Free Heaven Sent by Clea Hantman Page A

adventurous, rabble-rousing god.
    “Thalia, I can’t imagine what you’re thinking. I’m sorry I didn’t express my feelings to you first, before I went to your father. I thought it was proper, and I thought, well, truth be told, I didn’t think.” He paused, taking my hands in his. Breathlessly he said, “While the fact is, I do think—I think of you all the time. Thalia, I’ve been in love with you my whole life.” His deep, dark green eyes bored into mine, but I looked away. This didn’t make any sense to me. We were friends, capital F.
    “I—I—I,” I stuttered, pulling my hands out of his and stepping back, right into a potted rhododendron. I stumbled backward, and Apollo grabbed my shoulders, pulling me upright in one powerful tug. I could feel my face turning bright red as he held on to me a moment longer than he needed to. Then he started to laugh. And I started to laugh. It wasn’t really that funny, but the laughing made a lotof the tension in the air go away. And I loved to listen to Apollo laugh.
    I finally caught my breath and straightened up a bit. Apollo looked at me expectantly, and I cleared my throat. “Apollo, you are my friend, my very favorite friend. I thought, well, I thought that was all. You just never let on that you felt more than friendship for me.”
    “Come on, Thalia. Surely you’ve felt it. Some part of you must have known.”
    “Um, no,” I said. “How? Why? I mean, what makes you think you want to marry me?”
    “Why,” Apollo replied, shaking his head in disbelief. “You are the funniest, brightest, silliest girl I know. You are beautiful and exciting, no, thrilling, and creative. These are things that you, singularly, are to me. Not one of nine Muses, but Thalia.”
    Boy, he was in love. Even on my best day I’m not thrilling. Or beautiful. Cute, maybe. I looked at Apollo, really looked at him maybe for the first time ever, and realized he was the beautiful one. You’ve never seen lashes like his. And his skin—it was milky pure with just a splunket of rosiness at the apples of his perfectly formed cheekbones. He was perfect.
    So perfect.
    Too perfect.
    And his lips. Come to think of it, his lips wereperfect, too. I couldn’t stop staring at them. But his lips weren’t the point. Not at all. “A-Apollo,” I stammered, trying to stay focused on why I’d come here in the first place, “I think…well, maybe I might…marry you.” That was all I could get out—it was hard enough deceiving my friend. I couldn’t go overboard.
    “Remember that day, Thalia, the one where we hijacked Pegasus from your sister Calliope * and we took off on his back, racing through the clouds and down into Athens?” he said softly.
    “How could I forget?” I said.
    “It was my most favorite day ever.” And as he said those seven words I thought them in my head: It was my most favorite day ever.
    “Pegasus never saw us coming,” I remembered.
    “He was so stunned and didn’t want to go, and then you sang to him, you sang ‘Souvlaki Con Grakki’ so beautifully, it was like magic, and you convinced him and that was that, and we were off. I don’t have that kind of power over him. Only you.”
    “You teased me about it that whole day—you said that my voice cracked when I sang and that I was an evil trickster….”
    “Don’t be foolish, Thalia. That was my way, my way of avoiding what was really on my mind. Love. Pure, incredible, soul-deep, fantastical, crazy love.” He was standing closer now, his lips almost touchingmine. Was he actually going to try to kiss me? I jumped back, laughing nervously.
    “I like the teasing,” I said, trying to gain control of my spinning brain. “It’s how you and I talk. I don’t like this serious Apollo.”
    And it was true—I did like the teasing and the sarcasm. I liked it all. Apollo made me feel so good when we hung out. When we were together, I didn’t feel like just one of nine Muses; I felt special and smart, and I