I woke feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. Somebody put a bottle of water in my hand. I sat up on a couch and sucked water until the bottle was empty. My hand shook. I was weak as a cat.
“Baz, what happened?” That was Yoni. I looked up at her, speechless. She looked worried, but I could tell she was still the boss.
I shook my head. Ashur, Ashur! I turned aside and puked.
Yoni said, “Baz?”
I rolled off the couch. On hands and knees, I puked like a dog until my back arched, my stomach ached, and my throat was raw.
“What happened?” She filled the air with her power. Her voice was irresistible.
It was Aphrodite all over again.
“No!” I croaked. I staggered to my feet.
She handed me a towel and I wiped myself off. Being near her set my skin a-tingle.
No.
Why the hell was I here? She didn’t need me. I was crumbling, disintegrating like a mummy in the fucking rain. If she came any closer I might shatter. I’d be biting the dirt, trying to die.
We stood five feet apart. It wasn’t far enough. She spoke, but I winced away. The overtones of power in her voice made my eardrums pop. She was exquisite, perfect, radiant, and being this close gave me such a hangover that I wished I was dead.
Ashur, Ashur!
The room began to fill up with other people. Blinking through the ache in my head, I recognized her uncle, her aunt, and her douchebag cousin Joe. They were all upset about something. They showed her a picture.
Yoni stood frowning at it.
“—Letter demanding money so he won’t publish it. Now do you see why I warned you?” her uncle yelled. “He must have planted the camera before he took you there.”
She looked up at me. The force of her energy wilted.
I felt like a one-legged man trying to run up a mountain. “What?”
“Did you,” she said, “have this picture taken?”
I squinted. Two people in a room, kissing, wound together, practically having sex standing up. My stomach folded around a sharp point.
The woman in the photo was Yoni.
My neck hairs prickled.
Accustomed as I was to dodging the shaft from the sneaky fuckers who suck up to power, I understood instantly what had happened.
Yoni was practically in tears.
Her aunt and uncle had a creepy look. They seemed self-satisfied and ashamed at the same time.
A few minutes ago I thought I’d felt Aphrodite in the room.
But it wasn’t her, it was Yoni.
Yoni had made it. She was the goddess, and she was doing fine without me, and I was a landmine in her world. I wasn’t up to the job.
I looked at the photo and then at her family. Slowly I put it together.
They could get rid of me this way. If she bought this bullshit photo, she would stop hankering after bad-boy rocker poon. She’d get on with her superstar career. Her goddess powers would grow and she’d be responsible about them.
As long as I wasn’t around.
And then I could get on with drinking myself to death.
“Yes,” I said. “I did it.” It took every ounce of balls I had left to watch her face crumple. “Sorry, babe.”
She turned and walked out.
Do them credit, her folks didn’t kick me or anything as they followed her.