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Eleni always remembered it with a smile and a blush. It wasn’t their first date. Fortunately it wasn’t their last, either. But the most memorable? Most likely.

They’d gone on a trip together. Their first one. It was a roadtrip to the other tip of the Peloponnese, because his grandfather fell down a long flight of stairs and Iacob didn’t have the patience for buses and trains. They’d hopped into his jeep—he’d passed outside of Eleni’s apartment and honked until she’d emerged, fresh back from the university library and still with her backpack slung over her shoulder with textbooks—and barreled along down the highway like a silver streaking bullet.

They’d made excellent time, four hours when it should have been eight. She’d because nauseous once or twice but she kept it bottled up, for the sake of his grandfather and also in knowing that if she paused to get out of the car it’d be difficult to adjust to the breakneck 160km/hr again.

In the end, all was well. Two broken fingers, split lip, bruised pride. On the way back, Iacob even took her to a hotel for the night. A clean, small, rosebush-rimmed hotel, one of those airy sanctuaries tucked into rocky Mediterranean slopes that are only known by a few savvy tourists and most of the locals. They blushed as the receptionist mistook them for a married couple and gave them the honeymoon suite. The discount was exceptional. They didn’t argue.

Once in the room he’d decided to shower. She flopped on the bed, watching the red sunlight glinting off their tiny balcony railing, and suddenly realized that the soft embrace of the bed was partially due to a fluffy cloud of towels—towels that didn’t belong beneath her head, per se. She grabbed a couple and strode to the bathroom.

The instant she opened the door, the rush of water stopped, his fingers had pushed aside the shower curtain enough to reveal his face, and his eyes were roving for a towel. Then he saw her; his eyes brightened two shades of green and a big grin split his face. “You a mind-reader?”

She grinned back, and walked across to hand over the towel. The moment they touched, the shower curtain rod came crashing down.

She shrieked and instinctively reached forward to spread her hands above his head proactively, but she was a bit slow. He got a handful of it, and she got an eyeful. His head started throbbing, and elsewhere he was throbbing, but it was all useless, because he couldn’t stop laughing. It was that special kind of laugh, a laugh that fills rooms and hearts and slaughters all silences and awkwardness. And that moment, she knew. It was just a little spark, like the jolt you get from intense static, and she would only recognize it much later as love.

Just then all she knew was that this was a man worth loving.

“Angreek87″