger part of me felt completely justified, so I held my silence. He approached me hesitantly, like one might a potentially rabid raccoon. He peered at me earnestly, forcing eye contact. “But your dad always calls you Olive.”
Anger ricocheted through me, forcing me back a few steps. “What do you mean ‘always calls’? I haven’t talked to him since I was eight.”
“Since you were eight?” Theo’s eyes widened. “But the postcards…”
My heart thudded. He knew about the postcards? I suddenly felt flayed open. Vulnerable. Why did this guy know so much about me? “Postcards aren’t the same as talking.” Another exceptionally insightful comment by Captain Obvious.
But Theo didn’t laugh. He studied me for another beat. Then he stepped forward, his eyes softening with concern. “Your dad has a surprise for you, and he had a few details to finish up. He wanted to be here, but he wanted to get your surprise ready more. Will you please come with me? We have to go all the way up to Oia, and we can’t be late.” He gestured toward the motorcycle again, clearly hoping that I’d start moving.
But I was stuck on the word he kept saying. Oia. That was the name of the village on all the postcards. Only Theo said it EE-uh, not OY-uh, like I’d thought it was. Suddenly I felt ridiculous. How did I not know how to pronounce the village that my father had been from? Had my mom even known how to say it?
Oh no. Mom. Her rules popped into my head again. No talking to boys at the airport. This was the definition of talking to boys at the airport. She had actually prepared me for this scenario. Don’t let strange boys give you a ride. But she hadn’t told me what to do if my dad had sent said boy, or what to do if said boy sent small jolts of oxygen to my brain every time I looked at him.
Okay, not oxygen. More like… electricity? This was getting weird.
I took a deep breath, wrapping my fingers around the straps of my backpack. At least I still had my backpack. “How am I supposed to know you’re not like that guy in the movie Taken.”
Theo’s eyebrows shot up. His eyebrows apparently did half of his communication for him. “I’m sorry?”
Judging by his tone, he was massively amused, a feeling I did not share. I stepped forward, feeling emboldened. “You know that movie where the girl goes to Europe and gets kidnapped and her dad’s an ex-CIA agent?”
Theo’s expression morphed to horror, which mostly involved his eyebrows shooting up even higher. He stepped forward like he was going to touch my arm, then must have realized that that was exactly what a kidnapper from Taken would do, so he stopped himself. “… What? Oh my God. No. I told you, I’m a friend of your dad’s. I work for him.”
“You’re going to have to prove it,” I said, adjusting my posture to match my confident tone. Spine straight, shoulders back, make eye contact. James called it the power stance.
Theo looked genuinely stumped. “How?”
Good question. For a moment I was stumped too. Then a solution presented itself. “That’s on you.”
“Pismatara,” he mumbled to himself. “Like Nico.” The word sounded vaguely familiar. Stubborn? Proud? I bristled, but I couldn’t exactly call him out on something I hadn’t understood.
“So?” I said. Watching him flounder for an answer was surprisingly gratifying.
His eyes shot up to mine, and he spread his hands out triumphantly. “I knew about the postcards.”
True. “Well… ,” I countered.
He pointed at the curb. “And that’s his motorcycle. Could anyone else in the world possibly own that motorbike? It was scrap metal when he met it.”
I looked over Theo’s shoulder, giving the automobile my full attention. The motorcycle had clearly been through some kind of catastrophe, and along with a rusted frame and a duct-taped seat, the muffler looked jerry-rigged on. So, so my dad. He could fix anything with anything.
“Something else,” I said, but I was starting to relent.
Theo’s face twisted, drawing attention to his lips. I mean mouth. “Tell you what, you can ask me any question you want about him.”
“And you’ll know the answer?”
He nodded confidently, already looking relieved. “Guaranteed. I’ve spent a year with your dad now. I know everything about him.”
A surge of jealousy moved through me. An entire year? Who was this guy, his stand-in son? Now I wanted to stump him. I took a deep breath, thinking hard. It’s difficult to come up with intimate details about someone you haven’t seen in about a million years, but finally I landed on something. “What does my dad have tattooed on his inner forearm?”
Theo smiled proudly, raising one finger. “A compass. With some numeric coordinates on the outside.”
Correct. It was actually the coordinates of a small coffee shop in Chicago where my mom first told my dad she was pregnant with me. He said you have to mark the moments that change everything, and to him that had meant a tattoo. And yes, that was seriously depressing to think about.
I folded my arms over my chest. “What are the numbers?”
His eyebrows rocketed. “Seriously?”
I shrugged.
“Um… Forty-one point… eight? And eight-something… west?” He looked at me hopefully.
“Close,” I said. It was actually 41.8786° N, 87.6251° W. I can’t even remember my mom’s cell phone number, but I can rattle off the numbers tattooed on my dad’s forearm. I remember staring at them when he’d read to me at night and thinking, There we are.
“Also, I know you were born during a snowstorm and your dad kicked a guy out of a cab to get your mom to the hospital on time,” Theo said hopefully. Or was it smugly?
Great. Two minutes in Greece and the memory-lane thing was already getting old. I needed to take control of the situation. Fast. Now that the fight was draining out of me, I was starting to get woozy. I really should have tried to sleep on the plane. I took a deep breath. “Fine. But I need you to know that my stepdad is a Krav Maga master, and he’s taught me how to take down anyone, anywhere. Also, if you try to film me again, I’m going to freak out.”
Theo laughed, and the sound of it surprised me. It was a deep, goofy-sounding belly laugh, and it instantly set me at ease. Well, mostly at ease. “Seattle must be rough.”
“Not really,” I said, thinking about our manicured lawn, the way our modern house stood giant next to all the other massive houses in our community. Seattle wasn’t rough; it was everything that had come before Seattle that was rough.
Theo tilted his head toward the curb. “Ready now? Your dad will be so upset if we miss the surprise.”
I turned to look at the spot where Yiannis’s cab had once stood. “What are the chances my suitcase will actually make it to Oia?”
“Sixty-forty,” he said confidently.
I laughed, and he must have liked my laugh too, because he smiled. Huge. And when our eyes met, it sent me into spirals of panic, because his face should be carved into stone or painted on a tapestry or something. Faces didn’t look like that.