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ARTEMIS
In a turn of events that surprises absolutely nobody, my surprise engagement announcement at my baby sister and not-exactly-baby cousin’s birthday gala changes everything.
Although, to be fair, things were changing before we trouped over to the aircraft carrier. I just didn’t know how much.
Apollo doesn’t even pretend to want to be in his own apartment. He spends the rest of the weekend post-gala either napping on my couch or sleeping in my bed. He hovers outside the bathroom when I shower and grabs my hand the second I open the door. He explains in an exhausted slur that he’d had an episode in the office that had come out of nowhere. He’s not sure if the one that started on the drive home counts separately from the one that hadn’t ended yet when he got to the party. I write down the details in a note-taking app in a numbered list the same way I used to keep a record of the headaches Daisy had when we were in school so that if one of them rose to the level of an emergency, I’d be able to tell her parents—and mine—what had happened.
This thing with the episodes is similar, but scarier, because two of them in one day is unprecedented, never mind three. They’ve always come on slowly before, nagging and complaining and prodding. Neither of us wanted to find out what happened if we tried to resist.
Now we’re definitely not resisting, and Apollo keeps startling awake with a hunted look in his eyes. I keep reassuring him that I feel fine, and that he doesn’t have a fever, and the entire sequence of events could have been a fluke, though both of us know that if the schedule is going haywire, anything could happen.
I do internet research while Apollo sleeps with his head in my lap and a solid lineup of low-stakes romcoms play at low volume on the TV.
Two people age twenties get fevers when apart for more than a week
Weird fevers not contagious but coordinated between two people in their twenties
Man and woman in twenties can’t be apart for more than a week.
The same searches, with not mental illness added to the end.
The same searches, with not elderly added to the end.
The same searches, with supernatural added to the end.
It’s all useless. What’s happening to me and Apollo—what’s been happening for over half our lives—is an imaginary scenario that people like to put their favorite characters in. There isn’t medical research about it because it doesn’t exist in real life.
Except when it comes to us.
I give up on the searching after a fruitless attempt to describe the change in the situation. The trigger for the episodes was always the two of us being separated for too long, and they were matched. We experienced roughly the same symptoms in the same pattern of escalation over the same period of time.
We were apart the other day, but the interval was off, and Apollo’s symptoms were much stronger than mine. Scarily stronger than mine. Does that mean that the trigger was something else? Does it mean that the pattern has totally collapsed?
The internet is of no help at all.
“Do you want to stay home tomorrow?” I ask Apollo on Sunday night. We’re six episodes deep into an old espionage thriller show that first aired when they only released one episode per week on cable.
“That’s not the pattern,” Apollo answers, barely disguised worry in his eyes. “If we start staying home all the time, we might fuck it up.”
“Oh, no,” I tease. “I forgot your fear of doing a vacation.”
“What you’re talking about isn’t a vacation. That’s sick leave. And it’s fraud if I’m not actually sick.”
“Now you’re doing a patriarchy. Look at you, Apollo. Does the boss not deserve rest as well? Must we all remain prisoners to the relentless capitalist grind?”
“It’s a capitalist grind for world peace.” Apollo glances down at himself, then raises his eyebrows at me. “Do I look bad?”
“You look tired.”
“That’s not the same as being sick.”
Apollo pretends to be okay on Monday morning. We walk to the Starbucks by my building—our building—my uncle Hades’s building, technically, though that’s more a matter of paperwork than anything else. In the line to pick up our drinks, we have a familiar, comforting bicker about the merits of iced coffee vs. hot. I think there is, like, no merit to hot coffee pretty much ever, and Apollo insists that iced coffee is just expensive milk.
Coffees in hand, we walk a block farther in the blustery spring breeze and stop off in a by-appointment-only showroom with no sign over the door, just Uncle Hades’s etched mountain logo on the grass. An ageless, soft-spoken man inside has several options for me to choose from. It’s no choice at all. The carved-silver band with a round moonstone that looks like frozen blue starlight beckons like it was made just for me. It doesn’t even need to be sized.
Right. Apollo had said. Easy.
And it was easy, and it does feel right. Which is exactly why I can’t look at it once it’s on.
