Chapter 14 Felicity
Felicity
The short version is this:
I met Bryan when I was young and just getting used to being an adult.
He was a decade older, which to me meant he was sophisticated and mature, but in reality meant he was toxic and controlling.
And in the three years we dated, I let him take control of me, bit by bit, until I couldn’t even go for drinks alone with Janae without his permission.
Otherwise, he would whine and complain and send me twenty texts in a row to keep my attention occupied, never letting a single thought pass by without him being the center of it.
Then, when I’d get home, he would give me the silent treatment as he pouted and moped around the house, angry that I spent energy on anyone other than him.
He didn’t recognize that all of my energy went to him, always.
In this way, Bryan became my whole world—because he made himself my whole world. I was too young and too in love to notice.
Janae hated him, naturally. With a passion that put a strain on our friendship for a while. She was always better at seeing the truth of people than I was.
Then Bryan wasn’t a problem anymore. Because he left me.
“He broke up with you?” Cupid asks.
“Not exactly,” I say. “He just…left. He packed up all of his stuff and left one night. We’d gotten into an argument that morning because I wanted to get dinner with Janae.”
“Janae?”
“My best friend. You would have seen her that night we met at the bar.” I look at him. “She was the girl every guy couldn’t take their eyes off of.”
Cupid nods. “Yeah, I remember her,” he confirms. “But that’s not who I remember catching the eye of every guy.”
“Anyway…” I continue, letting that statement wash over me.
“We’d had a fight. He told me not to go.
I went anyway. And when I came home, he was just…
gone. I called, it went to voicemail. I texted, he never responded.
I even emailed a couple of times. Nothing.
” I bring the tea mug up to my chest and press it against my sternum, seeking warmth.
“He ghosted me,” I say. “After three years together. Poof, gone.”
“What a dick move,” Cupid says, and I agree.
Then: “So he’s the reason you’re…like this?” And at this, I genuinely laugh because what a way to ask that question.
When I finally get my breath back, I say, “Yes, unfortunately. Bryan is the reason I’m like this.”
By this point, we’ve moved from the edge of the bed to the center, propped up against the headboard. My left side and his right side touch at points—shoulders, elbows, thighs, our socked feet—as we look ahead at nothing in particular.
“I wish I could go back in time and kick his ass,” Cupid says.
I snort at this. “Oh yeah, what would you have done? Snapped your fingers and sang a song at him?”
“Wha—” he starts. “Oh, ha ha, very funny,” he says, bumping my shoulder with his. “Another Cupid looks like he’s in a musical joke. Welcome back, Love.”
“Can I ask—?” I bite my lip, considering my next words. “Why do you dress like this?”
“Would it be enough to tell you I just think it makes me look cool?”
“No, I don’t think it would be.”
He sighs, leaning his head back against the headboard, and folds his hands in his lap. “I had a bad breakup once, too, you know. Really bad. This was a long, long time ago, and it took me many years—centuries—to get over it.”
“What happened?” I ask, humiliatingly curious at this new information.
“It’s going to sound crazy,” he says, letting his head fall in my direction.
“Try me.”
“There was this girl, Psyche. The most beautiful girl I’d ever seen—” another nudge to my shoulder, “—until I saw you.” My cheeks heat. “And it made my mother jealous,” he says.
“Ew, your mom?”
“Yep, Aphrodite has quite the temper. So she recruited me to do her dirty work. She wanted me to shoot Psyche with an arrow and make her fall in love with this horrible monster thing. But I messed it up.” Cupid’s shoulders slump.
“All of it. Long story short, I fell in love with Psyche. Disobeyed my mother’s orders and tried to keep it a secret from everyone. ”
“Even Psyche?”
“Especially Psyche,” he says. “I wanted to keep her safe. But I ended up keeping her in a box, I think.” Cupid smiles sadly at me. “I wouldn’t even let her see me.”
“What happened?” I whisper.
“Her sisters got in her head. Convinced her I was some invisible monster she needed to kill. And when she tried to and discovered it was me, I just got so mad that she would betray me like that. So I…” he flutters his fingers above his lap, “flew away.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Wow,” I say. “I thought my relationship was fucked up.”
Cupid chuckles. “Yeah, those days were especially fucked up. Mortals don’t have anything on gods when it comes to fucked up shit.”
I suck in a breath. “Do you regret it?”
“Every day.” He closes his eyes, screws his face up into a scowl. “Every single day.”
Reaching over to him, I wipe a single tear from his cheek. “That still doesn’t explain the Danny Zuko costume,” I say. He chuckles.
“There’s just a vibe to those greaser guys, you know?
Like they don’t have a care in the world.
They’re just…cool. I spent centuries feeling sorry for myself and acting out.
And then, finally, I started to grow up.
Right when these guys were getting popular, actually.
” Cupid fiddles with the lapel of his jacket.
“And I thought, wow, I want to be like that—laid-back, unshakable. It’s like… emotional armor.”
“Huh. That’s very relatable.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, I wear armor, too,” I say, gesturing to my face. “My resting bitch face. It’s my way of telling guys not to fuck with me, without actually having to tell them.”
“Didn’t work on me, though,” Cupid says, giving me a slow, easy smile.
“No, it didn’t,” I say, smiling right back.
And then, without a second’s hesitation, I lean over and kiss him.