Page 3 of Perfectly Matching Again

“It looks good on her. The eye rolling. As someone who has made her beautiful eyes roll back in her equally beautiful face, I’d know.”

Aphrodite raised her own blues to the heavens.

“Is there a reason you’re being crass in my office?”

Erato dismissed the possible innuendo in the tone of her friend’s voice.

“Are you suggesting I go be crass somewhere else, Dite?”

This time, the Goddess of Love just let out a no-longer-covertly-suffering groan.

“Erato, you have been hounding me for days since my return to Paris. You’ve done nothing but follow me around. You oscillate between moping, pouting and faking the most bizarre cheerfulness and boastfulness that for the life of me—lives, perhaps, as there have been so many, being immortal has its perks—I cannot understand.”

Erato threw a final gaze at the still mesmerized and devastated mirror-muse and plonked herself in the chair in front of Aphrodite’s desk. One piled up with new correspondence and probably dozens of tasks that the Goddess of Love should be focusing on after her sojourn in the godawful New England frigidness. Erato made a face, then mentally corrected herself. It was cold, yes, but Aphrodite glowed with the power of several suns and Helios wasn’t even in Europe with them. The reunification with Athena had obviously gone amazing.

Still, Dite was making an effort. Now, she was regarding Erato with her most patient gaze. Or maybe it was just one of supreme sexual satisfaction. Erato would know. But somehow, after everything, thinking about Aphrodite that waywas suddenly inappropriate. Not that it had ever stopped Erato before… And yet. It felt so now. Erato pouted. Aphrodite raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow.

Erato sank lower in the chair. Crossed her booted feet. Tugged on the lapels of the leather jacket. Flipped her hair. Then decided that she might as well spill it.

“ImightvefuckedDemeterattheCon… Andsheisntspeakingotmeanymore.”

The second eyebrow joined the first one and pushed Aphrodite’s hairline up.

“I heard exactly what you just said, but I refuse to believe it, so could you please repeat that mumbo-jumbo, now with pauses and perhaps punctuation?”

Erato sighed again. She didn’t think she’d ever sighed as many times in her life as she had in the past few months.

“I might’ve fucked Demeter?—”

Aphrodite closed her ears with her red-tipped fingers and stood up, putting as much distance between herself and Erato.

“No, no, no. Stop. Stop! You did not say any of this. I do not want to know any of this. We had a deal.”

Ah, yes. The deal. The one longstanding, unspoken deal that all gods, cupids and muses were aware of.

“Nobody fucks with Demeter.”

Aphrodite said it like an oath. And when you thought about it, as the Goddess of Love, this would have been one of her responsibilities. To take care of Demeter’s love life. To make certain that?—

“Absolutely nobody fucks with that woman, Erato!”

And here came the raised voice. Erato winced and lifted her hands, palms up.

“Technically I fucked her, not with her, though the linguistics of this are rather ambig?—”

“Enough! Do not joke about this! And do not tell me you have no idea how that even happened. Do not shrug off the one thing we have all agreed on. That woman has suffered. Hence the damn deal we adhere to. Demeter has always been off limits. What the hell were you thinking?”

Erato opened her mouth, looked at Aphrodite, ran headlong into one of those dagger stares and decided that her friend knew very well the answer to that question.

“But you weren’t thinking!”

Well, she really did know that answer. Except?—

“And do not tell me Demeter started it, because NPW. No possible way.”

Again, Aphrodite knew her all too well if she was able to maintain this one sided conversation. Asking questions, answering them herself, since Erato was just that predictable. Except for this one detail, Erato would’ve given Aphrodite her due. Being right looked good on her. But there still was that one small, tiny, almost blink-and-you’ll-miss it detail. And Erato couldn’t help but think it mattered. Just that teeny bit.

“It’s complicated, but she did. Start it.”

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