Chapter 9 Tavern Whispers

Amelia Noah POV

The taverna sits on a side street that guidebooks haven't discovered yet—no English menus, no tourist prices, just locals arguing over wine and a grandmother cooking in a kitchen visible through an open doorway.

"How did you find this place?" I ask as David guides me past tables crowded with Greek families.

"I didn't. It found me." He nods to the owner, an ancient man with spectacular eyebrows who recognizes him immediately. "Yiannis, kalispera. Duo atoma."

The greeting flows like he's been speaking Greek since childhood rather than picking up phrases over a few years. Yiannis responds in rapid Greek that I can't follow, gesturing enthusiastically at me while David laughs at something I don't understand.

"What did he say?" I ask once we're seated at a small table near the kitchen's warmth.

"He asked if you're my girlfriend. I said not yet." David says it casually, like he's commenting on the weather. "He's a hopeless romantic. Believes every couple he sees is destined for marriage."

Not yet. The words hang between us, weighted with assumption.

"Bold of you to presume," I say, keeping my tone light.

"Bold of me to hope." His smile is disarming, honest. "But no pressure. I'm simply enjoying the company of an intelligent woman who hasn't run screaming from my photography obsession."

The menu arrives in Greek only, which David translates with confident ease. "The grilled octopus is mandatory. Saganaki—fried cheese, sounds terrible, tastes divine. Whatever fish Yiannis caught this morning, which he'll bring out and show us before cooking it."

"You're very comfortable here."

"I've spent enough nights at this table that Yiannis considers me halfway to Greek citizenship." He pours wine from an unlabeled bottle the owner delivered without asking. "This place reminds me why I chose photography over law. No spreadsheets. No billable hours. Just stories and food and people who've perfected the art of living slowly."

The wine tastes like rough earth and honest work, nothing like the refined bottles at the resort. I prefer it.

"Do you ever regret it?" I ask. "Walking away from the stable career?"

"Every month when I check my bank balance." He tears into bread still warm from the oven. "But then I remember what Monday mornings felt like at my father's firm—staring at contract clauses while my soul slowly died—and the regret disappears."

"Your father must hate that."

"He's convinced it's a phase. That I'll wake up one day at forty, realize I've wasted my life, and come crawling back to corporate law." David's voice holds an edge I haven't heard before. "He doesn't understand that success means different things to different people."

I think of my own mother's voice last Christmas: When are you going to find a nice man and settle down, Amelia? Your career is wonderful, but you can't marry your job.

"Families have a gift for making us feel like our choices are failures," I say.

"Yes." His eyes meet mine with sudden intensity. "Exactly that. Like we're disappointing them by wanting different lives than they envisioned."

The octopus arrives—charred and tender, dressed simply with lemon and olive oil. We eat with our fingers, the informality making everything feel more intimate than the resort's white tablecloths ever could.

"Tell me about your family," David says. "The sister who called. Is she the only one?"

"Kate. Two years older, married to her high school sweetheart, two kids, teaches kindergarten in New Jersey." I wipe lemon juice from my fingers. "She's everything our mother wanted me to be."

"Settled?"

"Happy." The word comes out more bitter than I intended. "Or at least she appears happy. Perfect house, perfect family, perfect life that follows the expected timeline."

"And you feel like you're failing because you're thirty-two and single?"

"Don't you?" I counter. "Your father waiting for you to abandon your 'phase' and return to respectability?"

"Touché." He refills our glasses. "Though I've stopped measuring success by my father's metrics. Took thirty-four years, but I got there eventually."

Thirty-four. Two years older than me. Old enough to have figured himself out, young enough to still feel like he's escaping something.

The fish arrives whole, grilled with herbs I can't identify, and David performs the delicate operation of separating flesh from bone with surgical precision. He serves me the best pieces without asking, an intimacy that feels both considerate and presumptuous.

"What made you choose marketing?" he asks. "Besides the obvious answer of paying rent in Manhattan."

I consider the question seriously. "I liked the puzzle of it. Understanding what makes people want things. How to tell a story that transforms a product into a feeling."

"That's poet-speak for 'I manipulate people for money.'"

His grin takes the edge off the words, but they still sting with accuracy.

"Maybe," I admit. "But there's an art to it. Good marketing doesn't lie—it just reveals the emotional truth beneath the transaction."

"Like my photography," David says thoughtfully. "I'm not documenting reality. I'm capturing what I want people to feel about reality."

"That's different."

"Is it?" He leans back, studying me. "We're both in the business of creating desire. I make people want to travel to places I've photographed. You make them want to buy things they didn't know they needed. We're both selling dreams."

The comparison unsettles me with its accuracy. I've never thought of my work that way—as selling dreams. But he's right. The Hartfield campaign wasn't about watches. It was about selling the fantasy of being someone who values their time, who invests in meaningful moments.

"When you put it like that, we sound like con artists," I say.

"The best art is a con." His eyes gleam with something I can't quite name. "We convince people to believe in beauty, meaning, purpose. All illusions, really. But necessary ones."

The philosophy feels cynical and sophisticated, like a worldview shaped by too many nights in tavernas having these exact conversations with other travelers.

"You don't believe in meaning?" I ask.

"I believe we create meaning through the stories we tell ourselves." He gestures between us. "Take this. You and me, sharing a meal in a Greek taverna. Is it meaningful? Or is it just two lonely people seeking distraction from their failures?"

"That's bleak."

"That's honest." But his smile softens the words. "Though I prefer to think we're creating something meaningful right now. This conversation, this connection—it matters because we've decided it matters."

The saganaki arrives—fried cheese that should be heart attack material but tastes like salvation. We eat it while Yiannis watches from his position near the kitchen, clearly satisfied with his matchmaking instincts.

"Tell me about Barcelona," I say, steering toward safer territory. "You mentioned photographing there."

Something flickers in his expression—too quick to name. "Beautiful city. Gaudí's architecture makes for stunning images. I spent three weeks there last spring covering a photography festival."

"Was it for work or passion project?"

"Both, ideally." He pauses to sip wine. "The festival paid expenses, but I stayed longer to shoot personal work. There's a neighborhood called El Raval—not tourist-friendly, but incredible street life. The way light falls through narrow alleys at dawn..."

He trails off, lost in memory or calculation. I can't tell which.

"And Rome?" I ask, remembering he'd mentioned Italy at some point. "Similar project?"

"Art exhibition at the Vatican." His voice carries practiced ease now. "Magazine assignment, beautifully boring. Though I found wonderful things in Trastevere afterward. Rome rewards people who wander without maps."

The way he describes cities feels both intimate and distant—like he's been everywhere but belongs nowhere. Or maybe like he belongs everywhere because he's never anywhere long enough to fail.

"Do you ever get lonely?" The question escapes before I can stop it. "All that travel, never staying put?"

David considers this while signaling Yiannis for more wine. "Sometimes. But loneliness in beautiful places feels different than loneliness in ordinary ones. More romantic, somehow. Like you're part of a grand tradition of wandering artists instead of just someone who can't commit to anything."

The admission feels raw, honest. Also practiced—like he's said it before to other women in other tavernas, testing which version of vulnerability works best.

Stop it, I tell myself. Not every moment of openness is manipulation.

But my marketing brain can't help analyzing his techniques—the careful revelations timed to deepen connection, the philosophical musings that make him seem profound, the way he mirrors my own insecurities to create false intimacy.

Or maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe this is just what happens when two emotionally damaged people share wine and vulnerability.

"What are you thinking?" David asks, catching my silence.

"That I'm terrible at turning off my analytical brain," I say truthfully. "Even when I'm supposed to be present in the moment."

"I have the same problem." He reaches across the table, his fingers brushing mine. "Always seeing through the lens. Always thinking about composition and light instead of just experiencing things."

His touch is warm, brief, gone before I can decide if I want it.

Dessert arrives—something honey-soaked and impossibly sweet—along with tiny glasses of amber liquid that burns pleasantly down my throat.

"Raki," David explains. "Traditional digestif. Yiannis makes it himself from grapes nobody else wants."

We drink in companionable silence while around us, the taverna empties slowly. Families settle their bills with elaborate farewells, locals linger over final glasses, and Yiannis begins the slow process of cleaning up while his wife—the grandmother I glimpsed in the kitchen—scolds him in rapid Greek.

"They've been married fifty-three years," David says, watching them. "He told me once that marriage is just choosing the same person over and over, even when they drive you insane."

"That sounds exhausting."

"Or comforting." He stands, leaving euros on the table that are probably too generous. "Depending on whether you believe in that kind of forever."

"Do you?"

The question hangs as he helps me into my cardigan, his hands lingering on my shoulders.

"I believe in right now," he says quietly. "And right now, I'm glad you're here."

The walk back feels longer than it should, stretched by wine and philosophy and the growing awareness that I'm falling into exactly the pattern I came here to break. But David's hand finds mine in the darkness between streetlights, and I don't pull away.

At the resort entrance, he doesn't kiss me. Just squeezes my hand once before releasing it.

"Thank you for tonight," he says. "For letting me share my favorite place."

"Thank you for the cultural immersion. And the life-changing fried cheese."

"Told you Yiannis knows what he's doing." His smile is genuine, unguarded. "I'll see you tomorrow? I want to show you those photos properly. Maybe we could—"

"Maybe," I interrupt, and this time it definitely means yes.

In my suite, I stand at the window watching the caldera's darkness, my lips still tasting like honey and raki and possibilities I shouldn't be entertaining.

My phone buzzes: Barcelona in spring is magical. You should see it sometime. - D

The message feels innocuous. Friendly. Just conversation extending beyond our physical proximity.

But my hands tremble slightly as I type back: Maybe someday.

Because maybe means yes, and yes means I'm already planning futures with a man I've known for three days, and planning futures is how I ended up with Marcus and Ryan and every other mistake I've cataloged in my journal.

I open that journal now, finding David's page.

He speaks Greek. Knows hidden tavernas. Has photographed in Barcelona, Rome, across Europe. Makes me feel like my cynicism is sophisticated rather than defensive. Question: Am I seeing who he really is, or who he wants me to see?

The distinction matters.

I just can't tell which side of it I'm on.