“What’s he saying?” Megan whispers as our five-foot Greek boss berates us in half English, half Greek. “Is he going to fire us, or what?”
I listen intently. I’m not fluent but I know enough to hold a decent conversation.
“θα σου χέσω το γάιδαρο!”
“The literal translation is ‘I will shit your donkey,’” I explain through gritted teeth. “Greek people say it when they’re pissed.” That’s the thing about Greek and English: never use a translator app on an angry Greek person. Their classic one-liners are ripe for confusion.
“You two are big headache.” He spits on me a little when he’s talking, and I take it. Dimitris has connections. I don’t mean mafia; I mean he owns all the businesses on the island paying backpackers cash in hand. We can’t piss him off.
Megan and I are spending the summer on a working holiday in idyllic Mykonos, aka the number one party island in the Greek islands. We were convinced that we’d make hundreds in tips.
The reality is that everyone wants a piece of paradise, and the island is saturated with swarms of hardened backpackers from Australia and New Zealand, and those guys know how to hustle. Never try to compete with an Aussie backpacker. Most of them have been globetrotting since they were in the womb. They have acquaintances in every coffee shop, hostel and bar on the island, allowing them to nab the lucrative gigs, leaving us sunburnt British backpackers with scraps.
The only option we had was working for Dimitris, earning a measly two euros commission per boat ticket sold. Today we haven’t drummed up enough to buy a bag of potatoes.
“So, you wanna clean the shit pipes of the yachts instead?” he yells, gesticulating wildly. I assume his question is rhetorical. “You break my heart. Watch!”
Dimitris snatches the placard from me. My role is to hold the placard and lure tourists onto the mediocre, overpriced boat trip. I’ve mastered the holding part but flunk at anything beyond that. He aggressively launches himself on the many groups of people strolling the boardwalk of the Mediterranean Sea.
Then he spots them.
The perfect prey.
They are in their fifties, maybe sixties, the innocent-looking couple dragging wheeled luggage walking straight into his trap. They don’t stand a chance.
He waves the placard at them like a weapon. Then comes the hard sell. Caves? No problem. Nudist beaches? No problem. Lost cities found under the sea? No problem. It’s a cross between a wildlife extravaganza and a luxury cruise line.
They are swept along the gangway, protesting in vain, with Dimitris stalking after them. He flings their luggage onto the boat, sealing their fate.
“They actually looked like they were on their way to the airport.” I grimace as the man looks back at us. “I can’t do that. No chance.”
“I guess that’s our sales careers over.”
We don’t know what the plan is for the next few decades. I’ve just finished a Law and Criminology degree at Swansea University in Wales and Megan is a Stylist in a salon. If I’ve done enough to earn first-class honours, I’ll apply for a trainee contract at one of London’s elite law firms. Results are out in twelve days. Eek.
For now, we are taking it one boat sale at a time.
“This job tonight, it’s not solely commission-based, right?” I eye Megan suspiciously. She’s apparently landed us the backpackers’ dream job from a guy she met on the beach. “An upmarket cocktail bar, you say?”
“Uh-huh.” She smiles unconvincingly. “Very exclusive.”
“I’ve never made cocktails before.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up. You just need to learn on the job and smile at the customers.”
“If someone else tells me to fucking smile, I’m going to smack them.” I wave a brochure feebly at a family who ignores me. “What should I wear? I’ve nothing suitable for working at a high-end cocktail bar.”
Megan steps in the path of a couple, forcing them to break their hand-holding. Tutting, they flow around her. “Don’t worry, we get uniforms. Oh my God!” She punches me. “That couple is coming over.”
We shift into position, holding up a display of brochures.
“It’s your turn,” she points out.
“Fine,” I mutter, launching into a lacklustre sales pitch to the couple. I’m a few unsold boat tickets away from getting us fired. I couldn’t sell whiskey to an alcoholic.
***
Megan is eating her words five hours later.
“Bounce?” I stare at the neon sign above the bar. “Are you sure this is the place?”
In front, two guys lie on the pavement. One is heaving beside a discarded kebab and his friend is attempting to light the wrong end of a cigarette. It’s only 7:30, for Christ’s sake.
“It’s probably much better on the inside.” Megan laughs but looks less sure of herself.
I observe the outside clientele engaged in drunken mating rituals and can guarantee that’s it not. There’s not a local in sight. I’ve passed loads of elegant up-market bars on the island, and this is most certainly not one of them.
“Nice tits, love!” the guy smoking shouts at Megan, and she shows him the middle finger.
“No way. I’d prefer to spend my night sitting in a public toilet.” I turn on my heel, but she catches my arm.
“Ah, come on! The guy said we’d be raking in the cash,” she coaxes me. “We can work one night and if we don’t like it, we never come back.”
“That’s what they all say.” I groan. “Dimitris practically sold it to us that we would be millionaires.”
She uses the pouty expression she knows works on me. “Let’s just see what it’s like on the inside.”
Begrudgingly, I trail after her as she approaches the bouncer.
“Yiasoo.” She beams, and he doesn’t return the smile. “I was told to ask for Jonas.”
Grunting, he nods toward the door. “Inside. Left hand corner.”
We squeeze into the neon-lit bar, where dozens of inebriated teenage lads compete for the prize of biggest wanker on the island.
“Not a chance,” I hiss, but she can’t hear me over the banging house music.
We weave through the drunken crowd to the other side of the bar.
A Greek guy wearing a white top with a deep V exposing most of his chest beckons us over. He must be Jonas. “Are you the girls Nikos sent?”
“Yiasoo.” It’s the only word Megan knows. “I’m Megan, and this is Elly.”
He grunts and sizes up our assets. “Tonight’s a trial. You do okay, you have the job.” He nods towards a door. “Go in there to get changed. Uniforms are hanging up. Come back, and I’ll explain the rules.”
I do a double take as I clock the bartenders’ dress code. “I think there’s been a mistake,” I explain firmly to him. “I am not wearing a bikini.” This guy is on another planet if he thinks he can get me into those red shorts and yellow bikini top. Hell will freeze over sooner.
A well-endowed female bartender walks past us. She gets in the path of the strobe lights and I see the full outline of her nipples through her bikini. I haven’t even been this exposed at the beach.
Jonas laughs in my face. “You want to work here then you wear the bikini, lady. No negotiation.”
“I don’t have a price for wearing a bikini,” I retort indignantly. The nerve of this guy. “No, thank you.”
He laughs again. “Everyone has a price, lady. Up to you, I don’t have all night. Trial. Two hours. If you want to earn 150 euros a night, then hurry up and get changed.”
Say what? How much? We’ve been earning twenty euros a day max at the boat tour stall.
Maybe I do have a price. If we work here for a week, we have enough to go island hopping. How bad can it be? I eye him suspiciously. “What do you have to do for 150 euros?”
He smirks at how quickly I abandon my morals. “Serve the drinks, talk to the punters. You’ve worked in a bar before, yes?”
Last summer I worked in the village local, The Wee Donkey. The closest I got to making cocktails was a Jack and Coke. Does that count?
Behind the bar, a bartender slams down eight shot glasses at lightning speed. He fires two bottles in the air then simultaneously pours all eight shots and sets them on fire.
I’m not sure the skills I gained at The Wee Donkey are transferable.
“You know how to smile, sweetheart?”
I bare my teeth, curling my lips upwards. ‘Smile for salary’ is the name of the game here.
He looks us up and down. “You.” He points to Megan, asset number one. “You start behind the bar. “You,” he mutters something that sounds suspiciously like lips and legs under his breath in Greek. “Let’s try you out front, pulling in the crowd.”
He wants to put me outside to pull in the crowd? Megan should be showcased outside first. Flirting is her forte. I’ve watched her hone her skills for a decade and she is top of her game. She’s the dick whisperer.
“What does that entail?” I ask. “Do I have a promotion sign or something?”
“Yes.” He points between my breasts. “These are your promotion signs. Do whatever it takes to get them into the bar. Then it’s up to the bar staff to keep them here. Be back here in five minutes changed otherwise stop wasting my time. The trial has started so you’re losing money by the minute.”
***
“It’s humiliating, Megan,” I wail.
We’re standing in front of a half-length mirror. Unfortunately, I can’t see my bottom half, but I can feel a draft around my bum where a half-moon has formed in my Lycra shorts. I pull the shorts down for a fuller coverage but give myself a plumber’s crack at the top. It’s a trade-off. “Nudists wear more clothing than this.”
Megan turns to me, looking like a whore. They didn’t have any red shorts left in her size so her slight muffin top hangs over the Lycra, two sizes too small. “No one’s wearing any clothes here—we fit in. Stop being a granny.”
Side by side, no one would mistake us for sisters. I’m all gangly legs and arms, more akin to an ostrich than a Victoria’s Secret model, whereas Megan is short with sexy curves and fiery red hair. With my dark hair and high cheekbones inherited from my Croatian mother, I’m sometimes mistaken on the island as a native.
The bikini bra covers more of my modesty than Megan’s. I’m a decent B cup but next to Megan I look flat-chested. A bloke once had the audacity to compare me to two Tic Tacs on an ironing board, and that was with my clothes on.
“Ready?” Megan asks in the mirror.
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
She takes my hand and forces me out of the changing room.
While walking back to Jonas, I notice that attention to us has multiplied by a billion percent since the outfit change. No one looks above the neck. Now I’m just a headless body with bright yellow tits.
Jonas nods his approval, gives us instructions, then hands me a tray of green shots. Together with my breasts, the shots are bait.
“See you later,” I whisper to Megan, feeling needy. “Good luck.”
She squeezes my hand and I head out to brave it on the street.
Up and down the pedestrianized street, hustlers just like me compete to lure drunk tourists into bars. It’s the red-light district for bar hustlers. An Oscar-winning performance is needed here.
My bait tray narrowly escapes being tossed by two brawling boys. “Watch it, dipshits,” I hiss at them as one knocks into me.
Beside me there’s a deep grunt; I turn in horror to see I’ve spilled sticky alcohol all over a guy’s T-shirt. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a white T-shirt that moulds nicely over muscle in all the right areas. In fact, I can see the definition through the T-shirt. To my dismay his thick chest is now splattered in neon green. The baseball cap hides his face. I can’t help but wonder what he would feel like on top of me as he attempts to remove the mess I’ve caused.
“I’m so sorry, sir!”
My eyes travel up from his chest to see piercing blue-grey eyes fixated on me. Annoyed.
Oh. Wow. My breath catches in my throat.
So, this is what drop-dead gorgeous looks like. He’s older than me, maybe late thirties, forty max. Broad but with a natural bulky physique, not a gym bunny. But it’s his face that winds me – an angular jaw, strong Roman nose, high cheekbones, heavyset chin. Not to mention the most beautiful dark eyebrows framing his striking eyes.
Fuck me.
A modern day Adonis. Thank you, Greek gods.
“I really am sorry,” I stammer, taken completely aback.
“Forget it.” He speaks in a deep baritone that is laced with frustration. Like really deep. One hundred per cent sexy British gravel. It’s an English accent, but I can’t pick up on the region.
Jonas watches us from the door. “The trial’s over if you don’t get someone in the bar within ten minutes,” he shouts in Greek at me.
Laughing hysterically like Jonas just cracked a joke, I turn back to the hot grump who is observing me like I’m contagious. “Please don’t complain to him that I spilled a drink over you, it’s my first night working here,” I babble, being my own cock block. “My friend and I are on trial and we really need this job.”
“It’s fine, excuse me,” he says dryly as he sidesteps me.
I silently curse myself for bumping into the most handsome man I have ever seen in my life in such a humiliating situation. “Wait!” I grab his forearm to stop him from escaping. It’s warm, slightly hairy and solid with muscle. A pair of forearms that could lift you up and throw you over a shoulder with little effort. “Don’t go. Come into the bar,” I plead.
With a tight grip on Adonis’s arm, I shout in Greek to Jonas, “It’s fine. You don’t need to watch me. This guy is coming in to buy loads of drinks.”
Adonis regards me, bemused. “What did you say to him?”
I blurt out a milder version of the truth. “I said you expressed an interest in coming inside.”
“I haven’t,” he grates, prising my hand from his muscular forearm.
Mission not accomplished.
I hit him with my best sales smile. “It’s the most exclusive bar in town! Amazing cocktails. Very friendly atmosphere.”
He looks at the two guys who are ‘ladding it up’ beside us, then back at me, raising one of his beautiful thick brows. “Sorry, I’m not in the mood,” he replies gruffly, moving away.
Jonas is still watching, with a gleam in his eye that tells me I’m close to getting the chop. Desperate, I step forward to block Adonis, pushing against a wall of hard muscle.
“Please, please, please?” I beg, in a last attempt since I’m one Adonis away from being fired. “Could you please walk into the bar? You can just leave after two minutes… If I get people over the line, I’ve done my job. Maybe you need to use the loo? You could go here!”
He stares at me, unimpressed. “You’re begging me to come into this bar?” His voice is deep and icy and makes me feel like I’m being told off. I like it.
I shrug. I’m wearing a bikini in the middle of a street full of bar hustlers. What did he expect?
The buzz of his phone in his pocket diverts his attention downwards.
Damn.
A gang of young blokes stagger up the street. This is the clientele I should be targeting, not older self-assured, devastatingly handsome guys who have a million better alternatives.
“I don’t understand,” Adonis shouts into the phone, his face creasing into a frown. “Speak slower.”
Ooh, he sounds angry. That voice is giving me a serious dose of the horn.
Adonis stands a few metres away from me and repeats himself on the phone. Speaking louder and slower, he repeats the same words but in different ways. He appears to be throwing out random Greek words in the hope that something will stick. Some of the words seem made up or…French? Yes, that’s definitely French.
As a result, the guy on the other end raises his voice as well, becoming more animated until the conversation is just a futile exchange of noise.
It gives me the chance to subtly ogle him. I wonder if he’s military or Marines. A fitness instructor maybe? His watch suggests he’s rich. The only reason I know it’s a Cartier is because Dimitris is selling knock-offs next to his boat stall. I assume Adonis’s watch is the real deal rather than a Dimitris sale special.
I see my opportunity and step forward into his space. “Do you need someone to translate?”
“Amongst other languages,” I reply, deadpan. I know he’s judging me based on my yellow bikini and red shorts ensemble. Hell, I would too. I smile sweetly back at him, thinking fuck you in five different languages.
I watch his mind ticking over.
Those eyes. The Law should force him to wear dark glasses so womankind can continue functioning.
“Okay.” He gives a curt nod. “Thank you, that’s very kind.” Adonis puts the phone on speaker, and I hear someone on the other end babbling in Greek.
“Excuse me, sir,” I cut in, in Greek. “One moment.”
I put the phone on mute and look at him expectantly. “Does your boat need fixing?”
A ghost of a smile flickers on his perfect lips. “I’m impressed.”
I shrug. “What do you need me to ask him?”
“Tell him he needs to send someone asap to look at the cooling system. The engine is overheating, and I need to sail back to Athens tomorrow.”
I translate to the guy on the phone, then listen. “He says he can’t get someone out until Wednesday afternoon.”
Two days from now.
Adonis curses under his breath. “Tell him I’ll pay him whatever it takes.”
I inform the guy that Adonis has an open chequebook. A sharp intake of air can be heard through the phone.
My brows crease as I listen intently. I’m not used to technical boating terms in English, never mind Greek. “He needs a part to come from Athens. I don’t know what the name of the part is in English. I can only repeat it in Greek.”
“Seriously?” Adonis rakes a hand through his dark, slightly wavy hair. “Tell him he needs to expedite it, or I’ll use another company.” Every word comes out in a gruff authoritative tone. Maybe he is military.
I feel like I’m being told off just as much as the boat guy. I wonder how long I can string out this phone call.
“He’ll try,” I translate as the man on the receiving end becomes panicked.
Adonis mutters something unintelligible under his breath and takes the phone. He disconnects the call before I can say goodbye. So, the guy doesn’t do goodbyes. I make a mental note to research personality disorders with that trait.
“Thank you.” For a moment his eyes hang on me. “I wasn’t expecting a Welsh accent. Are you part Greek?”
I shake my head, ecstatic for the conversation opener. “Nope. My mum’s Croatian but she spent quite a bit of time in Greece when she was younger. I learned Croatian and Greek from her. I don’t really have anyone to speak Greek to in Wales so I’m not fluent. This trip has really improved it though.”
His eyebrows jump up. “Three languages, impressive.”
“Four.” I smile innocently. “We learn Welsh in school. I helped you. Now will you help me in return?”
I watch him stare at the neon sign, grimace, then turn back to me. “I’d prefer to stick forks in my eyes.”
I nod, shuffling away from him. I gave it my all.
“But I’m a gentleman and it would be rude of me not to help a lady who’s done me a favour.” He exhales in defeat as I whip my head around, shocked. “One drink. Just because you helped. I’m assuming it doesn’t serve my brand of Scotch.”
“Doubtful.” I beam, bouncing back to him. “But for £1.50 a shot, you can get so drunk you forget how rubbish the place is.”
Like the Aphrodite that’s got the Adonis, I beckon him to follow me.
“Fuck me,” he says as I lead him into the bar, our eyes adjusting to the intense strobe lights. Don’t mind if I do. “It’s actually worse on the inside than I imagined. This place is going to give me a headache.”
He’s not wrong. I was just in it forty minutes ago, and it’s even worse than I remember.
When I turn to head back out, he stops on the spot, frowning. “Are you staying outside?”
“For the next fifteen minutes.” I smile. “Then we rotate. Have fun.”
With me, I plead silently.
