Chapter Three Aphrodite
Chapter Three
Aphrodite
Everyone in this family had a role to play. The patriarch, the peacemaker, the comic relief, the prodigal son.
Aphrodite? She was the token bitch.
She hadn’t always been this way. Once upon a time—it felt like eons ago—she had been young and na?ve, desperate to be understood. To be loved.
But when you looked like Aphrodite, it was hard to be truly loved. She had been objectified and resented, manipulated and leered at and lusted after. Love, however…that remained elusive.
The sounds of horns and traffic wove around her as she turned onto Park Avenue.
Everyone stared as she passed, male and female, young and old.
Waiters froze midmotion, plates half-delivered to impatient tables; shopkeepers drifted out of their boutiques just to get a closer look.
Aphrodite could practically feel their desires, as tangible as the brush of a feather over her skin.
This was the reason she walked home from work instead of taking a company car, the way a wealthy mortal would. She liked being looked at.
At Seventy-Second Street, the green awning loomed up before her: the entrance to her building. Aphrodite hesitated, then turned into the gourmet coffee shop on the corner.
“A chai latte, please. And a croissant,” Aphrodite told the barista behind the register, whose name tag read Kimberly.
As she waited, Aphrodite studied the girl. Her muddy brown hair was frizzy and riddled with split ends, her forehead covered in angry red acne. Kimberly seemed painfully aware of this from the way she hunched over, tugging her hair forward to hide her face.
But when Aphrodite handed over her credit card, Kimberly came to life.
“Oh my god! Are you really Valentine Ellene?” She pronounced Aphrodite’s mortal name with a perfect French accent, Vahl-an-teen, rather than butchering it as so many Americans did.
Aphrodite blinked in surprise. “I am.”
“I’m obsessed with your Amour line! I save up all my tip money for the candles. Sometimes, after the holidays, they sell them half-off at Bergdorf’s.” Kimberly was talking rapidly, her self-consciousness temporarily forgotten. “That scent! I can’t figure out, what is in it?”
“Company secret,” Aphrodite teased. The famous Amour candles, which retailed for a whopping one hundred dollars for the mini size, had been the foundation of her whole career.
Kimberly ran her hands down the front of her apron. “Sorry! Let me get you that latte,” she said hastily.
As Aphrodite tucked away her wallet, her eyes lit on the small red product samples jumbled at the bottom of her purse. An idea struck.
“Want some goodies?” she offered, and Kimberly’s face lit up.
As she withdrew each item—a face serum, a lip gloss, a perfume—Aphrodite squeezed it between thumb and forefinger, willing the beauty products to take on a little spark of magic. To make this girl beautiful in the eyes of the world, but more important, in her own eyes.
Confidence was always the most powerful aphrodisiac. Men had known this for centuries, but for some reason, women still hadn’t figured it out.
“Thank you,” Kimberly breathed. She accepted the samples as reverently as if Aphrodite had passed her the mythical treasure of Troy.
Aphrodite walked the remaining half block to her building, ripping off bites of the buttery croissant and popping them into her mouth.
She noticed a few women casting her bitter glances as they passed, probably wondering how someone with her figure could snack on bread, but calories were a mortal problem.
And the croissant helped restore some of her flagging energy.
That hadn’t been a complicated enchantment, but still. Magic was magic.
When the elevator doors opened into the penthouse, Thalia stood there, waiting. “Your husband is home,” she announced without preamble.
Thalia was a minor goddess, one of the three Graces. Aphrodite had long ago selected her as a handmaiden, which these days meant Thalia functioned as a personal assistant—plus—nanny.
Aphrodite’s mouth went dry, and she started toward the playroom. She hadn’t seen Hephaestus in…a month? Or was it two?
She reached into her bag and spritzed on a dose of the Amour perfume. As always, the scent of it steadied her. It was the same feeling she got from a good blowout or a new pair of Manolos—it made her stronger, more grounded.
She found Hephaestus on the playroom floor, patiently assembling a plastic racetrack. Next to him, a toddler with platinum curls, the same color as Aphrodite’s own, clapped in delight.
“Mommy!” Eros cried out, noting her arrival.
Hephaestus drew in a breath and looked up. “It’s good to see you,” he said slowly.
Was it? Aphrodite never knew how her interactions with Hephaestus would go.
He was taciturn, his emotions as unruffled as the waters of some subterranean lake, while Aphrodite’s mood swings were volatile (albeit short-lived).
He was content to sit for hours in silence while she craved conversation and laughter.
Aphrodite usually invited Hermes to her society galas or fashion shows because she never could drag Hephaestus out of his workshop.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she wondered if he regretted marrying her. Why had he married her, anyway?
Of course, she knew why. Lust. He had wanted her, plain and simple, and Hephaestus was too honorable to simply take what he wanted. Their marriage was a trade, her beauty for his position and security.
Aphrodite had always looked like this, even as a mortal.
The other gods—or more accurately, the goddesses—spoke of her beauty as something almost separate from her, a cosmic gift that had inexplicably fallen on Aphrodite and that she didn’t deserve.
She should be grateful, they sniffed, judging her with sidelong glances.
Aphrodite was grateful. But a gift as magnificent as her beauty didn’t come without strings. There was always a price to pay, which Aphrodite knew all too well.
When she was a human, beauty had brought her so much—immeasurable joy, and something she thought was love, and in the end, unbearable heartache. And then Hephaestus had come along.
When he’d revealed himself as a god, just like in the old stories, Aphrodite had been awed…and intrigued. In his own shy way, he began wooing her—he, an immortal, treating a penniless human as if she were a queen. When he had proposed, offering to deify her, she accepted without a second thought.
Yes, their marriage had been a bargain, and for her part, Aphrodite was satisfied with how that bargain had turned out.
She refused to consider their relationship in any other terms—refused to acknowledge that Hephaestus, in his earnest, honest heart, might love her.
Because Aphrodite certainly didn’t deserve his love.
“Looks like you boys are having fun,” she declared, sinking onto the carpet next to the racetrack. Eros came over to plant a sticky kiss on her cheek.
“We are.” Hephaestus snapped the last section of Hot Wheels track into place. His dark eyes darted to his wife and back again, as if he hadn’t decided the tone of their interaction, either.
Aphrodite should have been used to Hephaestus’s size by now, but it struck her anew each time she saw him.
Even seated, he seemed enormous, the plastic cars so fragile in his hands.
She would never have called him handsome, yet Hephaestus wasn’t unattractive; he kept his dark curls short and his beard neatly trimmed, emphasizing his square jawline.
Besides, Aphrodite had never cared all that much for handsomeness. In her experience, men could be attractive for plenty of reasons: Their power, charm, sense of humor. Their ambition.
She toyed with her thin gold necklace. “How was your trip?”
“The usual. What have you been doing while I was gone?”
“The usual, too,” Aphrodite assured him, which was true. Despite what the other goddesses thought about her, she had only cheated on Hephaestus once.
Unfortunately, that one time, he’d caught her.
It struck Aphrodite as deeply unfair that the male gods, namely Zeus, had countless affairs without consequence, yet she would forever carry a scarlet letter for a single infidelity.
She certainly hadn’t set out to cheat on Hephaestus.
It had just…happened, one night at Olympus.
Her resentment of Hephaestus’s family, her irritation at never being good enough for Hera, and her unbearable loneliness had all crystallized one evening into a prickly energy that she’d recognized as lust. Irrational, unquenchable lust.
Then she’d seen Hephaestus’s brother Ares.
Ares, whose anger felt as combustible as hers, whose passion and restlessness had matched her own. What happened next felt inevitable.
If only Hephaestus hadn’t come looking for her.
If only he hadn’t started shouting when he found her with his brother, drawing the attention of Zeus and Hera.
Aphrodite had closed her eyes and tugged her clothes up over her bare breasts, wondering if this meant the end of her marriage to Hephaestus.
He could call the other gods to a vote, cast her out of the Olympian Pantheon.
She would spend the rest of her days as a minor goddess, alone with a mere sliver of her former powers.
But he hadn’t left her.
Silence stretched between them now, the air heavy with uncertainty and the scent of Aphrodite’s perfume.
Eros shattered the moment by throwing a plastic car at Hephaestus’s head. “Car!” he squealed. “Car, car!”
“I think it might be your bedtime.” Aphrodite tugged the protesting toddler to his feet and glanced at the doorway, where Thalia already stood.
After they’d given their son a good-night kiss, Aphrodite and Hephaestus turned back to each other. So many things lay unspoken between them.
“I have something for you.” He headed to the couch, where he’d tossed his travel bag, and withdrew a black velvet box.
A reflexive excitement coursed through Aphrodite. She was like a child in this way; she never could resist the allure of presents.
When she pulled back the lid, her breath caught.
Hephaestus often brought her a small gift from his travels: a loose gem for her to set as she chose, or a simple gold bangle.
But this necklace was impossibly extravagant.
Enormous diamonds and emeralds were linked in an Art Deco pattern, each stone massive in its own right.
She watched, speechless, as Hephaestus lifted the curtain of her hair and placed the necklace against her skin, over the thin gold chain she always wore there. He knew better than to try to take it off.
They both stared at Aphrodite’s reflection, which blazed in the mirror like a flame. The emeralds turned her blue eyes a deeper, more turquoise color, the geometric lines of the stones emphasizing the curves of her collarbones.
“I love it. Thank you,” she said simply.
Hephaestus rested his hands on her shoulders in a deceptively casual gesture. For a moment, Aphrodite thought he might sweep her into his arms and carry her to bed. Surprisingly, she wanted him to.
She thought back to that night three years ago, several months after he’d caught her with Ares on Olympus. The one and only time they had discussed her infidelity.
Hephaestus had come home late from a work trip, taciturn as always. Unable to handle the silence, Aphrodite had asked how his meetings went. Our vendors are cheating us, he’d said tersely. Liars, all of them.
That word, cheat, had started it all.
Maybe they didn’t mean to cheat, Aphrodite had snapped in reply. She wasn’t sure why she said it, other than she longed to finally address what had happened.
Address it they did—in a loud, ugly, vicious way. An awful part of Aphrodite had relished that fight. Finally, she had cracked through her husband’s placid surface and exposed the beating heart beneath.
When they fell into bed, it felt like the natural conclusion to all the wounds they had inflicted on each other.
Obviously, Aphrodite had slept with Hephaestus countless times during their marriage.
But something had been different that night.
He had been different. He had kissed her with a possessive fierceness that wiped everything else from her mind, until there was nothing in the world but the sensation of his body against hers.
Everywhere his hands touched, sparks seemed to trail in his wake, the white-hot sparks of a hammer striking in a forge.
The next morning, still flushed and crackling with sensation, Aphrodite had looked over to find that he was gone. The only evidence he’d been there at all was the rumpled pillow on his side of the bed.
They had never mentioned her infidelity again.
Then, barely a month later, Aphrodite had learned she was pregnant.
At the news, an incredulous smile had spread over Hephaestus’s face.
“A baby,” he’d murmured, resting a tentative hand on her belly, which was still toned and flat.
The gods had plenty of demigod children scattered over the world, but this—a true god, fully divine and immortal—was inconceivably rare.
Eros’s arrival had shifted things between them, had brought a new center of gravity to their marriage.
Hephaestus’s hands were warm on her shoulders, his eyes still locked on hers in the mirror. Aphrodite felt that little shiver again. Most men were so easy to read, probably because most men’s desires were so clear. But Hephaestus’s thoughts had always eluded her.
Had they reconciled, or was this merely a truce?
She would find out in time, Aphrodite reminded herself. That, they had plenty of.