Chapter 10
The coven and I talked into the night, and even after two nights with very little sleep, I felt energized and ready for my next session with Cupid. For my weekend dates? Not so much.
The Reading Room meeting had been a balm for all of us. It was, technically, the first time we’d met as a coven outside of our board meetings, which were Magnolia-centric. There is a special magic in sharing the quiet parts of yourself out loud with trusted friends.
By one a.m., when we’d finally succumbed to fatigue, we’d come up with what I hoped was a solid plan to get Cupid’s arrow back on track. If he was off track on purpose, of course. Which I still wasn’t one hundred percent positive about.
When I arrived in the lobby the next morning, he was already there waiting. I guess I was going to find out soon enough.
“Morning, teach. I’m ready to roll.” He was wearing the shittiest of shit-eating grins, the smallest, tightest booty shorts in the world, and little else.
His body glistened with sweat. He looked down at his body with pretend chagrin.
“Excuse my appearance. I must look terrible. I just left the gym.”
There was no way I was taking that bait. I smiled my good morning and guided him to my office without speaking. My plan was to dive into the session fast without letting him distract me with shenanigans. I wanted to keep him a bit unsteady.
Apparently, Cecelia’s plan was to help. She placed a glass of water on the desk in front of him. Then, she draped a towel over his chair. When he set it aside to sit, she replaced it with another. They repeated this sequence at least ten times.
“I believe she wants to keep sweat off the chair,” I said, hiding my smirk while a Roman god lost a battle of wits against a sentient house. I’d lay odds on Cecelia any day. She had the best sense of humor.
When the great towel battle was over, Cupid focused his attention on me. “I guess now I’m ready to roll.”
“That’s good, Cupid. Because I’d like to go back in time a little.” I clasped my hands over my notebook, trying to look scholarly. He’d called me teach, after all. Maybe it was time he got schooled. “I’ve been doing some light reading since our last session.”
“Diving into the latest medical thriller?” He sent me a wink as he took his seat.
“Actually, no.” I returned the wink with an exaggerated flourish. “Roman mythology.”
The change in his demeanor was instant. The cockiness he wore like a shield seemed to melt away. Even his flawless skin dulled.
“Why on earth would you read that nonsense?” He attempted a nonchalant laugh that seemed to die mid-chuckle. “You know it’s pure fiction, right?”
“Perhaps it is.” I leaned back, crossing my legs and fiddling with my pen.
“But I have to confess that lately I’ve felt like I was ramming my head against a brick wall.
I’m concerned our sessions weren’t helping you to overcome the core hurdle that brought you here three months ago.
Do you remember, Cupid, what you said in our very first session? ”
“Sorry, no.” His grin was plastered on again, despite the tremble of his lips. “We say so many important things in here, you know. It gets hard to keep them all straight.”
“That’s okay,” I said in an overly chipper voice. “I keep copious notes.” I made a show of flipping through my notebook. “Aha! Here it is. Why don’t you read it?”
I rotated the pad so he could see it, gesturing for him to lean forward. He’d managed to magically adorn himself in a shirt while I’d messed with the notebook. Granted, it fit tight across his chest like a second skin, but at least I wasn’t staring at his nipples.
“Go ahead. It's good for you to see where you started.” He scanned it, moving his lips as he read. I pointed to the specific part I wanted him to see. “Read it out loud.”
“Ever since Psyche left me, my arrows won’t shoot straight. I’m worried I won’t ever be able to fulfill my purpose again. She’s right. I’ve lost sight of who I was when we first met.” He leaned back, an unnaturally serious expression on his face. “So?”
“So.” I twirled the pad back to me. “For three months, we’ve been focused on your, if you’ll pardon the expression, impotent bow.
” His wince was exactly what I’d hoped for.
With his guard down, maybe I could get past the ego and find the man.
Or … god. “But that second part is just as important. Maybe more so. And we haven’t really discussed it in a while. ”
“I’m not following,” he said. But he was also wearing sweat pants all of a sudden, so I suspected he was following at least a little bit.
“Well, when you said you’d lost sight of who you were when you first met Psyche, we talked a lot about who that man was. Do you remember that?”
“I do.” He brightened a bit, as if proud of himself for being on the same page as me. “We listed the traits I had back then that I might have lost touch with over time.”
“That’s right!” I placed a check mark in the air. “Gold star for Cupid. Since you started therapy, our goal has been to restore your sense of self, right? To help you become that better version of yourself.”
“And I have. Not just physically.” He flexed one bicep, leaning over to kiss it. Then he smiled at me. “You’ve helped me, like, become nicer again.”
“I just provide tools, Cupid. You do the work. But let’s circle back to the you-becoming-nicer part.” His smile faltered. My smile grew. “Because in the completely fictional mythology I read, I learned something interesting about you. Do you know what it was?”
“What?”
I reached into my desk and pulled out one of the books I’d been reading. It was, according to Cecelia, the original story about Cupid and Psyche, translated into English for my benefit. I figured if any of the stories had a chance of being true, it was this one.
“I learned that before you met Psyche, you weren’t a very nice god.” I dropped the book on the desk for effect. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you were a bit of a jerk.”
At Lydia’s suggestion, I’d opted for a bit of harsh talk.
She understood tough love and ego better than most, and I was willing to risk throwing him on the defensive.
We were all convinced Cupid needed to realize the version of him who messed with people’s lives no longer existed.
That he was pretending to be someone he used to be. At least, that was the hope.
Cupid inspected his fingernails, not saying anything for several minutes. The muscles across his shoulders were tense, and a vein in his neck pulsed in time with his breath. But he was still sitting there, and he hadn’t yelled at me or turned me into a frog. I was taking that as a good sign.
His tense demeanor told me my plan to catch him off guard was working. He was agitated because I wasn’t playing the game by the rules he established. Rules I wasn’t supposed to know. In a game I wasn’t supposed to be aware I was playing.
“What do you think about what I said, Cupid?” I finally asked. “Do you think there’s any truth to it?”
“I guess so.” Cupid followed his words up with a sullen pout. “Most of the time it was my mom who made me do it.”
“But you enjoyed it, didn’t you?” I dipped my head in an attempt to get him to look at me instead of his hands. “We can only blame our parents for so much, Cupid. At some point, we have to take responsibility.
“Psyche, and more importantly your love for her, changed you. It made you secure enough to embrace a more natural version of yourself. Then she left.”
After another moment of quiet, Cupid nodded his head.
“In therapy speak, I’d say the trauma of your separation triggered a protection defense. You reverted to the Cupid you were before you met her. The one who felt safe. The one who was easy to lean into, even if you didn’t necessarily like him.”
Cupid weaved his fingers together, slouching like a child being punished, though I couldn’t be sure he remembered his childhood. Or even had one. Did gods have baby gods? The more I learned the less I knew. But I didn’t want Cupid to feel like he was being punished.
“Cupid, do you believe Psyche brought out a better side of you?” I kept my tone soft, tapping the desk in a rhythmic beat, almost like a hypnosis tool. After a moment, Cupid’s head bobbed in time with my tapping.
“Psyche believed humans were stronger than gods because their lives were so short.” He met my eyes. “Do you agree?”
“To a point,” I answered. “It’s one of the reasons I don’t like the word mundane.
I don’t think there’s anything mundane about living in a world without magic.
It takes a lot of courage to really enjoy it to its fullest. Imagine making the most of every moment when, if you’re really lucky, you only get a hundred years on this wonderful planet. ”
“Yeah.” Cupid nodded at me, his smile growing. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. Mom always treated humans like playthings. She called them fragile. Like their mortality made them toys. Psyche showed me a different perspective.”
“Is that right?” I enjoyed this softer side of Cupid. There was one thing I had never questioned in three months, and it was on full display in this session. Cupid was devoted to his wife.
“She used to say, ‘Cupid, let’s live like we’re mortals.’” A soft laugh escaped him. “I was taken by her beauty from the moment I laid eyes on her. That’s why I ignored my mom’s order to poke an ugly beast with my arrow. I poked myself instead.”
“You chose to love her.” That was interesting, and not in any of the books I’d read.
“But her, you know, soul was so pure, too. Generous.” His shoulders dropped, as if a weight he’d carried for a thousand years had, finally, shifted off him. “I liked being who she thought I was.”
“Love can bring out the best in us,” I said.
“And the worst,” Cupid replied.
“Of course. There’s something so primal about human emotions.
It can be beautiful. And painful. Love, in particular, is a very powerful magic.
” I took my mythology book and slid it off the desk, hiding it from his view.
“Can you imagine having these deep, scary feelings and not being able to express them? Supernatural or not, it takes some of the shine out of our short, beautiful lives. Doesn’t it? ”
“It does,” Cupid said, his eyes beginning to well. “I gotta be honest, Doc. I miss Psyche something fierce. I kinda thought you could help me win her back.”
“I’m not a doctor, Cupid. I’m a therapist. Granted, a damn good one.” I chuckled a little. “But I’ve been very clear since the beginning that I can’t find a way to restore your relationship without your wife present. Our goal, together, was to restore the man she’d fallen in love with.”
“I know, I know.” He looked at me, raw hope in his eyes. “Have you talked her into coming to the sessions yet?”
“Let’s focus back on you for now.” I wasn’t about to admit she wasn’t even taking my calls. “One of the things you repeated to me in our first sessions was that being the man Psyche loved made you happier. Not just her. Do you remember that?”
“I guess?” Cupid’s tears had dried before they fell. His ability to hide himself from emotion was well practiced. If I didn’t get to the point soon, I might lose my chance.
“And you admitted to me that, over time, you’d let go of the good Cupid.” I used air quotes around the word good for effect. “You said you weren’t living anymore. Just existing.”
“Okay …” He was eyeing me with something like suspicion. He knew I was circling something. I took a deep breath and dove in.
“So let’s talk about this reversion to the, oh, let’s call it pre-Psyche version of you. The one who views humanity as a toy and plays with others for your own amusement. Is it making you feel happy? Or safe?”
He furrowed his brow, tilting his head like I’d asked him to make a chess move. Then his forehead smoothed, and he leaned back, propping one ankle on his opposite knee. It was such a casual gesture that I got very, very nervous. “How did you figure it out?”
Though my heart was pounding, I did my level best to keep my expression neutral. “What did I figure out, Cupid?”
Cupid snapped his fingers, shedding the clothes he’d gradually put on during our session.
He was back in his tight gold booty shorts and nothing else.
He threw back his head and laughed, long and loud.
When he stopped, he wiped pretend tears from his eyes and smiled at me like he’d just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“I underestimated you, Simone. I really did.”
“Most magical beings do, Cupid.” My pulse pounded behind my eyelids, throbbing in time with a swelling headache.
He scratched idly at his chest, peering at me like I was a specimen under a jar. A rat in a maze that had found the cheese way too fast.
“When did you figure out that my arrows are shooting just fine?”