There's a First Time For Everything
That said, Artemis still does not expect the neighbor woman to send her son up aforementioned long driveway, but Owen is there when she opens the door, arms laden with Tupperware.
“Mom said she hadn’t seen you since the ambulance took you back down the mountain,” he offers with an awkward laugh.
Almost amused, she cocks her head to the side, eyeing the plastic containers in his hold. “She… bakes when worried?”
Owen laughs, nodding. “Like you wouldn’t believe. I think she’s worried you haven’t been eating.”
Artie gives a weak smile at that, trying to ignore how her stomach clenches with guilt. Stepping aside, she opens the door a little wider, letting him step inside. He’s instantly awed.
“Geez, how are you not sweating bullets in here?” he asks, following her to the kitchen.
Artemis shrugs, tucking a loose strand of hair out of her face. “I haven’t been feeling too well, so I just kept the fireplace going.”
Pitiful lie, she thinks. There really was no other way for her to describe how Apollo’s heat filled the house. Best not to draw attention to it, she decided, lifting the lid off of a container to inspect the contents.
“She really sent you up here with all of this?” Artemis asks. Owen nods, taking the container from her to slide it into the fridge. Before long, all of the containers are stacked neatly, and it’s just the two of them leaning against the counters.
“How’ve you been?” he asks, to break the silence if nothing else.
She’s been depressed. She’s been sleepless. Most of all, she’s been angry. Between her brother’s days and her lack of adjustment, Artie found herself wishing that she had faded out instead of burning.
She shrugs again, smiling a little. “I’ve been fine. It’s quiet all the way up here. No repeats of the… the incident, thankfully.”
The college-aged boy almost looks relieved, returning her smile. “That’s good, at least.”
The quiet falls between them again, and Owen sighs.
“You do know that she could have come up herself, don’t you?” he asks.
Artemis laughs. “I’m aware.”
“Meddling?” the former goddess fills in. “Nothing compared to my sister-in-law, I promise. I suppose she told you to try to get me to…”
Owen nods. “Yup. I told her she should really mind her own business, and all of that, but she’s a mom.”
“You can’t really say no to her, Owen. She’s not even my mother and I can’t say no.”
The young man rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “I suppose since I’m here and since she can smell lies… Would you like to go to the ice rink with me? Not, like, romantic or anything, but you look like you could use the company.”
Artemis crosses her arms in discomfort at the idea, scrunching up her nose. “Is the lonesome really that obvious?”
After a long pause, the nod that she gets is enough of a response. Thinking it over, she nods once.
“Just give me a minute to throw something socially acceptable on?” she asks.
Owen nods, following her back out to the door. “I’ll meet you out in the car.”
Artemis waits until he’s down the front steps and on his way to the car to move away from the door, heading back toward her room. The door to the room that her brother claimed is cracked, Apollo’s back to it. She can hear him mumbling again, can smell the awful scent that she attributed to most likely a Sharpie. Drawing obscure things on the walls.
Deciding to not bother trying to rouse him, she continues to her room, immediately discarding her tank top and sweats in favor of a pair of jeans and a clean t-shirt. Her lank hair gets the brush quickly run through it before it’s pulled up, and then she leaves her room, tugging a sweater on as she goes.
Her sheepskin boots are the first shoes that she finds, and since they’re easy enough to find, she pulls them on before hurrying out the door, so as not to keep Owen waiting for much longer. He doesn’t seem irritated at all however, simply starting the car and pulling out of the driveway as soon as she’s buckled into the passenger seat.
He fills the ride with conversation with how school’s been going since he last saw her, and how he doesn’t like his classes, or his degree, and he’d much rather be doing something he liked, but the profession he was going into paid well. Occasionally, he would ask her questions. She mentioned that she had a sister-in-law, did that mean she had a brother. She’d answered that easily enough, but that prompted another question. Is he your only brother? Do you have more siblings than that?
It turns into her talking about them, though not all of them and most certainly not in the finer details. One brother wrote her beautiful words, one brother taught her how to fight honorably, one sister wooed everyone who met her in one way or the next, the talents that her older sisters had in dance, comedy, science.
“There are a lot of us,” she tells him as they enter town. “My father wasn’t very… good at keeping it in his pants.”
“Did yours stick around?” he asks.
“Overbearingly so,” she sighs.
The conversation changes from there, to the place that they’re headed. Artemis has never skated herself, but she knows that Christina loves to, and so does her brother, and she’s witnessed a hockey game or two, but never actually set foot on the ice itself.
So, when Owen finally gets her onto the ice, she’s very hesitant. Human now, she’s perfectly breakable and not very excited to see the inside of a hospital again.
“Trust me, I’ll keep you up,” he promises, offering her his hands.
She eyes them warily, looking back up to his face. Probably the picture of skepticism, really.
“I’m more worried about taking you down with me,” she tells him.
Ever confident, Owen shakes his head. “I carried your dog up the stairs for you when you moved in. You underestimate my ability to keep you balanced.”
Artemis almost, almost says something about godly strength, but manages to stop herself at the last second.
“You promise you won’t let me go?” she asks.
The young man sighs at her. “Artie, I won’t let go until you ask me to, I promise.”
And with that, she takes his hands, and let him lead. A little worried, since he’s facing backwards with his hands in her, she stumbles quite a few times, but doesn’t quite fall.
True to his word, he doesn’t let go until she gets the hang of it. Not a lap after she gains her confidence on the blades does she fall.
Owen panics, skating to her as fast as he can, only to have her laugh it off and get backup on unsteady legs. Much like a newborn deer trying to walk for the first time, she stumbles along, has more falls, but eventually gets enough of a handle that she doesn't have to stay near the wall, leaving more space for the small children there.
It isn’t until she’s back, safe in the warmth of her home, that she wonders if the bruising on her hips and elbows from would be worth the time she had.
That wasn't even including the blisters.
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