Free Oh. My. Gods. by Tera Lynn Childs Page A

don’t want to make any enemies on the first day—Stella is already enemy enough—so I just ask, “Whose are they?”
    Troy frowns, confused, but Nicole understands.
    “Aphrodite’s.” She does not hide the disgust in her voice, rolling her eyes as she adds, “You’d think she was the patron goddess of athletics instead of love, for all they throw her name around.”
    “Athletics,” Troy explains, “fall under the patronage of Ares.”
    Looking up, I follow the direction of his gaze to a table in the center of the room. While I’m watching, the cheerleaders approach the table and fill some of the empty seats.
    One, the blondest of them all, walks up behind a boy. His back is to me, so all I can see is his black curly hair. He stands up to embrace Blondie, settling his mouth over hers and smoothing his hand over her butt.
    Holy crap!
    Next to me, Troy says, “Looks like Griffin and Adara are on-again at the moment.”
    “Who?” I ask absently.
    “Griffin Blake and Adara Spencer. They get back together every summer,” Nicole says. “Never lasts more than a week into school.”
    Griffin Blake. The name rolls through my mind like gentle thunder. He is a god—okay, bad choice of words, but even with his face hidden behind the cheerleader he is the most beautiful specimen of boyhood I have ever seen.
    After a brief fantasy about his luscious hair, I take in the rest of him, starting with his height—all six-foot-plus of him. (Wait, do they use feet and inches in Greece? Maybe I should say all two meters of him.) Tall and broad-shouldered, but with the lean, sleek athletic build of a runner. Which instantly appeals to me, of course.
    There’s something vaguely familiar about him.
    His coal black hair curls over the white collar of the navy and sky blue striped rugby shirt he wears. Lifting his head from kissing Blondie, he turns to laugh at something someone at the table says.
    It’s him! The guy from the beach.
    Those full and soft lips spread into the most beautiful, open smile I have ever seen. So much more than that half smile he had given me that morning. And I know, absolutely 100 percent know, that one day I want him to smile at me that way.
    Then I see a girl at the table—one of the lesser blondes—pointing a finger in my gawking direction. Griffin’s gaze turns on me, sees me openly staring at him, and erupts into laughter.
    Winning that smile is going to be much harder than I thought.
    “Absolutely not.”
    “What?” I turn back to Nicole to find her glaring at me.
    “Trust me,” she says with her customary bitterness. “You want nothing to do with Griffin Blake.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because Nic and Gri—” Troy begins.
    “Shut it.” She gives him a warning look and then turns back to me, her bright blue eyes steady and serious. “Because no girl should leave the Academy with a shattered soul.”
    Without another word, she drops her gaze to her food and resumes eating. I look to Troy for answers, but his attention is fully on his plate, too.
    Nicole’s warning doesn’t make any sense. Sure, he’s with the cheerleaders and the jocks—normally a formula for making a jerk— but when we met on the beach this morning he was totally nice. He even got me home in time to clean up before school.
    Nicole must be mistaken. Griffin Blake is a really nice guy.
    “Welcome to the Academy track and cross-country team tryouts,” Coach Zakinthos says. “Some of you are familiar with the process, but for new students I will explain.”
    It may be my imagination, but I think he is talking only to me. Everyone else seems bored by his little welcome speech.
    We’re sitting on the soccer field at the center of a big stone stadium that’s on the far side of the campus from Damian’s house. It looks like a mini version of the Coliseum in Rome, complete with rows and rows of stone benches. We’ve already done group stretching and some stuff to get our blood flowing, like jumping jacks and