One True Loves by Elise Bryant

Author:Elise Bryant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2021-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The next day is my birthday, and the ship is docked in Athens. Alex, for some reason—even though we just met, even though we don’t really know each other—is on me to make a plan for the night.

“What are you doing after dinner?” he asks as we all trail after Etta at the Acropolis. The tour guide doesn’t even make an attempt to exert his trivia-knowing dominance, and looks at his phone instead.

“Not that you should have to plan it. I just wanted to get a pulse check, you know, see where you’re at,” he clarifies, while we’re sitting down for coffee and crepes at Little Kook, this fairy-tale-looking café with over-the-top decorations that change all the time. Right now it’s decked out in a Wizard of Oz theme, with green glittering walls, giant poppies sprouting from the concrete, and rainbow banners shading the alley where it’s located. Every thirty seconds, a white girl in a maxi dress pretends to look around while her boyfriend takes fifty-leven pictures for the gram.

“How do you feel about balloons?” he leans in to ask me as we bake under the hot sun at the Temple of the Olympian Zeus.

“I hate them.”

“Duly noted.”

It’s not that I don’t appreciate what Alex is trying to do. It’s nice or whatever. But I’m weird about my birthday. It’s hard not to get your hopes up. To wish that someone will read your mind and do the exact perfect thing that shows they see you to your very core, that you matter to them as much as they matter to you. But that never, ever happens.

Like, last year, Tessa and Theo planned this big surprise bonfire for me at Sunset Beach. They invited everyone from Chrysalis. I’m talking everyone, like even the pink-haired girl from my ceramics class who I’ve only said what’s up to once. But the thing is, I hate bonfires. I hate how the smoke smell hangs around in my hair for days. I have no interest in eating a hot dog that’s been cooked over the fire. We ain’t cave people! Plus, it was so exhausting to talk to that many people, to remain on for hours. I would have much rather just chilled with the two of them (Sam and Lavon could have come too), and, like, eaten Double-Doubles and watched a bad movie. And see, now I sound ungrateful, right? I should appreciate that my friends made an effort, blah blah blah. I know that, of course. But that’s why I feel like it’s better to have no expectations, no celebration at all. Let this day pass like any other.

“I can’t believe our baby girl is an adult now!” Mom says at dinner that night. Her lips are pressed together and her brown eyes are watery as she looks across the table at me.

“Technically, I am your baby girl,” Etta butts in. “If we’re being precise with our language.”

“Shut up, Etta,” I say. “And did you know, dear parents, that the

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