Love Stinks, Inc., an Uncollected Anthology story

by Reed, Annie

  Dyte felt small and ungrateful.

  “Okay, mom,” she said. “I get it.” She puffed out a frustrated breath. “Guess I’ll see you and dad there?”

  Her mom smiled at her in the way only a proud mother could. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  After she closed the connection, Dyte turned back to the little stuffed cat. She’d never imagined, not for a minute, that one little stuffed toy—okay, a few million little stuffed toys—could land her with a title she didn’t want.

  Movement outside her office windows caught her eye. Down by the waterfront, the Ferris wheel was turning lazily in the rare mid-afternoon sunshine.

  How many happy couples would be riding the wheel tomorrow? Hand in hand, eating chocolates her dad’s company produced or exchanging cards with his image on the cover, so in love with each other they wouldn’t care if the sun was shining or a misty rain clouded their view of the bay because they only had eyes for each other?

  Well, if February 14th was the day for lovers to ride the Ferris wheel, February 13th had to be the day the chronically single got their shot. If she was going to be their official goddess, then she should know what it felt like to ride the wheel alone. To buy herself chocolates and a single red rose—and maybe some cotton candy and popcorn—and climb inside one of those gondolas with nothing but a stuffed toy to keep her company.

  If she was destined to become the Goddess of the Chronically Single, better to own the title than whine about it. That’s what a grownup goddess would do.

  Right?

  Dyte pressed the intercom button on her phone. “Stewart,” she said when her assistant answered. “Clear my calendar for the rest of the day.”

  “Ma’am?”

  She grabbed the stuffed cat. “I’m going out.”

  4

  It seemed like half of Moretown Bay had decided to take advantage of the cloudless day by taking a walk along the waterfront. Dyte blended in just fine, but mingling was out of the question.

  She no longer dressed like a moody Goth teenager. She’d let her hair go back to its natural deep golden brown, and she wore it long and straight. Her fingernails were painted a neutral beige, she wore a minimal amount of makeup, and her clothes were appropriately business casual for the twenty-something mortal she appeared to be.

  But she wasn’t mortal, and everyone seemed to know it. Most of the men she passed on the street gave her an appreciative glance, but none of them looked at her twice. They might not know on a conscious level that she was an immortal and a goddess in the making, but she must have pinged their subconscious hard. Mortals had a long history of coming out on the short end of the stick when they dealt with the old gods and goddesses.

  That was one of the things that had made Christopher, her one and only mortal boyfriend, so special. Until her dad had messed with Christopher’s head, he hadn’t cared that she was immortal. He’d been one of the few men she’d met who hadn’t looked away.

  The few elves and other magic folk out on the street—the ones who could sense other magical beings the way mortals smelled people who wore too much perfume or aftershave—didn’t even look at her.

  She sighed and straightened her shoulders, and held her head high. So much for the wild idea she’d had that she might be able to find true love on a magically sunny afternoon.

  She made her way toward the Ferris wheel. Impressive from her office building, which was several hundred feet up one very steep hill from the waterfront, the gigantic Ferris wheel was breathtaking up close. Its white-washed metal spokes were festooned with thousands of lights, and the base was a maze white metal supports sunk deep into massive concrete moorings.

  She watched as the wheel carried its gondolas high out over the water of the bay before them returning them to the pier, going round and round in stately splendor.

  The sheer size of the thing impressed the hell out of her. Zeus could keep Mount Olympus with its high columned archways and marbled hallways. This wonder of the mortal world was right here in this city she called home.

  And what was even more impressive was the fact that no magic had gone into its construction. The Ferris wheel was totally the unspelled work of mortal men and women. Amazing.

  Of course, there was a line of people (and elves and dwarves and gnomes) waiting to take a ride. Dyte purchased a ticket, but instead of going to the end of the line, she strolled past the Ferris wheel and out to the end of the pier.

  She had been right. The air back by the entrance to the Ferris wheel had smelled of popcorn, and nearby vendors were selling cotton candy and ice cream and frozen bananas covered in chocolate and nuts. The smells had overlapped until they overwhelmed—the popcorn of her imagination smelled much better—but out here she smelled nothing but the slightly musty, fishy odor of the bay.

  Seagulls circled overhead, screeching at each other as they searched the pier for bits of food. The Ferris wheel creaked as it turned, and far out on the bay a ship’s horn sounded a mournful bleat.

  The wheel’s cheerful calliope music nearly drowned out these sounds, but Dyte wasn’t in the mood for cheerful. Tomorrow would be her last day as a plain old immortal. Goddesses had responsibilities. Not that running her own company didn’t come with its own set of responsibilities, but she liked running her company. She had absolutely no experience whatsoever in how to be a good goddess.

  “Think I can get a mentor?” she asked the stuffed cat. She’d shoved it in her carryall during her walk to the waterfront, but now she took it out so that it could gaze at the water with its blue plastic eyes. She wondered if her customers talked to their own stuffed toys.

  She scratched the toy underneath its chin. “At least we know you guys won’t make fun of us.”

  Huh.

  She’d just thought of herself as part of an “us.”

  One of the independently single who thumbed their noses at tradition.

  The willfully unattached.

  Maybe her mom had a point after all.

  “Cute cat.”

  Dyte had been so lost in her own thoughts, she hadn’t noticed she was no longer alone.

  The voice had a familiar ring to it, and she turned, half expecting to find Christopher standing next to her. If her life had been a romance novel, of course it would be Christopher standing next to her. But her life wasn’t a romance novel, and it wasn’t Christopher who’d noticed her stuffed cat.

  He wasn’t Hermes handsome, or even romance novel handsome, but the man leaning on the railing a respectful distance away from her was good looking in a rugged way. He had a strong jawline, an unruly mess of dark brown hair just long enough to brush the collar of his denim jacket, and blue eyes that twinkled with amusement. Dyte sensed no magic about him, and absolutely no touch of any god or goddess.

  And wonder of wonders, he held her gaze when she looked at him.

  “Thanks,” she said. “She’s a close, personal friend of mine.”

  “Ah,” he said. “The kind of friend you tell secrets to?”

  The corners of his mouth tipped upward in a good-humored grin. The grin made his rugged face look less rough around the edges.

  “She’ll never tell,” Dyte said.

  He held out his hand and introduced himself as Luke, and she told him her name.

  His fingers were rough with well-worn calluses. He looked to be about twenty-eight as mortals measured the years, and she felt absolutely no spark when their fingers touched.

  No love at first sight. Not even lust at first sight.

  Dyte tried not to be disappointed.

  So much for finding true love by midnight on Valentine’s Day, which was pretty much her deadline if she was going to get to the other side of the world in time for her naming ceremony on the 15th. Luke had been her best—her only—prospect so far, and the day was rapidly waning.

  “I was thinking about buying myself an ice cream cone,” he said after their hands parted. “Would you and your cat like to join me?”

  H
is expression was cautiously hopeful. She almost said no, but what the hell. She hadn’t made a new friend in a long time. Even when you were Cupid’s daughter, not everything had to be about romance.

  “Sure,” she said, forcing a grin. “I’d love to.”

  5

  They spent the rest of the day together.

  He bought them both mint chocolate chip waffle cones, and she bought two bags of popcorn, which tasted much better than it smelled. They strolled the length of the waterfront, from the pier that housed the Ferris wheel down to the Moretown Bay Aquarium and back again.

  She learned that he was a construction worker employed by one of the companies working on a new portion of the seawall north of the tourist district, and that his boss was a blustery but fair-minded dwarf who believed in working hard and drinking harder. They always started work before the sun came up and finished early enough that the boss could hit a few bars before he headed home. She told him that she owned a manufacturing company (she carefully avoided mentioning what, exactly, her company manufactured) and had decided to play hooky for the afternoon.

  She didn’t tell him that she was an immortal about to be promoted to goddess.

  “So you’re the boss,” he said. “I bet you’re a good one.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a gift.”

  He’d said it with a straight face, but then he laughed, which ruined the effect. She laughed along with him.

  By the time they made it back to the Ferris wheel, the sun had dipped below the horizon. The Ferris wheel was a blazing white monolith turning slowly against the dark water.

  “I suppose I should use my ticket,” she said. “It’s only good for today.”

  He produced a ticket of his own from the back pocket of his jeans.

  She shook her head. “Where have you been all my life?”

  “Well, for the last six months, I’ve been building a seawall.”

  The line for the Ferris wheel was practically non-existent. Luke let her get in the gondola first, presumably so she couldn’t see him tip the attendant so they’d have the gondola to themselves.

  The slow, interrupted ascent up along the back of the wheel as it took on new passengers didn’t prepare Dyte for the spectacular view of her city as the wheel carried their gondola forward out over the dark water, the wheel picking up speed now that all the passengers were on board.

  “Wow!” she said, clutching her stuffed cat tightly. She’d never put it back in her carryall, and Luke had never made fun of her for holding it during their walk.

  It didn’t escape her that Luke spent more time watching her enjoy the ride than taking in the view himself. When they reached the top of the wheel for the third time and he took her free hand in his, she wasn’t surprised.

  When the wheel slowed, their ride almost over, he leaned in close and kissed her.

  The kiss was gentle and his lips were soft and he smelled like clean air and sunshine, but she still felt no spark. It was just nice.

  With Christopher there’d always been a spark, from the very first.

  Luke held her hand until they got off the gondola, and he hailed a taxi for her, but when he asked for her number, she said no. He looked confused and disappointed, but he nodded his acceptance and told her he’d had a wonderful afternoon, and he wished her good luck with her business.

  She clutched the stuffed cat all the way home. She thought about how Luke had been the first man who’d noticed her, who’d spent time with her because of who she was since her dad had scared Christopher away, and she wondered if she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life.

  6

  Dyte called her assistant into her office first thing the next morning. “Tell me about your parents,” she said.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Are they still married?” That assumed Stewart’s parents had been married in the first place, which was a pretty big assumption where mortals were concerned. Or gods, for that matter.

  Stewart stood in front of her desk clutching his notepad like it might run away, which was probably what he wanted to do. A light sheen of sweat covered his forehead, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the next and back again.

  She was aware she was being wildly inappropriate. She’d never had a conversation with poor Stewart that was more personal than what brand of coffee he preferred. Neither, as it turned out. He had a caffeine intolerance, and limited himself to herbal teas.

  Dyte knew she could be a temperamental boss at the best of times. When she’d started Love Stinks, she’d hired Stewart away from Eros International with the promise that she would never fire him unless he did something truly egregious, like divulge company secrets to her dad. She’d also doubled his pay as soon as she could reasonably afford it, and given him regular raises ever since. None of that, however, made up for the kind of digging into his personal life she was about to do, but she needed to talk to someone. Preferably someone mortal, and Stewart was the only person she knew who fit the bill.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “They’re still married.”

  “To each other?”

  “Yes.” He swallowed hard. “Is that important?”

  “Bear with me for a moment. And relax. Nothing you say for the next ten minutes or so is going to cost you your job.”

  That didn’t appear to reassure him.

  “I just need some advice,” she said. “Okay?”

  Both his eyebrows climbed his sweaty forehead. “From me?” His voice practically squeaked on the last word.

  “Yes, from you.” She plopped her head down on her desk. “Did your parents ever tell you how they knew they were right for each other?”

  “Not really.”

  She turned her head to stare at her stuffed cat, now back in its place on her desk. The Don’t-Fall-In-Love red heart with her company’s logo seemed to mock her.

  “No great love affair?” she asked. “No love at first sight?”

  He didn’t answer, and that was so unlike him, it made her sit up and really look at him.

  Stewart was in his middle thirties, single like a lot of her employees, and an almost stereotypical nerd, right down to the thick, dark-rimmed glasses, unfashionable short-sleeved shirt that hung in baggy folds off his too-thin frame, and rumpled trousers. He was, however, a wiz at keeping her organized and her meetings running on time, and she couldn’t have asked for a better person to act as liaison with all her department heads, even if he was the most nervous mortal man she’d ever met.

  By his expression, he had something to say but wasn’t sure if he should say it.

  “Spit it out,” she told him.

  He sighed. “Real life isn’t like the movies, ma’am. Or those cards everyone gives their sweethearts on days like today. I’m pretty sure my parents love each other, but they go days without saying it.” He shrugged, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “I know they were friends for a long time before they got married. I grew up thinking that’s pretty much how love happened, you know?”

  Dyte considered that. Friendship leading to love. She supposed it could happen. That wasn’t the company line, of course, as drilled into her from a young age by her dad. Then again, her dad had a vested interest in promoting the notion of love at first sight.

  Stewart cleared his throat and glanced out the window before he apparently worked up the courage to look at her. He was practically thrumming with nervous energy. “That’s one of the reasons I left your dad’s company when you asked me to come work for you. All those things we did at Eros—nobody can live up to an ideal like Valentine’s Day. The perfect diamond, like just anyone can afford that. Or the perfect rose, or the perfect date. That’s a lot of pressure for people to live up to, you know?”

  She didn’t think she’d ever heard him say so much all at once. “But what we do here doesn’t exactly celebrate togetherness.”

  He nodded. “Sure. That’s one way to look at it. But I like to think that what we do,
the products we sell… we reassure people that Valentine’s Day isn’t such a big deal. It’s just another day. Don’t buy into the hype. If you don’t put so much pressure on yourself to make just that one day perfect…” He shrugged again. “Sometimes love needs time to happen, you know?”

  She looked at the stuffed cat. She’d always seen the heart it held as an anti-love symbol, but now she tried looking at it from Stewart’s point of view. Not anti-love, but more a sign of independence. A rejection of the need to prove how great love was on just one day of the year. A willingness to wait for the right person to come along.

  The chronically single who bought her products weren’t doomed to a life alone, and they certainly didn’t need to be pitied or made fun of for their patience. They just might be some of the bravest, strongest, and most patient people out there.

  And Zeus wanted to make her their goddess.

  Imagine that.

  She’d been angry and brokenhearted when she’d founded Love Stinks. She wasn’t brokenhearted anymore, and she really wasn’t really angry at her dad, either. If Christopher couldn’t stand up to him, he wasn’t the right man for her, no matter now much she’d loved him at the time. Her dad might not have gone about testing Christopher’s love for her in the best way possible, but he had been looking out for her.

  Maybe he wasn’t such a bad dad after all.

  Not that she’d ever tell him that.

  She smiled at Stewart, which made him blush to the roots of his thin, curly hair. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve helped more than you can imagine.”

  She gave the stuffed cat a quick pat on its head, then turned toward her computer. She had about a bazillion emails in her inbox, and back-to-back meetings starting in an hour.

  She’d get as much done as she could, then things would have to be put on hold. She had something special she had to do. A very special type of meeting she couldn’t afford to miss.

  “Stewart,” she said in her let’s-get-down-to-business voice. “Here’s what I need you to do.”