Complete Nothing (19 page)

“You’re not nervous?” I asked. “Thinking strategy . . . ?”

He tilted his head. “We have a game plan,” he said. “We stick to it, we’ll be fine.”

I wished I could have been so chill about my upcoming audition. Every time I thought about it, nervous butterflies started to mosh around my stomach. Even now, I felt guilty for being here instead of in the studio rehearsing. But there were other things in life besides dance. Important things. Like Peter.

“What about you? You coming to the game?” Keegan asked.

“Um . . . yeah, I guess.”

Keegan lifted his arm to wave at a pack of guys on the other side of the room, huddled around some shooting game. I tensed, waiting for him to beckon them over to join us, but he didn’t. Thank goodness. I wasn’t exactly interested in meeting Keegan’s friends. If this was going to be a one-and-done scenario, it would be easier for everyone if we kept it between us.

“You guess?” he said. “What if the quarterback of the opposing team personally invited you? Then would you come?”

I rolled my eyes. “Then it might be impossible to resist.”

Keegan smiled and my skin prickled. Had I really just said that? When had I become this expert flirt? Maybe he just brought it out in me. Which was odd, considering he was
not
the guy I liked.
From the corner of my eye, I saw True, Lauren, and Wallace enter the restaurant, slinking along the walls by the basketball games like they were on a spy mission. Suddenly my phone, which was on silent, lit up at my side. It was a text from Lauren.

PETER IS PARKING HIS CAR OUT FRONT.

Ho. Lee. No way. My insides instantly felt hot and sick and throbbing, even as my heart fluttered around with happiness. He was here! He did still care! But then the dread took over. I sucked down some more water and glanced at the door.

This was really going to happen. It was happening right now. I looked at Keegan, who was obliviously shoving fries into his mouth, and suddenly felt so guilty I wanted to run. He had no idea what he’d gotten himself into—what True and I had dragged him into. And then Peter walked through the door, his varsity jacket open over a T-shirt patched with wet, his hair matted with sweat as if he’d just come from a workout. When he spotted us, his whole face crumbled, then, just as suddenly, turned to stone.

It looked like Keegan was about to find out.

I saw them the second I walked through the door. They’d snagged one of the few two-person booths near the center of the restaurant, the ones so small that your knees pretty much had to touch under the table. Somehow I registered that before I realized whose knees, exactly, were touching Claudia’s. And when I did, I almost died.

Keegan Fucking Traylor?

I couldn’t move. For a second, I saw double. This was a nightmare. An actual, waking nightmare. The guy was my nemesis. The quarterback of our crosstown rivals. Not to mention an infamous dick who, if the rumors were true, had already had sex with half the girls in the senior class at Holy Cross School for Girls and had recently moved on to the public schools. Someone had to shake me awake from this. Please, God, let me wake up.

Then a stroller rolled over my foot. I doubled over in pain and knew that I was awake.

“Sorry,” the saggy-faced mom said, still moving toward the door.

I bit my lip and stood up. I was going to kill someone. And that someone was Keegan Traylor.

Somehow I made my way through the crowd, around the loud-as-hell games and screaming kids, past the cheering packs of guys at the NFL simulation machines. Before I knew it, I was standing next to their table, and as much as I wanted to grab Keegan Traylor by the collar and pull him out of his seat and pound him for moving in on my girl, I found I couldn’t even look at him. Instead I glared at Claudia.

“Are you kidding me?” I heard myself say.

“Peter!” Claudia looked up at me, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

Then Keegan smiled this big-ass smile that looked about as genuine as the framed copy of the Declaration of Independence my dad had left behind in our basement. He wiped his fingers and got out of his seat.

“Peter Marrott, right?” He offered his hand. “Nice to meet you. I’m Keegan Traylor.”

“I know who you are.” There was no way I was touching him unless it was to punch him across the face.

“Oh, so my reputation precedes me,” he said, like the cocky bastard I’d always heard he was.

I glanced at Claudia. She looked at the table.

“You guys know each other?” he asked Claudia.

“Like you don’t know,” I snapped. “What are you doing with this tool, Claude?”

“He’s not a tool,” she replied. “Don’t be rude.”

“You really think you can tell me what to be or not be?” I demanded. “When you’re out with the quarterback of the opposing team?”

“Oh, wow. I’m . . . wow. Are you guys, like, together?” Keegan asked.

“We were,” Claudia said. “Until Peter decided to end it.”

“You broke up with this girl?” Keegan asked, like he couldn’t believe it. He whistled under his breath. “I wouldn’t break up with this girl if you paid me.”

Claudia beamed. My stomach churned. I hadn’t eaten in hours. In fact, until about twenty minutes ago I’d been making out with Josie in the weight room, breaking about every rule possible. Why had I left her to come here? Why was I standing here letting myself be humiliated?

Why could I think of nothing other than grabbing Claudia’s hand and getting her the hell out of here, away from this jackass? And worst of all, why couldn’t I make myself do it?

I stared at her, waiting for a sign. Waiting for her to show me that this was a bad joke. That she didn’t want to be here. That she wanted me to save her from this jerk. But she didn’t move.

“Well, have a good game tomorrow, man,” Keegan said. “May the best man win.” He sat down across from my girlfriend and looked up at me. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get back to my date.”

For a long moment, I stood there, hovering. Waiting. Praying. Wishing. And then, finally, finally, finally, she looked up at me. My heart soared.

“Good luck tomorrow, Peter,” she said.

And just like that, I was dismissed. My worst fear had come true months before I’d ever imagined it would. Claudia had moved on with someone else.

When Lauren dropped me off in front of my house, I practically skipped up the flower-lined walk. Tonight could not have gone more perfectly. It was obvious that Peter was green with envy, realizing what he’d thrown away, coming to the conclusion that he had to have it back. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he showed up at Claudia’s door tonight and begged her to forgive him. Plus, we had just dropped off Orion’s spirit basket on his front porch, and even though he hadn’t been there when I pressed the bell, I knew he was going to get it and I knew he was going to love it. If the way to a man’s heart really was through his stomach, those raspberry cheesecake bars I’d been up half the night baking were going to make him mine.

Things were good.

Until I saw Hephaestus sitting in the foyer, waiting for me.

“The shit has officially hit the fan,” he said darkly.

I closed the door with a final-sounding click. “What shit are we talking about?”

“Artemis and Apollo,” he said, earning my full attention. “They found a way to bust through Zeus’s cloak, and they know where Orion is. Where you and Aphrodite are.”

He turned around and wheeled himself into the parlor, a small, octagonal room stuffed with velvet couches and settees, carved wooden tables, and a stone fireplace. If he expected me to get comfortable for this discussion, he’d severely miscalculated.

“How do you know this?” I asked, so dizzy I had to lean against the doorway.

“Harmonia. How else?” he said, his hands gripping his wheels. “They’re on Mount Olympus right now, doing everything they can to piss off the upper gods so that one of them will banish them here. She says she hasn’t seen this much chaos since the fall of Troy. This is not good, Eros.”

“You think I don’t know that?” I demanded, pacing to the fireplace and back again.

I had lived on Mount Olympus with these gods throughout my existence. We knew how these things worked. Every last one of us had some ancient quarrel or another with everyone else. Every last one of us harbored feelings of resentment, competitiveness, jealousy, guilt, anger, unrequited love. If Artemis and Apollo truly wished to be banished to Earth, they simply needed to anger the right god, someone who had a bone to pick with Zeus and therefore felt the need to flout his authority. Some of them would have banished Artemis and Apollo to Earth just for entertainment, to see how it would all play out, to place bets on which one of us would win. A cage match between gods and goddesses.

My elders could be so childish.

“How close are they to getting here?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, are the upper gods committed to Zeus’s decree that they not send them?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he repeated.

“Well, what
do
you know?” I shouted, frustrated tears filling my eyes. “That’s it. I want to talk to Harmonia myself. How are you communicating with her?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “I can’t tell you that.”

“Why not?” I thundered.

“Because Harmonia and I swore we’d keep it a secret,” he replied through his teeth.

“You and your secrets,” I spat. “I’m sick to death of you and your secrets.”

“What does that mean?” he demanded.

“I know about you and Aphrodite!” I blurted. “I know you were married to her, that you loved her, that you probably love her still. Tell me I’m wrong!”

Hephaestus’s visage hardened. His eyes seemed to flatten. He curled his fingers around the wheels of his chair, clinging to them until his knuckles turned white. “Ares told you.”

“Yes, Ares told me. He was worried about me,” I cried, feeling disloyal even as I said it. I didn’t want to take Ares’s word over Hephaestus’s, but it was true that one of them had been honest with me and one hadn’t, so what was I supposed to do?

“Worried about you?” Hephaestus repeated. “Seriously?”

I took a deep breath, bracing one hand against the intricate wood frame of the settee closest to the window. “Why are you here, Hephaestus?” I asked quietly. “Does Harmonia know about you and our mother?”

There was no way she knew. She would have told me. We told each other everything.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “She’s known for generations.”

I felt as if I’d been slapped. It wasn’t possible. It simply was not possible.

“And as for why I’m here, it’s because I care about your sister and she cares about you,” he said, his voice growing louder and more vehement with every word. “I’m here to help you.”

I turned to fully face him. I thought of his sudden departure from school the other day when he had to “work.” I thought of the conversation I’d overheard in his room two nights ago and how, again, he’d brushed it off as work. But worst of all, he wouldn’t tell me how to get in touch with Harmonia. He was keeping my sister from me, the one person who could soothe my fears, the one person who could convince me that everything was going to be okay.

He was keeping her for himself.

“Tell me why. Why must you keep your communication with Harmonia a secret?”

Hephaestus rubbed his face with both hands, frustrated and seemingly exhausted by my impertinent questions. “If anyone knew that the two of us were communicating, the repercussions could be disastrous,” he told me. “It’s a miracle we haven’t been discovered yet. If we told you how it worked, not only would we be in danger, but so would you.”

“But I wouldn’t tell anyone, I swear,” I promised.

“You know that’s a promise you might not be able to keep,” he said wearily. “Zeus could torture you until you told.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’d never break.”

“What if he tortured Orion in front of you?” he asked. “Or Harmonia. What then?”

I swallowed hard. The prick in my chest gave me the answer. I could never watch either one of them suffer.

“You see? We can’t risk it. I’m sorry, True. You have to trust me. This is what’s best for all of us.”

“Sorry it’s so early,” Keegan told me as he put his car in park in front of my house. The lights in my parents’ upstairs bedroom were on, and I saw the curtains move ever so slightly. “I was supposed to be home an hour ago. Football curfew.”

“Well, thanks for breaking the rules for me,” I replied, reaching for the door handle.

I wanted to get out of that car more than anything. Every time I blinked, I pictured Peter’s devastated face when he’d caught sight of Keegan, and every time I pictured it, my heart split farther down its center. I’d wanted him to be jealous, not suicidal. I felt like I’d made a huge mistake, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Everything inside me ached to get to my room, put on my pajamas, and cry into my pillow.

I wasn’t a manipulative person. I didn’t know how to do this.

“Wait. You don’t have to go yet,” Keegan said, touching my arm.

As soon as his skin brushed mine, every cell in my body hummed, and my mouth went dry. It hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment that he might want to kiss me. Ever since Peter left, I’d been too busy silently brooding over what had happened to consider it.

But now . . . yes . . . there was a definite charge in the air and that telltale hopeful-slash-sultry look on his face. Did I want to kiss him? No. I was in love with Peter. Whether or not we were together, I couldn’t just go around making out with other guys. That wasn’t how I worked.

Still, I settled back in the seat, not wanting to offend the guy who’d paid for my dinner and made me laugh throughout the night. Instead I tried to think of a good excuse not to kiss him. It was too bad I hadn’t ordered garlic bread. Unfortunately, the heavy dessert I
had
ordered now sat like a brick at the bottom of my stomach.

“Pete Marrott seemed nice,” Keegan said, looking down at his knees.