Interim Goddess of Love

by Mina V. Esguerra

  Interim Goddess of Love

  Mina V. Esguerra

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook belongs to vzyl at 64 70 67 72 6f 75 70 forum. I hereby acknowledge that I have shared this book outside the forum without permission from the original poster if I earn profit or rewards for providing access to this ebook. I also accept responsibility for advertising and providing a hyperlink to this forum.

  Contact the author:

  minavesguerra@gmail.com

  http://minavesguerra.com

  Cover art for this edition designed by Tania Arpa

  Photography by Rhea Bue (http://bebe-doll.net)

  Heart design by elizaletterist (brusheezy.com)

  Interim Goddess of Love

  College sophomore Hannah Maquiling doesn't know why everyone tells her their love problems. She's never even had a boyfriend, but that doesn't stop people from spilling their guts to her, and asking for advice. So maybe it shouldn't be a surprise when the cutest guy in school tells her that she's going to have to take on this responsibility -- but for all humanity.

  The Goddess of Love has gone AWOL. It's a problem, because her job is to keep in check this world's obsession with love (and lack of it). The God of the Sun, for now an impossibly handsome senior at an exclusive college just outside of Metro Manila, thinks Hannah has what it takes to (temporarily) do the job.

  While she's learning to do this goddess thing, she practices on the love troubles of shy Kathy, who's got a secret admirer on campus. Hannah's mission, should she choose to accept it, is to make sure that he's not a creepy stalker and they find their happily ever after -- or at least something that'll last until next semester. (As if she could refuse! The Sun God asked so nicely. And he's so, well, hot.)

  From an interview with Ivy Mira Alonzo, author of Day of Hearts:

  So what served as your inspiration for the novel?

  When I was a kid, my lolo told me stories about the old gods and goddesses of our people, from way before Spain brought Catholicism to our shores. He didn't have a TV so when I visited him in the summer he would instead entertain me with stories about the sun god Apo's controlling ways, moon god Maya's rivalry with her siblings, sea god Aman's forbidden love affair… I adored them, and kept asking what happened to them next, and he'd always have a new story.

  Day of Hearts is based on one of these stories, right? Did you do any other research into Philippine myths?

  That's the strange thing. I started my novel as a project in college but when I researched the myths, I couldn't find the ones my lolo told me. Or the stories would be similar but the names or some details would be different. I began to wonder if he had been making it up all along.

  You never got to ask him?

  No. He passed away years ago. But I wrote Day of Hearts anyway as a tribute to him, using the Sun God's love story that he told me about.

  Are there any other of his stories that you want to use, someday?

  Oh definitely. He had a story about Diya, the goddess of love. That one day she disappeared, and the gods scrambled to divide her power among them. But they were bad at it, because none of them knew love like she did. And they couldn't inherit all her powers anyway because she wasn't dead, just missing, and after a long time, she returned, stronger than ever.

  Did that show up in your research?

  No. Lolo probably made that up too. But, I figure, he was just doing his part. His family liked to tell stories, and he grew up in this tradition.

  Are you excited about the movie version? Isn't that coming out soon?

  Yes, and I'm very excited. Casting's perfect. I had little to do with it, but the director showed me some scenes and it looks amazing!

  Chapter 1

  Disclaimer: I'm new at this.

  It's only been three weeks, I wanted to say. So if I do anything wrong, mess you up in any way, I shouldn't be held responsible. But the girl sitting in front of me, she didn't know that anyway. She didn't know that by walking into the College Guidance Office, seeking something as abstract as "guidance," she would instead find me, and be the first to summon me.

  Quin told me that I would get better at the diagnosis with each "project."

  It helps if you're familiar with the feeling, he always said. But it'll get easier.

  Kathy Martin had been sitting on the couch across from me for ten minutes, but I only noticed her there after a pencil rolled off my desk. I bent to pick it up and saw Kathy's shoes. Ballet flats so orange, they looked like they were on fire.

  "You scared me," I said, or maybe something with more profanity. "I didn't see you there."

  "I get that a lot."

  "Are they expecting you?" I asked, going into secretary mode.

  Kathy shook her head. "No," she said. "Should I have made an appointment? I thought I could just walk in here."

  I checked the calendars of the two guidance counselors who were in that day and saw that neither would be available for another four hours. And they were both out at the moment.

  The disappointment on Kathy's face was unexpected. No one ever wanted to see a guidance counselor that badly, at least not on the Tuesdays and Thursdays that I did filing work there.

  "You could come back at five," I offered.

  "Do you work here?"

  I didn't, not in the way Kathy meant with her question. Located just outside of Metro Manila, Ford River College was a relatively new school (compared to the over-a-century-old ones put up during the Spanish and American periods), but it already had a reputation for being the place to send your children if they were very smart, or if you were very rich. I was there on scholarship, but I didn't think that automatically put me in the camp of very smart. Maybe lucky.

  One of the strings attached to the free education was that I had to work in a "relevant administration office" several hours a week. If Kathy couldn't tell I was a student, I could guess why. Students of Ford River wore uniforms only on Mondays.

  "I'm just a student employee," was the gist of it.

  "Oh." More disappointment.

  I could see what was coming, when her face lit up briefly.

  "Can I talk to you instead?" she asked.

  Could she? It wasn't like I was idle. I had two hundred sheets of student personality tests to file, and they needed this yesterday. I was sure Kathy could see that, because they were all on top of the desk, a Great Wall of Papers between us.

  "You're fine that I'm just a student?"

  She shrugged. "I just want someone to talk to. I'm Kathy, by the way."

  "Hannah Maquiling. What do you want to talk about?"

  She sighed. "There's this guy who likes me. I don't know what to make of it."

  I sighed too. "Let's walk to the cafeteria and you can tell me about it."

  "You don't mind?" Her eyes were big and pleading, and I saw it, before I felt it pass my skin and get into my bones.

  Longing.

  I knew that, longing. The act of identifying it seemed to make it worse, and it felt like it slammed into my chest instead of crept in.

  "Nah," I said, trying to sound casual and not at all like her emotion was suffocating me. "It's my job, I guess."

  I was told that they would find me, wherever I happened to be, and they would want and need to talk about boys, and girls, and relationships, and what it all meant, and I had to make time for them.

  For I am the interim goddess of love.

  Chapter 2

  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 crazy."

  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.

  Chapter 3

  You called the goddess of love with a song. Quin actually hummed it for me.

  "It sounds like a lullaby," I said. I must have heard it from my grandmother.

  It's the sound that the heart makes. It calls you to hear it, and when you do, you will
be able to see, and feel, and remember, someone's pain or joy with such clarity.

  Over the next few weeks, Quin and I met at the roof of the North building and he explained how things worked. The goddess of love listened to people. She received requests, pleadings, demands, and her job was to decide what happened next.

  "How exactly do I do that?" I couldn't comprehend it. So maybe I selfishly agreed to do this because I wanted to be closer to Quin, but this was serious business. Maybe a little too serious. More than once, I started to panic.

  And every time, Quin would find a reason to brush a hand, a fingertip, an arm, against my skin, and I felt instantly reassured. Even if I didn't understand it all just yet.

  "Don't worry about it. It'll start with words, conversations. Those are simple, easy to handle. The rest will come when you're ready, I'm sure you won't even notice that you're different."

  "Different how?"

  "You'll be able to do more than listen. It's like… enhanced empathy."

  "Will I have powers?"

  "Let's see how you do with listening first."

  "Okay." I was hoping there would be powers. "Is it because of those people who keep telling me their love stories? Is that why I'm qualified to fill in as goddess of love?" I asked him.

  "You're qualified because I chose you."

  I wanted to ask, you mean you chose me because I'm qualified, right? But it wasn't the time for nitpicking, or for second-guessing Quin, the sun god of the Tagalogs. (Technically my people, based on ancestry.)

  Instead, I asked, "When will it start?"

  "One of these days. You'll be summoned, but don't feel like you have to help everyone who does. Take it one person at a time."

  "Like a project."

  "Yeah, something like that."