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A real, real kiss. The breath whooshes out of me. Apollo laughs, nips my bottom lip, and pulls away, my hand still in his. As a finishing touch, he raises my hand one more time and brushes his lips over my knuckles, ring glowing palely next to them.
Then he gives me a gentle push toward the entrance of the building.
I look back at him and wave, my face hot.
Oh.
My.
Freaking.
God.
He’s going to stand there on the sidewalk until I’m inside.
“You can call me, too,” he says as I reach the door.
“Oh, yeah? Will you get in a car the second your phone rings and rush across the city to my side?” I say back, like it’s a joke.
“No guarantees on the car.” Apollo shrugs. “I might just run.”
I don’t think it’s for the best that Apollo decided to go to the office after all, but it’s probably less awkward for him.
Not because Apollo is a stranger to photo shoots. It’s impossible to grow up in my family, even with a late start like Apollo, Ares, and Hercules had, and avoid photo shoots.
The two of us pose together on a velvet green chaise lounge, my arm draped artfully over Daisy’s shoulder and our heads tilted together at one angle, then another, then a third.
We’ve done this a million times. Daisy is her parents’ daughter, and I’m my parents’ daughter, and we were born close enough in age to be sisters. When we were kids, there were rumors that we were twins. Then Daisy and her parents moved into the city so we could go to school, and everyone finally accepted that we weren’t twins, but we were also city residents with ultra-wealthy parents who look interesting and beautiful in photos together.
I should have seen the photo shoot coming after the gala, but I didn’t. I strode into the Roaring Twenties apartment thinking I would sit back, relax, and hang out with Daisy during breaks.
Instead, I was immediately whisked into hair, makeup, and clothing while at least four people circled me, talking at top speed about how our parents have to be so excited, and how the possibilities for a double wedding must have us thrilled to pieces, and how the cover photo is going to be even more enthralling with both me and Daisy on it together.
And Daisy, my best friend and on occasion my worst enemy, stood there and agreed with all of them, throwing out ideas for a double wedding and saying that maybe we should have a double honeymoon and generally being a straight-faced menace, a trait that everyone assumes comes directly from her father and is in fact from both her parents.
Now, of course, she’s leaning against me on the chaise lounge, as professional as can be, following our photographer’s instructions. We are being photographed by a man named August, who has been taking photos of the family since Daisy and I were little. I don’t want to make too many definitive statements about how things work in our family because the general consensus is that nobody really knows and so we just change the subject, but you can tell that August and his twin brother Julien—a journalist who translates for August, who only uses sign language in public—have been in our orbit. Neither of them look their age.
“If you could look at each other for this next one?” Julien says, for August.
Daisy and I look at each other. It’s only from these long years of practice that I don’t get the giggles. But then Daisy smiles, big and excited, like we planned the secret engagement so she could get me on to the cover of Vogue with her, and I smile back and fake laugh. The fake laugh turns into a real laugh, and then Daisy’s laughing, and for a few precious seconds I know it looks exactly how it’s supposed to for a magazine cover—joyous, but also elegant. The height of fashion. That sort of thing.
And then, naturally, Daisy snorts, and we do get the giggles.
August lets his camera rest against his hip, secure on its strap, and signs something to Julien.
“Five minutes,” Julien says. “Ten, if you need it.”
“Oh, thank God.” Daisy puts both her hands over her eyes and looks down into her lap. “I was just about to start thinking that this window is hellishly bright. August was way ahead of me.”
“Let’s go away from the window, then.”
“But I’m in this outfit.”
“The outfit will survive.”
Daisy’s gown is studded with various photo-shoot hardware in the back because she got her height from her mom, who is petite like Daisy, and not from her dad, who’s well over six feet tall, like my dad. We help each other off the chaise lounge and over to the snack table, where an assistant is waiting to drape us in cloth napkins and hand us opened bottles of water.
When she bustles off to see if August and Julien need anything, Daisy leans against the table and closes her eyes. Her engagement ring from Hercules twinkles darkly on her finger. I put my own left hand behind my back.
