“How long do I have to have my membership with Juno before he proposes?”

“Well, is he subscribed, too?”

“Lifetime with Venus.”

“Girl.”

“What?”

“You got the wife package and he’s on the new-girl-every-week program. He’s never gonna propose.”

Lana sighed. “It’s been four years. We’ve been happy! Why not lock this thing down?”

“Not everyone thinks love is lock-shaped.” Erica stirred her butterfly-pea blue mocktail and leaned back. She had canceled her subscription to Bacchus two years prior, and everyone agreed that was for the best. “Maybe you could talk him into a trial with Hymen?”

Rolling her eyes, Lana finished off her mimosa. “That’s like just saying ‘hey you should propose to me now.’”

“Would it kill you to be direct?”

The waiter was there to make sure she never saw the bottom of her glass. “No, but it might kill him.” Lana drained the new one at once. The patio was small; he’d be right back.

“Speaking of which,” Lana said, her face beginning to flush. “How’s your mom?”

Erica pushed her long dark curls up off her shoulders, letting the breeze move over the back of her neck. “Not better,” she said, looking down at the table. “It’s really just a waiting game now.”

“Are her arrangements already made? Or will you and your dad—”

“No, she handled all that years ago, during the first scare.”

“Allah?”

Smiling as she shook her head, Erica answered. “Anubis. She’s always been old school. She was born with a membership. Legacy, from her parents.”

“Must be nice to be from somewhere,” Lana said. “Nobody in L.A. is from L.A.”

“That’s what they say.”

Glass empty, Lana lifted a finger in the waiter’s direction. “Why don’t I get this?”

“You’re a sweetheart,” Erica said, and she meant it. She adjusted her short white dress before standing up. “I got next. If I go quick I can catch my meter before it runs out.”

Erica bent forward and kissed her friend lightly on the cheek. “Later.”

Lana signed the bill and put her enormous sunglasses back on. Beautiful as a blue willow plate, the day spread out around her. Warm but not hot. Breezy but no Santa Ana winds. She decided she would put the top down for the two-mile ride home.

• • • •

Darius worked from home, and Lana was smiling wide when she walked in. Not too tipsy to drive, just warm all over from the champagne. Dropping her bag on the couch, she approached his fortress of monitors, planning to push his chair back and straddle his lap until he gave up on work entirely.

Coming into view like a webpage loading in 1999, she saw inches of her boyfriend’s head appearing slowly as she approached, and each revelation made less and less sense. She blinked, thinking it was just the transition from sunlight to the aquarium darkness in which he preferred to work.

Darius’s brow was manicured; he was fanatical about it.

But this man’s caterpillars were wildly unkempt, filling in to suggest a single feature rather than a symmetrical two.

Darius had the posture of a Pilates instructor; this guy was either shorter by half a foot or slouched like a bag of laundry held together by only the tension of its container. Maybe both.

On the keyboard, Lana could see his hands. His nails were bitten and dirty, leading up to arms without a tan and without a hint of time spent in the gym.

“Excuse me,” she said, hating her own polite voice toward a stranger she’d found in her home. She tried to steel herself as he looked up, his eyes a weird shade of baby-shit green instead of Darius’ sparkling emeralds. “Who the hell are you?”

Flinching in shock, he rose a little. “Baby, are you ok?”

She took a step back. “Don’t ‘baby’ me. What are you doing here?”

Standing, it was clear this man had the beer belly that Darius had told her was his sworn enemy. He loved to drink, but fought off all signs of it in the gym and at the medi-spa.

“Lana, what’s going on? It’s me, Darius.” The stranger looked at her with genuine concern. “Did you hit your head or something?”

“You sound like Darius,” she said, still backing away.

“Come on,” he said. And stopped.

Together, they had reached the large round mirror on the wall. Even in the dim light, he could see himself clearly.

“Oh no,” he said, crumpling into himself. He put up his hands to cover his face. “Oh no no no. No, this isn’t—This can’t—”

Lana watched him, feeling the cold plunge of absolute sobriety crash through her like a brick through a plate glass window. “You are Darius,” she said, sounding uncertain but knowing.

“I am,” he said. He was fumbling with his phone, typing out his credentials with both thumbs. “There must be some mistake here. I paid. I paid for—for all of it. When I was eighteen. What the fuck do you mean, you can’t initialize?”

Hesitantly, she stepped toward him again. A half-step. She reached out, but didn’t come close to touching him.

“What is this?”

He sat heavily in his computer chair and bashed the keyboard with both hands, as if he could punish an unresponsive website with his impacts.

Lana came around to watch, incapable of turning away.

After a few angry refreshes, he pulled up the New York Times: “Adonis Subscribers Wake to Find Bodies Bricked Following Demigod Crypto Scheme Bankruptcy” read the headline.

“Oh babe,” she said, her voice hollow.

He stared up at her, shock and vulnerability making him look younger and uglier than she had ever seen him.

A push notification came through on her phone, and she looked to have an excuse to stop staring at his face.

It was Juno.

Three days, read the message from her goddess as a service. Punctuated by an emoji diamond ring.