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When she met him, he had a ring around his finger that he never took off. When she realized it was etched into his skin, ink as permanent as his existence, she asked if he was married. He laughed.
The ink said "Helen," woven into a ring by his knuckle, and he told that Helen was the love of his life. She wanted to be jealous, she wanted to feel resentful, but he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hair while he told her the story of Helen, Queen of Mycenaean Sparta, and a love so fierce that Paris fought a war to keep her.
"So many things in life are mediocre," he told her while her fingers traced the tattoo. "Helen reminds me that love should never be one of them."

She didn't know the exact moment that she fell in love with Jonah, but if there was one, that was it.

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When the new boy on her couch asked her about her tattoo, he asked her if she had traveled to Paris or studied abroad in school. Maybe it was the way he had assumed her motivation, maybe it was because the ink was so fresh it was still scabbing, or maybe it was the drugs or the booze or the alignment of the heavens that night, but for the first time, she told her story. The story of the boy with Helen wrapped around his finger, who fought it all to love her, who taught her to settle for anything but mediocrity. His tattoo was something to aspire to; hers was a memorial for what she once had, and what her war had lost.

He sat silent on the couch for several moments, his arm draped around her shoulders and awkwardly still, before he finally spoke, his words cautious and slow.
"Paris kidnapped her, you know."
She laughed, and took another sip of her beer, and leaned further into him.
"No, I'm serious. She was married to Menelaus, King of Sparta, and was kidnapped by Paris while Menelaus was at his grandfather's funeral."
She stiffened against him.
"...Okay, but, she loved him. She went with him. And he fought a war to keep her."
"And he lost. Paris was killed during the Trojan War, and Helen begged Menelaus for forgiveness. She returned to Sparta, as his wife."
He felt her jaw tense where she was leaning against his shoulder, and then she sad suddenly upright, shrugging off his arm. She leaned forward, and selected another pill from the table.
"You're just high," she told him, and her voice was thick and deep. "What a rookie. How are you feeling? Think you can still keep up?"
"I know these things, okay? I studied history in school. I better know these things."
"You're. Just. High." She said, and she turned to him, and her eyes were red and bloodshot. "Everyone gets confused their first time, so just fucking shut up and enjoy your ride, alright?"

He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't alright, because she was wrong. She was wrong and he had read the books and attended the lectures and studied the art and he know that it was a trick by Aphrodite. Paris had won Helen like a prize, but it was Menelaus whose love was fierce, it was Menelaus who fought the war. The love of her life had all the right intentions but all the wrong facts, and now she had the wrong name on her skin, the name of a coward who died alone instead of the name of a king who launched a thousand ships from his home. But she looked so broken, and she had suffered enough, and now Aphrodite was playing a new trick because he found himself leaning forward and taking her into his arms and he kissed her hair and said,
"Alright."