Page 6 of Okay, Cupid

Even Leo.

For the second time.

I don’t like doing this. I don’t like worming my way into the minds of other people and taking something that isn’t mine. But it’s necessary. Part of the job.

I’m back at the starting line all over again. If I’m lucky, my probation will only be extended, extra weeks of training and conditioning.

Because of the same boy.

All for a boy.

A weakness that we’re expected to exploit in humans but suppress in ourselves. Because we’re above that. At least, we’re meant to be.

I walk down to the bus stop, reaching into my pockets to pull out my headphones, pulling up Spotify and pressing play on the first Sufjan Stevens song that comes up on the front page because why not amplify the emotional torture?

The bus arrives a second later, and I stare at the open doors, wondering if I should actually get on and go home, or find another bus to carry me farther south until I reach Los Angeles or something.

But no. This is my life, and I have to deal with what I’ve done.

I’ve failed again.

Just like last time.

All over some boy.

I don’t know how to feel when I get back to the apartment and it’s totally empty.

I almost wish Leah were here, so I could go ahead and tell her that I messed up, that she was right all along and maybe I need some extra time and practice. I lock the gate behind me, the draft from the wind nearly snatching our front door out of my hands and slamming it hard. The third-floor walk-up takes the breath right out of me; when I get inside, I slump toward my bedroom and fall face-first into my pillows.

I let out the deepest, ugliest groan that I can muster. I thought I was over this, I thought I was done. Leo wasn’t the piece in a puzzle. He didn’t fit anywhere; he wasn’t meant to.

I’m supposed to be over this.

But even now it’s so easy to remember the chlorine smell that stuck to his skin after the days at the pool. The way his hair felt in my hands. The moments he’d stretch his arms into the air, giving me that glimpse of his stomach just above the waistline. A sight that drove me wild.

I roll over and stare up at the ceiling, my eyes finding the cracks that sit right above my bed because this building is so old and we’ve never bothered to do anything about them.

I’m over him. That’s what I told Leah and Richard. And I wasn’t lying; I truly thought that I’d gotten over him. That I’d managed to throw him away.

Because I am never one to pass up the chance to make a bad situation worse, I make my way to Instagram. Leah and Richard aren’t that fond of me having an account. But Cal and I and some of the other Cupid kids convinced them it was necessary. We just have to keep the accounts private.

Leo’s profile isn’t in my recent searches. Nothing is. The phone was taken away during my probation period because I wasn’t going on assignments. But his username has been committed to my memory. There are so many pictures since the last time I saw this profile, stretches of time where he’s with friends, family. A day at the beach, a picture from a flea market where he holds up a ceramic cup with fish painted on it. His family went down to Anaheim, to Disney, where he got to make a lightsaber at the Star Wars park.

There’s a gap in the pictures as I scroll back, though, a week that’s missing that I know was once there. Our magic is nothing if not thorough. Every second of our time together has been scrubbed clean, at least on his end. I still have a picture, though, in my hidden folder, the only picture that sits there. My head on his shoulders, the two of us as close as we could possibly be.

It hurts to look at it now.

It hurts so much.

I close my eyes, wanting nothing more than to open my window and throw my phone out into the backyard, where it’d soar three stories down to the hard concrete and shatter into a billion little unrepairable pieces.

But I don’t.

Because I need this thing.

I exit out, going to my text messages, where just three names stare back at me. Richard and Leah, of course. And Cal, the name at the top of my list because he’s the person who I talk to the most often.

It feels terrible to say that Cal is my friend by default, because I do genuinely like Cal. He’s smart, a great Cupid, and funny. I feel like my day is always better when we get the chance to hang out. But we only know each other because we were trained at the same time, because Richard picked both of us to take as his students. When we got older and I went to go live with Leah, Cal and I still helped each other out and practiced how to use our powers together.