“You won’t . . . you won’t be able to . . . get rid of me so easily,” I tell him with a broken voice. When we separate, I see how red his face is, and the tears on his cheeks. “I promise you, I will always be your stalker.”
He runs his thumb across my cheek.
“And I’ll always be yours.”
I give him a confused look.
“I was stalking you, too, you silly witch.”
“What?”
“We never ran out of internet. I asked Apolo to pretend with me. It was my excuse to talk to you. You’ve always had my attention, Witch.”
I don’t know what to say, idiot Greek god, why did he choose this moment to tell me? Ares takes some bracelets out of his pocket, and I gasp when I recognize them. I made them a long time ago for a school fair, but I couldn’t manage to sell any until a boy bought them all. Had Ares sent that boy? Had he done that for me even when we weren’t speaking to each other? Ares puts a pair of the bracelets in the palm of my hand and closes it.
“You’ve always had my attention,” he repeats with feeling, and that only makes me cry even more.
“Ares . . .”
“I have to go.” He kisses my forehead. “I’ll let you know when I land. I love you.” He gives me a short kiss and disappears through the security door before I can regret not begging him to stay.
With my hand on the transparent windows of the airport, I watch his plane take off and disappear into the sky. I feel like a hole has opened in my heart and it will never close. Maybe it will heal, but the scar will always be there.
Part of me imagines him coming back like in the movies, telling me that he loves me and won’t leave me, but it’s not like that. Real life is crueler than romance movies. I close my hand into a fist over the window.
Good-bye, Greek God.
Ares’s parents and Artemis are already gone, but Apolo remains by my side, weeping openly. The journey back to the house becomes the saddest hour of my life. Apolo and I share a taxi but neither of us speaks. Both of us are absorbed in our own sadness. Trees, houses, people, and cars pass by the window, but I don’t see anything.
I don’t even say good-bye to Apolo when I get out of the car. I walk into my house like a zombie. My room welcomes me with silence. My eyes slip to the window and pain squeezes my chest tightly. My mind teases me, imagining Ares coming through the window smiling, his pretty blue eyes lighting up at the sight of me.
I look at the front of my bed and remember that night I made him hot chocolate and he told me about his grandpa. Ares has grown so much as a person. From an idiot who didn’t value anything to a man who values everything, who finds it easier to express his feelings, who understands that it’s okay to be weak or even cry. I don’t want to take credit for that because no one changes if they really don’t want to change. I was just the push he needed to get started. I sit on my bed without looking at a specific point.
Dani opens the door with a bang. Her gaze meets mine, and that’s all it takes for me to lose control.
“Dani, he’s gone,” I say quietly. She gives me a sad look, moving closer to me. “Really, he’s gone.” I start to cry inconsolably, letting it all out. I feel like a part of me has gone with him, and maybe it has. Dani rushes over, throws her purse on the floor, and hugs me.
“He’s gone,” I keep repeating over and over.
In my best friend’s arms, I cry all night until I fall asleep. I wake up slightly to a text telling me that he has arrived, but after reading it, I just cry myself to sleep again.
Three Months Later
“And then I told him he was an idiot,” I say with the phone in front of me, talking about Joshua. “How could he even think of putting an egg in the microwave?”
Ares laughs, his face encapsulated in my phone screen. We’re Skyping while I’m cooking in the college dorms.
“And that wasn’t the worst of it,” I continue. “He put a pink shirt in the wash with his whites. Guess who only wears pink now?”
“And I thought I’d be the one making the most mistakes with this living alone thing.”
I squint at him. “You burned all the pots in your apartment.”
“I was learning.”
“You don’t even know how to make coffee.”
“You haven’t tried it.”
“Thank God,” I mumble.
Ares scoffs. “Yesterday I made pasta, it was a little sticky but edible.”
“Look who’s here,” I show him a stuffed witch he gave me when we met at Thanksgiving break a few weeks ago. “She’s my roommate.”