Page 5 of The Incredible Kindness of Paper
Shrill cheers broke through his memories.
The next table over was a party of a dozen women; one of them wore a glittery crown and a sash that read “Bachelorette,” and the rest wore sashes that read “Final Night of Freedom.” The women lifted shot glasses of ouzo and shouted “Opa!” before knocking them back and pouring more.
They must be the reason the couple had decamped indoors earlier.
The blonde next to the bachelorette raised her next glass in Oliver’s direction and smiled. That made the six women opposite her turn around, check him out, and giggle.
Oliver let out a long exhale. Then he got up from his chair and moved to the other side of his table, sitting with his back to them. He had zero interest in a one-night stand.
In fact, Oliver found any romance to be an ill-advised pursuit.
Love was too messy, full of dark, hidden corners of unspoken expectations and illogical emotions.
Look what his mom had done to his dad. Sixteen years later and the man was still dealing with the aftereffects, like an earthquake that never stopped shaking.
And then there was Chloe, also a long time ago…
Oliver could still smell her camellia shampoo, could still see the trust in her deep brown eyes as she looked up at him in that moment when they teetered on the cusp of being best friends and something more.
And then when he finally kissed her, he could taste the chocolate they’d just been eating, and even though they were only sixteen years old, he had felt sure he knew exactly how their lives would turn out. Together.
“Right,” Oliver scoffed out loud now.
Because love was promises that couldn’t be kept, wild dreams with no basis in reality.
Math, on the other hand… Numbers were clearly defined and predictable.
Life was better this way.
The bachelorette party women giggled some more and teased the blonde (presumably—Oliver couldn’t see them, after all), and then they started playing a celebrity trivia game and thankfully left him alone.
Xander brought the wine, which was a welcome antidote to recent events. Soon the food arrived. Oliver was hungrier than he thought and had to consciously slow himself down.
As usual, the spanakopita was flaky and crisp, its crust the perfect juxtaposition to the creamy feta and spinach filling. At other restaurants, spanakopita could be dense and even greasy, but Constantinides Family Taverna never disappointed.
Then the souvlaki came out, the skewers of pork and green peppers still sizzling from the grill. The thick pita bread was warm, too, accompanied by a salad generously topped with ripe tomatoes and imported Greek olives. It was like a summer travel brochure on a plate.
After he’d devoured it all, a contented, post-meal fugue began to settle in, and Oliver actually felt that today might be salvageable. He decided to linger a little longer and have dessert.
A few minutes later, Xander returned with a phyllo and custard pie, but before he reached Oliver’s table, a man on an electric scooter dashed by on the sidewalk, and Xander swerved to avoid him, then tripped and dropped the plate.
It smashed on the concrete while Xander fell as well, and the contents of his apron—pencil, order pad, and something that looked like a folded-up piece of yellow paper—went flying into the street.
“Shit! My origami rose!” Xander scrambled on hands and knees toward the street, oblivious that he was crawling through custard pie. He got to the curb and began to reach out.
Oliver saw the oncoming taxi as if it were in slow motion. “No!”
Just as the driver blasted his horn, Oliver dove at Xander and tucked him against his body, rolling them away together and back onto the sidewalk. It was a jiu jitsu maneuver inscribed into his muscles after more than a dozen years of practice. Half a second slower, and Xander could have been dead.
Xander’s mother ran screaming out of the restaurant to her son’s side. “My baby! My baby!”
“He’s okay,” Oliver said, releasing Xander from his protective hold.
“H-how did you do that?” Xander asked, dazed and looking from the edge of the street to where they sat now, as if unsure how he’d ever been in either place.
Oliver waved it off. No need to disclose that he was a second-degree black belt in jiu jitsu, which he’d taken up in college.
He and Ben had gotten beaten up far too many times as teenagers, after their mom lost everything the family owned and they’d had to bounce from one rough neighborhood to another.
When Oliver had finally escaped at eighteen, he’d promised never to be defenseless ever again.
Mrs. Constantinides, now assured that her son was okay, began yelling at Xander for being stupid, and careless, and how could he be so inconsiderate because if he jumped into the street and died, she’d have to run the restaurant without him, and he didn’t think she could cook and wait tables, did he?
“I love you, too, Mama.”
She smothered him in a tight hug.
Oliver turned away.
He walked back to the street and when the traffic broke for a second, he grabbed the origami rose from the asphalt. It had been run over a few times and now shone with a thin layer of oil and grit.
Oliver walked back toward Xander but then stopped to wait for Mrs. Constantinides’s maternal affection to subside.
Oliver’s relationship with his own mother had been so opposite—endearment on the surface but total disregard for the family underneath—that seeing mothers and sons who actually liked each other made Oliver itchy.
He didn’t quite know how to comprehend it.
Xander jumped up as soon as he saw Oliver holding the flattened yellow rose.
“Oh my god, Mr. Jones!” He ran over and clasped Oliver’s hands, then took the muddy origami flower from him gently, as if it were made of crystal rather than paper. “You have no idea what this rose means to me. Thank you so so so frickin’ much. Let me get you a new dessert. Totally on me.”
Mrs. Constantinides whacked her son gently. “Please forgive my son. He is an idiot. A sweet idiot, but still, idiot. You saved my Xander’s life, Mr. Jones. All of your meals are free, anytime, for eternity.”