Page 60 of Okay, Cupid

“Nope,” I tell him, turning the screen off and sliding it into my pocket. I turn to find Cal heading toward Alice and Neve.

“Looking for Cal?” Huy asks me, and suddenly his voice goes very … neutral. Not like he’s annoyed or anything. It’s just very un-Huy-like.

“Oh, uh. No? I mean, maybe?”

“Maybe?” He chuckles. “He stopped by before the show started, said hello.”

“Really?”

“Mhmm.” Huy takes another bite of his cake.

I don’t know how to feel about Huy and Cal having a conversation without me being there. But Cal knows what he’s doing; it’s not like he’d say something that he’s not supposed to.

“The two of you are cute together.” Huy’s words linger in the air before I truly hear them.

I turn to him slowly, wondering if I’ve actually heard him right.

“Wait, what?”

But before he can answer, I hear a crash and the sound of Alice saying “Really?” while another person tells her “I’m so sorry, oh my God!” My eyes meet Cal’s, who is smart enough to not be directly involved in the accident. Some older-looking guy starts to apologize profusely while he offers her napkins, and Neve goes to Alice’s side, leading her through the crowd. Earlier, I planted an OUT OF ORDER sign on the women’s bathroom door and jammed it shut. Now, with any luck, Alice will want to clean her dress badly enough that she’ll go for the men’s room instead of searching around.

Which means it’s my turn.

“Oh, yikes,” Huy says, his eyes following Alice as she brushes past the crowd of people. “You think she’s okay?” For a moment, it looks like he’s going to go after her without me needing to ruin his clothes.

I don’t want to risk it, though.

“Yeah.” I take a step back, carefully watching the people around me. I’m still thinking about whether Huy thinks Cal and I are together.

Isn’t it so funny how our brains control everything we do, that we’re only alive because of what they do; they tell us to breathe, tell our hearts to pump blood, control the trillions of nerves in our bodies that make us feel the fucked-up rainbow of emotions that we’re forced to experience on a daily basis?

And yet the brain does so much without our permission, thinking thoughts that we don’t want to think, as if we aren’t really ourselves. Just puppets for this weird little organ that would have no reason to exist without us.

I hate my brain for making me feel things for Huy that I shouldn’t.

“You okay?” he asks me, his brows furrowing close together.

“Yeah, yeah … I’m fine.”

My phone dings! again.

CAL: We don’t have much time.

I don’t reply to the message.

Cal’s right, I don’t have much time.

I’m still hanging on to Huy’s words. I don’t know if I’m a believer in alternate universes. I believe in them the same way I believe in aliens. I mean, how could I not? I’m literally a magical being meant to help humans fall in love. Aliens existing out there somewhere isn’t that far-fetched. And the universe is a big place.

But if there are an endless number of universes out there, that means Huy and I had to have found each other in at least one of them. There exists this perfect universe out there where we’re both human, where Cupids don’t exist—or maybe they do and I’m just not one of them—and we still found each other.

If the theory is true, there exists one perfect universe out there where this life that I want for myself isn’t impossible. Where I’m the happiest that I could be because I’m allowed to be with Huy Trinh, and I’m allowed to love him.

I hate them. Almost as much as I hate this version of myself.

The one who can’t love him.

I don’t have time to react to the push. Suddenly, I feel a hand on my back, firm and unmoving as this lady passes behind me at the same time. And I swear, at least for a moment, that I see Cal.