Interim Goddess of Love (11 page)

"
The sea. Work. And journeys."

Something came over me as my heart rate slowed, going back to normal after that sudden run across campus.

Diego just helped me with my work.
If my work was, now, being the goddess of love. 

So despite the sweat and
arrogance, stuff I normally avoided in a guy, I could see why Sol preferred him. He just had a different way about him -- more upfront about things, more transparent somehow.

I mean, I trusted Quin and all, but I didn
't mind learning my new "work" this way.

Oh, is that guilt?

It wasn't cheating. It wasn't like Quin and I were
in an actual relationship,
right.

"
What happens when territories overlap?" I asked.

"
Then it gets interesting," he said. "Everyone wants more than what Bathala has given. We fight, someone wins, the loser plots revenge. It's more common than you think, New Girl."

It was another one of those days when, just before six p.m., the setting sun would turn the sky into a bright orange. A minute later it would be blood red, and then it would dip into the horizon and just be gone.

Almost pretty enough for me to forget that there was a very angry god scolding me that very moment.

Blah blah you shouldn't have done that Diego is irresponsible and never thinks ahead you know better than to mess with destiny while you know nothing about your power blah blah blah…

Of course, Quin being angry didn
't mean he actually snapped and lost it. It was more of the anger of a preschool teacher, trying to convey to a four-year-old (that would be me) in a measured tone just how disappointed he was.

"
Well it's not like I can un-know what I know, right?" I said. "I already found out who it is. So I just need to bring the two of them together, and it's happily ever after, and we can move on to the next project."

"'
Moving on to the next project' is not the point of all of this."

"
It's not? Shouldn't I be helping as many people as I can?"

"
Do you seriously think it's your role to pair everyone up? That you'd be given this kind of power just to make sure everyone has a date to the next party?" He said this with so much disdain that I wondered if the original goddess of love quit because she didn't want to be picked on by the second-generation gods anymore.

"
What am I supposed to do?" I said. "They open up to me, and this is what they want. And I'm their advocate, right? Diego just… showed me a shortcut. It all works out the same way in the end!"

I wasn
't sure if Quin had telepathic powers but I could swear that with everything I said, I knew just what his response was going to be.

You
're wrong, Hannah. You don't know what you're doing. That was not what you were supposed to do. I was wrong picking you for this -- you obviously can't handle it.

"
I'd be better at this if you trusted me more," I said, without even hearing his actual response. "You chose me because I had instincts. And I do believe that Kathy and Jake belong together. I've seen how they both feel about each other. It doesn't matter how I found out, right? What matters is that I make it happen somehow."

"
What matters, Hannah, is that you learn how to do this the right way."

"
What way? Your way? Because Diego and Vida get to have their own way and I don't, right?"

Okay, s
o I said that because I was goading him. Maybe I wanted to see him actually angry. I was still jazzed up from my day with Diego and was in the mood for a cathartic screamfest.

"
We'll talk when you've calmed down. And when you're ready to do this properly again."

Not the reaction I want.

"Whatever, Quin. They'll be at the Bash together, even if you don't want to help me."

I turned on my heel so I could leave
him up there on the roof of the North building alone.

And then, a second later:

Shit. Now I don't have a date to the Bash.
Not that I was hoping he would ask me… but yeah I was hoping he would ask me.

Which made me even angrier, and all the more eager to get Kathy and Jake there together. I mean,
someone
should be there with the guy she liked.

I didn
't stop walking.

Personality Test Result for Katherine Martin:

You are naturally pleasant to work with, mainly because you like to avoid conflict and tend to work on making sure that people are comfortable around you. You are able to earn the trust and admiration of people and are well-suited to roles that put you in charge of someone
's well-being. You express yourself best through writing or conversations within a small group, but may have trouble completing tasks because of a tendency to want perfection.

Kathy Martin's most recent personality test result was exactly the same as mine. (Truthfully these weren't as personalized as they seemed to be. A student usually got one result out of a possible sixteen.) Still, assuming that we were that similar, I asked myself then what I would do next, if I were Kathy.

If I secretly liked someone, and then found out without a doubt that he liked me too, what would I do?

Sure, Jake Lalisan was popular right now for being Vida's boyfriend, but that was probably just goddess smoke-and-mirrors at work. Nothing that can't be defeated by destiny. He liked her, she liked him, and didn't the world deserve to be less lonely?

I
knew what
I
would do. I would make the world less lonely. So I decided to call Kathy and tell her that her most secret wish was about to come true.

An hour later, w
hen Tita Carmen walked into the dining room, which I used as a study area most nights, I probably still had the look of confusion on my face.

"
I think I was just hung up on," I said, before she asked.

"
Who were you talking to?"

There was a basket of baked goods in the middle of the table.
She picked out a
mamon
and sat at her usual seat.

"
This girl I was helping with something," I said. "We started to disagree, and suddenly the line was cut."

"
Bad signal?"

"
I don't think so."

The
mamon
smelled great. She tore bite-size pieces of it, and I got hungrier with each bit of sponge cake she put in her mouth. Tita Carmen paused to chew, and said, "I miss the old phones. Now you can't properly hang up on someone. Back then you could really bang a phone and make your point."

"
I don't know what her point was," I said. "I was helping her with something, and I thought that I just gave her exactly what she was looking for…"

"
You just reminded me of your mom, just now," Tita Carmen said.

"
That's weird. I've wanted to tell you that a few times now."

Despite this, I must say that Tita Carmen, my mom and I didn
't look that much alike. We all looked related only to people who knew we were, and that didn't count. But what we lacked in physical resemblance we probably made up for in mannerisms and other habits. There was something about the way Tita Carmen always reminded me to turn off the light at bedtime, and the way she greeted my visiting friends. It might have been her voice, and her choice of words.

I didn
't see her much when I was growing up, so it was easy to forget that she and my mom came from the same place. Of course they'd have similar habits, share the same vocabulary.

"
Why do I remind you of her?" I asked, almost expecting her answer to be similar.

"
When we were younger, I was always getting into trouble, and your mom would always try to help me," Tita Carmen said. "But I wasn't always happy about it. And she'd ask me why I was so annoyed, when she was only trying to help."

Yeah, that was my mother. She was always doing right by someone, offering good deeds even if they didn
't want them. There was this one time --

"
Wait.
You think I've turned into my mom?"

Because wait one second! My mom was the ultimate
"will martyr myself for friends and family and bitch about it to my daughter when I'm punished for my good deeds." I love her, but it's true, and I sat through one too many of these conversations. It was exhausting sometimes, getting that peek into my mother's life.

Tita Carmen
was obviously thinking of the same thing. "Don't worry, you're a mild case," she said. "No one carries the burden of the world like your mom."

I laughed.
"Thank you. That sounds like her."

It was nice to talk to someone who knew her like I did. It
had been just mom and me for a long time.

"
Why'd you get hung up on?" she asked, grabbing another pastry.

Now that Tita Carmen was being uncharacteristically chatty,
I wanted to be able to share with her that it was kind of
my job now
to help people like Kathy Martin. I wasn't in it because I was a serial do-gooder, or thought going around playing Cupid was fun. They
found me
.

But Quin said I shouldn
't tell people. It wasn't forbidden or anything, but he just thought that it would freak people out.

"
It's this friend," I said to Tita Carmen, trying to be vague. "I just told her that I'm about to give her exactly what she wanted, and instead of being happy…well there."

"
I'm probably the expert on people who reject things they say they want," Tita Carmen said. "Be patient with her. Some people aren't used to getting what they want -- their first instinct is to think there's something wrong with it."

"
You're right." I knew that, but was pleasantly surprised to hear my tita speak this candidly to me. Since I wasn't speaking to Quin at the moment, I needed help processing what to do next. "I shouldn't give up on her. Because I'm the one who knows both sides, right? I know better."

Or maybe Quin set it up that way again, mad
e my tita chatty so I'd have someone now that I was ignoring him.

Still ignoring you, Bossypants.
Just in case he was listening.

The Original Goddess could
have decided your fate in less than a second. You didn't have to meet her at school and take her out for a snack at the cafeteria. She could listen to the hearts of all the world's people and pass judgment on every request in the same moment.

I apparently was still bound by the laws of time and space
, unlike Original Goddess. I couldn't even imagine being able to do that, be responsible for the happiness of so many. But Original Goddess had a head start of, well, millennia. I didn't feel the pressure to be just like her right now.

On this particular morning, though, I was beginning to imagine
what it might be like. Maybe it just happened to be a clear day, or it was so early and quiet. I was sitting on the curb of the circular driveway that served as the main entrance to Ford River, and I was alone.

But I could feel things.

They were just flashes of feelings, so quick that if I stopped to think about one, five more would zing right by. They were over before I could figure out what they were or who they were from.

Or maybe I was imagining it
.

As seven o
'clock neared, more and more people walked past me, making their way to their first class. SKs usually entered the campus on foot, because public transport only stopped a block from here. RKs either drove in with their own cars, or were dropped off by their drivers. The first bell sounded, ten minutes to class, and the morning rush into school peaked.

The flashes stopped.

Kathy's car pulled up into the driveway, and I pounced.

"
Hey," I said.

Annoyance fluttered in her eyes and it confirmed right then that she
did
hang up on me last night. "Hannah."

"
What was that about, huh? Did you even hear what I was trying to tell you? I hope that was just a horrible signal and a dropped call."

"
I have a class in five minutes," Kathy said curtly.

"
You're freaking out. Don't freak out. This is
it,
Kathy."

She shook her head.
"Stop saying that. I don't believe you."