Aris Part 2

I sighed, feeling disheartened, as I checked my messages. It had been almost half an hour since Aunt Tati had sent me a message saying she had just landed and was on her way to the college.
"Not in the mood for cute guys right now, Lizzie," I replied.
"Wow... That guy over there must not be a student. Given his age, he’s probably a professor here. And 'cute' is an understatement... Man, he’s a Greek god, seriously."
"A nine out of ten?" I joked, still looking at my phone.
"Maybe a nine and a half. Or a perfect ten. On the Can Yaman level, but older. He’s coming this way... Oh my God... Come on, come over here, daddy..."
Noticing Lizzie’s excitement, I finally looked up to see the stunning man she was talking about.
Oh... my God...
"Daddy?" I said, shocked.
Lizzie continued excitedly.
"Yeah... I wouldn’t mind being the Sugar Baby of that hot daddy."
My astonishment was mixed with disgust at that moment, and I explained why with a shout.
"Lizzie... he’s my father."
"Okay, Aris... I’ll leave the handsome guy to you."
She definitely wasn’t understanding. But she probably did when the man she was drooling over stopped in front of us, accompanied by a woman Lizzie apparently hadn’t even noticed.
"Dad? What are you doing here?" I asked.
"What?" Lizzie finally understood.
"Lizzie, this is my father, Viktor. And this is his wife, Tatiana."
"Are you kidding me?" Lizzie grumbled, apparently disappointed.
Aunt Tati immediately came to hug me.
"What’s my dad doing here?" I asked close to her ear.
"Sorry about this, dear. I tried, but I couldn’t convince him that everything was fine, and he insisted on coming with me."
When she let me go, my dad hugged me.
I returned the hug, still confused.
"And Icarus?"
"He went on a school camping trip," Tati explained.
When she let me go, my dad looked at me attentively.
"Are you okay? Have you been having your exams regularly?"
"Dad, it’s been just over two months since I had a general check-up, just before coming here."
"You’re looking thinner. Are you eating properly?"

“She does!” Lizzie quickly jumped in to help. “Aris is the healthiest eater I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Tati sighed.
“I told him, Aris, that I was coming here just to catch up and chat a bit.”
That didn’t seem to convince my dad.
“What do you two have to talk about that I can’t be included in?”
“About boys, for example.” Okay, Aunt Tati had chosen the worst possible answer for a jealous father like mine. “Boy? What boy?”
“Boys,” Aunt Tati corrected him. “In the plural and in a general sense. Stop being such a clingy dad, Viktor. Aris is now a college student. She needs to enjoy her youth!”
He snorted, showing that he wasn’t very pleased with the answer.
And here I was, not wanting to worry even Aunt Tati, now also with my dad right there, probably believing that I was involved in trouble.
And he was right to think so.

***


Aris


September 27, Part 2.
...
I just hope I don’t worry anyone else besides her. In eighteen years, I’ve surely already exceeded the quota of worry a child can give their parents.
I chose a beach for Aunt Tati and me to talk. It was the same one I had visited some time ago with Lizzie, not the one where Dimitris and I had watched the sunrise together and shared our first kiss.
However, just the fact that it was a beach reminded me of that day. Damn it, I didn’t have much of an escape.
My dad came along but waited in the car. He had brought his laptop and said he would work there while ‘the girls talked’. I was glad he didn’t resist giving us privacy, but still saddened knowing that, despite this, he was worried about me. And Tati was too, considering she still didn’t know what kind of trouble I was in.
We sat side by side on the beach sand, and I just told her everything, absolutely everything, from the day I first saw Dimitris. I had my journal in my bag and even read her some passages because it was a way, more than just the facts, for her to understand a bit of my feelings too. She listened attentively and asked very few questions throughout my account.
After a long time—probably two hours or more—I was lying down with my head on my stepmother’s lap, crying while she stroked my hair. Still, she remained silent, and I didn’t know if it was just because she lacked words to comfort me or if she was trying to process all the information.
Maybe it was a bit of both.
When I calmed down a bit more, I sat up again.
“So...” I began, as if encouraging her to say something.
I was expecting some advice or something similar.
She sighed heavily.
“I’m trying to organize all this information in my head, Fadinha. And thinking about where to start.”
“Maybe start at the beginning?”
“The beginning? ...Well, let’s start with my beginning with you. Before I met you, I didn’t even know it was possible to love another human being this way.”
I managed a small smile, still amidst my tears.
“You already loved my dad.”

“Yeah, but there are different kinds of love. Before Icarus was born, I discovered what maternal love was through you. And it wasn’t just because you were my stepdaughter. But there is something about you that makes it impossible not to love you. You know.”
“Oh... that is possible. And I’m not just talking about Dimitris, but... As I told you, I’ve made some enemies around here.”
“I’m talking about good people, not those jerks who have threatened you. And I know I can be a friend to you, but... I also feel like a bit of a mother. Don’t think that inside I’m not a bit crazy with everything you’ve told me. And that I’m not holding back from going after that boy to have a word with him about what he did to you.”
“If it were for that, I would have talked to my dad.”
“Viktor wouldn’t want to have a word with Dimitris. He’d want to kill him; that’s quite different.”
“Please, Aunt. I also love you like a mother, but... I really need you as a friend right now.”
“…You entered a dance competition? Went to an illegal competition arena? You let that boy take you on his motorcycle in the middle of the night to a place you didn’t even know? And then you got into his car without knowing where he was taking you?”
“Your friend side, Aunt Tati. Please.”
“Alright. But after we have our friend chat, I want my mother moment because you did a lot of things that deserve a scolding. You’re already of legal age and I can’t ground you, but I helped raise you, so you’ll have to hear what I think about all this.”
“Okay... I promise I’ll listen to everything. But that’s not what I need right now.”
“I know.” She placed her hand on my face in a maternal gesture. I could see she was trying hard to hold back the tears forming in her eyes. “Oh, my dear... How I wish I could take all this pain from your heart. The things Dimitris said to you, you know that...”
“That they’re real. I know that, Aunt. His actions hurt me, but his words... are nothing different from what I’ve always known.”

"That’s not true. Dear, we worry a lot about your health, and you know that you’ll always need to be careful, but... You still have many, many years to live. Don’t deprive yourself of living fully because of this.”
“Even dance competitions?”
“…As long as you take all the precautions, yes, even that. It’s okay if you fail a course or two in college; you can sign up for fewer classes next year... Everything can be adapted. I just don’t want you to do things with the biggest concern being not letting your family know. Your focus should be your well-being and your happiness, within the limits where these two things can go hand in hand. And don’t deprive yourself of falling in love... and allowing someone else to fall in love with you.”
“And if I’m not here in two or three years?”
“And if you are? Because I know, deep down in my heart, that you will be. Someday you’ll find yourself... Ten, twenty, thirty years from now... suffering for the things you gave up. For everything you didn’t allow yourself to experience.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have that much time.”
“You don’t know. In fact, no one knows. Eleven years ago, Aris, when you were asleep in that hospital, we didn’t even know if you’d wake up the next day. And look at you now. Adult, healthy... and as beautiful and loving as you’ve always been.”
Her voice was choked with emotion, and she needed a moment to compose herself. I thought about it for a moment and concluded:
“Maybe you’re right. But if someone, someday, wants to allow themselves to love me, they’ll need to be aware of this.”
“They will. And if they truly love you, they’ll realize how being with you makes any risk worth it.”
“Maybe, deep down, I came to believe that this person could be Dimitris. I was so foolish…”
“Do you know why we always call you ‘Fadinha’?”
“Because I ‘charm everyone’?”
“Yes. But not just because of that. You also understand people. You have a sixth sense about them.”
“That sixth sense failed with Dimitris.”
“By the way, have I ever told you about how my first time with your father was?”

"That made me widen my eyes. It was the least desired topic change of my life.
‘...Why would I want to know about that, Aunt Tati?’
‘It’s because it’s quite an interesting story...’
‘Okay... can we, at this very moment, go back to being mother and daughter?’
‘I met Viktor in Brazil; I was hired as his translator for a big corporate event. There was already a certain chemistry between us, and one night we kissed and went to the same room, and then...’
‘Aunt Tati!’ I interrupted. For God’s sake, I didn’t want details about my father’s sex life!
She laughed, probably understanding my discomfort.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll skip the details. What I want to tell you is that, that very night, I left him.’
Alright... that was unusual to me.
‘What do you mean you left him?’
‘I left in the middle of the night while he was asleep.’
‘Why did you do something like that?’
‘Because I saw a certain little girl sending a message to his phone, calling him ‘daddy’. I did an internet search and found out he was married. I couldn’t imagine it was a marriage of convenience with his best friend to adopt a child together; that’s not the kind of situation you encounter every day.’
‘Are you telling me I almost made you two break up?’
‘It wasn’t your fault, my love. But what I want to show you is that... Far from me defending what that guy did to you, but... I did something very similar with your father.’
‘You had your reasons.’
‘People usually do when they do something drastic. Maybe Dimitris just doesn’t want to tell you what his reasons were.’
‘He said. After getting what he wanted, he left.’
‘Again, far from me defending him, but... You told me you were alone with him on more than one occasion. And he never tried anything.’
‘When we were alone at the dance school, I made it very clear that we wouldn’t be having sex. But the truth is that at that point I was already so involved and so foolish that... if he had merely kissed me, I would have certainly given myself to him on a silver platter.’
‘And you think men don’t notice those things? Especially the jerks. Maybe, just maybe, if his intention all along had been just sex, he would have had opportunities to get it before.’
‘...Are you really not trying to defend him, Aunt? Because that’s exactly what it sounds like.’"

"‘I’m just trying to find the loose ends in all of this. Because with the things you’ve told me he did for you... It’s hard to believe he didn’t feel at least affection and consideration for you. So maybe there’s some reason for him to have acted the way he did and said what he said, to push you away.’
‘I thought about that too. When he left that way, leaving me alone, I believed it was something unrelated to me. You know, he was very upset because of the date.’
‘What’s with the date?’
That was a small detail I had forgotten to mention when I told the story.
‘The day when everything happened. He said it was the anniversary of the accident that took his father and brother’s lives, and that...’
I suddenly fell silent because it was the first time since the event that I really stopped to think about it more attentively. When he told me, I was so absorbed in thoughts about his suffering... and then, when he acted that way and left, I could only think about the things I had said myself, trying to figure out what might have triggered him to leave in that manner.
But now, finally, I was making the associations...
He said that it would be eleven years since the accident. And his brother, at the time, was eight years old.
That’s it, of course... He had made the same association when I mentioned that my surgery was a heart transplant, done exactly the day after the accident with his family. But it was just an unfounded suspicion... It couldn’t be...
What were the chances of that being possible?
‘Aris?’ — My stepmother’s voice brought me back to reality.
‘Aunt Tati... Do you know anything about my donor?’
‘About your donor? Aris, you’re not thinking that...’
‘Please, Aunt, no questions... Just tell me everything you know.’
‘I don’t know anything beyond what you also know. Your father and I tried to get information about the donor’s family. Because we wanted to go to them, express our condolences, and thank them for, amidst the great pain of losing a child, having the noble initiative to authorize the organ donation, but we couldn’t get anything. It seems that this information is confidential.’
I tried to think quickly. There had to be a way.
And it was Tati who remembered something:"

"‘Alina was part of the transplant team. Maybe she knows something.’
With trembling hands, I grabbed my phone and called my mother Alina, hoping she wasn't in an appointment or surgery at that moment. She was a doctor and, although cardiothoracic surgeries weren’t her specialty, she had managed to get authorization to be part of the medical team responsible for my transplant. Generally, relatives weren't allowed to be involved, but she wasn’t legally my mother, as I had been formally adopted by Iryna and Viktor.
It took six endless rings before she answered.
‘Aris? Wow, I thought you had forgotten you have family!’
At any other time, she might have scolded me for ignoring the family for days, but not then.
‘Mom, please... I need you to answer something... About my donor.’
‘What? Why is this coming up now, all of a sudden?’
‘Please, mom, no questions right now, just answer me, please... I know you don’t know their identity, but... Do you have any information? Any information?’
‘Blood type compatible with yours. Size proportional to your thoracic cavity...’
‘Something less... technical? Whether it was a boy or a girl?’
‘That’s somewhat irrelevant, Aris. What’s going on?’
‘Cause of death? Please, mom, try to remember anything. It’s very important.’
She took a brief pause, and I initially thought she would question me further about the reason for the interrogation. However, I soon realized she was just thinking about it, probably trying to remember something.
‘The only information I had, besides the technical details, which I’ve already given you, was the hospital from where the organ came.’
‘And do you remember which one it was?’
‘I do. General Hospital of Thessaloniki. But why are you asking me all this now, Aris? Did something happen? ...Aris?’
The phone slipped from my hands, falling onto the sand. Aunt Tati quickly grabbed the phone and spoke briefly with my mother, assuring her that everything was fine and that she would call back soon to explain everything. Then, when she hung up, she pulled me into her arms, letting me cry again while she comforted me.
The heart beating in my chest...
My miracle...
Represented the ruin of Dimitris’s family."