Page 2

QETESH

The doorbell went and I grabbed my phone so I could click through to the app. My best friend waved at the camera from the other side, her hand grasping the neck of a bottle.

I hit the button which would unlock the door and then the microphone. "I'm in the greenhouse."

Ella didn't even respond before heading through the door and making her way into my house.

"You really should just give me a key, Tesha," she said as she entered the room and set down a bottle of non-alcoholic prosecco.

"You had a key," I reminded her. "It's not my fault that you lost it."

"Your plants stole it," she murmured.

"If that was true, then it would have turned up by now."

"Maybe."

"There's no maybe about it." I loved her dearly, but she did have a tendency to misplace things.

Especially keys. She'd somehow managed to lose the one she had at the Lock and Key party where she met her fiancée too.

I'd had to spend hours working out which key went with which lock so that I could remove the lock without a match from circulation.

"Maybe you just need a passcode to get in the house instead."

"Keys are better," I responded.

"Ah, right. You're super old. I forgot."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm not super old."

"You don't look super old, but you definitely are. I'm going to get some glasses."

I nodded and pulled off my gardening gloves, knowing that there wasn't going to be more time for tending to my plants. In Ella's words, that was what she spent all day doing, she didn't want more of it when she visited me.

The evening sun shone through the glass panes of the greenhouse connected to my house, and I let out a contented sigh.

This was my haven away from the world. Here, it was just me and my plants with the occasional visit from my best friend.

But as a dryad herself, she understood my connection to this place in a way very few other people ever had.

She returned a couple of moments later with a couple of champagne flutes and we made our way over to the comfortable chairs I'd had installed here for moments just like this. Ella sloshed some of the sparkling wine into glasses and handed one of them to me.

"I'm going to drink so much real prosecco on Friday," Ella mumbled.

I laughed. "You're the one who decided not to drink in the lead up to the wedding."

"Because I don't want my liver to go on strike the moment I say I do ."

"That's not how it works," I reminded her. "You can do as much damage by binge drinking it..."

"I know, I know. Just let me have this, Tesha. Not all of us can have banging bodies after thousands of years."

"You don't know that," I countered. "You could become immortal tomorrow..."

"Pfft, no thanks. What's the point in only living once if you're not going to die?"

"I couldn't tell you." At this point, I'd reinvented myself more times than I cared to count.

It was less of an issue now that the world was more accepting of the gods in their mix.

Or at least, the paranormal members of the world were.

Humans still had no idea that we lived among them, but I had very little to do with them unless they found out about Jinx.

And if they knew about Jinx, then they knew about the world of gods and paranormals anyway, it wasn't the kind of thing people could just stumble across by accident.

"You're coming on Friday, right?" Ella asked.

"Of course I'm coming," I promised. "I'm your Maid of Honour, I'm not going to skip the Bridal Shower."

"Good, because Nadia would be sad if you missed it."

I laughed. "Nadia? You're really going to say that your fiancée would be the one to miss me at your Bridal Shower?"

Ella grinned. "Oh, and you'll finally get to meet my brother. He's just moved back to town for a job. My parents are thrilled, naturally."

"Hopefully not to the point of overshadowing the wedding."

"Oh, no, not at all. My brother would never want that.

He's a good guy, you'll like him." The way she looked at me made it seem like she was thinking about more than just a friendly situation, but I was going to have to disappoint her there.

It was highly unlikely that I'd say more than three words to her brother beyond the two of us being introduced.

"I look forward to meeting him," I said.

"Good." She leaned back in her chair and let out a contented sigh. "I can't believe I'm going to be married in just over a month."

I laughed. "That's because you've only been dating Nadia for a year."

"Yeah, but when you know, you know. Right?"

"I couldn't tell you."

"You're a love goddess, you're supposed to know stuff like this," she countered.

"Allegedly," I said. "But I never claimed to be an expert on love, and anyone who thinks I am one needs to take a moment to actually think about it, because I am really not."

"You'd be a lot more convincing if you weren't the reason I met my future wife."

"It's not that I've not learned anything over the past few thousand years," I pointed out. "It's just that I'm not an expert. Now some of the other love gods? They really know what they're talking about."

"I'll refrain from judging considering I've not had any conversations with them knowingly. Maybe when you get married, I'll finally get to chat with some."

I laughed. "I'm not going to get married."

"So you keep saying, but I don't understand why. Do you not want to fall in love?"

"It's complicated," I murmured.

She frowned at me in a way that made me certain she wanted to ask a lot more questions.

Ones that I wasn't able to answer. It wasn't that I didn't know why I didn't date, it was just that the answer wasn't exactly an acceptable one given my status as a goddess of love, sex, and all things related.

It would be much better if I'd just been able to keep being known as a nature goddess and not had to worry about the rest of it.

But if there was one thing I'd learned over the past few thousand years, it was that there was very little opportunity to choose what humans believed I was the goddess of.

It wasn't like I was the only god in that position either.

It was a common phenomenon, even if it could be frustrating at times.

Ella moved on to talking about the wedding, and I let her.

As much as I wanted to avoid the complications of love myself, I did enjoy hearing others talking about it, especially when I'd done something to help them find it.

And I was going to enjoy every minute of her wedding knowing that I'd helped her and Nadia meet.