“You don’t need to pay for a swimsuit for me.” Emma was a typical cash-strapped grad student.
Emma stood and brushed the sand off her limbs. “Consider it a thanks for this incredible summer vacation.” She offered a hand up to Cara. “I insist.”
Cara started to protest, but changed her mind. Emma had her pride, and Cara understood pride. After all, how much could a bikini cost?
“ONE HUNDRED twenty-five euros? Are you nuts?” Cara yanked at the spaghetti straps of the turquoise string bikini. On reflection, she shouldn’t have been surprised. Any swimsuit store located half a block from a tourist beach was not going to be a bargain hunter’s paradise.
Emma lightly slapped her hands away from the neck ties. “Come on, Cara, this suit looks amazing on you. The color makes your eyes as blue as the ocean—”
“And my skin as pale as the sand,” Cara interjected.
“So you aren’t tanned to the consistency of saddle leather. I’m telling you, this is the suit for you and I won’t take no for an answer.”
“But—”
“The proper response is ‘thank you.’”
“Thank you, Emma.”
Emma pulled her into a hug. “No, thank you. I’m going to look at that hot-pink bikini while you change.” She left Cara in the small curtained changing room.
Cara studied her reflection. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d examined herself closely in the mirror. Once upon a time, she had done practically everything but measure herself with calipers to see how fat she’d been. Which was to say, not fat at all.
And she still wasn’t fat, despite how her former self would have fainted with horror to know how much weight Cara had gained over the past couple years.
Cara shook her head, glad to be past that craziness. Instead, she looked healthy. She pivoted to see her back in the mirror. Her butt looked full but not jiggly under the thin stretch material, and she even had a couple dimples at the base of her spine. She turned to see the front view and cupped her breasts to make sure the two triangles of fabric would be sufficient. Not that that really mattered since no one batted an eye at topless sunbathing. As she adjusted her breasts, her nipples tightened and poked against the fabric. She impulsively brushed one with her thumb and shuddered in pleasure. The suit was too tight, she should have realized. It rubbed all sorts of sensitive areas, her breasts, nipples, especially the strip between her legs.
“Cara? Are you ready?” Emma called. Cara started; she’d been about to slip her hand inside her suit bottom.
“Just a minute.” She hurriedly changed back into her heavy black swimsuit and white terry cloth cover-up. They felt like a muumuu in comparison to the sexy blue bikini. She burst out of the curtained cubicle, suit in hand. “I’ll take it.”
“I’m paying, remember?” Emma plucked it away and set it on the counter in front of the young, dark-haired girl.
Cara turned to the salesclerk. “Do you have it in any other colors?”
Emma raised her eyebrows. “I told you it was a great suit.”
The clerk ambled over to the racks and selected three suits—one black, one yellow, and the last a melon-orange. Emma shook her head at the yellow. “You’ll look like your liver’s acting up with that color. How about the black?”
“I like the melon color.” Cara held it up in front of her.
“You look very nice in that color—most ladies not so much,” the clerk offered.
“She’s right, Cara. It’s great with your hair and the gold trim on the cups and beads on the ties really make it shine.”
Cara took the black one from the clerk, as well. “The blue, the black and the orange.” She reached over to another rack. “And both of these crocheted cover-ups. I think the white one will look nice with the turquoise and the black with the black bikini, of course. And those three pairs of matching thong sandals in American size nine.” The woman scurried around, gathering up Cara’s selections. “Emma, what are you getting?”
Emma’s eyes had widened. “Cara, are you sure you should get all this? We’ll be here for longer than we planned moneywise.”
Cara stopped for a second. “Really, Emma, don’t worry about it. I built some shopping into my budget. You know how frugally I live.”
Emma laughed and visibly relaxed. “Frugally is right. Some might even call it cheaply. But shopping spree or no, the blue suit’s still on my bill.”
“Agreed.” But Cara noticed how Emma returned the hot-pink bikini that she’d been admiring to the rack.
Emma paid for the blue suit with a wad of euros and took the parcel. Cara caught the clerk’s eye and gestured for her to pull that hot-pink suit back out. The woman nodded. “Emma, why don’t you walk down to that café we passed and grab a sidewalk table for us? We should have an afternoon snack since dinner doesn’t start until about nine or ten o’clock.”
“You have a good idea,” the clerk chimed in. “The outdoor tables are always busy and they have excellent pastries, as well.”
“Sure!” Emma scooted out of the shop. She’d been eager to try different Greek desserts. Once she was gone, Cara quickly selected a matching cover-up and sandals for the hot-pink bikini. The total came to over six hundred euros, which Cara put on her platinum credit card without a second thought.
As the clerk was wrapping her purchases, a jewelry display under the glass countertop caught Cara’s eye. Definitely beach jewelry—various ankle bracelets, toe rings and belly button rings. She stopped and touched her own navel. Her piercing was still open, although she almost never wore anything but a plain tiny silver ring.
“Would the lady like to see the jewelry? We have a gold-and-pink ankle bracelet that would look lovely with your friend’s suit,” the clerk offered.
Cara cursorily eyed the bracelet. “Fine, add the matching toe ring, as well.” But she couldn’t take her eyes off the belly button rings. “What about the light blue stone?” It was large and the same color as the afternoon Aegean sky.
“Very high quality. In Greek is akouamarina—water of the sea. In English, nearly the same.”
“Aquamarine.” A stone named after seawater was a perfect choice for an island summer. Almost…destiny? Cara dismissed the echo of Athena’s words. “I’ll take it, as well.”
The clerk did a little half leap of joy but managed to restrain herself enough to tally up the second bill. Cara figured it was fitting to return some of her dough to the Greek economy, back from whence it came.
“You come back again, okay? You ask for me. My name is Niki, and I take good care of you.”
“Thank you.” Cara was royally ushered to the exit, where Niki held the door for her. The late-afternoon sun blasted her in the face, so she popped her hat and sunglasses back on.
The café Emma was waiting at was only about two or three blocks down the main road from the shop. Cara strolled down the sidewalk and walked in front of a narrow alleyway.
A screech of brakes made her stop dead in her tracks as a Vespa-type motor scooter skidded to a halt a foot from her legs. The sunglasses-wearing driver gave an angry shout in Greek that questioned her brains and skills of observance.
Cara fought the urge to tell him where to get off, using several pungent Greek verbs, and instead pulled her sunglasses off, giving the young, curly-haired guy her best freezing glare. “Why don’t you look where you’re going, you bonehead? Pulling out of an alley where you can’t see who might be walking in front of you—where’d