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This moment is like a chandelier dangling by a thread over a concrete floor. All the metaphorical crystal is going to succumb to gravity and come crashing down on us. A falling-chandelier-sized disruption to the party is all but guaranteed if I shriek Apollo, what the hell are you talking about at top volume?
So I don’t do that.
Daisy’s fingers move on mine. If she’s seriously trying to write a code into my palm, she has to choose a different method. I can’t make out any letters. I’m too consumed with the sensation of Apollo’s big hand on the small of my back. It’s not like we don’t touch each other. We do. A lot. That’s part of preventing the episodes. Being in each other’s presence will do in a pinch, but touching is what keeps the fevers away.
And it’s not like he’s never put his hand on the small of my back before in an older-adoptive-brotherly way.
Just not this way.
Like he’s staking a public claim on me.
I don’t know how to feel about that. Angry? Confused? Swoony?
I feel warm about it. Warm and pleased and bubbly. And, yes, a little confused, because I don’t have all the facts I need to make a determination. But damn it, I like when he has his hand on the small of my back. I like it a lot more than I’ve ever allowed myself to imagine. If Daisy wasn’t holding my hand behind my back, I might go rogue and one-up Apollo by doing something wild, like kissing him in front of everyone in a fit of lust.
God, no. I would not do that. Not at Calliope and Orion’s party.
Something slides onto the ring finger. Daisy squeezes my hand and lets go, and I finally put two and two together. I’m free to lift my left hand, place it into a pearl-clutching position atop my chest, and gaze at Apollo with an attitude of breathless surprise.
“Apollo!” He meets my eyes. It’s not my fault that having a fever adds a sun-kissed color to his cheeks. It’s not my fault that his blue eyes give me heart palpitations. It’s nobody’s fault that my heart boings around in my chest like one of those bouncy balls from a gumball machine. It’s to my advantage. And! The next word out of my mouth should be a pet name. A term of endearment. Wait, no—it should not be a term of endearment, because I don’t have time to make up a term of endearment that I’ve secretly been calling him while we secretly dated and secretly decided to get married. If I call him a pet name right now, I could be stuck calling him that pet name for who knows how long. “You!” Not the best start, but I take the momentum and run with it. I bat my eyelashes as if I’m feeling the surprise all over again. “We! We were going to wait until after the party!”
Gasps rise from the guests around us, along with a crystal clear awww.
Apollo’s eyes widen. A flurry of realizations flickers through the sky blue. I can see him becoming aware of all the people around us and the ripples he’s sent through the crowd.
The shock in his expression melts into a hungry guilt that I last saw on his face when we kissed last summer, ten minutes after Daisy and Hercules got engaged.
“I couldn’t help it.” He says this at a faux-private register that results in another awww from a nearby party guest.
I’m used to having complicated feelings about Apollo. I’m not ashamed to say that I had a crush on him at first sight. I didn’t know it was a crush, as I was six years old and had not attended school. Daisy and I were into chasing each other around her parents’ mountain mansion or my parents’ Manhattan mansion or sometimes our Uncle Poseidon’s ship. Things like crushes and boys weren’t on our minds.
And then, all of three minutes after I felt the first crush of my life sweep through my six-year-old body in an intense wave of what I would later come to identify as longing—and after my instinctive response to encountering that feeling was to shoot a toy arrow directly at Apollo’s face—my parents stood in front of the Christmas tree and announced that the boy I had a crush on—a massive, horrible, heart-stopping crush—was going to be my brother.
They might not have used those words exactly, but the implication was clear. Ares and Apollo were part of our family and it didn’t matter how long it took for the paperwork to wrap up.
And then I just had to live with that.
And with the slowly dawning knowledge that Apollo wasn’t just my brother, he was the only path to good health. Sooner or later, my body makes it known that it can’t survive without him.
Who wouldn’t fantasize about a life where it was less awkward to announce an engagement? Where you’d simply tell your parents that you fell in love with a man, not a man who was supposed to be like your sibling? Where that man didn’t have some secret hang-up about kissing you?
The one thing I wasn’t prepared for was this. Apollo telling the world—or at least everyone on the deck of this aircraft carrier, along with everyone in their social networks—that he was so overtaken that he had to tell everyone about our nonexistent engagement.
I’m not letting the world know about a single one of those feelings. I take in everything I can sense about the party and my family and most of all Apollo.
And put my hand to his cheek.
And run my thumb over his perfect cheekbone.
And say:
“I forgive you.”
“Yay!” Daisy cries, with so much enthusiasm that everyone around us starts clapping.
Hercules reaches over my shoulder to shake Apollo’s hand with a wry wow.
Senator Chris Walsh stands there with his hands in his pocket, watching the celebration that will send more ripples into the crowd and ensure that the rest of our family—namely Castor and Pollux, who will spring into action to spread the news to every last person at this event—is about to converge on us.
