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Authors: Jordanna Max Brodsky
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kiss. Every time I walk by your apartment, I think of our first night together.
Selene shifted uncomfortably, but forced herself to keep reading. In her job as a private investigator, she was used to watching people exhibit their lustful perversions—love, on the other hand, always discomfited her.
I love your letters. Love to think of you visiting the digs in the hills of Crete and spending your evenings watching Aeschylus and Sophocles in the place they were meant to be performed. But it’s not the same as being with you.
The letter went on in a similar vein for three excruciating pages, closing with
Mainolai thymoi
, “With a raving heart.” Selene rolled her eyes. The next letter was more of the same. And the next. But by December, Helen’s missives changed.
I write every day, sometimes twice. And all I get from you are e-mails full of academic details and superficial jokes. You say you miss me, you care for me, but where’s the passion, Theodore? I keep waiting for the part where you say how you’ve bought a plane ticket on a whim and flown home to surprise me, if only for a day, because you can’t bear to be away from me. Instead, you sound like you’re enjoying yourself, while I feel increasingly insecure.
She signed it
Syn philoteti
, “With friendship.” Finally, the last letter to Greece. Dated just before Christmas.
I’ve fallen in love. I met him and it was a flood tide. Like all my thoughts of anyone else were just wiped away and I was left newborn, clean, with my eyes finally opened to another world. He makes me feel confident, strong, complete, and at the same time, I can’t help feeling you never really loved me enough. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I know something you don’t—sometimes Aphrodite just can’t be stopped.
Selene let out a dismayed whistle.
Ouch.
Was wounded pride enough to push the mild professor over the edge? One final note lay in the box, a single folded sheet with no envelope. It was dated only three months ago.
I can’t stop thinking about last night. One moment keeps replaying in my mind. After you fell asleep, I ran my fingers along your ribcage—as if I were a blind woman and you the map. I followed the line of your sternum, my hands rested along your collarbone, I traced your jaw until I found your lips. I didn’t know what I sought at the end of the trail—you? Everett?
I miss you, Theo. I love you. I always have. But I’m with Everett now, and I love him, too. My engagement ring seems more appropriate than ever. A Greek
meandros
… maybe because love isn’t always a straight line? It twists and turns back on itself. But, I hope, it continues to move forward. And that’s what I have to do.
You said we shouldn’t have let last night happen. Now, in the light of day, I know you’re right.
The letter ended there, but the image still lingered in Selene’s mind—for an instant, she recalled how it felt to run her palms over the hard muscles of a man’s chest. She’d had a lover of her own once. Schultz’s books told their own versions of the tale, but this was the one memory from her pre-Diaspora godhood that she’d managed to preserve in its true, unaltered form. It had taken a great act of will, but from the moment she’d realized her memories had begun to shift and fade, she’d started reciting the story of her love, in all its passion and heartbreak, over and over to herself through the millennia, so the poets’ versions might not eclipse her own. So, while the rest of her history had slipped away, this story remained clear.
Hesitantly, she traced the sharp contour of her collarbones, the square lines of her own jaw, trying to imagine her lover’s caress.
“Orion.”
She whispered his name aloud, the shape of it like a kiss upon her lips. She closed her eyes, falling into the memory of the only man she had ever loved—
would
ever love.
Stag and boar flee before us, but we chase them down. All through the night we hunt, my silver
Selene shifted uncomfortably, but forced herself to keep reading. In her job as a private investigator, she was used to watching people exhibit their lustful perversions—love, on the other hand, always discomfited her.
I love your letters. Love to think of you visiting the digs in the hills of Crete and spending your evenings watching Aeschylus and Sophocles in the place they were meant to be performed. But it’s not the same as being with you.
The letter went on in a similar vein for three excruciating pages, closing with
Mainolai thymoi
, “With a raving heart.” Selene rolled her eyes. The next letter was more of the same. And the next. But by December, Helen’s missives changed.
I write every day, sometimes twice. And all I get from you are e-mails full of academic details and superficial jokes. You say you miss me, you care for me, but where’s the passion, Theodore? I keep waiting for the part where you say how you’ve bought a plane ticket on a whim and flown home to surprise me, if only for a day, because you can’t bear to be away from me. Instead, you sound like you’re enjoying yourself, while I feel increasingly insecure.
She signed it
Syn philoteti
, “With friendship.” Finally, the last letter to Greece. Dated just before Christmas.
I’ve fallen in love. I met him and it was a flood tide. Like all my thoughts of anyone else were just wiped away and I was left newborn, clean, with my eyes finally opened to another world. He makes me feel confident, strong, complete, and at the same time, I can’t help feeling you never really loved me enough. I’m sorry if this hurts you, but I know something you don’t—sometimes Aphrodite just can’t be stopped.
Selene let out a dismayed whistle.
Ouch.
Was wounded pride enough to push the mild professor over the edge? One final note lay in the box, a single folded sheet with no envelope. It was dated only three months ago.
I can’t stop thinking about last night. One moment keeps replaying in my mind. After you fell asleep, I ran my fingers along your ribcage—as if I were a blind woman and you the map. I followed the line of your sternum, my hands rested along your collarbone, I traced your jaw until I found your lips. I didn’t know what I sought at the end of the trail—you? Everett?
I miss you, Theo. I love you. I always have. But I’m with Everett now, and I love him, too. My engagement ring seems more appropriate than ever. A Greek
meandros
… maybe because love isn’t always a straight line? It twists and turns back on itself. But, I hope, it continues to move forward. And that’s what I have to do.
You said we shouldn’t have let last night happen. Now, in the light of day, I know you’re right.
The letter ended there, but the image still lingered in Selene’s mind—for an instant, she recalled how it felt to run her palms over the hard muscles of a man’s chest. She’d had a lover of her own once. Schultz’s books told their own versions of the tale, but this was the one memory from her pre-Diaspora godhood that she’d managed to preserve in its true, unaltered form. It had taken a great act of will, but from the moment she’d realized her memories had begun to shift and fade, she’d started reciting the story of her love, in all its passion and heartbreak, over and over to herself through the millennia, so the poets’ versions might not eclipse her own. So, while the rest of her history had slipped away, this story remained clear.
Hesitantly, she traced the sharp contour of her collarbones, the square lines of her own jaw, trying to imagine her lover’s caress.
“Orion.”
She whispered his name aloud, the shape of it like a kiss upon her lips. She closed her eyes, falling into the memory of the only man she had ever loved—
would
ever love.
Stag and boar flee before us, but we chase them down. All through the night we hunt, my silver
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