Indebted to the Mafia King
Loukoumades

Eleni

I blink awake in the morning with my mouth watering. Cold sheets. No Dante.

I check my phone and find the usual text. At Piacere today, had to leave early, news when he gets home. I drop my phone with a groan. My stomach grumbles. I think I spent all night dreaming about loukoumades, these honey puffs Mama used to make for my birthday, or whenever she was in a really good mood. The air even smells like them, as if I brought the memory from my dreams into reality.

If Dante was here, I could have convinced him to drive around to find some. Instead, I'm just going to have to throw myself on Seb's mercy. Or, more accurately, the mercy of Seb's alarm clock. He's rarely awake before noon.

My mood sours as I get dressed and discover my favorite T-shirt fell out of the laundry basket before it got taken this week, so it's still dirty. I pull on one of Dante's and scowl at myself in the mirror as I brush my teeth. Today sucks. Maybe I'll skip schoolwork and catch up with a few of my capos instead. That gives me a chance to see Dante, at least.

I stomp down the stairs, and the smell of loukoumades seems to be getting stronger, like it's taunting me. I throw open a window in the foyer as if I can chase out imaginary smells.

"Zouzouni?"

Great, now I'm hallucinating Mama's voice too. I really must not have slept last night. I storm into the kitchen for coffee

And pull up short. Mama stands at the stove in one of her favorite dressing gowns, tending a spitting saucepan full of oil. A plate of glistening loukoumades sits on the counter behind her. She stares at me, tears filling her eyes. I pinch myself. Nope, still there.

"Mama?" I say tentatively.

"Zouzouni!" She smiles so wide I think her lips might split.

I throw myself at her for a hug. She stumbles back a step, warning me to be careful, and hugs me with one arm while tending the oil with the other. Familiar sensations wash over me like a tidal wave, and suddenly, I'm crying. Sobbing in Mama's arms like I'm a little girl again, and someone made fun of my accent on the playground.

"You look so different," she murmurs, "and so much the same."

"I've missed you, Mama," I whisper.

She kisses me on the head. "As I have missed you, but if you don't let go soon, I'm going to ruin perfectly good loukoumades."

I laugh wetly and release her, then grab the paper-towel lined plate to her left and hold it out. We move together like clockwork, like we're finishing a last batch before the lunch rush. She pulls them out of the oil and stacks them in neat rows, I blot off the excess and drizzle the dough in honey syrup, then add them to the finished pile behind her. Tears streak down my face, and my chest aches, but this is just as good as her holding me. Maybe better, because this lets me imagine Baba yelling from the front to hurry up before he flips the sign to "open" and Christos burning his fingers when he tries to steal one.

When all the loukoumades sit, pretty as a magazine, on the counter, Mama throws both her arms around me. "What are you doing here?" I ask.

"Is your mama no longer allowed to visit?" She laughs.

I shake my head. "I'm always happy to see you. But I didn't know—"

Realization strikes like a lightning bolt. The surprise Dante mentioned. The one I couldn't have until morning.

"Dante brought you here, didn't he?"

She pulls back to look at me. "He did. Called me up, and of course Theia Adriani answered the phone." She shakes her head. "There was so much scuffle about you having a young man she almost forgot to tell me what he said." My face burns. "I don't know if I have him." What did Dante say on the phone? Is Theia Adriani just blowing things out of proportion?

Mama clicks her tongue and looks me over once more. "His plane ride. His house. His cooking oil." She plucks the front of my T-shirt. "His clothes. There is something about this man you're not telling me, zouzouni."

I bite my lip. On the phone, I only told her Dante had taken me out a few times. It's way harder to hide how intertwined our lives are with her standing in our kitchen. His kitchen. Fuck.

"Is he stringing you along?" Thunderous fury crosses her face with such intensity that I'm briefly scared for Dante, surrounded by guards in his club.

I shake my head furiously. "No, Mama. I know he cares for me. And I know there's no one else." No matter what I yelled at him about yesterday."

She narrows her eyes. "Tell me how much a flight from Greece costs."

"Um, a couple hundred dollars each way?" I guess.

"Perhaps." Her intense stare doesn't relax. "And a private plane? Because I have not flown commercially since this man entered your life."

"Oh, that's no big deal," I say. "Dante already owned the plane."

She purses her lips in a way that tells me that was not the right answer. Before she can ask about whatever kind of gas planes use, I grab a loukoumade and pop it in my mouth.

My eyes flutter shut as the honey bursts over my tongue. It's delicious, but it's so much more than that. Like Dante said the first day we met, the loukoumades are good because they taste like birthday mornings before school, waking up in the winter dark and not resenting leaving the warmth of my blankets for once.

We made them for The Greek Corner always, but we ate them on birthdays and good days, so they taste like Baba loudly messing up the tune to the English birthday song because it's different in Greek and Mama humming to soft rock on the radio. They taste like a home I've barely had time to miss in months.

I open my eyes, and Mama is smiling at me like she can read my mind. I want those moments back.

"I'm his girlfriend," I blurt. "Dante loves me. And... and I love him."