Hades II

gorgeous

Hades

I arrived at the beach ten to two. I parked the car and went to the sand.

Stella was sitting in the sand. She wore tight jeans and a short sleeved t-shirt in navy blue.

I walked to her.

She looked up at me. "Hey."

"Hey." I replied. "May I?" I gestured to the empty spot next to her.

She nodded.

I sat down next to her and looked out at the ocean. This was truly magnificent, Poseidon's realm.

"You do know that I'm not the me I was in the Underworld?"

"Yes," I replied. People often behaved differently, though it was more of a breaking down of barriers they experienced. Not a radical change to their personality.

Stella turned her head, and I met her blue eyes.

"I had no right to go snoop in your letters."

"Don't apologize," I said. "You didn't in the Underworld, and I don't want to hear it now."

She sighed and looked at the ocean again. The waves were crashing against the shore, yet the beauty of this, of nature, was sublime. Otherworldly.

I rested my arms on my bent knees.

"I really want to do this, us," she said. "But you have to get to know me again, and I guess I have to get to know you too."

I nodded. "Yeah."

She looked at me. "It's not that I don't want to meet during the week, but after work I'm done."

"With the crash you had, it's understandable."

She narrowed her eyes. "What do you know about it?"

"What you've told," I said. I knew more. "And, uhm, how close you came to dying, what modern medicine can do, as well as information about the driver of the other car."

Her eyes went wide. "What?"

"I have to," I said. "I have to know about people who die or are close to dying. And I'll forget, eventually, but I don't forget everything."

She rubbed her face in her hands. "Fuck, Hades."

I couldn't not be me.

"I want simple."

"Sorry, sweetheart, I'm not simple."

"I know," she grumbled.

I stroked her back.

She looked at me.

We just looked at each other. She was gorgeous. No other word. And not because she was pretty as Aphrodite, but because she was her. That was so cliché, but she was gorgeous. In my eyes.