When I first met him, I really thought he was a god.
Not literally. More like the way a freshman girl sees a junior guy with chiseled features and perfect skin and assumes he looks like a marble sculpture of a god. I had never been to Italy or Greece, never seen those statues up close, but I was eighteen years old and my limited experience told me that they were probably modeled after guys like Joaquin Apolinario.
Besides, I didn't meet any juniors. Didn't take any classes with them. The ones who happened to speak to me while I served time at the Guidance Office treated me like they would any barely-there admin employee. Sophomores were nicer. Seniors too, maybe because they were almost out of here. Juniors on the other hand were enjoying their first year as upperclassmen all too much.
But he wasn't like that. He wasn't just the only junior who talked to me then. He was also the only junior who lingered at the Guidance Office, introduced himself, made small talk, stayed until five-thirty, helped me lock up, and walked me to the cafeteria because I was hungry.
He introduced himself as Quin, which I thought was an unusual name for these parts. I said my name was Hannah.
"What's your real name?" I asked.
"Joaquin."
"But you say 'Quin' differently in 'Joaquin.'"
"Does it matter?"
"It's not a proper nickname. You might as well call yourself something totally different. Like Bob."
As far as conversations went, my side of that one was icky and foolish and stereotypically freshman, but for some reason Quin was amused. For a second there I thought that this was it, my college romance is about to begin, and with a tall, gorgeous junior at that (my mom always did say I was an overachiever).
Instead, the gorgeous junior just kept wanting to talk. Kept asking me to lunch, walking me to class. He would casually tell me about his basketball games and practice (he was captain of the varsity team already) as if his life was so boring. I would tell him about my daily concerns, like what I ate for breakfast and oversleeping on quiz day, and he acted like he was actually listening.
Ten months later, as the school year ended, he said the thing that explained everything, and nothing, about why he befriended plain old me:
"Hannah, this might seem forward and a bit much for you to grasp, since I never said anything to you before about it, and it's a huge responsibility..."
My thoughts were along the lines of: Will you agree to be the most hated person on campus and be my girlfriend?
But he said: "We need you to be the goddess of love, for now."
I must have had a blank look on my face for a full minute. I kept thinking, is that what people are calling it these days?
And then he explained it.
"Do I have to be trained for this?" I said, taking the news rather well.
* * *
Hearing tales of love and woe wasn't new to me. My earliest one was when I was eleven, when my mother explained to me that my dad wouldn't be living with us anymore. It was quickly followed by the news that he had a new family and had decided to live with them. I hugged her and told her that she was going to be okay, and that she shouldn't wish for him to stay with us if he was happier somewhere else. She said then, not a little irritated, that I shouldn't give up on him so easily. He might still come back. I didn't believe it but told her what she wanted to hear.
Years later, I think I was a high school junior by then, she reached for my hand across the dinner table (set for two, still) and out of the blue thanked me. I just knew what she was referring to; she didn't have to say it.
I would also hear stories from friends, neighbors, teachers, cousins, and even strangers sitting beside me in public transport. It was like I had a sign over my head advertising my counseling services.
Most of the time they just needed an ear, but sometimes I got asked for advice. Every time, I warned them that I had never even been in a relationship before, so I could just be making things up as I went along. They didn't care.
I guess that was why I wound up studying Psychology.
"Maybe," Quin said. "Or it's the other way around."
That I was attracting the love stories because I was potentially a replacement for the goddess of love? It was comforting, the idea that I was special in some way.
* * *
When I said yes to this, Quin invited me up to the roof deck of Ford River's North building. Students weren't supposed to be there, especially at night, but now I understood why Quin seemed to be able to do all these things without ever getting a note from the Student Discipline Office.
On that particular day, I got there just in time to see him play with light again.
Quin, usually when he thought I wasn't looking, liked to change the way light fell on things. He would stare at something intently, and the shadows would move. It looked like art to me, these impossible patterns of shadows on the bright concrete surface. He would hold that pattern for a second, and then with a wave of his hand he'd set it back to normal.
"That's pretty," I said, not knowing how else to react.
"It's how I write notes to myself," he explained.
"That's intense."
I wanted to ask more about that, but he had changed the topic.
"Thank you for doing this, Hannah," he said, in his somber way, as if he had just asked me to scrub the mold off his kitchen tiles. "I'm very grateful."
"No problem," I said cheerfully. "Besides, who else could do this, right? I have that special predisposition, don't I?"
That was a very understated way of saying that I was uniquely positioned to take on this job because a long time ago I had an ancestor who was one of those deities who fell in love with a mortal. It didn't work out, but when did those ever?
An awkward pause followed, not just in my head but between me and Quin. I cleared my throat. "So what do I need to do?" I asked. "Is there, like, an initiation?"
Quin had a hint of a smile on his face, the only kind of smile I've seen on him. He touched my wrist and gently led me to where he had been standing, and I could see the moon right behind him, visible already in the late afternoon sky.
He looked so... cute as a word was so inadequate, it should be ashamed of itself.
"Stand still," he said.
He gently tipped my chin up, like he was making me look at the moon. The tips of his fingers touched my forehead, then my temple near the corner of my right eye.
What was I supposed to be doing? I couldn't look at the moon even if I tried.
I wanted to say something to release the ball of tension in my throat but he had come even closer, and then our heads were together, his lips grazing my ear. He said something in a whisper, something that felt gentle and old, and I either couldn't hear it or understand it, but immediately afterward I felt a rush of warmth radiating from each point where he had touched me.
I fainted. Or something happened and it felt like fainting. Everything in my peripheral vision went white and yet I could only see the moon, the sky, and Quin's face.
And then he stepped back.
"That's it?" I asked.
He nodded. "Yeah, that's it."
"What happens next?"
"You'll start seeing it. Remembering things that never happened to you. And people will begin to find you, because they need you. There might be dreams too."
Great, like I hadn't had enough dreams featuring Quin.
I blinked. "What if you had to initiate a guy?"
Quin almost laughed. I liked to think that I brought that out in him. Instead of what was closer to the truth, which was that I was just a silly mortal who happened to have the barest minimum of goddess in me to meet the job requirement. I began to suspect that he knew exactly how I felt about him. He probably always did, pre-goddess stuff.
That was so embarrassing.
So yes, I knew longing.