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All characters are above 18 and are not based on any real people.
Tw: alcohol consumption
The first chapter doesn't include any particular NSFW but stay tuned for next chapters. It will be a slowwww burn!
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That summer I was really excited to finally go to my father's family's place in Greece for a few days, now that my mother, who always quarrelled with that side of the family, was happily divorced. All of my childhood I had felt ostracized since I was the only one of my cousins who didn't spend their summers there. Their stories of riding longboards along the winding slopes, having the same crushes and friends year after year, late night beach bonfires and spending the days on tanning on the boat deck or swimming in crystal clear waters, that they would tell over Christmas, were always stirring up jealousy. Already, I was the sole only child in the family, and my family lived in a completely different city (and sometimes, country) than the rest of the lot, and my father was also an only child, only remotely related to my uncles and aunts. I grew up fairly alone family-wise. It was always just my parents and me, apart from spare Christmas dinners, until I moved out for college. Now that my parents had divorced, I had felt even more alone and without a clear home or sense of belonging, despite being close to both of them.
I had five cousins on this side of the family, three of which I've known since childhood, as they lived in the same country at least. We were all relatively close in age and quite different from one another but there was always this sense of camaraderie and mischief despite seeing each-other rarely. It was the closest I've felt to having siblings. The two other cousins, both boys and slightly younger, grew up with my aunt in another country and I never knew much about them, having seen them once or twice in my lifetime. I knew that they were family, but it was just a distant fact, an afterthought, as we never really interacted.
Unfortunately, I was able to hop on the train of Greece house vacation only when we were mostly well into our twenties, most of them having stopped frequenting the place with their parents. I was happy to learn that at least my aunt would be present with two of her sons. Not the cousins I had imagined spending my time there with, but it was a possibility to get to know them better and see what this place was all about through their eyes.
The first day upon arrival I could sense my father's bubbling excitement for going back to the house he spent his whole childhood in with his cousins, and especially getting to share at least a fragment of that atmosphere with me. Our SUV had a hard time rolling uphill through the narrow and steep driveway, the tires crackling on gravel suspiciously beneath us. The house had been built long before cars were invented, and the parking space we stopped at in the back garden used to be a goat sty. The old stone bricks were covered with fig trees and laurel bushes, fresh linen sheets awaiting us coolly swaying in the balcony shade. It was early August and the air was hot and sticky with those distinct Mediterranean smells of sun scorched aromatics and rotting fruit.
The aunt and uncle who lived in the same country as us, Robert and Gina, sunbathing in the front garden, leaped to greet us. They were preparing to leave the next day, as the house was relatively small albeit the two stories, and it was a family tradition that everyone gets a fair use but respecting the other's calendars and time slots. The other aunt, Mar, wouldn't be coming until late the next day, along with her sons and husband. It was nice to see familiar faces first, so we spent a nice evening making grilled fish on the grill outside with the neighbours from surrounding houses, who all knew my family since decades. Wine was always a drink of choice for us, blame it on the Mediterranean genes. After claiming a small cool bedroom on the upper floor for myself, after that merry of an evening, I drifted quickly to sleep lulled by the sound of cicadas on the trees outside.
After Robert and Gina left the next morning, my dad took me for a 30min walk along the coast to the nearest shop to get more wine and food for Mar and her family. He wanted to make dinner to welcome them, as Rob and Gina did for us. I was finally starting to understand the dynamics of this very dispersed family and I loved every moment of it, my heart sinking further because this was what I was deprived of all of my childhood and adolescence. We got an astounding seven bottles of everything ranging from Prosecco to harsh tannic reds. I asked my father jokingly how many people are we planning on inviting and he responded with "Just the family, that's why we need to be well prepared".
Spending the day at the small stone paved beach, I was introduced to all the locals that my father and my grandparents even knew, as a finally full fledged part of this family, I started feeling the effects of this community. They were all relatively well educated and interesting people, living on almost every continent imaginable, sharing this small village as their one lifeline since they were kids. Everyone knew everyone, even after not seeing them for almost 20 years as was the case with my father.
It was one of the rare moments where I saw him truly relax and let go of expectations and just enjoy himself and enjoy sharing this with me. It was intoxicating. He told me "I know you had to spend the entire day with old people but Albert and Felix are coming tonight, so you will be able to also discover how it is here for young people too" referring to my two cousins. I was at the time in my late twenties and I very much enjoyed the company of my father's friends so far, that my cousins even slipped off of my mind. Albert was only 20 and the last time I had seen him was when he was a baby, and Felix was 3 years younger than me but since the last time I saw him he was also in high school while I was in college, I couldn't really see how I could integrate myself into their friend groups more than my dad's.
Mar's family arrived while we were lighting up the grill and I was preparing Aperol spritzes for aperitifs and as a consolidation for the long drive there. Mar and her husband commented on how I changed (duh, they saw me 7 years prior while I was in their city for a concert with friends, when we had a very stiff lunch together as my cousins weren't present and they are both extremely posh, with me being the wild child even compared to my parents), not commenting on my nose piercing or my tattoos that were very visible as I was filling the ice trays in a bikini top and a bermuda short. I knew they had things to say but I never really considered them close so I just hoped they wouldn't give my father a hard time.
Albert and Felix rolled out of the car, both extremely blonde and blue-eyed, as their mother, which was completely in contrast with my father and especially myself. I took after my Turkish mother, a tanned black-eyed dark-haired tower of a person, with my slightly crooked nose and broad shoulders and curves, nothing alike their elf-like features. They were both tall, lanky, with electric blue eyes, and Felix sported a septum piercing which I found surprising, but then again he was soon to be graduating from an art faculty as an MA.
