Athena's Story

Part 1: When it's over, she cries.

"He- he left me, Taz," she wailed, her dark blue eyes spilling a waterfall of tears.

"What?"

Deep down, Taz was relieved but she was definitely surprised. That low down scumbag had the nerve to dump her best friend? After all he'd done?

"Well," Athena Kourikopolis started, "I'm technically the one who 'left' but..." her voice trailed off as her emotions got the best of her and she started crying again.

Taz, her red haired best friend was already a man-hater but even she still couldn't understand why anyone would leave this delicate dark-haired beauty with the most amazing eyes and the innocence of a child. It didn't help that Athena was so upset that she wasn't making sense anymore.

"What happened Athena?" Taz insisted, her initial outrage quickly fading.

She listened as Athena wept over the details of her involuntary break from the biggest asshole in her life. It is almost always the same stupid excuses from men, she thought cynically. And it's just a pity that not all women could see that it isn't worth the grief. Love's so blind that it can't even see when it isn't loved in return. Or when it isn't even love at all.

"And then," Athena now gulped, "he said something a bit... strange."

"What did he say?"

"He said- he said I'd never get another man or be with anyone else." She looked away from her friend's increasingly incredulous expression.

"But he dumped you!"

"Well, not really," Athena corrected her friend, unconsciously defending the man in question, "but I just don't get it... why would he say something like that when he doesn't really want me?" Saying those words out loud made her feel like such a failure.

After a moment Athena looked up, with shining eyes. "Do you think he actually wants to be with me?" she asked softly, almost to herself.

No. Taz did not think so.

Athena's friend actually shivered and shrugged off images of stalkers and blood-spattered axes. All she said was, "What you need is a change of scenery. Look around and all you see is memories of Jason, Victor or Walter."

Athena winced at that brusque reference to the first two men who had broken her heart in college. She was weeks away from graduation now but that didn't mean she would be able to forget them when she went back to New York. It seemed that she was the fragile kind of lover who took everything personally.

Each time it didn't work out, she felt so deeply wounded that she doubted she'd forget the man who caused the pain. She just hoped Taz was right and that romantic disaster wouldn't follow her back to the city.

Thinking of moving back to New York made her think of her parents, wistfully.

It was days like today when she wished Daddy's money could fix everything, and that was funny because, in all honesty, she wasn't the typical spoiled girl who thought that it could. Her friends often acted like it could, but she was a bit more down to earth than that... or perhaps she was just used to her lifestyle. Her parents had never been unkind with her allowances and meeting her needs. They were never happy when she was miserable. No; all her discomfort was at the hands of handsome men who crushed her little heart the moment she handed it over.

Walter had always blamed her mistakes on her and her rich upbringing.

But he wasn't coming to New York with her. And that was what she would focus on.

Athena knew that she should forget him. The man had come into her life and turned it upside down. He had made her feel like several different things... it hadn't always been easy and it definitely hadn't always been great. It wouldn't do her any good to remember or hold onto to what they had, no matter how much she loved him.