Enraptured

Chapter 29

Mrs. Nikolaos was a highly energetic person, to say the least. She had a bubbly personality that could easily draw a long person in, the exact opposite of her quiet husband and her son. But she also had an air of confidence to her that demanded respect despite the fact she was nearly as short as me.

With an arm hooked with mine, she bombarded her favorite cafe with a boisterous voice, asking for her usual seat. I wanted to shrivel away under all the eyes that were instantly drawn to us, but the employees seemed to be used to Mrs. Nikolaos's bubbly personality as they happily showed her to her "usual" seat and laughed at her antics as she randomly pointed new things in the cafe from the last time she visited.

I was a bit uncomfortable with everyone's attention. They whispered very poorly to each other about us, asking about who was with the madam of the Nikolaos household. However, Mrs. Nikolaos easily pulled my attention away from their whispers with the mere mention fo Demetrius's name.

She told me about what he was like as a kid. How he excelled at his academic classes as a child and often left tutors flabbergasted at his blunt comments questioning their credentials.

I couldn't help giggling at her animated reenactment of a little Demetrius who would proudly stand before his tutors and demand to see their education degree. It reminded me of Theo and how he used to scare the teachers of the classes I sent him to before I switched him to online homeschooling.

All throughout breakfast, Mrs. Nikoloas told me stories about Demetrius's childhood. How he ran into his father's meetings as a 4-year-old and called one of the investors a "moron" for yelling at his father. Or how he constantly followed his mother around when his younger brother was first born, insisting on helping out even though he was too little. Or how as he got older, his eyes would secretly light up at the sight of sweets but still stubbornly say that he didn't want them out of the belief that he couldn't enjoy sweets if he wanted to be taken seriously.

I was so absorbed in her recollections that I forgot all about the strangers surrounding us. It felt like I was secretly being let in on Demetrius's past, one that he would probably never tell me about himself. Things that would only ever be told a mother's guilty pleasure, like when I teased Theo for his embarrassing mistakes.

When we finished our food, Mrs. Nikolaos gleefully whipped out a similar-looking black card from her husband and declared that all of today's escapades would be the boys' treat, paying for breakfast before I could even protest. Then, she dragged me out of the cafe and told her driver to take us to her tailor.

By the time we arrived at her tailor's boutique, she had bombarded me with an uncountable amount of questions about Demetrius and I's relationship. Questions like if I was the one that he would disappear out of the room in the evenings to call or if he would text me a lot throughout the day, or if he had stayed with me before.

Although I wasn't ready to tell her about Theo yet, I told her everything else, like all the little signs of affections that Demetrius would shower me with everyday. Like how he stole kisses at work when no one was looking. Or how he started coming over to my house for dinner every night. To how he would always show up with a bouquet of flowers or random boxes of pastries and greet me with a kiss on the head before asking me about my day. Or how he would always insist on cleaning the dishes for me even when I said he didn't have to. To how he would never leave without saying that he would see me again tomorrow.

It was all little things, but Mrs. Nikolaos squealed like a little girl at every sentence, saying that she would've never imagined her son to be so loving. It was as if her energy only increased with each comment to the point that she was nearly bouncing off the roof by the time we arrived at her tailor's place.