Mean Gods

Chapter 2

Chapter 8: Evie

“Wait, so you actually went to get her some lemonade?” Evie asked, speaking on the phone. She was lying on her back, her hair falling over the edge of the bed. She liked positioning herself like that and putting her feet up on the cool wall.

“Yeah, I’m at the periptero around the corner,” Horace sighed over the phone. He spoke of the kiosks that carried pretty much everything under the sun, those little shops located at every Greek corner.

Evie knew which one he was talking about. She’d hang out with him sometimes at home, Kifisia was a great suburb with lots of pinetrees and flowers. They’d watch movies or play board games together, and the periptero was a constant destination for a resupply run of munchies and soft drinks. Thinking of soft drinks, she pinched her belly. It was far more pinchable than she liked. She had to work out more.

But she didn’t wannaaa.

She huffed all alone, covering her eyes with her free arm.

“Horace, she broke into your house.”

“I know. But this thing, ugh. It’s weird, but it doesn’t feel threatening. The thing with the app and the tokens.”

“You said the other woman literally mentioned danger.” By the goddess, he was so thick-headed sometimes.

“She’s snoozing right now, with a soft snore and everything. Anyway, we’ll see. She might be an addict or something, the way she moves… I’ll kick her out tomorrow.”

Evie felt a pang of jealousy. It was irrational, she knew that. Horace wasn’t her boyfriend. He wasn’t her anything. She never admitted that she took that horrible temp job just to be around him for a few hours longer each day.

That stupid, geeky man wasn’t hers. At hearing that another woman would spend the night dozing off on his sofa, that stung her a bit. It was their thing, their sofa. They hadn’t done anything more than just hang out and laugh and whatever, but it was their thing.

Not this strange woman’s who had broken into his home.

How f****d up was that?

“But for now, you’re gonna bring her lemonade.”

Horace inhaled deeply. “Sure, why not?”

Oh, you poor, stupid man.

Evie imagined that slut all over Horace. ‘Bring me some lemonade,’ she imagined her squeaky voice in her mind. ‘Bring me ice cream, it’s hot.’ ‘Ooph, I’m gonna take this off, I hope you don’t mind.’

She shuddered and pushed the images away.

What was this all of a sudden? Her? Jealous? She hadn’t felt so jealous before. Maybe it was because she was thirty and all her friends had married off and got proper careers. She had carefully removed quite a lot of people from her Agora page. She didn’t wanna get assaulted by the constant barrage of marriage and baby pics.

It was too much.

She knew Horace from high school. They’d been friends on and off as their lives shifted into adulthood, but lately they had found they liked hanging out together. He was very nerdy, into those fantasy games and cartoon ladies that practically wore nothing at all and video games with the same thing, but animated in polygons.

She thought it was ridiculous at first, but after getting over her initial repulsion she found that she damn well enjoyed those games. She loooved being a badass sorceress that could call on flame and burn her enemies, her boobs jiggling with carefully implemented physics. She loved hacking through enemies as a female troll, impervious to physical damage, shrugging off cuts and slashes, killing enemies with her big magical sword.

She loved the escape from her miserable life.

Sure, the community at large was a bunch of weirdos. Nerdy, with glasses, most of them definitely virgins.

Horace wasn’t a virgin, she knew that. In fact, she knew all of his past conquests, even that summer fling he hadn’t told anyone about with a older teacher at Crete.

No, Horace was… How would she describe him?

Not fit, certainly. He didn’t work out much but had an average proper body. A slightly receding hairline in his brown hair. She didn’t mind that, judging by his dad, age would look good on him.

Evie really liked his hands, though. Soft, triangular, artistic. He could make a lot of things with those hands. He could paint, he could assemble models of fantasy waggons and sci-fi tanks, he could work things on the computer.

He was a head taller than her, but she was short to begin with. She liked stepping on her toes to hug him goodnight.

Evie realised she was grinning like an i***t.

Horace was telling her more things but she hadn’t heard a thing. “So, we’ll see for the weekend, right?”

“Um, sure. Text me,” she replied.

“Okay,” he said, and hung up.

Evie felt flushed, even hotter than she felt before. The phone was also overheating, making the side of her face sweat.

Yeah, that was it. She pfted.

It was the phone, heating up. There was nothing more to it. She put her feet up on the cool wall.