She was mad at me. That’s what this whole silent treatment was about, right? Either because we fought about her brother or because I refused to kiss her, she was throwing a tantrum worthy of a six-year-old’s, and I was going to burst through my skin before it was over.
Toward the end of the movie, Scarlett got up and went into the bathroom. A few moments later, the shower kicked on.
My line of sight was still aimed at the T.V., but the actors became moving blurs as my focus dipped back to the bathroom. I listened to the rush of water, trying not to picture Scarlett under it.
My pulse skipped several fucking beats when I failed, mirages of her drenched and naked clipping into my brain.
The crotch of my pants tightened, and I shifted in my chair, hoping the uncomfortable lumps in it would dig into my back and simmer my hard on.
It was barely working. Scarlett was strobing in my head, her pert pink nipples beaded with clinging water, lines of it running down to her tight stomach to her navel, her wild mouth donned with the same liquid drops that looked like crystal candy behind my eyes.
I almost groaned out loud feeling like I could taste the drops on my tongue as if they really were candy while my mind cooked up pictures of sucking each one off her pouty lips.
Knee bouncing, I tried to derail my brain to think of anything else, anything other than her wet mouth crushed against mine and the sweet little noises I could pull from it.
I even tried to focus on the movie again as a distraction from the maddening urge to break down the bathroom door, step into her shower fully clothed, and kiss away every ounce of her terrible sadness.
I needed a distraction. Any fucking distraction.
“You wanna know something interesting?” the youngest Vitalis spoke up.
My bouncing knee froze to a stop, mood plummeting and crashing.
Okay, not this distraction.
The universe must really enjoy fucking with me today.
Ignoring his eyeline, I picked up my almost empty carton of red curry from the floor. “No.”
He kept yapping.
“The name Demitri is actually synonymous with James. My full name, Demitrius, was anglicized into Jim or James by Greek Americans. So, you and I pretty much have the same name.”
Sliding a piece of lukewarm chicken between my teeth, my focus came up to find brown eyes staring up at me from the floor. There was a speculative glint to his pupils I didn’t fucking like.
“Do you know what Demitrius means?”
Rolling my eyes down at my to-go carton, I swallowed my bite. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“It means follower of Demeter.”
My tongue froze, smoothing across the front of my teeth. I felt my left eyebrow twitch.
A strange feeling prickled at my chest as I thought aloud. “Demeter is Persephone’s mother.”
Back in high school, I went through a stint of fascination with Greek mythology. It’s how I knew who Demeter was, and how I knew the story about Persephone and Hades when Scarlett and I debated over its meaning in the woods.
She called me Hades.
I called her Queen of the Underworld. AKA: Persephone.
The prickling sensation in my sternum started to feel more like hot nails instead, poking at the vulnerable space around my heart. My upper lip twitched at the barbs of pain, and I tried to breathe against it, the rhythm of my exhales wobbling.
It’s just a stupid coincidence.
It was a meaningless link that the name he claimed we shared was connected to that one story. The last twenty-four hours had clearly hijacked my brain if I was getting hyper-sensitive about fairytale shit.
“Yeah. She’s a goddess,” Demitri went on, resting his elbows on his hiked up knees. His dark-eyed focus was keen and glued on me. “I always liked that my name meant I was destined to follow a goddess. It felt right for me. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last two years, following my goddess. Even if she leads me into the mouth of hell, I’ll happily burn for her. It’s in my name.”