Page 12 of The Perfect Matchmaking

A sound of barely suppressed ‘gross’ from behind Ares made him let up and she managed to swiftly sidestep him. Athena, in a white starched shirt and thin black suspenders—of all things—and those glasses that made her face even more angular, setting her cheekbones in focus, leaned on the wall a couple of steps away from them.

“Don’t you have to cause discord someplace, Ares? You’re never satisfied when things are not in bloody upheaval around you.” Low voice dripping with derision, Athena rolled her sleeves and Aphrodite tried not to stare. The exposed forearms, tanned and muscular, had no business belonging to a stuffy Yale academic. One teaching boring Greek, at that.

“I’m kinda busy, Athena.”

Aphrodite, seeing an opening, latched on to the exact body part of Athena’s she’d been ogling intensely just seconds ago. Those forearms were hard as a rock, solid muscle and sinew. Aphrodite almost forgot where she was and what she was saying.

“Not anymore you’re not, Ares. We were done, oh, a couple of millennia ago. I’d say it was great, but it wasn’t. I’m not sure what assumptions you’re making here, but please stop.”

Ares, clearly unaccustomed to being given the brush off, stood menacingly in front of them.

“Back then, this kind of strategy got you all the unwilling women, Ares, didn’t it? Just good old-fashioned aggression. Now? Now it will get you a knee in the groin and a broken nose, if I have my way.” Athena straightened to her impressive six feet and looked him in the eye, tilting her head just a little. He was a hulking piece of beefy man, and Athena was a lanky woman, but after a stare off that lasted about thirty seconds, Ares visibly shrank and staggered away. Somewhere from the side, clapping and gasping could be heard. Which could only mean one thing.

“I keep telling you, Maddison,” still clapping, Erato slowly stepped closer. “That this second chance romance bull you keep preaching is only possible when neither lover is a wanker. Kudos to the Brits for such a wonderful word. Wanker. Love it. I’ll borrow it, since it’s entirely appropriate for the occasion and for the man. Since the man in question, currently hightailing it out of here, is a massive wanker, I say you reconsider your strategy and stop wasting your arrows.”

Maddison turned to her, eyes blazing, ready to argue her position, when Athena slowly tugged on the hand that was still on her forearm.

“I suggest we make a quick exit, if you’re not willing to spend the next hour or so debating the romanticism of tropes.” At her nod they made themselves scarce. In their wake, they could still hear Maddison arguing with Erato about how good sex can bring back memories. Suddenly, there was an opening to her right and Aphrodite was shoved unceremoniously into what for a second looked like a closet before the door closed and she and Athena, who’d done said shoving, were plunged into darkness.

“What the—” A cool hand over her mouth stopped her tirade and, to resort to silly cliches, took her breath away. There was that scent again. Strange, familiar, comforting. And she still couldn’t place it, despite being enveloped by it.

“Shhh, Ares and Hera were at our three o’clock. I didn’t think you’d want to engage with those two again.” The whisper right next to her ear sent a shiver down her spine. What in the world was going on with her?

“Yes, I’d rather not get engaged to Ares, or Hera, or anyone, thank you very much.” She took a deep breath and leaned away from the cool hands and seductive scents and the press of that solid, warm form. Her body was rudely screaming at her in unpublishable expletives. Had it really been that long since she’d had sex? Why was she suddenly reacting so strongly?

“You’re funny. I don’t think I remembered that about you.” Athena purposefully and demonstratively took a step back and Aphrodite missed the warmth immediately. She needed her head examined.

It was time to stop acting like a damsel in distress. It was getting embarrassing.

“There’s a lot I don’t remember about you.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise at all. I don’t think we exchanged more than two words during all our acquaintance. Unless it was to argue. Boy, those were the days, huh? Quarreling over apples, starting wars, me winning.” A husky laugh ended that sentence, and Aphrodite smiled in the darkness of the small room.

It felt overwhelmingly comfortable to be here like this, without really seeing Athena, but smelling her and sensing her just inches away. She was probably reclining against the wall again, those ridiculously long legs crossed at the ankles and the arms hugging her chest. Such a seemingly relaxed, unobtrusive pose, and it revealed so much about her, Aphrodite thought. She was clearly at ease in her own body, enough to show it off in small glimpses here and there, either by the skinny jeans or the rolled-up sleeves. She looked good, she knew it, she didn’t care who saw it. And yet, the folded arms implied that as comfortableas Athena was, she was still holding a part of herself back, in the shadows.

“I don’t remember you winning, Athena.”

The low laugh was back, enveloping her along with the mysterious fragrance. She felt embraced and wanted to simply lean into it, like a cat into a warm caress.

“I may not have won that apple, but I won the war.” For a second both of them were silent, Aphrodite remembering the Battle of Troy and the price the mortals paid for the useless quarrels of bored gods.

Athena broke the silence first. “For what it’s worth, that one ended any and all aspirations I had to continue as Goddess of War. Ares can have it all to himself.”

“I wondered a little about that, honestly. You stepped back and away, so suddenly. And here you are. You speak your mind. You play no games, unless it’s to enrage Ares.”

They both laughed at that. A quiet sound of shared mirth that abruptly became too intimate to Aphrodite. But Athena was watching her with an unabashedly open gaze and so words just kept tumbling out of her.

“It made such a stir and yet here you are. Unbothered.”

Athena’s eyes crinkled now with more genuine joy and she exhaled loudly, as if she had been waiting for a completely different statement. When she spoke, her voice was stilted.

“I can’t say that it always felt that way. The fallout… I’m not sure how much you’ve seen. Being you, you’d have been busy. But I was banished for a bit. And I had to find myself along the way, in the loneliness and the quiet. You know, when all of this…” Athena waved her graceful hand around as if the janitor’s closet was something more than it was.

But Aphrodite understood. All this, all the trappings of being an Olympian. As Athena went on, her words became quieter, yet firmer.

“When all of this is gone, you are all alone and you hear your own thoughts. I found myself. In science. In nature. In experiments and knowledge and yes, wisdom. As ironic as it sounds. I found that I am indeed what I am supposed to be. And that banishment wasn’t scary. I think seeing me as indifferent and self-sufficient, Zeus simply couldn’t allow me the sheer pleasure of me staying that way. So I was allowed back and he, of course, claimed credit for all the progress science has made in the time I was away and ever since.”

“Does it bother you?”

---