Free In Between Frames by Judy Lin

Miles quickly discovered that his fingers were soon dripping and sticky with honey.  
     
    “I can understand why,” Miles said, as he licked his fingers in a futile attempt to clean them.   “I’d buy these by the ton if I lived here.”
     
    Something shifted between them—the little “if” set them both to imagining their lives together in Loutraki :   Miles wondered if she, too, was thinking of them spending a day like this, walking through the market, tentatively holding hands sometimes, with him stopping occasionally to take a picture with his smartphone, and her contemplating calamari rings for dinner that night, while Mabel darted in and out amongst the stalls on her little missions.   Sam was looking at him strangely, and for a moment Miles dared entertain the notion that they were sharing the same thought.   Then he realized that she was looking behind him.   He turned around, and saw a man holding Mabel’s hand.  
     
    “Hello, Stephan,” she said.  
     
    Just like Stephan to ruin everything, Sam thought bitterly.  
     
    “Hello, Samantha,” Stephan said.  
     
    She sensed that she had to be very careful about what she said—Stephan was holding Mabel’s hand encased in his large one, and all he had to do was squeeze, accidentally or on purpose.    Sam didn’t want to think he was that big of a jerk to want to hurt her daughter, though the side of Stephan she’d seen recently gave her good reason to suspect that he could do it.   Stupid, to think that you could avoid him, she thought, cursing herself.   Loutraki was tiny, not even a square mile, and everybody went to market.  
     
    “Come to mummy, Mabel,” Sam said, holding out her arm.  
     
    Mabel slipped out of Stephan’s grasp.   “Stephan says he’ll take me on a boat ride!” she said, as she ran headlong into Sam.
     
    “A boat ride!” Sam said, feigning excitement.   She shot Stephan an annoyed look.    Was he trying to win her back, or make an enemy of her to her daughter?  
     
    “Can we go, mummy?” Mabel asked.   “Please?”  
     
    Miles took the whole scene in with the silent appraisal of a photographer who’d seen it all.   “Come on, Mabel,” he said.   “Let’s go get some baklava from Demetria .”
     
    Mabel skipped away with Miles, leaving Sam alone with Stephan, bewildered, surprised, and wondering what kind of game Stephan was playing now.   He’d stopped their Greek lessons, hadn’t come over or called her for two days, and now he wanted to take Mabel out on a boat?   Sam’s mind envisioned the worst—that he’d toss her overboard, or scuttle the boat—before shame could stop her from thinking.   Stephan isn’t a monster, she thought.   An immature, self- centered man, yes.   But not a monster.  
     
    “Are you serious?” she asked, in a low voice.   “About a boat ride with her?”
     
    Stephan nodded, and jerked his head towards the harbor .   There was sheet of plywood, crudely painted, leaning against one of the piers, and behind it, a little shack with no windows.   She felt her lips move as she sounded out the letters.   “Boats,” she said, finally.   “Ten euros an hour.”
     
    “Not too much money,” he said.   “Is much fun for a little girl.”
     
    The boats she saw were small dinghies with a single white triangular sail, striped with orange and yellow after the logo of the shop renting them out.   There were no outboard engines—one errant wind, and they’d be out on the high seas in a flash.   “No,” she said, finally.   “It’s too dangerous.”
     
    “What’s so dangerous?” he demanded.   “Calm seas—“
     
    “They won’t always be calm.”
     
    “There’s almost no wind.”
     
    “And what if there is?” she snapped.   “Those boats have no engine.   If you get blown out and then there’s no wind to blow you back, what then?”
     
    “That won’t happen,” he said, but without any of his earlier confidence.