This Never Happened (Olympus Drive Chronicles)

Part 6.8 - Heroes and Bastards

I wake to Juno shifting in my arms, my face still buried in her hair. Soft, warm, light falls across my face. I don't open my eyes, settling deeper into the covers and inhaling the sweet smell of her skin.

I know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking "he just slept with his half-sister, that's depraved!" and what you are failing to take into account here is all the other more depraved things I've done during the course of this story. This is absolutely not the worst thing I've done here. Also, she's my maybe-half-sister. We don't actually know if we're related or not. I could be some poor bastard who accidentally stumbled on her family.

"Hey, that's my phone, I have to get it," Juno says, stroking my cheek.

"Sorry," It's been a while since I spent the night with someone. I forgot my tendency to trap whoever I'm sleeping with in a vice hold against my chest. Neil used to claim I gave him bruises, but he was also clumsy so there's that.

"It's Dara, she's texting me plane tickets," Juno says, pulling on a t-shirt and looking at her phone.

"Oh cool when's our flight?" I ask, pulling a pillow over my head.

"Get up---we have to have breakfast," she says.

"But consider: we could remain asleep."

Yeah we get up. Then I get the joy of waking up Ian.

"Oh so it's a Leane thing?" Juno asks, as she watches me drag my nephew out of bed by one foot as he stubbornly tries to remain asleep, forty five minutes after she did the exact same thing to me.

"Oh yeah, definitely, come on, E, don't you want the hotel breakfast?"

He does not respond, instead burrowing deeper into his pillow.

I am informed we are flying to Greece (to be clear I do not speak Greek) and we all three board a plane. How do I get my minor nephew who I have dubious custody of out of the country? No, Juno didn't use her powers. Dara just showed up to provide us with fake paperwork.

I'd like to describe the flight or how long it was, but the truth is, I fell asleep immediately and woke up when Juno shook my shoulder and then poured ice down the back of my shirt. Then I did the same thing to Ian who had also apparently slept the whole time.

Thankfully, Juno speaks Greek. I do not, so my narrative here is quite boring I'm sure. It basically involved her getting us a taxi to a hotel, which was near a beach. We were intended to get on a boat right then, but our flight had been delayed. We were both secretly glad of that, I think.

We went immediately to the beach. Ian was enraptured, having not been to a coast since he was tiny. Despite the   cold water, we were all three quickly up to our waists. His revelry was quite infectious, and I quickly tossed him in, and splashed him, him climbing on my back to dump water on my head, then slipping off to go splash Juno who tossed damp sand at the both of us.

Suitably soaked and freezing, our laughter did enough to keep us warm. I knew the moments would pass, but I didn't want them to. For that instant I could pretend Ian was our son, Juno my wife. And we were happy on a typical trip to the beach. And he'd fall asleep and I'd carry him home and none of the cares pounding at the back of my head existed.

Except I didn't truly wish that, I realized. To wish for that to be true, would be to wish for my own babies never to have been born. And I did not wish that. Nor could I fully wish Meg, and Daisy, and Travis to be here as well—sure I could wish them alive, but to wish I was here with them would mean that Juno also did not exist. None of it mattered, since wishing got me nowhere. But I didn't even have a desire or a hope. For once, I would not erase these past few days, weird as they'd been. I didn't want to erase kissing her in front of that fire place. After so many years spent longing to just delete everything back to that one terrible moment, I now suddenly had something that wouldn't exist without it.