Val

“Cupid is an asshole,” Valery said to her sister Alison at their weekly bakery excursion. “He flutters around with those pint-sized wings, cherub cheeks, and that dainty bow with those heart-shaped arrows. Everybody loves him. I hate him.”

“Mmm,” Alison said biting into her pink heart-shaped cookie. Alison had correctly anticipated that the Valentines Day themed décor of this new bakery would insight such a rant from her sister but had determined not to let any of her sister's bitterness spill into her sugary drink and snack.

“He shoots that damn thing with reckless abandon and expects us not to notice. Pairing up people who have no business being together. Making people fall in love who cannot or should not be together at all. Making a straight man fall for a gay woman or a gay woman fall for a straight woman. How often does he put old married men with younger women? Most times he shoots one person and not the other. What the hell is that about? It’s bullshit,” Valery said definitively. Her straight, black hair twisted in the air as she tossed it from one side to the other with every sentence.

“Mmm,” Alison slurped her chocolate strawberry mocha and looked into her sister’s dark brown eyes to signal she was not just pretending to listen to a rant she had heard twice already.

“How many gods of love and passion do we need anyway? Where is the god of happy healthy relationships? Why not have a god of mental health? Or couples therapy? One that teaches healthy communication and helps them grow together. Because they’re all archaic beings dreamt up before the scientific method was invented, that’s why.”

Alison looked around the bakery at the pink and red heart-shaped decorations hung from the walls and the ceiling and wondered how long they took to put up.

“You know he visited me the other day?” Valery continued.

“Who did?”

“Cupid. Flew in right through the window, the little shit. I called him that too, right to his face.”

“Oh,” Alison said, perking up. “What did he say?”

“He pointed that goddamn bow and arrow at me, and I snapped. I said, ‘Don’t point that fucking thing at me ever again.’” Valery jabbed her finger in the air like a spear being thrust into an enemy. “He just giggled like a little baby and said, ‘I’ll sneak up on you when you least suspect it.’ He left when I grabbed the fly swatter though.”

“Don’t you ever get lonely, sis?” Alison asked.

“I have you, don’t I.”

“That’s not what I mean Valery. I mean don’t you want someone to share your life with? Someone to be there with you through the triumphs and the tragedies? I have Philip now and I can’t imagine going a single day without his goofiness around me. I want that for you. I want you to be happy again Val. I know Jay hurt you but that was four years ago. Don’t you think it’s time to move on?”

“No thank you, sis. I have been there, and I have done that. Every relationship becomes a contest of gaslighting, manipulating, and scorekeeping. With both parties keeping highly detailed ledgers accounting for every mistake, everything given, and everything taken. Whatever poison Cupid’s arrows are tipped with dissolves into your bloodstream and metastasizes into resentment and bitterness. Count me out.”

The two sisters sat speechless for a moment with Ashanti playing gently in the background.

“How are things going with Philip by the way?” Valery asked.

“They’re great. Thank you for finally asking. In fact, I have some news. Philip’s work is relocating him to Europe later this year.”

“Oh. Wow. Well, that’s great. Good for him. But, what about you?”

“Yeah. We’re moving to Spain in April. Together. It’s only supposed to be for a year, so we’ll be back by next summer. That’s part of why I’m so worried about you. I’m worried about leaving you here alone.”

Valery sat up straight and with a voice that sounded like the breaks of a city bus said, “Ali, I’m so excited for you. You’re going to be living in Spain. That’s amazing.” She walked around the table and hugged her little sister. “Oh, and don’t worry about me, sis. I’ll be fine,” Valery concluded with false confidence.

…

After dropping Alison and Philip off at the airport that summer, Valery went straight to work on pouring herself, full tilt, into her own life, vowing not to spend a single minute of it watching reruns of any show she had already seen. She went hiking every day after work. Wrote poetry every night when she got home. Went camping on the weekends. Joined a book club that met up on Thursday nights. Finally finished reading Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time and only joked about needing to make up for the lost time she had spent reading it once.

There were moments throughout the year that she wished she had someone to share with. While watching the sunset in California’s golden hills, she longed for Jay's shoulder to rest her head on. They could have sat in silence, soaking in the moment together, and at the end, she would beam into his bright brown eyes before he made a well-timed joke. They would have laughed together on the way to bed and cuddled or made love or both. She could feel that longing weighing her down at times, like hauling a kettlebell in her gut.

Then there were moments when she was glad to be alone. While sweating on a hike through the sweltering heat of the Grand Canyon, the resentful voices in her head, which could spin like a Fraser Spiral, had finally run out of things to say. Slowly but surely the acid in her veins became more alkaline.

A month before her sister returned, she took a week-long camping trip to the San Juan islands. She sipped hot tea in the doorway of her tent and watched the sunset over Puget Sound. At night she fell asleep to the echoing sound of barking sea lions and waves breaking on the rocky cove.

On Valery’s final morning on the island, while fresh fog still hung in the air, she went kayaking on her own. Away from the stress and noise of life, she found herself content for the first time since Jay had left. No angst about the future, no longing for the past, no concerns about the opinions of others, or wondering if she was good enough or pretty enough. Just the rhythm of her breath and the crisp sound of her paddle gliding in and out of the metallic silver seawater.

Once she was completely isolated on the open water she paused and laid her paddle across her lap. She closed her eyes and listened to the peaceful quiet. There were no planes overhead, no crunching from pastries she was stress eating, no music in her ears, even the breeze across the water had fallen silent.

Then came a humming, not in the air but in the pit of her stomach. It was a gentle, steady hum. The hair on her arms stood at attention and a few feet to her right a massive dorsal fin, like the wing of a plane, sliced through the water’s surface into the air. Her kayak seemed suddenly fragile as it slowly sailed past her before receding to the ocean depths. Then another fin repeated the act to her left. Then another and another. A whole pod of Orca whales, she decided, had come to say good morning.

“Good morning,” Valery whispered back.

The humming in her gut spread to her shoulders, knees, even between the gaps between her fingers. It was like an elastic plaster that filled the gaps of her broken heart and pulled it back together.

…

When Valery returned home, she dropped her keys on the counter, plopped herself onto the couch, kicked her feet up onto the coffee table, spread her arms wide across the back of the couch, gently closed her eyes, and unleashed a deep, happy sigh. The kind of sigh you let go of when you know that everything is going just fine.

“I told you I would get you when you least expected it,” a bratty, childish voice said.

She opened her eyes and saw Cupid bobbing above her like a butterfly.

“Mmm. You again,” Valery moaned. “What do you mean you little imp? I haven’t fallen in love with anyone. I’ve gone a whole year with only me in my life and I couldn’t be happier. Any arrows you shot at me missed and I’d like to keep it that way, so buzz off you little insect.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Pretty sure.”

“Hmm,” Cupid said as he batted his eyes and arrogantly tilted his chin to the sky. “Why are you so against being in love anyway? Don’t you remember what it was like? The excitement, the joy, the sex. When every beautiful moment was made perfect because you had someone to share it with. Be honest. Don’t you miss it? Even a little bit?”

“Miss it?” Valery shot up from the couch. “Was it nice having someone to share some sweet moments with? Sure. Was it worth the hurt and anguish that came with it? Fuck. No.” She walked toward him, backing him down with her finger pointed at him like a knife she would thrust into his tiny heart. “Loving Jay wasn’t just something that I once did with my life. It was a part of who I was. It was my favorite part of who I was. I was good at it, and I liked doing it. Everything I had to give; I gave. Everything I had to share; I shared.” Her face turned red, and her throat strained until her voice cracked. Tears pooled in her eyes like morning dew.

“After his accident, I was the one who took care of him. I was in college for Christ’s sake. Girls my age were in the club getting drunk, hooking up with strangers. Not me. I was there for his physical therapy. I helped him walk again. I was in that hospital every single day, same as him. Except I didn’t have to be there. I chose to be there. I did it happily, too. I never complained or held it against him, and I would do it all over again because loving him was the best thing I've done with my life,” Valery yelled uninhibited. All the resentment and bitterness which had dwelt dormant for the last year, like a hibernating bear, was now awake, feral, and famished. She had Cupid cornered and towered over him. He cowered beneath her, holding his hand aloft, he hoped for mercy.

“And after all that I did for him, how does he repay me? At my lowest point was he there for me, caring for me, consoling me at my mom’s funeral? No, of course not. He’s off at some club, getting drunk and hooking up with strangers. Didn’t even have the courage to tell me himself. His coworker told me on Facebook. And it’s all your fault. You’re the one who controls it all, don’t you? Love, lust, passion? Why did you make him cheat on me when I needed him the most? How could you?” Finally, the dam broke. Tears flooded her face. She sobbed and crumpled to the floor beside Cupid.

He floated up and tenderly patted her on the shoulder with his chubby, mouse sized hand.

“Oh, Valery. I’m sorry,” he said innocently. “I can’t help myself. When I see a chance to make love happen, I take it. Whether it’s a one-night fling or a lifelong love. It’s what I do. I’m in love with love. And I particularly love the way you love. With nothing held back. It’s fearless. You charge into the battle of love with no armor, no weapons. Just you, exactly as you are. It is brave and it is beautiful. I wanted you to give the same quality of love to yourself that you once gave to someone else. I didn’t make you fall for someone else; I made you fall in love with you. With your own life.”

She looked up at him, mascara streaked and frowning.

“Just so you know,” Cupid continued. “I can’t force anyone to fall in love. I can only give love to people who are ready for it. Who want it. That’s why you haven’t fallen for someone else. Jay cheated because he wanted to. It’s not because you did anything wrong. He was just a jerk.”

Cupid grabbed his bow and floated toward the window. “When you’re ready again, or, if you’re ever ready again, I’ll be there Val.” Then Cupid cooed like an infant and darted through the window like a hummingbird.

…

“Wow,” Alison said with genuine surprise when the two sisters met at another bakery to recount their year apart. “That’s amazing. I’m impressed.” The last thing Alison expected was to have her year-long trip abroad one-upped by her heartbroken, reclusive sister.

“And,” Valery added with extra excitement. “I didn’t go on a single date.”

The pair laughed.

“Congratulations,” Alison managed through the laughter.

“But,” Valery added seriously, “I am looking again.”

“Oh,” Alison said like a dear that had heard a twig snap. “Well, you know, one of Phil's friends from Spain is staying with us for a little while.”

They raised their eyebrows mischievously, slurped their coffee, and laughed again.