Love in Color: Mythical Tales from Around the World, Retold(12)
She was scrubbing aggressively at the stain when Eros’s low, smooth voice swooped into her earshot with ‘What a statement. Is it a transformation of nude? A splash of brown against a white backdrop. Poetry. Subversive.’
Psy looked up to meet the gaze of the owner of the buoyant voice. Irritatingly, even at 8:45 in the morning and under the ugly fluorescent lights of the corporate lobby, the guy was still pleasing to look at it. His dark curls were immaculately dishevelled and moisturised, his bronze skin looked like he’d just come back from Mykonos, and he was dressed with urbane casualness, in a khaki shirt layered over a thin white tee that grazed the contours of his torso. There wasn’t a coffee stain in sight.
‘Great, thanks, Eros. Very cute,’ she said.
‘Thanks, and so are you. Actually, you remind me of coffee. Hot, dark, sweet, gets my heart racing—’
Psy groaned, rolled her eyes and laughed despite herself. This was their friendship: Eros flirting with Psy as some kind of exercise in rakish coquetry, because there was no danger of her thinking it was real, and Psy acting as if Eros was a creature to observe on some kind of playboy safari, taking notes, learning what to do when she encountered them in the wilderness.
‘Stop. Do girls usually fall for this? Really?’
He twitched his shoulder. ‘I mean . . . yeah. They find it charming and disarming and then it usually leads to me asking if I can replace their coffee, which they graciously accept . . .’
When she looked unimpressed, he changed tack. ‘Isn’t today promotion day?’
‘That was the plan,’ Psy huffed, before gesturing to Eros’s outfit as an idea struck her. ‘And this is what we’re gonna do to make sure that’s still the case. You’re gonna give me your khaki shirt for an emergency fit. I’m gonna change in the downstairs lobby toilet. I can’t take the risk of going upstairs and having Venus see me like this. She’s ended careers for less. Remember when that intern came in in jeggings?’
Eros was already shrugging off his shirt and exposing arms that were almost too obscene to look at at this hour of the morning. ‘She is . . . difficult, yes. It’s just a case of managing her.’
Psy forced her eyes away from his arms, grabbed his shirt from him and quickly made her way to the toilet in the corner of the lobby, with Eros following suit. ‘Maybe it’s easier for you to manage her because she’s your sister . . . But you know what? Maybe you’re right. It’s all about a positive attitude. Maybe if I dig deep enough, I’ll find that there’s something fulfilling about living my life in total servitude to a woman who once said I had a “hard-working nose”. What does that even mean, E?’
Psy was in and out the toilet in a matter of minutes. When she emerged, her coffee-stained top was squished into her tote and Eros’s shirt had been transformed into a cute tie-waist number with a few buttons tastefully undone. Their conversation continued without pause, although Eros took a moment to silently decide that he would never ask for that shirt back, despite it being a favourite, that Psy should keep that shirt forever, and that it looked better on her than it would ever look on him or on anybody else. He cleared his throat. ‘Well, I think you have a very cute nose.’
Psy levelled a cool look at Eros. ‘So, what, she’s saying that the rest of my face is so unattractive that my nose has to do a lot of the leg work in making me look half-way decent? Also, later on she told me that the magazine staff get discounts for non-surgical treatments at a certain clinic. Why would she say that?’
They made their way to the elevator together and Eros swallowed and shrugged uncomfortably. He knew exactly the kind of person his older sister was and knew that, if she hadn’t been related to him, they probably wouldn’t have been friends. Venus was strong, smart and capable, but also incredibly ruthless and self-involved, in a way that could manifest in being borderline cruel.
Psy was also strong, smart and capable, but unlike Venus, she was also well-liked and charming. She worked harder than anyone, managed her own popular fashion blog on Instagram (Psy’s Style: 20,000 followers and counting), and after two years, she was definitely due a promotion. Venus saw her potential and knew that she had the same skillset she did but without the side of vaguely murderous energy. Eros knew his sister well enough to know that she felt threatened, and that’s why she did everything in her power to suppress Psy. The only major schism in Psy and Eros’s friendship was that it was his own flesh and blood who made Psy cry in toilets and made her feel like she wasn’t good enough. He was conscious of Psy looking at him and seeing a reminder of the woman who created the chasm between her and her dreams. The thought of Psy resenting him even for a split second made him feel sick.
They entered the lift and Psy punched the button that would take them up to their floor. They were the only ones in it, a precious rarity that comprised the best part of Eros’s day. Two shots of espresso in the form of a sweet, kind, sharp-tongued, diamond-eyed girl who knew how to look at him in a way that held his senses to ransom. Now she was looking at him with some distance, not quite meeting his gaze as she took his coffee from him and took an absent-minded sip.
‘Sorry. Talking about your sister like this isn’t fair on you. You being my work bestie and the brother of the worst boss in the whole world gets confusing sometimes—’
‘I thought I was your work husband?’