Gray

Marriage was an entirely foreign concept. The very word “marriage” made me cock my head to the side in a curious (not to mention adorable) manner like I was a child who couldn’t understand basic concepts. Of course, I knew what it meant and of course, I had heard the short version from many married people over the years: well, we just fell in love and when that happens, there’s only one thing left to do. Granted, once I got a bit older, I discovered that there were many other ways to express your romantic feelings for another, and they were all more fun than having a wedding and wearing diamond rings and spending the rest of your lives together.

The very idea of matrimony was just ridiculous.

Why did people even have to get married? Couldn’t they just stay together always, without having some sort of legal document to prove it? If they ever fell out of love, they’d have to go through a messy divorce. Wouldn’t it just be so much easier if they hadn’t gotten married in the first place?

When I thought of marriage, I thought of old people. None of my friends were married. True, my best friend was my dog and my second best friend was Rudy, who had vowed never to fall in love with a woman again, because he was convinced that they were crazy (and I certainly hadn’t done any good to dissuade him of that belief). My friends list mostly stopped there.

Except for H. H was a friend. Kind of. A little bit. Yes, I paid him to teach me piano, but we had had some good times. Right?

Honestly, I wasn’t sure exactly where H and I stood.

And then there was that whole wife business.

I wasn’t exactly sure if a marriage between gods was like marriage between mortals. Did they have a ceremony and a document stating that they were husband and wife (or husband and husband, or wife and wife)? Or did the other gods just sort of know immediately and so there was nothing to be said?

My first thought when I stumbled upon the webpage discussing Persephone and how beautiful Hades thought she was and blah blah blah…was that H was far too young to be married. The second notion that popped into my head, however, was the realization that H was immortal and that the Greek gods had been around for millennia. Needless to say, H was old. I suppose, perhaps, that after being single for such a long time, you eventually come around to the idea of marriage. But gods screwed around with everyone; at least, they did according to all of the myths about them (which I was coming to understand weren’t exactly myths, after all). And if H was married to Persephone, wasn’t Persephone the daughter of Zeus and wasn’t Zeus the brother of Hades? That would mean that H was married to his niece.

That’s just messed up.

But I suppose that it’s different with gods.

I was distracted from my ridiculous, rambling thought train by the orange-purple-pink sunrise that was forcing its way up into the sky at a snail’s pace, simultaneously pushing its shiny rays in through my dark curtains. I had been staring at the screen of my laptop for hours, as the clock now read seven thirteen a.m., but somehow I still couldn’t make sense of all that I had read.

One thing I knew for certain, however:

I couldn’t mention anything about Persephone to H.

In the week since he had spilled his guts to me (though honestly, there wasn’t much spilling, because he was very short, suave, and sophisticated about it), we hadn’t spoken once about him being a god and all of that immortal mumbo jumbo. The reason for this was A) I hadn’t actually seen him since the afternoon when he had told me his secret and B) I was too scared to ask him anything. However, my mind was slowly filling up with nonsense and questions about H and sooner or later, my curiosity would become too much to bear. I hadn’t had a piano lesson this week, because H was on some sort of trip, which was probably for the best. I needed to keep myself from breaking down and telling him everything that was on my mind and everything that I wanted to know about him. He would be back from his trip in three days and I would go to see him, just like friends casually do. Make small talk, casually ask about his trip. You know, friend stuff.

Now that I knew his secret, though, it made me curious about what sort of a trip he was on.

“Gah!” I let out a groan of frustration, slamming my laptop closed to avoid giving into any more temptation. In response to my shout, Jubb came trotting out of my bedroom very sleepily, looking up at me and whining in a sympathetic manner.

“Thanks, Jubb,” I sighed, “It’s just kind of tough to have squirmy, girlish, inside feelings for the ruler of the Underworld, you know? Especially when said ruler is your piano teacher and is very probably married to some hottie flower goddess.” Jubb pawed at his nose, as though he was agreeing with me and could totally understand where I was coming from.

But he’s just a dog, so that would be weird if he knew where I was coming from.

“It’s fine, though,” I stretched out all of my limbs, a yawn escaping my lips and betraying just how tired I was, “I will just have to find things to distract myself from thinking about H.” I stood up and smiled down at Jubb, who looked about ready to fall back asleep. Quickly, I poured some food into his bowl and got him some fresh water, before going to the bathroom to shower.

It would be a piece of cake not thinking about H and all of his mysterious voodoo shit.

Right?

Easier said than done.



My curiosity was killing me and I truthfully wasn’t sure how much longer I could go without demanding answers from H. I even had begun imagining my curiosity literally strangling me to death and my dying words being, “I should have asked him when I had the chance…” and then lingering for far too long, finally ending my life with an extremely drawn-out breath.

Alright, so it wasn’t completely awful, but going so long without talking to H after he told me a potentially life-altering secret was difficult. As it turned out, I didn’t do a whole lot of activities outside of my piano lessons.

The first day since realizing that Persephone probably existed, I didn’t leave the house except to walk Jubb around the neighborhood. It was a shame, too, because it was a surprisingly warm day and I’m sure that Jubb would have loved to go to the park and hang out with all of the cool, popular, park dogs. But, unfortunately, I just wasn’t feeling it.

Instead of enjoying the sunshine, I stayed indoors and curled up with a very bored Jubb, eating my weight in frozen yogurt (which I had bought an abundance of, on a whim) and watching every Land Before Time movie ever made (even the incredibly lame ones). (I am not even the least bit ashamed to say that I own all of the Land Before Time films PROUDLY. I love dinosaurs. True story.)

I’m not sure what time I ended up falling asleep, but the following day, I woke up on the sofa, one of my arms dangling off of the side and a yogurt-covered spoon sticking to my face and catching a few strands of hair in its sticky web.

“Gross,” I wrinkled my nose up, yanking the spoon off of my face with some difficulty, as the yogurt had hardened. I rubbed my face, figuring that there was a red mark there from the spoon, because it was just a little bit sore. I sat up on the couch, feeling that my hair was basically a rat’s nest encompassing my head like a halo. I was also dressed in nothing but a too-large Star Wars T-shirt (and underwear, of course).

“Man, I am so not ready to start the day,” I rubbed my temples with my fingers, apparently talking to myself because Jubb was nowhere in sight. Blinking and rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I turned my head to look out the window, expecting the sun to be shining in through the curtains.

However, my eyes were met with the midnight blue of an evening sky and I immediately leapt to my feet.

“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed, “I slept all day!” And then I looked around, realizing that I was shouting to myself and that it was really one of those habits that I ought to kick.

As I looked around my shabby apartment, I noticed a bottle of opened – but otherwise completely untouched bottle of wine – sitting on my table, surrounded by all of the other things that I normally kept on my table, such as a bag of dog food and my laundry. I didn’t remember drinking last night, but as I looked more closely at the bottle of wine, I saw that not a single drink had been taken from it. That meant that I must have opened it and then forgot about it.

I wandered further into the kitchen, but the minute my eyes traveled upward to gaze around my kitchen, I screamed as loudly as I possibly could.

“Tawny, please don’t scream like that again,” H took his hands away from where they had been covering his ears, “And could you tell me where you keep your wine glasses?”

“H! What the hell are you doing in my apartment?!” I demanded to know, a soft pink coloring my cheeks as I realized that I was only wearing a Star Wars T-shirt and I probably had yogurt on my face and in my hair.

“Well, I was going to take you out to dinner as a thank you for keeping my secret,” H leaned back against my kitchen counter, folding his arms across his chest in the process, “But you were sleeping so I just let myself in.”

“You can’t just go around letting yourself into people’s houses!” I shrieked, still embarrassed about my current state, “That’s breaking and entering, H. It’s illegal.”

“I seem to recall you ‘letting yourself into my house’ to return a coat and ‘accidentally’ stumbling upon my deepest, darkest secret,” H pointed out in a sardonic tone.

“Well that’s, that’s just…is what it is, you just…ah!” I shouted at H in frustration, my hands clenching into fists, “I was just trying to be nice and it was just that one time. Maybe next time, I’ll keep your coat to myself or pawn it off onto the man who lives in my car.” H opened his mouth to argue back at me, but closed his mouth once again and gave me a very perplexed look.

“You have a man living in your car?” he asked curiously, receiving a bashful look from me in return as I gripped the hem of my shirt, trying to pull it down as far as it would go to cover my bare legs.

“I might…” I looked around the kitchen uncomfortably, biting my lip, my eyes twitching awkwardly.

“How has this never come up during any of our piano lessons?” H wanted to know, an amused smile playing upon his features.

“Because, it’s not really something I advertise to guys,” I huffed, a pouty look on my face now as I regarded H, “I mean, you already think I’m weird.”

“That’s true.”

My mouth fell open in pure dumbfoundedness as I stared across the kitchen at H.

“What the hell, H? You’re not supposed to agree with me,” I snapped bitterly, “Did you grow up with absolutely no social skills whatsoever? Christ, it’s like I’m dealing with a six year-old sometimes.” H smiled over at me, pushing his bangs from his eyes as they had a tendency of getting in the way.

“I’ve missed you,” he told me, in a quiet yet matter-of-fact voice. It was sweet the way that he said it and entirely unexpected. I didn’t say anything about it, but I felt my insides do backflips (which I’m pretty sure heart guts are not supposed to do). I had to admit, I was taken aback by this blunt confession. So taken aback, in fact, that I said the first thing that came to my mind.

“Are you married?”

My hands flew to cover my mouth, but it was too late. My dumb mouth had walked away with my mind and locked my mind up in some kind of no-interference cage, leaving my mouth to ask H a stupid-ass question.

I was expecting H to get angry or to get very quiet, like he does sometimes. I was expecting some sort of off-handed answer in return. What I got was something very different.

“Well, yeah, kind of,” H chuckled a little bit, as though this was a trivial matter but he didn’t mind discussing it. It was almost like he had forgotten that he was married, as though it didn’t matter to him at all.

“Oh,” was all I said in reply.

“Is that a problem?” H wanted to know, taking a few dangerous steps in my direction, his head cocked curiously to the side.

“Fuck no,” I told him resolutely, though I could feel my nerves rising up in me, “What the hell do I care if you’re married? Congratulations, I’m sure she’s beautiful and ridiculously awesome. I mean, why would it matter if you were married? It’s not like I have feelings for you, because you’re, you know, my piano instructor even though you’re barely older than me – though I guess that’s not true, because you’re a god and you’re all old and stuff. Not that I would have any qualms about having a little something with a married man, because let’s face it, my moral compass doesn’t exactly point due North. But whatever, that wouldn’t ever happen, because of things that I can’t really think of right now. So in conclusion, it doesn’t matter that you’re married, because that does not at all change the dynamic of our relationship. Because we’re friends, just friends.” I gulped, because H was very close to me now and I had backed up against the table. I hoped that I wouldn’t accidentally knock the wine off of the table and send it crashing to the ground. H had gotten dangerously close to me with that charming, devilish expression of his, but as I finished up my rambling session, his expression changed to one of slight surprise.

“Are we…friends?” H asked, in a manner very alike to that of a small child (and I didn’t even notice that he had ignored everything else that had come spilling from between my lips). I relaxed a little bit against the table, giving H a sort of doe-eyed stare, our eyes caught in a sort of lock.

“Well…yeah,” I assured him, scratching the back of my head sheepishly, “I mean…I consider you my friend. We drank wine and watched an Audrey Hepburn movie marathon together. I think it’s safe to say that that qualifies us as friends.” H didn’t take a step back, but he stared back at me as though he was trying to figure me out. A sort of bittersweet expression morphed his features, to where I couldn’t tell if he was sad or happy.

“I’ve never had a friend before.”

The words were almost painful to hear. He really sounded like a little kid this time – a little kid who had grown up with all of this weight and responsibility on his shoulders, with a disposition that scared the other kids off, so that nobody came near him or dared to be his friend.

It almost reminded me of myself when I was younger.

I’m not sure what possessed me to do it, but in a second, I had closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around H’s torso. I could feel tears welling up behind my eyes, just thinking about H not having any friends before me. What was happening to me? H comes around and suddenly I’m a big ball of emotions. Curse emotions.

What was even more curious, was that H had wrapped his arms around my small frame, as well, one hand on the small of my back and the other stroking the back of my head, in an almost loving manner. I fought my tears back and just held onto H for dear life; he didn’t dare let go either, despite how long the embrace lingered. True, we had shared a hug before, but it was different this time. This time, it meant more.

“Tawny?” H whispered in my ear, pulling me closer into his strong arms.

“Yeah?”

“You’re a good friend.”

I hesitated before replying to this statement. No one had ever called me a good friend before and it made my heart swell inside of my chest. I could feel the burning sensation of my reddened cheeks, so I only clung tighter to H so that he wouldn’t see my embarrassment.

“Thanks. You are, too.”

“Thank you.”

And just like that, I knew exactly where I stood with the Lord of the Underworld.