Accidentally Aphrodite (24 page)

His grandmother—or GG, as they called her—sauntered into the living room, a pink umbrella-ed cocktail in hand, her crazy Mohawk sagging from the humidity. “Yep,” she said on a sigh. “I heard.”

His mother threw her arms around his grandmother’s neck. “Isn’t this the most amazing news, Mother? Grandbabies!”

His grandmother pushed her false teeth from her mouth with her tongue before slapping Khristos on the back. “Hold onto your flimsy panties there, girlie. I got a confession to make.”

His eyes narrowed in his grandmother’s direction. He adored her, loved her as much as he loved his mother, but Grandma’s first name wasn’t Agape for nothing. Like her name, she was the scariest bitch.

Fear skittered up his spine. “
GG, what have you done
?”

She took a long sip of her drink through the straw, sucking on it noisily until she’d had her last drop. “You want it straight up, or do you want me to weave one of my stories like I do on the bus?”

He cracked his jaw. “Straight up, GG. Now.
Please
.”

She hiked up the front of her flowered orange-and-black bathing suit. “It was me who knocked the apple off the column. Now, don’t go gettin’ pissy. I did it to give you a break. You weren’t ever gonna find the love of your life if you were too damned busy guarding the apple. Quinn’s a nice kid. Never wrinkled her nose once on the bus. Even after I rolled in goat shit. Because you know how I am. I like to really become one with the peasant storyteller shtick. Anyway, she gets the whole dealio with love. She’s good at it. She believes. Your mother’s getting wrinkles around her eyes from trying to keep up. I had to do something, and she’s such a control freak, she never would have quit. And that Iris is a twit. Who lets the Goddess of Rainbows make choices the fate of the world relies on? We’d have a bunch of baby unicorns running around and no humans.”

His mother bit her lower lip and winced. “Oh, Mother…”

GG rolled her eyes in disgust. “Don’t ‘oh, Mother’ me. Look, it was time to take charge. So I whipped up a small seismic occurrence, and knocked the apple off the column when you weren’t looking.”

“And you chose Quinn because…?” Khristos asked.

His grandmother snorted. “After hearing your Quinn on the phone with her schmoe of an ex-boyfriend Igor, I knew she was right for the position because she’s got moxie. Plenty of it. Told that Igor to shove his nose clippers into his anus-head.”

His eyes almost rolled to the back of his head. “I can’t believe
you
did this, GG.”

She flapped her hand at him. “Yeah, yeah. I did this. If she hadn’t taken a bite of the apple, I would have figured out another way to transfer the power to her. But she didn’t go down without a fight, did she? She told you what was what. Loved it!”

But hold on. Maybe there was some measure of relief in this yet. “So you were the one who put a love spell on the apple?”

She wrinkled up her face and popped her lips. “Um, nope. No love spell. That’s all on you.”

He made his way to the couch and dropped down into it.

Shit.

His grandmother dropped down next to him and ran her knuckles over his head. “I’m sorry, kiddo. Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”

His mother took a seat on the other side of him, blowing a long strand of hair out of her face. “Love stinks.”

In the esteemed words of the J. Geils Band,
yeah, yeah
.

Chapter 15

“H
ey. You okay in there?” Ingrid asked, peeking under the gel pack Quinn had over her eyes.

No. Right now, she was not okay. She patted the gel pack back in place. “I’m great. Just resting my eyes.”

“I heard you matched anus-head with Cantaloupes. You’re a better woman than I am. He’s lucky I’m not Aphrodite or I’d have given him an arrow in his stupid ass.”

“Wasn’t it you who, just before we got on the plane to Greece, said I was frightening you when I went through my I’ll-leave-Igor-drooling-in-his-own-spit-slash-Lorena-Bobbitt revenge phase and that I should knock off all thoughts of payback immediately? You said it wasn’t healthy.”

“Very fair. But looking back, you have to admit, you were super scary. I mean, I knew the Quinn who was rainbows and puppies and suddenly you were all three-sixty, looking to gank him.”

“I was not going to gank him. I was just going to scare him—with a chainsaw. Remember, lots of great romances, in fact, some of the classics, end in tragedy.”

Ingrid laughed. “You’ve come a long way since that day on the plane, baby. Especially if you matched Igor and Miss Cantaloupes.”

Yeah. A long way. “Something you should know, by the way. Igor claims he didn’t cheat on me. He said Shawna wouldn’t allow it. Sure, they were emotionally involved, but nothing physical. He’s more of a man than I thought.”

“You believed him?”

“I did.” She couldn’t explain why, but she did.

“So where’s our resident hottie Khristos?”

She shuddered a breath and scrunched her eyes shut to keep more tears from falling down her cheeks. “He went home.”

“Where is home, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered. But she hoped it was somewhere nice with a stupid soul mate just waiting for him to show up and sweep her off her delicate feet.

Ingrid lifted the gel-pack again. “Let’s talk about whatever’s making you so glum, chum.”

“I’m not glum. What makes you think I’m glum?”

“This,” she said, pulling at the downward turn of Quinn’s lower lip, “all thin, followed by the occasional tremble, is definitely glum.” Cocking a pierced eyebrow, she gave Quinn’s lip one last tug for good measure. “So let’s talk about it.”

“Let’s not.”
Please let’s not.
She was still trying to do the right thing and the right thing was eating a hole in her heart.

“Why is Khristos gone then—which ironically happens to coincide with you trying to hide the fact that you’ve been crying? Don’t bother to deny it. Your eyeballs look like someone plucked them out of your head and stuffed them back in. What’s going on, Quinn?”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“It’s because Khristos left, isn’t it?”

“I told him to leave. It was time he got back to his life.”

“And why did you tell him to leave, Quinn? Because I don’t know if you were getting the signal, but he was pretty into you, and you were really feelin’ him.”

“Maybe you should be the Goddess of Love. Wanna bite my apple, little girl?” she joked to hide the dread in the pit of her stomach.

“I like human just fine, thank you. And you didn’t answer the question. Why did you tell him to leave?”

“It was all just too soon, Ingrid. I’m fresh off an ugly breakup with Igor, and even though we mended fences today, I learned a lot about myself making these matches and why I make the choices I make where men are concerned. I don’t want to make more wrong choices. Isn’t that the smart thing to do? No rebound relationships unless they’re wham-bams, was what you said. Just to help me get over the hump. Remember those words of wisdom?”

“He’s no wham-bam, Quinn, and you damn well know it.”

“I don’t even know his last name, Ingrid. Does he even have a last name? How does he sign his Christmas cards? Khristos Aphrodite? Khristos hyphen Goddess of Love’s Spawn?”

“That’s a reason to chase him out of your life?”

She didn’t respond. She couldn’t.

But Ingrid wasn’t letting go. “Still avoiding the question.”

“Because he has a life, too.”

“Nope. That’s not why you did it, Quinn. If you’re going to do all this reality, let’s do it right. You did it because you’re afraid you’re getting too carried away with your romantic expectations again.”

“How do you know?”

“My sleeping bag has ears. I was right out here on the floor last night. I know. You showed him your Cucamonga and he showed you his man-bits, and now you’re freaked out.”

God, she was smart. “So? What does that matter? It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve never gotten a single relationship right.”

“No. It says you’ve just picked the wrong men.”

Quinn remained silent. Wasn’t that the same thing?

“It also says you’ve gone too far the other side of reality. Come back before you miss something really great.”

“Before it was too much romance, not enough caution. Now it’s too much caution? Make up your mind,” she said on a groan.

“No. Now it’s just right, Quinn.”

“How can you know it’s just right? It’s too soon to tell. We just met each other, Ingrid. Things like that don’t happen overnight.”

Ingrid grabbed her hand and held it to her cheek. “Sometimes, they do. In the past, if anyone defended love at first sight, it would have been you, sitting on the bleachers, megaphone in hand. But if you can’t defend it right now, I will for you. Real love
can
happen in a glance or a touch or a week. You should know that after the matches you’ve made in the last few days. You’ve seen it. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Hey, Chatty Cathys, you two wanna go get ice cream?” Nina asked. “Marty and Wanda think it’d be fun to walk in the shitstorm out there and eat something cold when it’s twelve degrees out.”

“Need some quiet time?” Ingrid whispered in her ear.

“
Please
,” she whispered back, utterly miserable.

“I’m in,” Ingrid said, giving Quinn’s shoulder a squeeze before rising.

Nina nudged her with a knee. “I’m gonna be right outside with Carl. Right on the sidewalk. Promised I’d help him build a snowman. Fuck if I don’t regret buying him and Charlie
Frozen
. Anyway, you’re not alone. All ya gotta do is give a yell if you need me. And for the record, you should flippin’ listen to Ingrid and rethink this plan, Love Maker. It’s fucking stupid.” She reached down and chucked Quinn under the chin before gathering Carl and heading outside.

After everyone dropped a kiss on her forehead and shuffled out, silence fell over her apartment. She struggled to sit up, letting the gel-pack drop to the floor, her eyes sore from keeping the tears at bay.

Her line of sight fell on the sweater Khristos had left behind, his things in a neat pile by the side of the couch, and she ached.

Ached to see him, ached to talk to him. Ached.

Like someone had torn off a limb.

In all her failed relationships, she’d never felt quite like this when they’d ended. Though, technically, theirs had never even begun. He hadn’t stopped her from walking away.

How would it have played out if he’d reminded her she’d gone
Pygmalion
on him and fallen for the teacher out of idol worship? What if he’d told her she still had her head in the clouds, dreaming up scenarios that didn’t exist? What if he’d said exactly what she’d said to him? We had sex. Yay! Thanks for a good time. Good luck in all future endeavors.

Quinn let her head fall to her hands. Quite possibly, this was the smartest thing to do—just plow forward.

But what if it isn’t? What if you didn’t give him the chance to say anything because you were so busy dunking in the pool of reality, you forgot to come up for air?

“Alone at last,” a sultry voice whispered into the dim light of her living room.

Quinn’s head whipped upward. She scanned the room, her eyes darting around every corner.

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to take a bitch out when she’s constantly surrounded by a posse like yours? Goddess, they’re an annoying bunch. All that food and hugs and kisses and broccoli. I should torture you before I kill you, just because this has all been such a hassle. I think I actually broke a nail.”

She fought a grating sigh. Okay, disembodied voices were on her checklist of things she’d like to take a pass on, going forward. They were unnerving and just a little unfair on the playing field of who had bigger powers.

“Who are you?”

“Who I am matters little. Who I’ll be when you’re dead is what matters.”

Did the voice belong to Aphrodite? That moment when she’d shown up was still a little hazy. So she couldn’t be sure. But it was worth a shot to ask. “Aphrodite?”

Laughter filled her small apartment. Maniacal and so earsplitting, her eardrums shook. “Uh, no. I
would
have been Aphrodite if you would’ve just died like you were supposed to. Alas, you’re tougher than you first appeared.”

Okay, not Aphrodite. Shit just got real. Bad guys were real, and in all her new realist state of mind, she was in trouble—for real.

“So it was you who knocked me down that night?” she asked into the room, hoping whomever the voice belonged to couldn’t see her knees quaking.

A wistful sigh whistled in her ear. “Honestly, I’m better than that shot I took at you. I can’t believe my aim was so off. But you really gave it a good effort when you hit the ground. Your tuck and roll was impressive.”

Quinn nodded, looking around the room to find something to defend herself with. “Yeah. I took a gymnastics class for like a hot second when my mom thought I didn’t get out enough. Funny what you retain, isn’t it?”

“Oh, a laugh riot.”

“And that match I made—afterward, when it felt like someone was sticking a hot poker in my colon?”

Another long, drawn-out sigh whizzed around the room, leaving an echo of disappointment. “I poisoned the apple just before you sunk your pretty white teeth into it. But it was the wrong poison. I forgot you’re human. No residual effects. Just gas to show for my efforts. Bummer, right?”

Stall, Quinn. Stall
. “You think my teeth are pretty?”

And then she remembered Nina was right outside.

Just as Quinn thought to call out to Nina was the moment an invisible hand grabbed her and threw her up against the far wall, pinning her there.

A woman, surreal, beautiful, perfect in almost every way, appeared in front of her, her wrist attached to the hand wrapped around Quinn’s throat. “
Shut—up!
” the woman hissed in her face.

She was so caught off-guard, she somehow managed to marvel at this woman’s beauty. From her long, graceful neck, to her almond-shaped sapphire eyes, to hair flowing to her waist in soft, full curls, she was amazing. It almost hurt to look at her.