Chapter Text
I ended up sitting in a corner.
The fluorescent lights were so bright you could hear them. Indie pop blended with ice shaking blended with receipt paper printing as I bounced my leg to some fervent nonsense rhythm.
My stomach felt hollow. At some point, someone offered me a mug, shaking their head when I reached for it then setting it in front of me. My mortal mouth didn’t like coffee, but it was warm on my skin. I alternated sections of fingers to press against ceramic for as long as they could without burning.
A chunk of hair hung at just the right angle to curl into my eyeball. I shook my head once before giving up. It only poked slightly when I blinked.
What recipe had Josephine sent us out for? Given the evening sky, our friends at the Waystation had likely given up waiting and eaten another dinner entirely. The thought made me tear up slightly for some reason. It was probably from the hair.
A hand tapped a single finger on the table across from me. I looked up.
My eyes wouldn’t quite focus, but I could recognize the blurry stoplight in front of me anywhere. Meg sat first, then gracefully screeched the chair closer to the table in staccato beats. I must have made a face, because she mouthed something and stopped.
I looked back at my mug. My brain generously decided to start processing information from my eyes. My hands connected to my body in a way that didn’t quite visually compute, but the white ceramic object I was clutching shone with the reflection of the lights above. Said ceiling fixtures drew my gaze up and over to the counter, where a bespectacled teen looked away as soon as we made eye contact.
The windows from the side opposite us were now black, circling all but our table in a reflection of white and green. Finally, my eyes settled, and I realized Meg was watching me stare dumbly around the room. “You good?”
I nodded a few more times than necessary. “Mhm. Yes. Sorry.”
She stared. In few instances had I been privy to her undivided attention, and the sensation was always unnerving.
“Sorry for leaving you back there,” I continued. “That wasn’t… good.”
Meg scrunched her face. I assumed due to my less-than-poetic apology, but her eyes were on my untouched drink.
“Did you want some? I can get you one. I didn’t know you liked coffee– I haven’t drank from this one.”
She made no advance on the offer, face steeled in vague dissatisfaction. “Your hands are shaking.”
I blinked, then smiled. “Freezing in here. The coffee helps.” To demonstrate, I lifted the mug to take a drink, and immediately regretted it as hot liquid drenched my fingers.
I hissed, clumsily abandoning the mug. Meg helpfully pulled napkins one-by-one from the table’s dispenser, tossing them at me like a clown pulling out handkerchiefs. After the eighth or ninth, I waved her off with my right hand, tapping the other dry as it reddened.
We probably did look like a circus act to the other patrons, I thought. Meg paid no mind, leaning her face across the table to scrutinize my very minor burn. “Still shaking.”
“Well, now I am!”
She stuck her tongue out, then frowned. “You’re hurt.”
I breathed out a laugh, now gathering the excess napkins into a semblance of order. “I’m not.”
“Are too.”
“Meg, please.”
“Your hand’s burnt.”
“Well, it isn’t my hand, is it?”
The words came out before I could finish thinking them. Heat rushed to my face, circling my eyes in a tight strangle. Damned mortal blood! We gods never had to worry about being betrayed by our own capillaries. Aphrodite did have a brief stint with an ichor-yellow blush, but for obvious reasons it never caught on.
“Huh?” Meg squinted.
I swallowed. “I only mean…”
My brain buffered like a video with dodgy Wi-Fi as I realized I hadn’t really been thinking about anything for the past, well... however long it had been since I’d abandoned a child with a stranger in Indianapolis. A stranger.
Pushing through the sudden dryness of my mouth, I vocalized my thought process. “I suppose that it’s not,” My eyes flicked up to gauge Meg’s briefly. “My skin.”
If her face moved somewhere behind her crooked glasses, I didn’t catch it.
“Therefore, it shouldn’t matter if I burn it. Now that I say it out loud, of course, I fear the opposite might be true. Perhaps I should be even more careful not to burn it. Or, damage it, that is. Because it isn’t mine.”
Meg wrinkled her nose. “That’s dumb.”
I laughed, loudly, the tension in my chest escaping my lungs. In my periphery, the barista’s head snapped toward the noise. I brought my unmarred hand up to wipe my eyes dry. “You have such a way with words.”
She did not thank me for the compliment. Instead, she slinked an arm over to pluck another napkin from its dispenser. “What do you want to do?”
“I doubt if Josephine or Hemithea will be too upset. Leo probably wanted dinner within five minutes of our departure. It was a losing battle.”
She shook her head. “Mm-mm, what do we do about the guy?”
I furrowed my brow. “I–I don’t know that there’s anything to do, at least for now. What did he say after I left?”
“You mean, on the walk here?”
“No, when—” My eyes widened. “Do you mean he’s outside?”
“Yep,” she popped the ‘p.’
“Meg!”
“What was I s’posed to do with him? He wouldn’t leave.”
I sighed, staring back into my now less-full mug. It occurred to me that from Meg, doing whatever she did to get the stranger to stay outside while she presumably figured she'd need to talk me off of a proverbial ledge was a fairly thoughtful gesture. I only hoped it hadn’t involved threats of violence or some sort of plant barricading the door.
“We can sneak out the back,” she offered.
I briefly considered the idea before deciding it would make me feel even worse. Steeling myself, I pushed the coffee away. “No, we should talk. I need to know the exact extent of my father’s derangement.”