Io works for Hera for three months before she meets Peter. Hera is young, newly tenured, and dresses nothing like the other professors that Io knows. She wears high, pin-sharp heels and doesn’t wobble, stands all day and doesn’t slouch. Her lipstick is crisp and unsmudgeable, even on days when they serve Sloppy Joes in the dining hall. Io stays late at her admin desk, long after the phones have closed, finding busywork to do on her laptop. She doesn’t like to leave before Hera does. She cherishes the extra time, the two of them alone in the department, their breathing almost synced.
It is on one of these nights that Peter arrives, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, buttons undone down to his collarbone. He pays no mind to Io, breezing past her into his wife’s office. Io hears him chuckle, low, and murmur Hera’s name. The intimacy of it makes Io shiver, miserable. There’s a pause and Io wonders if they’re kissing. She feels it like a gut punch—stupid. Of course they’re kissing. Of course they kiss. They are married. Hera is.
After a few minutes, they emerge together. Io watch them with a helpless, drowning feeling. At the door, Hera pauses and looks back. Her dusty-mauve lips curl up into a smile.
“Io,” she says. Her mouth curves around the letters of Io’s name, warm and bubbling. Io feels helpless not to learn toward it. Toward her. “Don’t stay too late.”
Io watches as her fingers curl around the place where Peter’s hand becomes his wrist. Io says, “No, I,” and cannot manage anything further, the words gumming up her throat. What she wants to say is: No, I won’t stay. I can’t stay. I want to stay. I can’t.
Hera reaches out and tucks a strand of Io’s hair behind her ear, carelessly fond. Io glances nervously at Peter. Now he is watching her. Now he sees the way the world has narrowed for her down to the place where Hera’s affection left a shivering trace on Io’s ear. She thinks perhaps that she is shaking. It must be written on her face, her devotion and her disappointment, her sudden clarity of what all her desire means. Hera must know; Hera can’t not know.
Hera turns away. They leave her there.
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