Goddesses Don't Get Sick (2 page)

THREE.

THREE MONTHS LATER,
the mysterious stranger was nowhere to be found, and after a vague and fruitless attempt to find out anything about him was all but forgotten from Angela’s memory. Until she came home from her classes one day to find a package on her doorstep.

Staring at the small, nondescript, unlabeled box for a few moments, Angela wondered if it was for either of her roommates. Puzzling over the lack of postmark, she bent down and picked it up to better look at it. It was only then that she noticed the writing in the top corner of the paper wrapping. In small, neat print was the package’s destined recipient:
To the Goddess Angela
.

Snorting (despite the smile that crept onto her face), Angela unlocked the front door and moved down the hall to her room. Dumping her book bag on her already cluttered desk, Angela moved to sit on her bed and looked over the package, trying to discern what it contained and from where it had come. Quickly giving up, she tore open the brown paper to find a beautifully carved, wooden jewelry box.

Stunned, Angela could only stare at it for a moment in wonder. The carvings were a mass of intricate lines, weaving and dancing through each other. They created shapes that were visible from one angle then gone in the next. Finding a catch at the front, Angela carefully opened the box, almost afraid to touch it in case she would somehow damage it.

The gift inside took her breath away.

Sitting on a cushion of soft, navy velvet, was a fine white gold chain. Attached to it was a small feather, pure white except for a golden tan edging. The feather was so perfect in form that it was impossible to tell whether it had come from a real bird or a craftsman.

Time lost meaning to Angela as she stared at it, unable to fully comprehend the beauty of the gift, let alone its reason. Her fingers itched to touch it, to pick it up and try it on, but at the same time she was terrified to test the strength of something that looked so fragile.

Eventually, Angela noticed a folded piece of paper tucked inside the lid of the box. Opening it, she found a letter from her stranger in the same, neat handwriting.

Happy birthday, Goddess! I hope you like this little gift—White looks to be your color. Don’t worry about the feather’s delicacy—it’s tougher than it looks.

I’m sorry I haven’t seen you in a while. Maybe I’ll explain it the day I tell you my name. Which I will do. Eventually.

Look after yourself, Ange. I’ll be doing the same.

Blinking stupidly at the formless signature that could have been anything from a scribbled symbol to a strangely drawn letter, Angela tried to process the contents of the note.

The fact that he knew her birthday was tomorrow hadn’t surprised her as much as one would think; she was more surprised that she had mostly forgotten about it herself. Preoccupied with her studies and fending off the questionable excuse for men Sharon had been hurling at her, Angela had lost all track of time outside the classroom and student timetable.

But her mysterious stranger had remembered. Three months of silence and yet he had broken it to wish her a happy birthday. Touched deeper than she really knew, Angela picked up the necklace and put it on, enjoying the cool touch of the metal as the feather—real, if the texture was to be believed—nestled between her breasts. Feeling inordinately cheerful—happier than she had all week, really—she got up from her bed and admired the pendant in the mirror.

Giggling to herself, Angela picked up the phone and called Sharon.

“It’s late notice, I know,” she said when her friend answered. “But want to go out tonight? Birthday drinks and all…”

“
Finally
!” Sharon sighed in exasperation. “You’ve been so bloody quiet about the whole thing I was beginning to think you didn’t want to celebrate it! I thought I had to plan it without you, and you
know
I’m terrible at surprises!” She accused. Angela giggled again.

“I’ve been distracted,” she admitted. “Mid-terms are coming up, after all.”

“Not for another month at least!”

“Yeah, well…” Angela hedged, receiving an exasperated sigh in response.

“Crazy girl,” Sharon told her. “You need to put the books down every once in a while.”

“That’s what I have you for,” Angela countered with a grin. “So…tonight?”

After that first, the gifts continued to appear at infrequent intervals. None as beautiful as the feather, but each of them touching in both their timing and meaning. Just as she would begin to forget, or as her mood began to drop, something would appear to cheer her up.

One night, while at a party, Angela had seen Aaron with the girl she’d caught him with. She came home to a bouquet of red roses at her door, the card displaying only the symbol the stranger had signed on his birthday note.

Another time, after she’d stayed up all night to study for a test and fallen asleep over her work, Angela was woken up by a home delivery of coffee from the local café. It was only after she’d sat the test and come home did she realize that she’d forgotten to set her alarm—it seemed the coffee had woken her up in more ways than one.

The day she’d finished her finals for the semester, Angela found a small pile of textbooks about deities waiting for her. Attached was a note that promised a test…eventually. Angela had laughed at this, before picking up the top book of the stack and starting to read.

The gift-giving continued until Angela’s room was full of small tokens and mementos from her nameless friend, ranging from the adorably cute to the plain absurd. Her friend Sharon watched the growing collection curiously, until finally she could take the suspense no more.

“Okay Ange, who is he?”

“Mmm?”

“This boy of yours. Who is he?”

Angela looked up from the book on Greek mythology she had been lazily reading. The two of them lay reclined on her bed, enjoying the afternoon sunlight that shone into the room from the window, a fashion magazine Sharon’s lighter choice of reading.

“Who’s who?”

Sharon rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Well gee, I don’t know. How about the guy who sends you presents and flowers about once or twice a month?”

Angela smiled fondly to herself before catching her friend’s eye and blushing. Looking back down at her book, she unconsciously played with the feather that still hung around her neck.

“He’s no one. Just a…friend.”

Sharon snorted and tossed her magazine at Angela. “Bullshit, hon.
Friends
do not send you a dozen red roses just to cheer you up.
Friends
do not randomly surprise you with something every few weeks.” Sharon poked Angela in the arm. “So come on! Who is he? He must be rich to afford all this. How come you haven’t told me about him?”

Oblivious to the discomfort her friend was beginning to show, only that her questions were not yielding answers, Sharon pressed on with her rant. “You’ve been getting these gifts for months, but whenever I ask you about them you say it’s nothing. You’re never in a bad mood these days, either. It’s like you’re getting sex every night—
good
sex, which I
know
is not coming from any of the boys I’ve hooked you up with—but you still say that you’re single!”

“I
am
single,” Angela murmured. Moving to sit against the headboard, she hugged her knees and avoided Sharon’s eye.

“Well maybe you think that, but I don’t think he does. So what is he, Ange? Something warm for the cold nights? Winter’s nearly over.”

Angela made a rude noise. “I haven’t seen him in nearly a year. I don’t even know his name.”

Sharon blinked in surprise, her rant derailed for the moment. “You…what?”

“I’ve met him twice. He showed up out of nowhere the night Aaron cheated on me and…he talked me out of doing something really stupid. Then I ran into him again at a club back when you first started trying to hook me up with people. I haven’t seen him since then. I don’t know his name. I don’t know who he is or what he does. All I know is that every few weeks he’ll send me something and,” she shrugged, smiling softly. “I don’t know. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him that I just…” Sighing, she shrugged again and gave up.

Sharon leaned back on her elbows and stared long and hard at her friend. Picking up a plush toy cat (another gift from the stranger) that sat by her at the foot of the bed, she fondled it absent-mindedly as she processed what she’d just heard.

“A mysterious suitor…” She murmured. Angela caught the girl’s eye and they both burst out laughing, the tension that had been quietly building dissipating with the loud and sudden noise. Tossing the cat at Angela, Sharon grinned and bounced closer to her friend.

“So tell me. Is he cute?”

FOUR.

BARELY HALF AN HOUR HAD PASSED
since the sun had set, and already the party was in full swing. Music loud enough to be heard all the way down the street blared out of the apartment’s speakers, while in the living room a miniature mosh pit was being formed by the party-goers who had already achieved certain stages of drunkenness.

Angela and Sharon sat at the kitchen bar with a group of girls from one of their classes, laughing drunkenly as they attempted another round of a drinking game without much success. When Angela’s attempts to down her shots began to miss the target more often than they landed, she excused herself from the table and left the girls to finish the tequila.

Splashing cold water on her face to remove the sticky residues of the misplaced alcohol, Angela rested against the kitchen bench for a while before deciding to take out the trash—a semiconscious attempt to ease the pain the morning’s clean-up would bring—and also to get some fresh air. She was so focused on not tripping over the bulky rubbish sack as she tried to manoeuvre through the crowd of people that Angela didn’t even see him standing at the gate until he spoke to her.

“Hey, Goddess.”

Angela squealed and spun around in shock, staring at her stranger’s face in stunned surprise. He grinned, eyes twinkling in the dark as he leaned against the fence, hands stuffed into the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Good party?”

“Yeah,” Angela struggled to find words as she mentally fought to overcome the toxic mix of alcohol and the shock at seeing her nameless friend. “Uh, end of semester. Got a month’s holiday…” She trailed off stupidly, still unable to believe he was physically there.

“I’m sure you did well in your exams,” he phrased it as a statement, not a question, the quiet assertion in his voice causing Angela to blush. Dropping her head with a smile and a shrug, it was right at that moment that Sharon burst out the door.

“Hey Ange, we need more ic-” she stopped short as she saw the stranger standing with Angela, jaw falling open slightly as a blush crept up to her face. She blinked a few times as she tried to place a name to the unknown man, before the realization of who he must be hit home. Grinning drunkenly, Sharon winked at her friend and disappeared back inside. Angela watched her go, happy to be alone once more with her stranger, but confused by the score of emotions that were vying for attention in her mind.

Whether it was the combined effect of his absence and the incredibly thoughtful gifts that had been delivered in lieu, or the mix of alcohol and post-exam cheer, Angela couldn’t deny that her attraction to the stranger was growing. And if Sharon’s reaction was anything to go by, she wasn’t the only one who found him more than a little easy on the eyes.

Taking a deep breath in a vain attempt to clear her head, Angela turned back to face the stranger. She tried to meet his eyes, but only managed to get as far as his chest before she dropped her head again shyly. At a loss, Angela focused on his shoes as he moved away from the fence and came to stand by her, close enough that she could feel the heat from his body.

“So I take it you’ve been receiving my gifts?” He asked. Angela nodded dumbly, vaguely aware that the stranger was waiting for her to say something.

“Thank you,” she managed. “They’ve all been so…” She trailed off, lost for words at first, before the right one came to mind; “…Perfect.”

Her stranger laughed warmly, bringing a new flush to Angela’s face that she hid behind the strands of hair that had fallen over her eyes.

“I’m glad you liked them. I know some of them weren’t as nice as others but they all seemed to fit the –”

“Where have you been?” Angela interrupted, looking up at him for the first time and catching herself once more in the depth his gaze. He held her eyes for a moment before turning away with a rueful expression on his face.

“I’ve been busy with…work.” He rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably, causing Angela to frown at him in confusion.

“What do you do?”

“I…I’m a kind of…guidance counsellor,” the stranger shifted his feet and avoided Angela’s gaze. “I help people through difficult stages in their life.”

Angela’s frown deepened as she processed the information, a part of her growing suddenly defensive.

“So that night on the bridge…I was a pity case?”

“No!” The stranger looked at Angela in surprise. “Not at all.”

“Well, then what?” Angela’s voice grew louder and she began to pace, becoming somewhat high-pitched as her anxiety flared, wondering if she’d fallen for an elaborate wooing performance. “Do you like your job that much, that you’ll spend your spare time helping people out, too? Or do you just like helping upset girls by calling them nice names and giving them things? It’s been, what, a year since I last saw you? And I don’t even know your
name
?”

Angela was aware that she’d started to sound hysterical, but she didn’t care. Fuelled by the alcohol and a sudden resurgence of bad memories, she became determined that—whatever this guy’s tricks were—she wasn’t going to fall for them. Not this time. “What is it, then? Am I just another in a harem of girls that you string along or som-”

She was stopped short as the stranger gently grabbed her shoulder and turned her to look at him

“I help people where I can,” he spoke evenly, not quite angry, but apparently getting close. “Yes, I have helped some girls, but never more than I did for you that first night. For them, I was just doing my job. I like to help people, Ange, it’s in my nature. But none of them meant anything to me the way you think. None…None of them were like you.” He seemed to deflate as he finished, looking at Angela with a sadness in his normally-smiling eyes as he let his arm drop from her shoulder.

“I wanted to stay in touch with you, Ange. I haven’t been able to be in the area for a while, and I’m sorry if you thought I was stringing you along, but I wanted to stay in touch.”

Before she knew what she was doing, Angela stepped forward and found herself in his arms, holding him close as she pressed her face against his chest. He’d blinked in surprise at her action and almost pulled away, before he wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair.

“None have been like you, Goddess,” he murmured, almost inaudibly.

“What’s your name?” Angela asked softly. She felt his back tense slightly against her arms, before he sighed and slumped a little, as if in defeat.

“Tuyen.”

“Tuyen,” Angela murmured to herself, before pulling back to look at him. They stared at each other for a moment, both searching for a way to restart the conversation. Tuyen smiled softly and brushed a strand of hair out of Angela’s eyes.

She kissed him.

For a moment, it was beautiful—everything she had dreamed without realizing she had been dreaming it—but that moment only lasted for a second.

Pulling back, not quite pushing her away, Tuyen stared at Angela in shock and blatant fear. Turning so quickly he almost slipped over and crashed into the gate, Tuyen bolted, his footsteps unheard beneath the pulse of the music as he disappeared into the night.

Angela stood alone, deaf to all the noise around her as she wondered numbly what she’d done.