A brownstone on West Eighty-eighth Street, just steps from Riverside Park on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Half as wide as its neighbors, rust pitting its iron railing, peeling paint feathering the windowsills. A house that begged to be ignored—just like its previous owner. Selene’s house.
Her half brother Scooter Joveson had given Theo the deed when she died, so it was technically his now, although he still didn’t think of it that way.
Two women sat hand in hand on the stoop, waiting for Theo and Ruth with three shopping bags from Zabar’s.
Gabriela Jimenez stood, holding aloft a bottle of wine. “I come bearing gifts.”
Minh Loi hefted a cake box in turn. “Heavy gifts, full of chocolate.”
“I never turn down chocolate, but what are we celebrating?” Theo asked, pulling out his keys.
“Minh just got a paper accepted into the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics,” Gabi said, fairly beaming with pride as she kissed her girlfriend on the cheek.
“Congratulations!”
Minh gave a self-deprecating shrug. “They were looking for female contributors.”
Gabi rounded on Minh. “Your article’s not being published because you’re a woman. It’s being published because it’s awesome.”
“Thanks, babe.” Minh rolled her eyes with a wry smile, managing to discourage Gabi’s effusiveness and bask in it all at the same time.
“And, Theo-dorable,” Gabi went on, “since your house has more space than all of our apartments put together, we decided to have Minh’s party here.”
“Party?” Theo asked with a raised brow, grabbing the shopping bags.
“Just a few friends from the museum,” she assured him breezily as she stepped inside and headed confidently toward the kitchen, pulling Minh by the hand. “Bring the groceries in here, will you?”
Minh looked over her shoulder at Theo with a grimace. Clearly, none of this was her idea, but Gabi was just about the most stubborn person Theo knew. If she wanted a party, she got a party.
With the other women out of sight, Theo looked to Ruth, whose cheeks burned a suspicious shade of crimson. “You knew about this, didn’t you?”
“They needed a place that could host a dinner party for ten.”
“Selene’s table only holds two.” He lugged the grocery bags into the foyer. “Four if you squeeze.” He tried not to sound pissed. His whole life, he’d tempered confrontation with humor. But sometime in the last six months he’d lost much of his talent for levity.
Ruth’s flush darkened. “I ordered a folding table from Costco.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me first?”
“We knew you’d say no. You’d come up with some excuse so you wouldn’t hurt Gabriela’s feelings, but you’d still refuse.”
“That’s not true. I’m happy for Minh.”
“I’m sure you are. But you always say no.” Ruth’s voice slowed, as if she hesitated to admit the truth. But for all her shyness, Ruth never lied. When he asked a direct question, she answered it. Theo wished he could say the same about himself.
“You just want to work, Theo. You know I support your research, but the way you’re going about it isn’t healthy. It’s bringing you more pain than joy. You keep looking into the past and ignoring what’s going on around you. Pythagoras, Mithras, Saturn—they mean more to you than your own friends. You’re sublimating all your grief into your work, rather than reaching out to those who want to help.”
“You’re right. Sublimating is exactly what I’m doing,” he snapped, more harshly than he’d intended. “The sick and suffering of ancient Greece used to go to the shrines of Asclepius, He Who Soothes, and offer themselves to his snakes for healing. The snakes knew the secrets of the Underworld. They could cure sickness by bringing men right up to the border between life and death, between god and mortal. That’s what ‘sublime’ means, Ruth—to come ‘up to the threshold’ between worlds. There’s nothing wrong with trying to do that. I’ve been broken apart, and that’s the only way I know how to heal.”
“Well, in chemistry, ‘sublimate’ means to turn a solid directly into a gas,” she shot back. Finally, his loyal friend had lost her patience. Theo was almost relieved. If she was angry at him, it made it that much easier to push her away. “That’s what you’ve become, Theo. Ether. Air. Floating above it all in a cloud of theories, living with dreams of a goddess. That’s not healing! Come back to the solid world! Come back to your very real, very human friends. Gabriela and Minh have been dating for three months now, and it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them. They want to share that with you, but they barely ever see you.”
“I won’t see them tonight either, not with ten people in the house.”
“I know you don’t like guests, because she never wanted people over, but you’re not her.” Ruth reached for his hand. “You’re your own man, and you’ve always liked having friends around. Retreating from the world isn’t good for you. We all thought it’d be nice for you to socialize.”
Nice? How about if all my friends stop telling me how to live my life? That would be nice, he thought angrily. Ruth wants me to stop researching. Gabi wants me to throw a dinner party. Selene—if she were alive to want anything anymore—would want me to live on without her.
“Screw this,” he muttered, pulling away. He turned toward the stairs, intending to spend the rest of the day up in his bedroom with his research notes, not wasting time on frivolity. Then he heard the clatter of claws on the kitchen floor and the unmistakable sound of Hippo’s tail thwacking against someone’s legs. The huge dog barreled down the hall, bumped him happily in the groin with her head, and gave Ruth’s hand a lick before hurtling back into the kitchen to greet Gabi and Minh once more, her paws slipping and skittering on the hardwood.
Selene might not have liked guests, but her dog sure did—female ones, at least.
As always, the sight of the massive, brindled dog with her floppy ears and wagging tongue softened the edges of his grief. Hippo was the only other creature in the world who’d been as devastated as Theo by Selene’s death. If she was finding a way to heal, maybe he could too.
All right, Hippo, he conceded silently. I’ll be a gracious host—but only for you. “I’m going to change,” he said more calmly. “I’ll be down in a minute.”
Upstairs, he closed the door to the bedroom—the one he’d shared with Selene for a few short and glorious months—and yanked off his tie like a man reprieved from hanging. He was free of his button-down and rifling for a T-shirt when a faint knock sounded on the door.
Ruth stood awkwardly, her eyes darting to his bare chest and then back to his face. “I want to apologize. You’re right. I should’ve asked you first. This isn’t my house.”
Somehow, Ruth’s speed at making amends only annoyed Theo more. “It’s fine, really.” He tried to banish all evidence of impatience from his voice but could tell from the hurt in her eyes that he’d failed.
She took a tentative step closer, and for the first time all day, he noticed that she’d abandoned her usual sensible biologist’s outfit. A soft blue skirt swung around her knees, tanned shoulders peeked from a sleeveless white blouse, and an enamel pendant in the shape of an amoeba hung at her collarbone—a gift Theo had bought her years ago, more as a joke than anything else. At the sight of the pendant, his annoyance dissipated, transformed into something closer to guilt. Ruth had spent the last hour—the last half a year—trying to help him, and this was how he repaid her?
“I didn’t mean to be an ass,” he said.
Ruth’s eyes, large behind her glasses, flitted back to his chest. He lifted a self-conscious hand to the pale Mercury symbol on his flesh, evidence of his run-in with Saturn’s branding iron.
“Sorry. I wasn’t staring at it,” she said quickly.
“Just at my pecs?” he asked, surprising himself with the joke, then immediately regretting it when Ruth looked away, abashed. He knew full well that she had feelings for him, feelings he had no right to encourage—at least not until he knew his own heart better. He pulled on his shirt hastily. I never should’ve let her claim the room down the hall as her own, or leave her toothbrush beside mine. But as isolated as he’d become, he could never completely divorce himself from the extrovert he’d been. Having someone to talk to, or even just to sit in silence with, had eased some of the throbbing loneliness he felt every time he saw something that reminded him of Selene. In Manhattan, that was just about everything.
That spring, the cherry trees had bloomed early in Central Park, their branches heavy with pink puffballs. When the wind blew, the petals drifted down like blushing snow. He’d sat beneath the trees, their drooping limbs forming a secret, wondrous bower, unable to believe that he’d never share such beauty with the woman he loved. Surely, he’d thought, she’ll show up, pushing aside the branches and scowling at the excessive pinkness. She’ll laugh when I say I thought she was dead. “I found a way to be reborn, of course. I’m an Athanatos! One Who Does Not Die. Or did you forget that?” But after two weeks of riotous glory, the petals had turned to brown mush, the trees leafed out and looked like any other trees—and Selene never appeared.
Theo sat heavily on the bed, one hand pressed against the still-tender skin that surrounded the Mercury brand, a constant reminder of Selene’s death. He could smell the burning flesh, the acrid tang of electricity as the lightning bolt struck them both.
Ruth sat beside him. After a moment, she laid a hesitant arm around his back, her fingers curving lightly around his shoulder. Her breast brushed his elbow. She smelled like soap and summer grass. When she’d lain beside him on the quad, the bustling students and open air had tempered the intimacy. Now his body responded involuntarily—but he didn’t move. She rested her head against his arm. Her sun-warmed hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, a few unruly wisps tickling his skin.
“Ruth,” he said finally, quietly, not sure what to say, knowing he had to say something.
“I know,” she replied in a whisper, stopping him from having to figure it out. “You’re still thinking about her, and you can’t promise me anything, and you don’t want to hurt me. You don’t know how you feel, you don’t know what you want.” He didn’t bother trying to deny it. She knew him well, this friend of his. “It’s okay,” she went on. “You don’t have to do anything.” She rested her other hand on his thigh, and he could feel its warmth through the fabric of his pants. He sat like a statue, wondering if she’d move her fingers. Wondering if he wanted her to.
Eventually, she turned her head so her mouth pressed against the flesh of his arm. She didn’t kiss him, just rested her lips there. Instinctively, he turned his head in response, his chin just touching the crown of her head. He felt her fingers curl a centimeter tighter on his shoulder, the crescents of her nails pressing into his flesh as her breath quickened. He inhaled sharply, formulating the right way to tell her to stop.
The doorbell saved him. Hippo barked, Gabi laughed, Minh’s footsteps pattered into the foyer.
“More guests to drag me from my work, kicking and screaming,” he murmured before gently pulling away. She looked up at him with a smile so trusting, so warm, that he almost told her the truth about his Pythagoras research right then. But he didn’t.
This was one quest the hero had to undertake alone.