Work Text:
Helen and Sophos had wanted their rehearsal dinner to be a quiet affair at Sophos’s parents’ house, but the sheer size of Helen’s extended family had necessitated that they rent out a local Eddisian restaurant instead. Fed up with wedding planning, Helen had let her aunts do as they wished, which was probably why Gen had watched her pick raisins out of her salad during the first course even though she had hated them ever since Pylaster used to switch the chocolate chips in her trail mix for raisins every morning before school.
The whole process of wedding planning had gone along these lines. Gen had told her to elope more than once, but as per usual, his good advice had been ignored.
Despite her marked disinterest in the whole wedding enterprise, Helen had made an exception for the seating arrangements. At a typical Eddisian formal dinner, the central table would have been close family only, the bride’s on one half and the groom’s on the other, with friends and more distantly-related members of the wedding party at the next tables. Instead of being placed at the second table, however, and to the chagrin of several cousins who no doubt felt slighted, Irene had been elevated to sit next to Gen. This was either a distraction or a bribe, and quite possibly both.
Not that he was complaining. Gen didn’t even mind being predictable. He could smell the light sea salt and lily-of-the-valley of Irene’s perfume as she shifted and reached for her wine, which was worth any amount of good behavior. It also saved him from having to speak to either Cleon or Pylaster, both of whom were currently nursing grudges against him and would have jumped at the opportunity to pick a fight.
Between courses, he played with the delicate bracelets on Irene’s wrist. She had slid her eyes over to him once, but ignored him for the most part as she spoke to his father about something tedious that was happening with the Hephestian Central Bank. His mind wandered, turning over possible elopement destinations, daydreaming of a quiet temple nearly in ruins overlooking the sea. At last, Hector turned to ask Stenides about a project he was working on at his office and Irene focused her attention on Gen.
“What?” she asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously as he set one of the bracelets spinning.
“Nothing.” He grinned. “Just bored. Your hair looks nice. Did Penelope do it?” Irene always looked radiantly beautiful, but tonight she was especially incandescent. Her hair had been braided, twisted up, and then dotted with little clips that looked like stars. Even when she wasn’t smiling, she seemed to glow.
When she did smile at him, it was enough to make him feel lightheaded.
“It was Agape actually. She’s very skilled.”
Gen spun one of the bracelets again. “How many hairpins did she have to use?” What he really wanted to say was that Irene was so impossibly lovely that he felt it physically in his chest, a tightness that came from wanting so badly to keep looking without having to look away, to reach out and touch her, not just her jewelry, and to feel her hand curl around his.
Irene had tilted her head slightly and he realized that she had answered, but he had been silent for too long.
“Are you alright?” She touched his wrist gently, and Eugenides made himself nod. She eyed him shrewdly for a moment, but Irene tended not to pry and sure enough, a moment later, she changed the subject. “What is the significance of the toast your father is making before dessert?”
Gen answered her questions about the peculiarities of Eddisian wedding traditions and they were both caught off guard when the end of the meal arrived. As dishes were cleared, people began to shift around the room, changing tables, moving chairs to talk to a cousin from out of town or a family friend. The wine was still flowing.
“Gen, get in the picture!” He was dragged out of his seat by his second oldest sister, who steered him into a photo with the rest of his siblings and their father.
“You’ve been quiet tonight,” his father observed, setting a hand on his shoulder. Gen knew he was referring not to any actual volume, but to the lack of arguments and insults. He couldn’t even take full credit; no one had thrown a punch all night, which he supposed was a bit of a novelty. Helen had known what she was doing. It wasn’t only his seat that had been engineered — Temenus and Pylaster had been separated at opposite ends of the table and a fearsome great-aunt was being accompanied by Cleon, who had been deemed too thickheaded to react to her barbs. Gen knew that this carefully orchestrated suppression of longstanding feuds and hot tempers was for the benefit of Sophos’s family. Helen was determined for her extended family to make an unremarkable first impression and no number of assurances from Sophos about his indifference to the drama or pointed comments from Gen that she could not keep the volatility hidden behind a curtain forever had dissuaded her.
Helen was leaning across a table to look at something Sophos’s sister was showing her on her phone. Sophos had been taken under the wing of Helen’s brothers and a few of their cousins, who were intent on getting him to drink as much wine as possible. He spotted Irene talking to Aulus, but was waylaid in his attempt to escape his sisters and bring her a drink by Aunt Livia telling him that he would never find a nice Eddisian girl if he never came home.
“We are at Helen’s rehearsal dinner right now,” he reminded her. “Because she’s marrying a Sounisian that the whole family adores.”
This only annoyed her further and Gen was subjected to a lecture about Eddis’s long and venerable history pre-unification and all of the ways that Attolia and Sounis were inferior. He had already decided on which pair of Helen’s earrings he was going to steal as recompense for subjecting him to this ordeal by the time he finally escaped. He made his way to the small group of his cousins that surrounded Irene and slipped into the space beside her to offer her the wine he was carrying.
Their hands touched briefly as he passed her the glass and she gave him a quick smile.
“No wine for the rest of us, eh, Gen?” Boagus said loudly. Gen smiled at him with malice, promising trouble if he said anything else, but Boagus only grinned back, unruffled.
“Aunt Livia was just telling me how centuries of hedonistic living and intermarriage with Invaders have made Attolians weak-blooded and cowardly.”
Aulus winced. “Mother feels strongly that the Eddisians should never have come down from the mountains, volcano or no volcano,” he said apologetically to Irene.
Gen lowered his voice and leaned in towards Irene. “Also, she’s not surprised the Hephestian birth rate is slowing because she’s never seen an Attolian woman with proper childbearing hips.” He smiled secretly, enjoying the suspicious looks that his cousins who couldn’t hear him were now shooting his way.
“Gen.” Irene pursed her lips at him over the glass, not taking the bait. “I’m not going to get into an argument with your Aunt Livia at Helen and Sophos’s rehearsal dinner.”
“But she’s the worst,” Gen groaned. “Just a little argument. Helen can’t always get her way. Think of your national honor,” he urged. “I told her you wrote your thesis on the successful military campaigns of pre-unification Attolia and she looked like she bit into a lemon.”
“Helen can get her way for the next 24 hours,” Irene said mildly.
“I'll have your first born child,” he wheedled.
“I don’t know,” Irene said seriously. “It sounds like I could find one of your cousins with better childbearing hips.”
“Ouch,” said Gen, grinning up at her.
Irene reached over and flicked his ear, a slight press of her mouth all that betrayed her own amusement. “If you’re bored, go rescue Helen.”
He looked up and saw that Helen had indeed become ensnared in conversation with Sophos’s most noxious uncle.
“That stupid oaf,” he muttered, already crossing the hall.
*
He looked for Irene again later as the rehearsal dinner wrapped up. The younger cousins, many of whom had flown in from around the peninsula, were going to Cenna’s house to keep drinking.
“Have you seen Irene?” He nudged a familiar shoulder. Sophos had long since lost the suit jacket that Gen had picked out for him and the swell of his biceps under his shirtsleeves had drawn lingering looks from more than a couple of Gen’s cousins.
“Gen!” Sophos wrapped his arms around him in a great bear hug and bowed his shaggy head so that he could press his face into Gen’s shoulder. When he looked up, Gen could see that he was flushed, glassy-eyed and beaming. “I think some of the girls got a cab already.”
“Shall we follow them?”
By the time Gen and Sophos arrived, Cenna’s afterparty was in full swing and all of Helen’s careful social engineering had been thrown out the window.
“Gen!” Aulus’s booming voice was unmistakable and Gen failed to dodge the meaty arm that was slung around his shoulder. “Tell Philonikes the story about Sten and all those chickens.”
Luckily, a fight saved Gen from recounting that particular tale. A crash drew them into the living room and he had barely caught the sight of one big figure launching over a couch to tackle another before other people had joined in. To the side, Cenna was taking money from Boagus. Some of the spectators began to cheer and shout names and Agape managed to snatch up a painted amphora full of flowers just before the side table it was resting on was overturned. Gen rolled his eyes and slipped out of Aulus’s grip. He wandered through the house, avoiding conversations with relations he had no interest in talking to.
“Have you seen Irene?”
“I think she was out on the front porch with her friend. The cute harpist?”
“Dite?”
But the only person on the porch was Hegite, who was on her cellphone having a fight with her boyfriend. She spared a poisonous look for Gen as he climbed up the porch column and levered himself to the roof. More people were out here, smoking and laughing, but Irene wasn’t among them either. He picked his way around them and ducked through the window.
“Genny.” His sister Antonina managed to catch his shirt before he could slip away. He raised an eyebrow when he saw that Phoebe was wrapped in a baby carrier and sleeping peacefully against her chest, somehow undisturbed by the music and the shouting. “Helen said if I saw you to tell you to keep an eye on Irene.”
“Irene?” he frowned. A popular Eddisian football stadium song came on and loud cheers and shouts rattled the house, but Phoebe didn’t stir. “I was just looking for her. Nina, did you drug your baby?”
His sister flicked his forehead, hard. “Irene! Tall, gorgeous, not-your-girlfriend. Personally, I think that she should be allowed to let loose if she wants to, but Helen wants you to check on her. She and Aulus were raiding the bar in the basement twenty minutes ago and I saw them pouring shots, I don’t know if they’re still down there.”
They weren’t, but Helen was bandaging up Lias’s eyebrow on the sofa, and she said that Irene had disappeared out back. “She seemed off,” she told him, craning her neck around to look at him. “I would have talked to her, but...” There was another crashing sound from upstairs and Gen caught her wince.
“Say no more.” He saluted with his right wrist and slipped back up the stairs to the garden door.
It was a beautiful summer night. Night-blooming vines crept over the arched trellis above the path that led from the house, moonflowers and evening jasmine hanging over the path. Cenna, or maybe her fiancée, was an avid horticulturist. The garden was washed silver in the moonlight and the air was alive with quiet sounds: the chirping of crickets, the rustling of olive trees, the squeak of the old bench swing rocking under an orange tree in bloom. He scuffed his boots softly across the mulch path so that he wouldn’t startle her.
“Hi Gen.” He could count on his fingers — which was to say, one hand — how often he had seen Irene drunk, but she had a certain way of moving, her usual grace turning liquid, as if every part of her was seconds away from sliding to the floor. That instinct seemed to have won, because she was laying across the bench of the swing, one hand idly stabilizing a wineglass balanced on her sternum, the other almost trailing the ground. She sat up as Gen approached, leaving room for him to sit down beside her.
“Was someone looking for me?” Irene asked. She spoke just a touch more slowly than usual.
“Just me,” he assured her. “Antonina said you were doing shots. Having fun?” He sat down and absentmindedly pushed the ground with his foot, setting the swing to rocking, then laid on his back, imitating her previous position.
Irene turned her chin down to look at him. “Cenna opened some mastika. Took some shots with Agape...and Aulus…oh and...whatshisface, the big one that doesn’t like you?”
“Cleon,” he supplied, shifting to rest his head on her thigh.
“Yes,” she said dully. His concern increased.
“Irene, are you okay?”
Irene sighed unhappily. She reached out to touch his cheek with her index finger. “Your face is blurry,” she told him.
Gen was so surprised that he laughed. “I think that’s the shots catching up with you.”
Irene accepted this with a slight nod and then was quiet for several minutes. “Dite told me he was in love with me,” she said finally, very subdued.
Gen felt the vestiges of amusement disappear. The night slowed to a crawl as his heart stuttered. A sick fear gripped him and he struggled to maintain a nonchalant tone. “Did he?” he said slowly. “What did you say?”
“Thank you.” Irene said, with an air of faint bewilderment. She drained the glass in her hand and made a face. “I said that it was very kind of him and I had always valued him as a friend.”
Gen winced despite himself. Poor Dite.
Irene caught his expression and her face fell. “Why does this always happen to me?”
“Because you’re gorgeous and brilliant and everyone in their right mind is in love with you.” Gen kept his tone light, nudging her with his shoulder.
Irene rolled her eyes. “That is not true,” she told him sharply.
“Which part?” he asked. The sharp panic of his original murderous impulse was fading but he still felt jittery and unmoored. He rubbed at his chest, trying to recover from the adrenaline rush caused by the fright of someone else confessing his love to Irene.
“That everyone’s…what you said. In love with me.”
“No?”
“Not Helen,” she said triumphantly. Her nails clinked softly on the glass in her hand as she thought for a few more seconds. “Not Sophos.”
Gen stifled a laugh. “We’ll give them a pass since they’re getting married to each other.”
“Not you.” Irene was still smiling but her eyes had changed.
His pulse had just settled and now suddenly all of the blood in his body seemed to be rushing to his head, creating a dull roar that blocked out everything but Irene. “Me?” He echoed her, sounding stupid to his own ears.
“Not you,” said Irene almost sadly, reaching down to trace his jaw.
It said something about his shock that he couldn’t muster enough thought to even choose whether or not he wanted to lie. “You think…I’m not into you? Irene.”
“Obviously,” Irene said grumpily, pulling her hand away. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
Gen couldn’t tell if he wanted to laugh or cry. “Irene.”
All of his feelings were crowding at the tip of his tongue and for once in his life, he couldn’t speak.
She shifted, her hand sliding under his head to cushion his skull as she slid off the bench. “Don’t mind me,” she said, voice carefully even.
Gen scrambled to a sitting position. “No, Irene—”
“I’m not feeling very well,” she said, and her face was even more pale than usual as she swayed slightly. He sprang up to support her as she started back towards the house.
“I’m going to go back to the hotel,” she told him, not pushing him away, but not looking at him.
“I figured,” he said, pulling out his phone and awkwardly pulling up an app with his left hand while trying to support her. “The cab will be here in five minutes.”
When the car arrived, he helped her into the back seat and then slid in the other side. Irene’s brows pulled together. “Gen, your family,” she said quietly. “You should stay.”
He offered her a crooked smile. “If I stay here I’ll only pick a fight. You know me and Cleon.”
She sighed and rested her head against the window as they rode in silence. A few minutes later, they were back at the hotel and Gen was out of his seat and opening her door as Irene fumbled for her purse.
“I paid the driver,” he told her, and when she frowned, added, “It’s already done so there’s no backsies.”
Irene’s sigh finished in a resigned huffy laugh, finally breaking the solemn atmosphere that had settled over them. He helped her out of the car and they stumbled into the elevator, leaning against each other as Gen jabbed the button for her floor and extracted her room key from her purse.
She was silent as they got into the room and seemed tired, accepting the water he handed her and letting him gently prod her into the bathroom to wash her face and change.
“You’re quiet,” she said after she came back, peering at him as she sat on the edge of the bed.
“Just thinking,” he told her. “You’re quiet too.”
“I’m always quiet.” There was a current of bitterness in her voice that wasn’t usually there. She pulled her knees up to her chin, still watching him. Gen couldn’t bring himself to meet her eyes.
Irene could be quiet, could easily sit still for hours without moving or speaking. Gen, even though he could barely sit for twenty minutes without fidgeting, had always found her company to be a soothing respite from the other chaotic environments in his life. But even though she had an enviable calm and a less enviable ability to bottle up her emotions with the best of them, he rarely associated her with quiet, even from their earliest meeting.
He had chosen the first apartment he lived in after graduating college for the spindly iron fire escape that wound its way to the roof. Gen had always loved heights, loved looking out over the city from a distance and seeing a hundred thousand lives, individual and interconnected.
The very first night, he had been climbing up to the roof when the sound of someone playing a piano had drifted out of one of the apartments he was passing. He paused, the music awakening a memory, and without thinking, peered inside.
It was a warm summer night and the window was open, framed by golden curtains that only deigned to stir every few minutes when a particularly lively breeze shifted them. Sitting at the piano a few feet away was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
The music stopped, but Gen could still hear the one-two-three beat as she stood and danced herself over to the kitchen, graceful and alone as she moved without partner or companions in steps only she could see. After she had poured herself a glass of water, she returned to the piano bench and set her fingers to the keys once again, playing song after song that he remembered from his childhood, standing on his mother’s boots as she whirled him around the kitchen, melodies he had only half remembered until now.
When the woman looked up from her music at last, her sharp gaze had passed through the window, landing on Gen, too slow-headed and lovestruck to move. Her eyes had flashed and he knew he was in trouble. She reached for the nearest projectile, the oranges in the bowl beside her and her aim had been nearly flawless.
He had called Helen breathlessly from the roof after his escape, pressing his wrist gingerly to what was sure to become a black eye. “My upstairs neighbor might be the meanest person I’ve ever met,” he swooned. “She’s incredible. She’s gorgeous. I’m going to marry her.”
But here they were, years later.
“We’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?” he whispered now to Irene, surprised by how his voice stuck in his throat.
“So,” she agreed, yawning.
It wasn’t long before she was asleep. Gen tugged the blanket up over her shoulders and then poured another glass of water and left it on the nightstand with a couple ibuprofen that he had fished out of her purse. He hovered a moment longer, staring down at her face, beautiful and still in the dim light. The familiar ache in his chest was suddenly almost unbearable and he bent to brush his lips against her cheek.
“I love you,” he said quietly to the dark room, heart racing even as a wave of relief washed over him at admitting it out loud.
Irene didn’t stir. He lingered for another second, watching her, and then left.
*
“You look terrible,” Helen said the next morning, eyes sparkling a little as she took in his disarray. He had paced his hotel room half the night before finally falling asleep a couple hours before dawn.
Gen scowled. “Where’s Irene?”
“Still asleep.” Helen yawned. “Nina checked on her about twenty minutes ago. I think she had a rough night last night. She doesn’t usually drink that much.”
“Did she say anything to you?”
“No.” Now Helen was looking at him warily. “Why, did something happen?”
“Nothing,” Gen said immediately. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Whenever you say ‘Don’t worry about it’, I suddenly start to feel very worried.”
“Probably an anxiety disorder,” Gen told her gravely. “You should talk to someone about that.”
“Gen.”
“Helen.”
They stared each other down. Finally, Helen waved him off. “Begone. You’ve got to pick up the crowns from the florist by noon. Don’t ruin my wedding, I just have to survive twelve more hours before I never have to hear Great-Aunt Xenia tell me her opinions on canapés ever again. And speaking of Aunt Xenia, track down your brothers, would you?” She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “I need them at the hotel to keep the aunties occupied or they’ll all be in here while I’m trying to get ready.”
“But I need to talk to—”
“She’ll still be here later! When she’s awake! Shoo!”
*
Reluctantly, he did his assigned errands, fishing an ungrateful Temenus from the warm embrace of one of Cenna’s friends, and picking up the olive and verbena wreaths that Sophos and Helen would be crowned with during the wedding ceremony. He was dispatching Sten back to the hotel when another call flashed on his phone. Gen hung up on his brother so quickly that he almost dropped his phone.
“Hi,” Irene yawned.
“Hi,” he said back, suddenly tongue-tied at the sound of her voice. “How are you feeling?”
She made a non-committal sound. “Helen said you wanted to talk to me. Was there trouble with the crowns?”
“No, I’ve got everything we need. I wanted to talk about last night — what you said when we were outside.” He sounded stupid to his own ears, his mind struggling between the need to confess to her and his desire to talk to her in person and gauge her reaction.
“Outside?”
“In the garden,” he said, stomach sinking. “At Cenna’s?”
“I vaguely remember that,” Irene said cautiously. “Did I tell you about—” her voice lowered to a hush “—Dite?”
“Yes, but—” he floundered, disoriented by the mention of Dite. Dite was playing the harp for the opening wedding hymn. Irene might have changed her mind.
“I don’t know—” Her voice moved suddenly away from the phone. “No, the favors are already in the reception hall,” she said to someone. “Gen?”
“Still here,” he swallowed.
“Sorry, what did you want to ask?”
“Uh.” His nerve failed him. “It can wait, actually. Remind me later?” He longed to tell her, to shout it, but he wanted to see her face unguarded one last time if there was even the slightest chance she was going to reject him like she had rejected Dite and all the other unlucky suitors he had seen hit on her over the years.
“Okay,” Irene sounded slightly puzzled. “Have you been to the dry cleaner’s yet?”
“All set,” he confirmed. “Do you know what you’ll do?”
“I have an idea.” He could hear her smile through the phone and his toes curled in his boots. “Your aunts aren’t going to like it. Should I go now?” she asked.
He glanced at the time on the dashboard and hooked his wrist through the steering wheel to help turn it. “Give me another thirty minutes. I have one more errand to run.”
*
One of the bridesmaids had propped open the door to the bridal suite with an ice bucket, so Gen was able to slip in unnoticed and take stock of how the preparations were going.
It was utter chaos. Cousins and great aunts were everywhere and several women clustered around Helen were trying to make themselves heard over each other. One of his sisters and Agape were fussing over the wedding dress, while another cousin had burst into tears. Most of the rest of the relations had gathered around Irene, baying like a pack of angry wolves. She managed to look indifferent, towering over them as she leaned against the wall and scrolled through her phone, idly holding an empty mimosa glass as if she didn’t notice that she was being berated. In the center of it all, in a dress that made her look like a floofy Medean cat, patiently allowing Agape to scrub at a long orange stain on the satin, was Helen.
Irene was the first to notice him, and Aunt Livia noticed her noticing and rounded on Gen, sensing a new target for her ire.“Your Attolian friend,” she said venomously, shooting a dirty look at Irene, “has sabotaged your cousin’s wedding day! I told Helen that having an unmarried lowlander in the wedding party was bound to cause trouble. I should have guessed that any woman you tried to bring into the family would be a—”
“Queen among women,” he said fervently to Irene, cutting off Aunt Livia’s outrage as he thrust a garment bag at Helen. In the bag was a freshly laundered white dress uniform. “Luckily, I happened to pick this up from the dry cleaners.”
“Eugenides.” Helen tried to sound disapproving but didn’t quite manage it. She took the hanger, holding it tightly as if afraid that someone might try to snatch it back. Her eyes traveled to Irene, who met her gaze levelly, and then back to Gen, who was smug. “Looks like you saved the day,” she said mildly. “I’m going to change.”
Ignoring the aunt still glaring daggers at her, Irene took a seat on a couch and glanced at the delicate gold watch on her wrist. “We’re going to be late,” she informed Gen.
He waved it off. “If we started on time, half the family would miss the ceremony.” He sprawled out on the couch beside her.
“Sorry about Aunt Livia,” he said.
“Oh, I’m a jealous, pretentious lowlander, no better than I ought to be,” Irene seemed amused. “The sea vapors have gotten to my brain.”
“Not to mention your hips.”
“Your hips,” she responded. “I’m reconsidering your offer to birth my first born child. After this, you owe me.”
“Take your time,” Gen said magnanimously. “It’s a standing offer.” He grinned at her sideways from the couch. “Which reminds me, I have something for you. Don’t ask questions, I’ll explain after the ceremony.” He made her close her eyes and hold out her hand. She did so with much less suspicion than any of his cousins would have, although in fairness he had never tried to give her a handful of worms before.
“You can open your eyes,” he informed her. Irene blinked to see the pair of earrings in her palm.
“They’re beautiful, Gen,” she said, after a long moment of silence. “Are they—”
“After the ceremony,” he reminded her.
Irene held one of the earrings up to the window and the ruby set in the center glowed like a burning ember as it caught the sun. “Everything’s always a mystery with you,” she said, not sounding overly concerned as she slipped the earrings into her lobes. “You’re in charge of these now.” She handed him her golden bee earrings and he slipped them into the pocket of his suit obediently. The earrings shone against her dark hair and his breath hooked painfully in his chest for a single sharp moment.
“Don’t you need wedding colors?” She eyed him critically and the spell was broken.
“The ties are in the bag and I’ll get the boutonniere just before the ceremony,” he said indifferently.
Irene looked in the bag at her feet and pulled out a tie. “It looks like everyone else already has theirs.” She reached into the bag again and came up empty.
He swore when he saw what she was holding. “Lias must have grabbed my tie.”
“Are they different?” Irene asked as he took the one in her hand from her like it was an unfriendly snake.
“Mine clipped on,” Gen said sourly, dangling the tie on his right wrist.
Irene reached over and tugged gently at his collar and Gen felt his mouth go dry. “Shall we track him down and fetch it back?” she offered. “Or would you like me to tie this one for you?”
For a moment, his brain was nothing but static. Unable to speak, Gen offered the tie to her and sat up. She nudged him to stand and then reached around his neck to turn up his collar.
“Would you like a certain knot?” Irene glanced down at him as she tugged the ends taut and made sure the middle wasn’t twisted.
“Whatever you like,” he said, hardly daring to breathe. He could smell orange blossoms and sandalwood, her mother’s vintage perfume that she saved for special occasions. Her lips were stained the same deep red as her bridesmaid dress. The same red as the earrings shining against her hair.
“There.” Irene smoothed the tie down, eyes sparkling with mirth. “You look perfect. Sophos’s family will think that you’re very proper.”
He made a face at her. “You wouldn’t happen to have another mimosa would you?”
She laughed.
Helen reemerged from the bathroom before he could do something impulsive, looking smart in her army dress uniform, pressed trousers and bronze buttons all neatly in place. Great Aunt Xenia sighed in disapproval, but Helen smiled broadly at the room, at ease in a way Gen hadn’t seen her throughout most of the wedding planning. She squeezed Irene’s shoulder in gratitude as she passed her and he caught a trace of relief on Irene’s face.
“Let’s do this.”
*
The ceremony was beautiful. There were hardly any snags, apart from one of his nieces dropping the basket of verbena that she was supposed to be sprinkling around the temple and starting to cry. Helen was happy, Sophos ecstatic, and Gen utterly distracted by the one-two punch of Irene, serene and beautiful, just out of reach, and Dite at his harp, looking drawn and miserable, as morose as Gen had ever seen him. His stomach felt like a huge knot had taken the place of his breakfast.
“Are you going to tell me about the earrings?” Irene asked after dinner, shaking her head a little so that the gold beads and glimmering seed pearls that fell from the square ruby setting rattled quietly.
As if he hadn’t heard the question, Gen seized her hand. “Let’s dance,” he said, grinning at her as a familiar pipe melody started up. Irene allowed him to drag her onto the dance floor. She knew all the Eddisian dances, the furiously paced square dances and the graceful line dances both and the driving tempo distracted him from his racing heartbeat.
The next dance was a folk dance, slower but with more complicated footwork. Eugenides and Irene danced that one too. This had been one of the songs Irene had played on the piano the first time he saw her.
The day after his disastrous first meeting with Irene, he had knocked on the window and tried to start over.
“I reported you to the building superintendent,” she told him immediately.
“I wasn’t spying on you,” Gen promised, not sure if his heart was pounding from love or because of the letter opener she had leveled at him. He hoped that the love goddess would forgive him for the half-lie. “I was going up to the roof when I heard the music. Was that Hespira’s Waltz?”
Her suspicion slowly lessened as they spoke about music and folk dancing. The next night, he had brought her a case of oranges and she laughed and agreed to come to the roof with him. They had talked until the midnight bells of the temple next door rang and they both jumped, surprised. He might have earned the eternal enmity of Teleus, the building superintendent, but Irene had agreed to a truce.
As they became friends over the following weeks though, Gen had been paralyzed with fear. That if he asked her out, he would reveal himself to be exactly what she had been worried about: a creep who had spied on her and then wormed his way into her life. The kind of person who had pretended friendship when really all he wanted was to get into her pants.
But Gen did really want to be friends. He loved being friends with Irene, even if he also occasionally daydreamed about buying a house with a garden together and teaching their children to dance Hespira’s Waltz in the kitchen. He told himself that he could handle the squeezing in his chest and the occasional blind jealousy and fear that seized him. What he couldn’t handle was living without the way Irene laughed, quietly, almost under her breath so that it was inaudible if you weren’t close. He couldn’t live without seeing her eyebrow quirk at him when she was amused or watching the stress fall away from her shoulders when she sat down at her piano or spun around him in a swirl of skirts, their joint hands like an anchor.
The longer they were friends, and then best friends, the more inconceivable it was to live without her. And so, every time he psyched himself up to confess his feelings, he had lost his nerve. It didn’t help that every time he had watched someone else fall in love with Irene, it had turned out disastrously for them.
Until now. All night, he had tossed and turned, had paced circles in his hotel room, unable to think of anything but the embers of hope flickering inside of him. And now, holding her hand, arm wrapped around her waist, every line he had practiced fled him again. Even his breath seemed to have abandoned him.
“Gen.” Irene was staring at him with concern. “Eugenides, you look like you’re about to be sick.” She took his hand and steered him off of the dance floor to an empty table, and he found a glass of water being gently but firmly pressed into his hand.
He took the glass, but didn’t drink.
“I love you,” he blurted, then winced. So much for his plans for a careful confession.
Irene stilled.
“Last night, you said you didn’t know.” Gen ran his hand through his hair, heartfelt speeches abandoned. “You thought I wasn’t into you. And I am, I am, I’m so —”
This hadn’t been the plan at all, but his tongue had run away with him.
“I’m sorry,” he said hopelessly, unable to read her frozen expression. “I know Dite just — and you hate—”
Irene silenced him with a hand on his wrist. He searched her eyes, feeling cold and more than a little sick.
There was an expression on her face that he had never seen before, and then, leaning in close, she kissed him.
He had imagined kissing her so many times, but had never guessed it would be so soft. Irene’s mouth was lush and gentle as she cupped his chin in her hands. Her nose bumped his cheek and she laughed so quietly it was almost soundless, just a warm exhale against his lips. Gen could feel the tip of her pinky barely grazing his throat and a shiver went through him knowing he would do terrible things to feel her fingers on his neck.
Someone wolf-whistled and Gen tore his eyes away from her to fix his most ruinous stare at Boagus.
“Let’s go someplace quieter,” Irene said, and Gen, who would have followed her anywhere, agreed.
Outside of the temple of the marriage goddess, where the wedding and the reception had been, the rest of the temple complex was still. Gen reached for Irene’s hand, heart in his throat, at the same time that she reached for his. They fumbled for a moment, then managed to lace their fingers together.
They walked under the trees, talking easily about the things they usually talked about until Gen couldn’t take it anymore. He had a thousand questions, all of them with potential answers that terrified him, but Irene’s touch and the easy, happy way she leaned closer to kiss him made him braver.
“How long have you…?” He trailed off, not sure of exactly what he wanted to ask or if he even wanted to know the answer.
“A few months ago,” Irene said, shaking her head. She continued slowly, choosing her words. “When you got that job offer from the university and I thought you might move to Ferria. I was a short-tempered terror for weeks. I made Chloe cry at work, it was awful.” She looked down at their entwined hands. “I finally realized that I was terrified that you would go and that I would lose you. I began to look at jobs in Ferria myself and I realized — how special you were to me. But I didn’t think…I thought it was just me.”
“I thought you had to know how I felt.” Everyone else had.
“I was sure you didn’t have feelings for me. Because of the—”
“Don’t say the Griffons game,” he begged.
“Because of the Griffons game!”
Gen pressed his wrist to his forehead and groaned. Soon after he had introduced Helen and Irene, they had all gone to an Eddisian football game. Halfway through, their seats had been spotlighted on the kisscam and Gen had lost his head.
“You looked straight at me and then turned around and licked Helen’s face. I wasn’t even — I was just going to kiss your cheek.” Spots of red crept into her cheeks. Gen squeezed her hand tightly.
“I panicked,” he said quietly. “I was an idiot.”
The moment had gone viral for one horrible week. Gen’s cousins still brought it up if they felt like starting a fight.
Gen wanted to give a token to the love goddess, so they wandered into the main temple with its many altars and shrines. He didn’t have much on him, his boutonniere and a couple odds and ends he had picked up during the reception. He left it all on the altar and then, after a moment of thought, slid the earring from his ear and added that as well.
“Will you tell me about these earrings now?” Irene asked quietly, reaching up with the hand that wasn’t laced with his to touch one of the rubies.
“They were my mother’s,” he said, dropping his gaze. “We’ve all got some of her jewelry. I’ve wanted you to have them for the longest time but Penelope threatened to cut off my other hand if I gave them to you and we lost touch. She said I had to confess, but I kept losing my nerve. I grabbed them from dad's house earlier today.”
“They’re beautiful,” she told him softly. “Does Penelope — does your whole family know?”
“Irene, I think there are Epidi Islanders who know,” he confessed. “The first time you came to one of Dad’s barbecues, Antonina and Temenus both asked me if I was dying because Helen was wearing this truly heinous bubble dress that made her look like the Incredible Hulk in the worst way possible and I hadn’t said a word.”
Irene frowned. “You’re not that bad about her clothes.”
“I am. I was.”
They paused at the altar of Eugenides. “Can you only dedicate something you’ve stolen?” Irene asked suddenly, surprising him. Irene had never been particularly religious.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose not.”
She pulled a keycard from the pocket of her dress. Gen recognized the number on it instantly.
“You left it on the table when we went to dance. I didn’t steal it, really, I was just holding it for safekeeping.”
She reached forward and laid the card on the altar with the other offerings. When she turned back, he could see the high flush of her cheeks, but she didn’t look away.
“Irene,” he said helplessly, heart caught in his throat. “We need to get out of this temple now before we offend every god here.”
The hotel was just across the street from the edge of the temple complex, but Gen felt like he might never get there. Like he would wake up any minute, or some other man would appear on the path to swoop in and promise her a life of glamour. He was pretty sure Irene was the only thing keeping him tethered to the ground. Every few seconds he felt her thumb against his knuckles and all of his anxieties would settle for a moment.
The hotel lobby was nearly blinding after their night walk and the soft candlelit interior of the temples. He blinked up at Irene, who was as radiant as ever, even backlit by the fluorescent lights in the hall as they waited for the elevator.
“I forgot to tell you how beautiful you looked today.” He leaned over to kiss her shoulder, smiling.
She rolled her eyes and nudged him with her hip. “Don’t start all that.”
“Indulge me a little,” he begged. “I’ve been biting my tongue not saying anything about how gorgeous you are for years and now I finally can.”
“You, biting your tongue?” she said, but gently. Her cheeks were pink.
“A miracle,” he acknowledged.
The elevator arrived and they stumbled on, impatiently trying to kiss each other and press the button for the right floor at the same time. Now that they had some semblance of privacy, a new sense of urgency seemed to imbue every touch. Irene’s teeth grazed his lip and Gen groaned and tried to pull her closer.
“What if we hit the emergency stop button here,” he mumbled into her neck.
Irene giggled. “The hotel staff would come to find out what was wrong.”
“I’d tell them to go to hell.”
“That wouldn’t make the doors close again.” Her hands were wandering under his jacket now, making it hard for Gen to think straight.
“But it would be satisfying,” he said, nuzzling her throat.
Irene made a small noise that immediately branded itself in his brain forever. “I want you in a bed,” she said, kissing along his jaw and then gently behind the ear as her voice went lower. “All to myself and no interruptions.”
“Your wish…” Gen grinned at her stupidly, just as the elevator chimed its arrival on their floor.
Irene tugged him into the hall only to stop short when they saw a familiar figure sitting on the ground.
“Sophos??”
“Gen!” He scrambled up from the floor, but didn’t make it fully upright before sprawling back on the floor.
“Oh he’s wasted,” Gen said to Irene.
Sophos blinked at them from the ground. “I went to get ice but I couldn’t find the machine so I went to the next floor but I left my key and I put the ice bucket down somewhere and now Helen’s not answering the door.”
“I’m calling her,” Irene announced, whipping out her phone. She let it ring out, but there was no answer.
“She’s asleep,” Sophos said morosely.
They tried the door, knocking loudly, but there was no answer.
“She’s a heavy sleeper when she’s drunk,” Gen said.
Irene tapped her nails along the back of her phone, thinking. “Gen, go downstairs and get a new key for the honeymoon suite.”
“I think a foghorn might be more effective,” Gen said, knowing that he was being ill-tempered and not particularly caring.
Irene rolled her eyes at him. He wanted to kiss her, but Sophos’s presence threw him off. They hadn’t discussed what — if — they were going to tell people.
“Helen is going to have so much to answer for,” he swore, grumbling, but headed back to the lobby.
The hotel clerk was on the phone, tapping away at a computer. “We don’t have an airport shuttle, but I can recommend several taxi services. Yes, there’s a car service in the city. One moment while I look for the number.”
Gen shifted impatiently. He could slip around the desk and make the keycard himself at this rate.
“And will you require a wake-up call? Uh-huh. Yes, sir. Alright.”
Finally, the clerk hung up the phone. “Thank you for waiting, how can—”
“I need a new keycard,” Gen interrupted. He gave Helen’s name and room number.
The clerk raised his eyebrows and looked Gen up and down. “Do you have your identification?”
“It’s not for me, it’s for my cousin. She’s in the honeymoon suite on the top floor,” Gen said impatiently.
“I’m afraid I can't make a replacement for someone else’s key, sir.” The concierge looked smugly apologetic.
Gen growled. “She’s asleep and her new husband is locked out of their room.”
The clerk was regretful, but firm. Gen wanted to punch him in his horrible snooty face.
He thought of Irene and how he had always wanted to unpin her hair and watch it fall over her shoulders.
“Fine,” he said, close to losing his temper. “An extra key for my room then. Eugenides Eugenideides.”
When he got back upstairs, Irene was watching Sophos snore quietly on the floor of the hall.
“Helen?” he mumbled hopefully, stirring as Gen bent over him.
“Just us,” Gen grumbled. “Up you go.” Between him and Irene, they were able to haul Sophos to his feet and get him to Gen’s room. They pulled off his shoes and his jacket and Irene poured him a glass of water.
“I don’t need water,” Sophos protested, pushing the glass away. Gen bared his teeth.
Irene placed a hand on his arm and he went still. She took a step towards Sophos, who looked belatedly alarmed. “Sophos,” she said, very calmly. “If you do not drink this water and go to bed, I swear to every single god in the temple complex that I will dismember you with a penknife and feed the pieces to the pigeons. Don’t test me.”
Sophos drank the water.
“Atté, atté,” Gen murmured into her ear. Her gaze slid to the side and her eyes were dark and intense when they met his.
“Goodnight Sophos,” she said abruptly.
“If you see Helen will you tell her that I’ll wait up?” he asked hopefully.
“Sure,” Gen lied, guessing that Sophos would be asleep in less than five minutes. He and Irene escaped into the hallway.
“Finally,” he grumbled, or he would have if Irene hadn’t pushed him against the wall and kissed him.
Gen was still blinking the stars from his eyes as Irene pulled away. “My room,” she said, and as she had promised, there were no more interruptions.
*
Sunlight woke him, streaming through the windows. They hadn’t closed the curtains last night. Gen remembered the dream first, Irene all around him, whispering his name. He felt half sick, not wanting the memory of it to slip away into the morning.
Then he smelled Irene’s perfume on the sheets and realized that he wasn’t in his room and it hadn’t been a dream. He opened his eyes to see Irene’s thick hair spread out over her pillow beside him.
For a moment, he was afraid. Then Irene opened her eyes and saw him and smiled.
“Gen.” Her voice was rough from sleep but the happiness in it was as clear as daylight.
“Good morning,” he whispered.
“Is it?” she asked, searching his face.
“The best,” he said, shifting closer to kiss her.
Irene was a slow riser, he was delighted to learn. She nestled in the pillow and watched through heavy-lidded eyes as Gen draped himself across her.
She lifted a hand to his face and he went still, recognizing something solemn in her expression.
“I love you.” She spoke quietly, and her hand was perfectly still on his face. Gen knew that she meant it.
“Irene.” He kissed her throat like a man possessed, dropping short sloppy kisses onto her skin, and she giggled as his sleep-mussed hair tickled her chin. “I love you,” he said, again and again and again.
He kissed her breasts and down her stomach, and then Irene’s laughter gave way to soft pants that were no less welcome to his ears.
He was interrupted by a loud knock on the door.
“Irene?”
It was Helen.
“Ignore her,” Gen mumbled, laying his chin on her stomach.
Helen knocked again. “Irene, I’m sorry to wake you but I can’t find Sophos and everyone else is too hungover to help or doesn’t remember. If this is a repeat of the bachelor party where he got kidnapped and ended up in the ER I’m going to murder Cleon and—”
She fell silent as the door opened. Ignoring Gen’s whispered pleas, Irene had slipped from bed and grabbed a bathrobe.
“Good morning,” Irene said, offering her a small smile. Helen looked rumpled and distinctly hungover. “Sophos slept in Gen’s room last night. You were asleep and we couldn’t get an extra key, I’m afraid.”
“Gen’s room.” Helen rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.”
“Yes.” There was a beat of silence and Irene stepped back as if to close the door, but Helen took it as an invitation to step into the entryway.
“Argh. It’s so bright.” Helen squinted at the windows on the other side of the room.
“It is morning,” Irene agreed. A muffled snort came from the bed.
“Is there—someone in there?” Helen blinked and rather obviously craned her neck over Irene’s shoulder.
Irene adjusted her robe and didn’t say anything as Helen moved past her.
“Oh, it’s you, Eugenides.” Helen’s face broke into a wide smile.
“Helen, I say this with love, but get lost,” he grumbled. “Go find your husband and consummate your marriage.”
“Oh we got that over with in the bathroom before the reception,” Helen started to say, but Gen, making gagging sounds, was already pushing her out the door.
“I’m happy for you two!” she called, right before Gen slammed the door in her face.
He turned back to find Irene standing behind him, trying to hide her smile behind a hand.
“We are going to elope,” he told her, before his brain could catch up with his mouth.
Irene’s face went still and he wanted to snatch the words back. He had known it was her for so long that he had forgotten that Irene might want to take things slow — or want something else entirely.
“We are, are we?” She arched an eyebrow at him, but her cheeks were pink. Gen let out the breath he was holding and grinned.
“If I have to get on my hands and knees and beg.”
“I’m not sure that will be necessary,” Irene said, biting her lip, but her expression was considering. He felt a rush of heat go through him.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and walked him back towards the bed. “Where should we go? Ferria?”
“Wherever you want,” he promised, leaning into her. They tumbled back onto the tangled sheets together. He stretched up to press a kiss to her collarbone. “Epidi. Mur. Antarctica. As long as it’s just us.”
“Do you want your father to hate me forever?” Her lips moved along his hair, meandering. The sunlight was shining on the bed, warming it.
“He can be a witness,” Gen said begrudgingly, leaning into her.
“Sophos and Helen?”
“Not after this weekend,” he grumbled.
Irene laid her palm over his ribs, spread wide. “I’m still here,” she murmured, a promise, and he tipped his head back to receive her kiss.