Summary: Esther tries to come to terms with the scandal, and with Liam’s (supposed) rejection of her. Set in the airport scene at the beginning of Book 2, just before Maxwell and Bertrand find her.
—
Esther
The guard to your left is arguing with someone on the phone, in a language you do not understand (you’re guessing it’s Greek*). On occasion you can catch a few staccato words in English – something about shoes and toothpaste and leftover pasta. You breathe in the cold, dry air of the airport, and try to imagine a pasta dish in toothpaste sauce served over a plate of shoes. At this point, really, you really do deserve to laugh at something. Anything.
The guard pockets his phone now, looking over you to the one on the right. His smile disappears into his handlebar moustache.
“I gynaíka mou**,” he says by way of explanation.
You stop, mid-giggle. Your gurgle of laughter stays stuck in your throat. You’ve heard those words before. Somewhere. You must have. It sounds way too familiar. Where?
It doesn’t take more than a few minutes before it strikes you.
It was the last thing he said before he came. When he moved in you, his breath coming out in short spurts, his mouth raining kisses over your face and neck and everywhere, not caring if his toes were getting caked in mud or the grass was tickling his knees. I gynaíka mou. You had opened your mouth to ask him what it meant, but all that managed to come out was his name.
Liam. Liam. Oh.
And now you’ll never be able to ask him anything.
For all you knew it could have been Greek for O God. Or “I’m going to come”. Or “Christ this feels FUCKING AMAZING, Esther.” (allow me this one ego-boost, Liam, she thinks)
You don’t want to, but suddenly you miss him.
You take out the only thing you have that could possibly remind you of him. Just before leaving the airport gift shop tonight, you grabbed another keychain from the racks, the one shaped like an apple. He didn’t give it to you, granted, but when you held that and the Lady Liberty keychain in your two hands, you’d grinned at the sweet, sweet irony.
I’ll forever keep a part of his home with me, and he’ll forever keep a part of mine.
Your smile dims when you realise that he’s probably thrown your gift in the trash long before he’s reached his bedroom. Why would he want it? A useless gift from a faithless suitor. What value could it – you – have to him anymore? The tears make their way against your will once again but you manage to stem them this time. Not in this place, not in front of these people.
You’ll find the time to cry. Soon. At home. The only home you have left, the one that will never feel like home again, not really.
You’ll mourn. You’ll eat tubs of ice cream. You’ll mope in your old apartment to your heart’s content. You’ll find the time to get over this, to look back and remember it for the failed adventure it was. All that will happen, eventually. For now, you can only hope you’ll find time to google this new Greek phrase…if you ever remember it by the time you land.
Maybe you won’t.
Maybe you’ll never understand what igynaíka mou means. What had slipped out of his mouth, in his native tongue.
Listlessly, you hook your spare keys to the tiny apple.
Maybe you’ll never know.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
–
* I headcanon that Greek and English are Cordonia’s national/official languages
** I gynaíka mou is Greek for “my wife”.