It’s not you, it’s me.
The phrase repeats in my head with repulsive annoyance as I follow Love through the mortal gym. She’s completely focused on making love matches, and yet here I am feeling like a hopeless, stupid cupid.
What’s worse is when Eros said it, I knew it was a lie. Part of the reason is because of me, because I’m not a great cupid. Especially not one worth doing long distance with.
I’m not upset about the breakup with Eros, not really. I’m upset about everything else. How I seem to suck as a cupid, how I’m unlucky in love, and how everything seems to be truly going to shit.
I’ve been a cupid for a few weeks now, and I have no love matches to show for it. No accolades, no romantic partner... The only bright spot is that I have the kindest cupid willing to show me the ropes. Love is one of the best people I know and has taken pity on me and graciously taken me under her perfect pink wing to help me become a better harbinger of love.
Despite this, I am failing tremendously. Worse than tremendously, if I’m being honest. I might just be the worst cupid in the history of fucking cupids.
“Juliet, you’re not going to make any love matches being depresso espresso,” Love says with an easy smile.
I don’t deserve her kindness. I was so rude to her when I started dating Eros, and I still feel hopelessly guilty over it. It wasn’t my proudest moment, and I’ve made a promise to myself to never act like that again. If anything, Love has become my role model. I want to prove to her and myself that I’m not a waste of her time.
More than anything, I want to be a good cupid. This constant feeling of failure is eating away at me, and I hate it.
“I’m sorry. I just suck at everything, Love. I can’t fly for shit. My aim is trash, and I haven’t made a single love match since I became a cupid.”
Love floats on top of a treadmill effortlessly, where a human man is panting while running. Her bright pink eyes assess me like I’m a puzzle, and I feel even more insecure. She’s so pretty, and I guess I have a lot of the same features, but I still feel less than. I’m pink all over, but I don’t have the gentle cuteness that she does.
“You need a self-esteem makeover,” she says, tapping an arrow on her chin.
I blink and her smile widens even further.
She, without a doubt, has some plan hidden in her quiver, and I don’t know if I want to know what she has in store for me.
“No, what I need is to figure out how to do my job so Cupio doesn’t fire my ass and… and what happens to cupids when they’re fired?”
“No one knows,” Love says wistfully. “You’d have to do a lot more than just be bad at shooting an arrow to get fired. You’d have to make a mortal fall in love with an inanimate object or something. Like the cupid who made that man fall in love with pool floats.” She grimaces. “The things he did to Willy the Whale were catastrophic.”
“Love,” I whine at her, and she tuts at me.
“I really hope Eros is suffering on that planet right now. I thought he did a number on me, but if revenge isn’t what will soothe your heart, then we need to do something else. It’s the whole ‘get under someone else to get over someone else kind of situation.’“
“I don’t think I want to be with anyone else, Love.”
“Why not?” she asks.
I know she’ll scold me if I say what I’m really feeling—that I can’t even figure out how to be a cupid and spread love. How the hell am I supposed to figure out my own?
“It’s not really about Eros.”
“It never is,” Love says with a smile. “I’ll spend the night in Cupidale. Me, you, Amore, and Doe can have a girls’ night in. It will be great. We can do makeovers and talk about cupid tips. It will be awesome.”
“Your reaper won’t mind?” I ask, trying not to sound jealous.
What she and Death have has been the hottest gossip in Cupidale since the big Valentine’s Day Ball. They are the ‘it’ couple in the veil right now, and he seems like he might be the domineering type.
Love barks out a laugh and shakes her head. “Death only thinks he’s in charge. I have that man wrapped around my little, pink finger,” she says while swirling her perfectly manicured finger in the air.
“All right, I’ll give it a go,” I say.
I’m not going to let my insecurity impede me from making friends or trying to figure out where I belong as a cupid. I latched on to Eros so quickly because he seemed like he knew what he was doing, and I liked being with someone so powerful. You can only hide behind someone else for so long until reality slaps you in the face.
The reality being, I don’t know who I am, what I want, or what I’m even good at. Who would have thought that dying and getting a job in the veil would feel like such an existential crisis?
“Since using the bow seems to be your biggest trouble, why don’t we work on close contact love connections,” Love suggests.
