CATEGORY: Relationships

Prologue

There are questions that arise within human relationships and rarely have a simple answer.

One of them became the inspiration for the story I am about to tell you.

“If she hurts me, why do I still want her?”

It is a real question that emerged in therapy. “I know this relationship hurts me. I know I have cried more than I have smiled. I know I have given more than I have received. And yet… a part of me still wants to go back.” It is what happens when reason knows all the reasons you should walk away, while a part of you still remains behind.

From this point on, however, fiction begins.

The story that follows will unfold in the form of a novel. The people, characters, dialogue, and events you are about to encounter are fictional, created around this very real and deeply human question that first emerged in a therapeutic context.

Alkis & Irini

Part 1

It was one of those soft evenings in early autumn, when summer still seems reluctant to let go. The group had gathered at a small, dimly lit place with wide-open windows. Soft music drifted through the room, old songs from abroad fading into conversations, laughter, and the clinking of glasses.

Alkis had arrived earlier and was talking to a friend when he saw her walk in.

Irini.

He didn’t know her name yet.

She was wearing a long dress that moved lightly around her as she walked, her hair falling loosely over her shoulders. She greeted a few people in the group and, almost immediately, smiled at something one of her friends said.

For a moment, Alkis stopped following the conversation beside him.

He was watching her.

There was something about her smile that captivated him. And when, a little later, he heard her laugh—a clear, spontaneous laugh that somehow rose above the music and the voices—he found himself smiling too, without quite knowing why.

His eyes kept returning to her.

To the way she spoke with her hands. The way she swept her hair back over her shoulder. The way she leaned toward people when she listened to them, only to break into that same laughter again.

He watched her, mesmerized.

And then, as though she could feel his eyes on her, Irini turned.

Their eyes met, and for a moment, time seemed to stand still.

The voices around them faded away. The music softened, as though it were suddenly coming from somewhere far away, and for a few seconds Alkis could see no one else in the room.

Only her.

Irini didn’t look away. She held his gaze and smiled.

And he felt that sweet, almost imperceptible flutter pass through him. He smiled back.

Something had just happened between them.

Before they went their separate ways that night, they exchanged phone numbers. Alkis left with her smile still lingering in his mind and a strange sadness that the evening had ended a little sooner than he wished it had.

The next day, her name appeared on his phone.

A simple message. Just a few words.

But they were enough to make him smile.

And just like that, almost without a sound, Irini began to find her way into his life.

Their first date came a few days later.

They met one afternoon after work at a small café by the sea. When he saw her walking toward him, he felt his heart begin to beat a little faster.

For a few moments, he simply stood there watching her. The way she walked toward him, the way her hair moved softly over her shoulders, the smile that appeared on her lips the moment she saw him.

And then he felt it again—that familiar flutter from the night they first met.

Only this time, it was stronger.

And as he watched her coming toward him, Alkis wasn’t seeing only Irini. He was already seeing something of the woman she might become to him. The warmth he had been searching for, the companionship he had missed, that sense of “us” he had always believed he would find someday. And that thought, simple as it was, filled him with an almost childlike joy.

He didn’t know her well enough yet to know whether any of those things truly existed within her.

But Alkis had always had a tendency to fall in love with both what he saw and what he hoped to see.

Irini sat across from him, and the awkwardness of those first few minutes quickly disappeared. They talked about their work, about places they had travelled to and places they dreamed of visiting someday, about music, films, and the little habits that made up their everyday lives. They laughed often. They discovered things they had in common and disagreed about others with that playful ease two people have when they are still discovering each other.

At some point, Irini began asking him more personal questions.

She asked about his previous relationships, about the people who had passed through his life, about the things that had hurt him. She wanted to know what he looked for in a relationship, what could make him stay, and what would make him walk away.

At first, Alkis was surprised. He wasn’t used to conversations like this on a first date. But very quickly, his surprise gave way to something else.

She really wants to know me, he thought.

Every new question felt like another small sign that her interest in him wasn’t superficial. That she wasn’t sitting there simply because she had liked a man she happened to meet one evening. She wanted to know who he was. What he carried inside him. What he feared. What he needed.

And the more she asked, the more Alkis felt that something special was beginning to grow between them.

It never occurred to him that two people could share so much in the space of a few hours and still remain almost strangers.

That evening, Alkis didn’t feel as though Irini was simply learning things about him.

He felt as though she was drawing closer to him.

By the time they got up to leave, night had already fallen. They walked for a while by the sea, neither of them seeming particularly eager for the evening to end.

Just before they said goodbye, Irini looked at him and smiled.

“I had a lovely time.”

“So did I.”

They didn’t kiss that night.

And yet, when Alkis returned home, he had the feeling that something had already begun.

Over the next few days, they began talking more and more. A message in the morning, a phone call at night, a photograph of something insignificant from the middle of the day that, for some reason, they wanted to share with each other.

It wasn’t long before their second date.

This time, they met in the evening. They had dinner at a small restaurant and afterwards walked without any particular destination in mind. Their conversations had already begun to carry the kind of intimacy that usually takes much longer to develop.

Alkis would talk and Irini would often laugh, occasionally resting her hand on his. Small, almost imperceptible gestures that he noticed far more than he wanted to let on.

When it was time to say goodbye, they stood facing each other for a moment.

This time, there was no “I had a lovely time.”

Alkis leaned closer and kissed her.

Irini didn’t pull away. Instead, she stayed close to him for a few moments and, when she finally drew back, she looked at him with a smile.

From that night on, things began to move quickly.

They saw each other more often. Their phone calls grew longer. They began learning each other’s little habits, creating their own private jokes, their own words, all those tiny details that slowly turn two separate everyday lives into an “us.”

Alkis had begun to grow accustomed to Irini’s presence in his life.

Irini was affectionate and expressive. She would message him when she missed him, seek him out during the day, tell him how happy she felt when they were together.

And Alkis let himself fall into it.

There was no reason yet for him not to.

For a while, their relationship was exactly what he had begun to hope it might become.

Until one evening, something changed.

Not enough for him to name it.

But enough for him to feel it.

Almost three months had passed since the night they first met.

That evening, they had gone out for dinner. It was one of those nights when everything seemed to be exactly where it belonged. They laughed, teased each other, and made plans for a short trip they wanted to take together.

At one point, Alkis reached across the table and took her hand.

“I really like what we have,” he said.

Irini smiled, but this time her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

She gently slipped her hand from his and reached for her glass.

Alkis looked at her.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s like something suddenly changed.”

Irini lowered her eyes for a moment.

“I don’t know why we always have to put things into boxes. I’m happy when I’m with you. Isn’t that enough?”

Only a few days earlier, she had told him how much she missed him when they were apart. They had talked about their trip, made plans for the holidays, and she had confided things in him that, according to her, she didn’t easily share with anyone.

“I didn’t ask you to promise me anything,” he said.

“I know.”

Irini smiled again and changed the subject.

Alkis didn’t press her.

But on the way home, something was troubling him. He kept trying to understand exactly what he had said wrong.

The next morning, Irini didn’t send her usual message.

Nor did she the following day.

When he finally messaged her, her reply came several hours later.

“Sorry. Difficult day. We’ll talk.”

Alkis read the message two, then three times.

He couldn’t recognize Irini in those few words. Just two days earlier, she had been the woman who reached out to him throughout the day, who told him she missed him, who made plans with him for a trip. And now, suddenly, it felt as though a wall had risen between them.

His first thought was that something must have happened.

His second was far more painful.

Had he done something wrong?

He picked up his phone to call her. Then put it back down.

“We’ll talk,” she had written.

He tried to respect her need for space.

But that night, for the first time since he had met Irini, Alkis slept with his phone beside him and woke several times during the night to check the screen.

The following afternoon, his phone rang.

It was Irini.

Alkis stared at her name on the screen for a few seconds before answering. He had been waiting for this call all day. Over and over, he had rehearsed what he wanted to ask her. He needed to understand what had happened, what had changed so suddenly in the space of just a few days.

“How are you?” she asked.

Her voice was familiar. Warm. As though nothing had happened.

“I’m okay… You?”

“Fine. Tired.”

Alkis waited for a moment. Perhaps she would continue. Perhaps she would explain.

She didn’t.

“Irini, what happened these past few days?”

“What do you mean?”

Her question caught him off guard.

“You disappeared.”

“I didn’t disappear, Alkis. I just had a lot on my mind.”

“Two days ago, we were fine.”

“We’re fine now.”

Alkis fell silent.

“I don’t know… I just felt like you suddenly pulled away.”

There was a brief pause.

“I think sometimes you overthink things.”

Her words confused him even more.

For a moment, he wondered whether perhaps he really had made too much of it. Maybe she was simply under pressure. Maybe she had needed a little time to herself. Maybe he had been too quick to assume that something was wrong.

And then her voice softened.

“I missed you.”

Almost immediately, all the tension he had been carrying since the night before began to fade.

“I missed you too.”

“I want to see you.”

They met that same evening.

When Alkis saw her approaching, he tried to hold on to everything he had wanted them to talk about. But Irini smiled, wrapped her arms around him, and stayed there for a moment, pressed against him.

She was the Irini he knew again.

Tender. Warm. Close to him.

Alkis didn’t ask again what had happened.

Perhaps because he didn’t want to spoil the moment. Perhaps because, right then, having her back seemed more important than having an explanation.

Over the next few days, everything returned to the familiar rhythm between them. Irini sought him out, sent him messages, wanted to see him. They laughed again. They made plans. And Alkis began to believe that perhaps those two strange days hadn’t meant anything after all.

Except that a small question mark remained inside him.

He didn’t yet know that it would be the first of many.

Nor did he know that every time Irini returned, the question mark would remain unanswered.

It would simply be forgotten for a while.

For some time, everything seemed to have gone back to the way it had been.

Except it wasn’t quite the way it had been.

Irini could spend an entire weekend in his arms, talking about the things they would do together, constantly reaching out to him and telling him how happy she felt when she was close to him.

And then, without anything obvious having happened, she would change.

The messages became less frequent. Her replies grew shorter. The warmth in her voice gave way to a distance Alkis couldn’t explain.

At first, he would ask.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“You seem a little distant.”

“I’m fine.”

“Did I say something that upset you?”

“Alkis, there doesn’t always have to be something wrong.”

And somewhere around there, the conversation would end.

Except that for Alkis, it didn’t.

It continued inside his head.

He would go back over their most recent conversations, trying to remember every detail. A phrase that might have bothered her. A joke she might have taken the wrong way. A moment he might somehow have misread.

He found nothing.

And the less he found, the more he searched.

Until, a few days later, Irini would return.

“How are you? I missed you.”

And it was as though someone had turned the lights back on.

Alkis would forget the hours he had spent wondering. He would forget his anger, the questions he had promised himself that, this time, he would finally ask her.

The relief was greater than his need for answers.

And somehow, the months passed.

Without realizing it, Alkis began to experience their relationship differently. When Irini was close, he was happy. When she pulled away, he waited.

At first, he waited for a message.

Then he waited for a change in her mood.

Eventually, he began waiting for the Irini he had first met to return.

And slowly, something even more subtle began to happen.

He started watching himself.

He didn’t always tell her when something bothered him. If he wanted to ask when they would see each other again, sometimes he waited to see whether she would suggest it first. When he felt her pulling away, he tried not to let his anxiety show.

He didn’t want to “pressure” her.

That was the word he had begun using even inside his own mind.

Once, he even wrote her a message:

“This isn’t good for me. I can’t feel like we’re together one day and then, the next, not even know where I stand in your life.”

He read it.

Then deleted it.

Instead, he wrote only:

“I hope you’re okay.”

And pressed send.

Perhaps that was one of the first times Alkis swallowed the words he truly wanted to say. Not because they weren’t important, but because he had begun to fear what might happen if he said them aloud.

He told himself he was trying to protect their relationship.

The first major confrontation came one evening, several months later.

They had made plans to see each other. Alkis had kept the evening free and was waiting for her.

Shortly before the time they had agreed to meet, a message arrived.

“I won’t be able to make it after all. I’ll explain.”

Nothing else.

Alkis stared at the screen and felt that now-familiar knot tighten in his stomach.

He called her.

She didn’t answer.

An hour passed. Then two.

This time, he couldn’t convince himself that nothing was wrong.

He messaged her.

“Irini, it’s not the cancellation that bothers me. It’s that, once again, you’re leaving me wondering what’s going on.”

Her reply came almost immediately.

“I can’t do this right now.”

“Do what?”

“This pressure.”

He stared at the word.

Pressure.

He hadn’t asked her to come. He hadn’t been angry because she had cancelled. All he had asked was for her to tell him what was happening.

They met the following day.

Alkis had decided that this time, he was going to speak.

“I can’t keep doing this, Irini.”

She looked at him without expression.

“Doing what?”

“Never knowing where I stand with you.”

“You’re with me. What more do you want?”

“I don’t know if I am with you. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

Irini sighed.

“Do we always have to analyze something? Can’t we just be okay?”

“But we’re not always okay.”

“You’re not.”

The words stopped him.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t have all this anxiety you have. You’re constantly looking for something to be wrong.”

Alkis felt his anger rising.

“Because every time you get close to me, you disappear afterwards.”

“I don’t disappear.”

“You do.”

“No, Alkis. I have a life. I have work. I have friends. I can’t give you an account of myself every time I need a little time on my own.”

“I’ve never asked you to give me an account of yourself.”

“That’s exactly what you’re doing right now.”

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.

Alkis had come determined to tell her that he was hurting.

And suddenly, he found himself trying to prove that he wasn’t controlling.

“I don’t want to restrict you.”

“Then don’t make me feel like I have to justify myself.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Maybe you’re not saying it. But that’s how you make me feel.”

Somewhere along the way, Alkis lost the thread of the conversation.

He could no longer remember how they had gone from “It hurts me when you disappear” to “I don’t want to restrict you.”

All he remembered was hearing himself say, a little while later:

“Okay. Maybe I pushed too hard.”

Irini softened immediately.

She moved closer, placed her hand against his face, and kissed him.

“I don’t want us to fight,” she whispered.

And Alkis wrapped his arms around her.

But when he was alone again, something didn’t feel right.

For the first time, he wasn’t only wondering what was happening with Irini.

He was asking himself something far more dangerous.

What if he was the problem after all?

From that moment on, he began to trust his own feelings a little less.

And every time something hurt him, before asking himself whether Irini’s behaviour toward him was fair, he began asking a different question:

“Am I overreacting?”

From that night on, something began to change in Alkis.

Not suddenly. If someone had asked him, he probably would have said he was fine. That they were simply going through a difficult phase. That Irini was someone who needed more space, and he was trying to respect that.

But in reality, he had begun to live differently.

His phone was always close by. A single notification was enough to make him immediately turn toward the screen. And when it wasn’t her, he felt a small flicker of disappointment he wouldn’t even admit to himself.

On the mornings when he saw her name on his screen, the day began differently.

“Good morning ❤️”

Two words were enough to make him smile.

On the days when there was no message, he tried not to think about it.

She must be busy with work.

Maybe she slept in.

It doesn’t mean anything.

And yet, as the hours passed, his mind kept returning to it.

He began keeping track of things he would never have noticed before. How long it had been since her last message. Whether her reply was shorter than usual. Whether she had added a heart, or whether this time she hadn’t. Whether her “goodnight” sounded warm or somehow hurried.

Sometimes he grew angry with himself.

What are you doing? he would think. When did all of this become so important?

And then Irini would return.

A phone call. A tender word. An “I want to see you.”

And everything inside him would settle again.

Perhaps that was the greatest change of all—the one he had yet to recognize.

It wasn’t only that he missed her when she pulled away.

It was that he had begun to need her return in order to feel all right again.

He started keeping evenings free in case she suggested they meet. He avoided making plans for the weekend until he knew what she was doing. Sometimes his friends would tease him.

“So, are you coming or are we waiting for approval?”

Alkis would laugh.

“No, come on. I just don’t know what I’m doing yet.”

But he did know.

He was waiting for Irini.

And when they finally saw each other, none of it seemed to matter anymore. There were still evenings when everything felt just as it had in the beginning. She would laugh with him, curl up beside him, kiss him, and talk about all the things she wanted them to do together.

In those moments, Alkis would look at the woman he had fallen in love with and tell himself that she was worth a little patience.

This was the Irini he waited for, every time, to come back.

Until one evening, for the first time, she didn’t come back the way he expected her to.

To be continued…