Page 50 of Ungodly Rich

Aphrodite hadn’t meant her words to be considered anapology.She smoothed her napkin, pleased with the way her bracelets slid becomingly down her arm with the movement. “Of course. I’m just glad that we can be friends.”

Julia seemed eager to change the subject. “Do you usually come to these events? This is very…intimate,” she concluded, with a glance around the rooftop.

An army of waiters sailed over with the salad course, each plate topped with a trio of mandarin orange slices. Aphrodite saw Julia start to reach for her fork, only to pause when she registered that no one else had started eating.

“I usually come with Tara. There is so much overlap between theart world and the beauty industry, you know,” Aphrodite replied. “Though I’m glad you’re here! I wonder whose place you’re taking? Scarlett’s?”

“Scarlett’s?” Julia repeated.

“Scarlett Johansson.” Aphrodite made sure to say it with the appropriate amount of nonchalance. “We’re at the director’s table, you know, with his personal guests. Scarlett normally comes to these events, as she’s quite active with the museum, but I think she’s filming another of those dinosaur movies.”

Julia didn’t flinch. She just nodded as if she always sat at a table intended for Hollywood royalty and said, “Then I owe her, andJurassic Park,a thank-you. This is a lovely night, and I’m grateful to be here.”

It was an irritatingly thoughtful response. Peeved, Aphrodite gave a bright little laugh.

“Oh, you have to thank Scarlett for more than that! She’s the reason your fiancé dresses like a grown man.”

“Excuse me?” Julia asked. On Julia’s other side, Hermes cast Aphrodite an exasperated look, but she was committed now. She couldn’t rub herownhistory with Ares in Julia’s face, but she could still make this woman feel inadequate. Could pretend to befriends,all while making Julia second-guess herself.

“Until they dated, Harry always dressed so poorly—T-shirts with the sleeves cut off, mesh running shorts. He looked like a high school athlete on game day.” Aphrodite placed a hand on Julia’s arm as if drawing her into the joke. “His thing with Scarlett was short-lived, but he was so desperate to impress her, he cleaned up his look. I mean”—Aphrodite lowered her voice to a stage whisper—“he used to wear short-sleeved button-downs. Can you imagine? Those should only be worn by children under the age of ten, or cartoon characters.”

Julia shrugged off Aphrodite’s touch and reached for her fork, ignoring the reference to his famous ex. “I have never cared what Harry wears, so I wouldn’t have a problem with ashort-sleeved button-down.” She managed to pronounce the phrase in a way that made Aphrodite feel slightly mocked. “But I’m thankful to Scarlett anyway, for Harry’s sake. I know his family cares about things like fashion.”

Things like fashion?How dare this woman dismiss, in a single breath, everything Aphrodite stood for?

Not that she’d always felt that way. There had been a time when Aphrodite thought she had more to offer, that she wasn’t just a pretty face. But that was eons ago.

She stared out at the horizon, trying to gather her thoughts. It was the sort of lush Manhattan evening that had inspired writers and artists for generations. Fiery orange light blazed behind the skyline, causing shadows to pool in the streets below. The warm June air kissed her bare shoulders.

Like all the gods, Aphrodite couldn’t remember much beyond the span of a human lifetime. But one night was burned into her mind.

It had been a night much like this when everything changed. The night that they made her immortal.

• • •

Aphrodite met her husband by the river, as women of that age did quite often, except that her husband happened to be a god.

She knelt at a washing board, scrubbing stains from her master’s work shirts. When she heard an approaching figure and glanced up, Aphrodite saw at once that he was immortal. The very air seemed to crackle and spark at his presence, power clustering around him like warmth after a summer storm. She assumed he was the god of this river, or perhaps of the mountain nearby.

She assumed he would take what he wanted, as so many men did.

But he didn’t. Hephaestus settled on the ground next to her and asked her name. Aphrodite told him, flinching, expecting violence. Yet he just leaned back on his palms and watched her movements as she kept running the fabric over her washing board. “I’m Hephaestus,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you.”

The next week, when she returned to the river, Hephaestus was already there—with a large metal contraption that would do the washing for her. “Now you can sit and talk to me, instead of laboringneedlessly,” he’d offered as the metal arms of his mechanism scrubbed shirts in her stead.

“Where did such a thing come from?” Aphrodite stared at the invention, marveling at its cleverness.

Hephaestus looked almost shy as he replied, “I made it.”

And so they talked. Aphrodite told him small, meaningless things: gossip from the wealthy household where she worked, stories from her childhood. She never mentioned her father, addicted to drink, or her mother, aged and embittered before her time. She certainly never mentioned the man at her previous position, the one who had hurt her indelibly, even though the wounds he’d inflicted were not the type to leave visible scars.

Hephaestus never interrupted. He just nodded sagely and listened.

Aphrodite began to look forward to the washing days. Each time, Hephaestus brought her a gift: earrings that changed color based on her mood; a wheeled cart that could drive itself, for carrying laundry back to the house. A clip that kept her long braid in place, after he’d watched her struggle to tuck back her waist-length hair. His eyes were always on her, and she saw the hunger in them, the eagerness. But he never touched her, not once.

The day he knelt down with a ring, Aphrodite stared at him in shock. “Yes,” she breathed, with hardly a thought. She wasn’t such a fool as to think he loved her; she wasn’t sure she even believed in love, after what had happened at her last position. But Hephaestus wanted her, and he was giving her the immense privilege ofchoice.

Aphrodite had the freedom to decide for herself, for the first time in her brief mortal life. Of course, she said yes.