Aris Moustakis, 62, made his living for 37 years restoring antique maps, smoothing out creases in centuries-old parchment, patching tiny tears with rice paper so fine you could hold it up to the sun and see straight through. He’d lived in the same yellow bungalow in northwest Indiana for 28 years, and hadn’t attended a neighborhood block party in eight, not since his wife Eleni died in a car crash on their way home from a Greek festival. His worst flaw, the one his sister nagged him about every Sunday on the phone, was that he’d turned down every invitation to anything that didn’t involve his workbench or his backyard tomato plants, convinced anyone who tried to get close was just angling for a peek at his $40,000 collection of 18th century Aegean nautical maps. He only showed up to this year’s party because Maeve’s 9-year-old granddaughter, Lila, had banged on his front door at 3 p.m. holding a paper cup of neon pink lemonade she’d made herself, and he didn’t have the heart to say no.
He was leaning against an oak tree at the edge of the party, holding a lukewarm Pabst he hadn’t sipped in 15 minutes, when Maeve walked over. She was 58, moved into the blue house next door three months prior, worked part time selling small-batch wine to restaurants across the region, and Aris had gone out of his way to avoid her, crossing the street when he saw her in the yard, pretending he didn’t hear her when she waved over the fence. She stopped so close he could smell the peach iced tea on her breath, the lavender hand lotion she wore, the faint tang of cedar from the raised garden beds she’d spent the last two weeks building along the property line. Her dark auburn hair had streaks of copper that glowed in the golden hour sun, she was wearing a faded navy linen button-down unbuttoned one notch too low, scuffed white sneakers, and a silver necklace with a tiny horse charm on it. She didn’t say hi first, just reached out and brushed a smudge of iron gall ink off his left wrist, her fingers calloused from digging in dirt, warm against his skin. He flinched before he could stop himself, but didn’t pull away.
“Spent all morning restoring a 1792 map of the Cyclades, didn’t you?” she said, grinning, when he stared at her like she’d grown a second head. “Saw your work light on at 2 a.m. when I let the dog out. You gonna keep hiding up in that house forever, or are you gonna act like you live here?”
The irritation hit first, sharp and familiar. He hated that she’d watched him, hated that she’d paid enough attention to notice the ink, hated that she was calling him out on the routine he’d built to keep himself safe. But under the irritation, there was something else, a quiet buzz he hadn’t felt in years, like he was 17 again, sneaking into a bar in downtown Athens with his cousin, scared he’d get caught and thrilled at the same time. He shrugged, took a sip of the beer he’d forgotten about, winced at how warm it was. “Got nothing to say to most people around here,” he said.
She laughed, a low, throaty sound that made the back of his neck tingle. “Fair. Most of them are boring as hell. I brought a bottle of 2021 Agiorgitiko from a tiny family vineyard outside Nafplio in my cooler. You like Greek wine? I won it at a sales contest last month, haven’t had anyone to drink it with.”
He almost said no. The words were on the tip of his tongue, the same automatic rejection he’d given every other invitation for eight years. But then she shifted her weight, her knee brushing his, and he could see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow she’d gotten falling off a horse when she was 12, the way her mouth tilted up at the corner when she was waiting for an answer. “Yeah,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it. “Bring it over to my place once this mess dies down. I’ve got clean glasses on the back porch.”
The party wound down an hour later, kids dragging home with sticky faces and lollipops stuck in their hair, neighbors carrying folding chairs and coolers back to their garages. Maeve showed up at his back door 10 minutes after that, holding the wine bottle in one hand, a bag of salted pistachios in the other. He’d strung up fairy lights above the porch the summer before, when Eleni’s sister had visited and bullied him into it, and they cast a soft, warm glow over the wood, the crickets chirping loud in the grass behind the house, the distant hum of a highway a few miles away.
They sat on the porch swing, passing the wine bottle back and forth, talking about nothing and everything, the way map ink stained his skin no matter how hard he scrubbed, the way her customers would lie about knowing anything about wine just to impress their dates. He told her about Eleni, about the crash, about how he’d spent the first three years after she died barely leaving the house, eating frozen dinners for breakfast, letting the tomato plants die in the backyard. She told him about her husband, who’d died of a heart attack six years prior, about how she’d sold their big house in the suburbs and moved here because she couldn’t stand walking past the empty chair he used to sit in every night.
When she leaned in to pass him the bottle, her shoulder pressed against his, and she didn’t move away. He could feel the heat of her arm through his flannel shirt, the way her breath fanned against his neck when she laughed at a story he told about restoring a map for a millionaire in Dubai who’d thought it was a treasure map. He fought the urge to reach out and touch her face, the same old guilt bubbling up, the voice in his head saying he was betraying Eleni, that he didn’t get to be happy again. But then she turned to look at him, their faces inches apart, and she reached up and brushed a strand of gray hair off his forehead, her thumb grazing his cheek, soft and slow. “I know it feels like you’re doing something wrong,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear. “But you’re not. She’d want you to not be lonely.”
That was the thing that broke him. He didn’t say anything, just leaned in, kissed her slow, the taste of Greek wine and peach lip gloss on her mouth, her hands coming up to tangle in his hair, soft and warm. They kissed for what felt like five minutes, what felt like an hour, the wine bottle sitting forgotten on the porch rail, the crickets still chirping, the fairy lights glowing above them.
When she pulled away, she was grinning, her cheeks pink, her hair messy. “I also brought that old family map of Ireland I found in my grandma’s attic,” she said. “Was gonna ask if you’d look at it for me. If you’re not too busy, that is.”
He laughed, a real laugh, the kind he hadn’t let out in years, and pulled her closer, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, her head resting on his chest. “I’ll look at it tomorrow,” he said. “Tonight’s fine just like this.”
They sat there until the bottle was empty, until the moon was high in the sky, their legs tangled together, not talking much, just listening to the crickets, the distant sound of a dog barking a few houses over. When she left to go home, she kissed him again on the porch step, slow and soft, and promised she’d be back in the morning with the map. He stood on the porch long after she’d gone inside her house, the faint taste of peach lip gloss still on his lips, the ink smudge still visible on his wrist, the porch swing still warm from where she’d been sitting.
