Chapter Sixteen
Julien
Life with Athena was a systematic dismantling of everything I had spent thirty-three years building.
Monday: I’d come home from a fourteen-hour surgery to find she had rearranged my entire apartment based on “energy flow.” My couch, which had been positioned at a precise ninety-degree angle to the window for optimal natural light, was now diagonal.
Diagonal! When I’d asked why, she’d said something about “chi” and “blocked pathways” and “the universe needing room to breathe.”
The universe didn’t need room to breathe.
I needed room to breathe.
Tuesday: She had gone through my closet and removed everything that “didn’t spark joy.” This included... my favorite tie, which was “too rigid,” three perfectly good dress shirts because “the energy was off,” and inexplicably all of my black socks.
“But they’re black socks,” I’d said, staring at the pile she had designated for donation.
“Exactly! They’re so serious. So heavy. You need more color in your life, Julien. More lightness. More—”
“I’m a neurosurgeon. I need black socks.”
“You think you need black socks. But what you actually need is happy socks.”
I bought new black socks the next day.
She’d found them and replaced them with socks that had tiny smiling suns on them.
I was currently wearing socks with tiny smiling suns on them.
Wednesday: She had shown up at the clinic again, and this time with homemade lavender sachets for “stress relief.” She’d distributed them to the entire staff. Winnie had been delighted. Fitz had been amused. Hayden had looked at me with something that might have been pity.
I found one in my desk drawer.
It actually did smell nice.
I hated that it smelled nice.
Thursday: She’d befriended Mrs. Channing from 4B, who apparently had been “lonely” and “needed someone to talk to about her grandson’s upcoming wedding.” They had tea. For three hours. In my apartment. When I came home, they roped me into looking at fabric swatches.
I was a neurosurgeon.
I didn’t have an opinion on fabric swatches.
Though... the sage green was nice.
Friday: She had reorganized my bookshelf. Not alphabetically, not by subject, but by “the energy of the words.” When I’d asked what that meant, she’d said, “You know, like, some books feel heavy and some books feel light, and you want them to flow together in a way that creates harmony.”
My medical textbooks were now shelved next to The Alchemist.
There was no harmony.
There was only chaos.
Saturday: She’d convinced me to go to a farmers’ market. At 7 AM. On my day off. We’d bought organic vegetables, artisanal bread, and something called, “activated charcoal lemonade” that tasted like regret.
She’d held my hand the entire time.
I’d let her.
Sunday: I had woken up to find her meditating on my balcony, completely naked except for one of my dress shirts, greeting the sunrise with some kind of chant that involved the words “cosmic mother” and “divine masculine energy.”
My neighbor, Mr. Patterson, a retired accountant with a very rigid morning routine, which I fully respected and now envied, had been watering his plants. He had seen everything, and I received a very pointed email from the building manager about “appropriate balcony attire.”
And now... now it was Saturday again, and I was supposed to have dinner with my parents.
My parents.
Who didn’t know I had gotten married.
Who didn’t know I had gotten married in Vegas.
Who definitely didn’t know I had gotten married to a woman who believed in cosmic energy and rearranged furniture based on chi and wore my dress shirts while chanting at the sun.
I was going to die.
Not metaphorically.
Actually die.
My heart was going to give out from stress, and they would find me collapsed on the floor of my apartment, clutching a lavender sachet, wearing socks with tiny suns on them.
“Julien?” Athena appeared in the doorway of my bedroom, wearing a dress that could only be described as “bohemian chic,” all flowy, floral, with about seventeen different colors that shouldn’t have worked together but somehow did.
“Are you ready? We should leave soon if we want to make our reservation.”
“I’m ready,” I lied.
I was not ready.
I would never be ready.
“You look very handsome,” she said, crossing the room to adjust my tie, which I had deliberately chosen because it was my most conservative, my most professional, my most this is fine, everything is under control.
She loosened it slightly.
“There. Now you look less like you’re about to perform surgery and more like you’re about to have dinner with your parents.”
“I perform surgery better than I have dinner with my parents.”
“I know.” She smiled up at me, and there was something in her expression. Something soft, and knowing that made my chest tighten. “But I’ll be there. We’ll do it together. It’s going to be fine.”
It was not going to be fine.
Nothing about this was going to be fine.
The restaurant was called Le Bernardin, because of course it was.
My parents only ate at restaurants that required reservations made weeks in advance and had wine lists longer than most novels.
It was the kind of place where the waiters wore white gloves and the napkins were folded into swans, and everything on the menu was described with at least four adjectives.
It was also the kind of place where Athena’s dress, beautiful as it was, stood out like a wildflower in a field of perfectly manicured roses.
My mother noticed immediately.
“Julien,” she said, rising from the table with the kind of graceful precision that suggested years of cotillion training. “You’re late.”
“Traffic,” I replied, which was a lie. We were three minutes late because Athena had insisted on stopping to help a woman whose grocery bag had broken on the sidewalk.
“And this is...” My mother’s eyes swept over Athena with the clinical assessment of someone evaluating a potential threat to the family’s social standing.
“Athena,” I said. “My...” I looked at my mother, then my wife, then back at my mother and groaned. Here goes nothing. “My wife.”
My mother blinked.
Not once, but several times.
My father looked like he was having a stroke.
I knew the feeling well.
And my wife... well, she....
“Please call me Athena!” Athena shook my mother’s hand with genuine warmth. “It’s so wonderful to meet you! Julien has told me nothing about you, but I can already feel your energy... it’s very strong, very grounded, very—”
“Yes,” my mother interrupted smoothly. “How nice.”
My father stood, offering his hand with the kind of firm handshake that suggested he was already calculating Athena’s net worth and family connections.
“Athena,” he said.
He didn’t sound welcoming.
He sounded like he was welcoming a hostile takeover.
We sat.
The waiter appeared immediately, as if summoned by the sheer force of my family’s collective discomfort.
“Would you care for wine?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“The 2015 Chateau Margaux,” my father said, not looking at the wine list.
“Actually,” Athena said brightly, “do you have anything organic? Or biodynamic? I try to be mindful of what I’m putting into my body, and the energy of the grapes really does make a difference.”
My mother’s eyes twitched.
Just once.
But I saw it.
“The Chateau Margaux will be fine,” my father said firmly.
Athena smiled. “Perfect! I’m sure the universe guided them to grow those grapes with love.”
Silence.
The kind of silence that suggested the universe had made a terrible mistake.
“So,” my mother said, folding her hands on the table with the precision of someone about to conduct an interrogation. “Athena. Tell us about yourself. What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a spiritual guide and energy healer,” Athena said, as if this were the most normal profession in the world. “I help people connect with their higher selves, release blocked energy, and find alignment with their true purpose. It’s very fulfilling work.”
My father’s expression suggested he had just been told she was a professional unicorn trainer.
“How... alternative,” my mother said.
“It is!” Athena agreed, missing the insult entirely. “I’ve always believed that traditional paths aren’t for everyone, you know? Some of us are called to walk a different road, to follow the whispers of the universe, to—”
“And your family?” my father interrupted. “What do they do?”
“Oh, my parents are wonderful! My dad is a woodworker and a part-time shaman, and my mom is a herbalist and a Reiki master, and they’re both just so connected to the Earth and to the spiritual realm and—”
“A shaman,” my mother repeated.
“Part-time,” Athena clarified, as if this made it better.
My father reached for his water glass.
I reached for my wineglass.
It was going to be a long dinner.
And then, because the universe apparently hated me, I heard a voice from across the restaurant.
“ATHENA!”
No.
No.
Please, God, no!
I turned.
And there, weaving through the tables of Le Bernardin like a bohemian tornado, were Athena’s parents.
I would know them anywhere. Woodlawn “Woody” was impossible to miss.
Tall, easily six-foot-three with long grayish-blond hair pulled back in a loose ponytail and piercing ice-blue eyes that seemed to see directly into your soul.
He was wearing a traditional handwoven poncho made of what appeared to be hemp or some other “earthly fiber,” khaki shorts that had seen better days, and flip-flops.
Flip-flops!
At Le Bernardin.
Behind him, moving with the kind of ethereal grace that suggested she was floating rather than walking, was Stephanie, “Stevie.” She had long, wild, curly black hair that cascaded down her back in untamed waves, a flowy multi-colored skirt that looked like it had been tie-dyed by the universe itself, and a bohemian-style baby-doll shirt that jingled with every step.
Actually jingled.