I Regret…

The café smelled like roasted almonds and honey, and the late afternoon sun cut through its broad windows like a golden blade. In the back corner, away from mortal ears and eyes, sat two women who didn’t quite belong in any age but had learned to wear whatever century they walked through like a silk scarf.

Aphrodite stirred her cappuccino with a lazy finger, watching the foam swirl, her long lashes lowered. Across from her, Athena sat upright, all crisp lines and calm precision, wearing a dove-grey pantsuit, a small notebook resting beside her hand. She did not drink her tea but let it steam untouched.

They had been meeting like this for a few decades now. Aphrodite called them “sessions.” Athena never called them anything at all.

Aphrodite exhaled heavily. “You’ll be pleased to know,” she began, her voice low and thick as honey, “that I haven’t thrown myself at any poets this century. Not even that darling one from Buenos Aires who writes like fire and looks like a young Achilles.”

“That is progress,” Athena replied dryly, though the faintest curve of a smile betrayed her amusement.

Aphrodite looked up at her then, catching her gaze, her own eyes a troubled sea. “But I can’t stop thinking about him,” she said.

Athena arched an eyebrow, waiting.

“You know who I mean,” Aphrodite said. “Hephaestus.”

At that name, the café seemed to quiet around them, though of course it didn’t. Only Aphrodite felt it — the weight of it, the old story, still clanging like hammer on anvil after all these millennia.

Athena did not flinch. “And what is it you think about?”

Aphrodite laughed softly. It wasn’t a happy laugh. She set her coffee down and leaned back, crossing her legs, her silk dress whispering against itself.

“I regret…” she began, and stopped, almost startled to hear herself say it out loud.

Athena only nodded.

Aphrodite stared at the foam dissolving in her cup. “I regret betraying him. Not just because it hurt him — which it did — but because… he was so good. Too good. I don’t think I understood it then. I don’t think I could.”

Athena’s voice was soft but steady. “It sounds like you’re beginning to.”

Aphrodite shook her head, curls bouncing. “I’m not sure that’s a kindness. To see it now. When it’s long too late.”

She looked out the window, watching a young couple on the sidewalk kiss in the golden light. How easy it came to them. How messy it was underneath.

“Hephaestus,” she said, tasting the name. “I thought of him as a cage back then. A smith’s workshop full of smoke and iron and things that clanked and burned. And I was… well, I was Aphrodite. Born of foam and air, too light to carry such weight. That’s what I told myself.”

“You were young,” Athena observed.

“I was never young,” Aphrodite said bitterly. “I just acted like it.”

Athena did not argue.

Aphrodite leaned her cheek on her palm, gazing at nothing. “He was kind to me. You know that? All the silly stories — that he forced me to marry him, that he tricked me — they’re not quite right. Yes, there was… persuasion. But he never touched me without gentleness. He never spoke a word to shame me, even when I deserved it.”

Her voice grew quieter. “He used to make me things.”

Athena’s pen scratched faintly in her notebook. “What kind of things?”

Aphrodite smiled faintly. “Jewelry, of course. Chains fine as spider silk, pendants of gold that shimmered like sunlight. But also things no one else knew about. A mirror that never lied — I hated it but I kept it. A comb shaped like a crescent moon. A little bird that sang only to me, made of brass and rubies. Gifts I didn’t understand then.”

She fell silent for a moment, lost in memory. “He had clever hands. They smelled of fire and metal and something earthy. Sometimes he would just hold my hand while he worked with the other. I hated how that made me feel — small. Tethered. And yet…”

Athena finished the sentence for her. “You miss it.”

Aphrodite pressed her lips together, but the answer was in her eyes.

Athena leaned forward slightly. “You’ve always spoken of your affairs — Ares, Adonis, the mortal boys — as if they were inevitable. Even justified. Why is this different?”

Aphrodite sighed, sitting back. “Because he deserved better. He wasn’t Ares. Ares is like me — chaos and heat and no thought for consequence. But Hephaestus… he saw things clearly. He knew me. He saw what I was and loved me anyway.”

She swallowed. “And I threw it away.”

“Why?” Athena asked gently.

Aphrodite met her gaze, eyes bright. “Because he frightened me.”

That surprised even Athena.

Aphrodite gave a small, sad smile. “He frightened me because he loved me the way mortals pray to me. With all of himself. And I couldn’t hold that. It was too heavy. So I ran.”

“To Ares,” Athena said.

“To anyone who wasn’t him,” Aphrodite corrected softly.

For a while they both sat quiet, listening to the muted hum of conversation and clinking china. A mortal couple at the next table laughed too loud. Outside, someone strummed a guitar.

When Aphrodite spoke again, her voice was low. “You know what he said to me? After the… net?”

The memory came back sharp — Hephaestus dropping the chain mesh over her and Ares mid-tryst, the laughter of Olympus ringing in her ears, her cheeks burning with shame and fury. But that wasn’t what haunted her.

Afterward, when the others had dispersed, Hephaestus stood over her and simply said:

“You don’t even see yourself, do you?”

Aphrodite closed her eyes now, recalling it. “He wasn’t angry. That’s what hurt most. He just looked… tired. Like I’d broken something he didn’t have the tools to fix.”

Athena watched her steadily, her hands folded.

“I thought he’d shout,” Aphrodite said. “Or throw me out. Or worse. But he just let me go.”

“Wasn’t that what you wanted?” Athena asked.

Aphrodite laughed bitterly. “At the time. Gods, I was such a fool.”

“I didn’t go back,” she continued. “Not really. Oh, I visited his forge sometimes, if only to torment him. To see if he still cared. But he never touched me again.”

She swallowed, her throat tight. “And I think… I think I miss the way he did touch me. Like I was real.”

Athena’s voice was very soft now. “And you regret?”

Aphrodite’s hands curled around her cup. “I regret cheating on him,” she whispered. “I regret mocking his love. I regret not being what he needed. And I regret that I didn’t even try.”

Tears shimmered at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back before they could fall. She was still Aphrodite, after all.

Athena sat back, giving her a moment. Then she asked, “Do you believe you were not a match? Or did you simply refuse to be?”

That question sat between them for a long time.

Aphrodite finally answered. “Both.”

They lingered in silence after that. Aphrodite dabbed at her eyes, composing herself. The mortal couple next to them left, leaving behind the faint scent of perfume and laughter.

“I wonder if he ever hated me,” she said quietly.

Athena shook her head. “I don’t think he could.”

Aphrodite smiled faintly at that. “That’s what makes it worse.”

When they rose to leave, the sun had nearly set, painting the street in amber and violet. Aphrodite adjusted her shawl, her golden hair catching the last light.

Before they parted, Athena touched her arm, surprising her.

“You are capable of more than you believe,” Athena said.

Aphrodite met her gaze and, for the first time in centuries, let herself hope it might be true.

That night, she visited the forge.

It wasn’t Olympus anymore — Olympus had long since gone quiet. But Hephaestus’s forge still burned somewhere, in some corner of the world mortals couldn’t find.

She stood at the threshold, watching the glow of the coals, listening to the rhythmic strike of hammer on metal.

He was there, of course. As she knew he would be. Bent over his work, hair streaked with ash, arms corded with muscle, the scent of fire and earth clinging to him.

He didn’t look up at first.

She took a breath. “Hello, Hephaestus.”

The hammer stopped mid-swing. He looked at her then, his eyes sharp and unreadable.

“Aphrodite,” he said simply.

She stepped closer, her hands clasped before her. “I… I came to say—”

But her voice faltered.

He waited.

Finally she forced it out, quiet but clear: “I regret what I did to you.”

His gaze softened, just slightly. He set the hammer down and straightened.

“You always were good at entrances,” he murmured.

She almost smiled through the ache in her chest.

“I don’t expect forgiveness,” she said.

“Good,” he replied, though his tone wasn’t cruel.

They stood there for a long moment, the air thick with heat and memory.

Then he turned back to his work. “I never hated you,” he said over his shoulder.

Her breath caught.

“I just stopped expecting anything,” he added.

She nodded, though he couldn’t see it.

“Still,” she said softly, “I’m sorry.”

This time, though, he did look at her — really looked at her — and nodded once, as if to say he’d heard.

And maybe, for now, that was enough.

When she left the forge, the moon was high and silver, and for the first time in millennia, Aphrodite felt just a little lighter.

Epilogue: The Next Session

The following week, Athena was already waiting when Aphrodite arrived at the café.

Without preamble, Aphrodite slid into her chair and said, “I did it.”

Athena raised an eyebrow. “Did what?”

“I told him,” Aphrodite said. “That I regret it. All of it.”

Athena’s mouth quirked faintly upward. “And?”

Aphrodite exhaled and smiled — small, but real. “He heard me.”

“That,” Athena said, “is a start.”

They sat in companionable silence then, and outside the window, the first blossoms of spring were just beginning to bloom.