Finding Cupid

Chapter 13

​POV: Eros

Alice, Addy, and I were sitting on the floor in the living room eating Chinese takeout - after Alice had stocked up the fridge, she didn't feel much like cooking so she decided to order food - and watching season four of Bob's Burgers on Netflix. It was an awful show, but it had Alice and Addy in stitches laughing next to me, falling over each other in a failed attempt to contain their laughter. Alice was on my right, her thigh pressed up against mine - she seemed to be as unnerved by the contact as I was by the way she kept glancing over at me. The effects of the arrow were getting more and more obvious as time passed - she constantly wanted to be close to me, but I could see her struggling to resist the urge. On the walk home from the food store, she had actually grabbed my hand for a quick moment before realizing and dropping it. But at least she knew that anything she felt for me was artificial. Everything that I felt was real, and really confusing.
​"God, this show is hilarious," Alice sighed after the fourth episode in a row. I shot her a look that was meant to convey my skepticism at her admiration for such an unintelligent show but only seemed to fuel her amusement as she once again burst into laughter. "Eros! You have to appreciate the stupidity instead of criticize it!"
​"Everyone in that show has serious issues except for Bob. How does he constantly stay sane surrounded by idiots?" I pushed my hair back from my face and shook my head at her. Alice barely even registered the teasing tone in my voice and immediately started to get defensive about the show. She had downed two glasses of wine and her cheeks were flushed a deep red as she argued with me.
​"This is a quality show, Eros!" Alice argued, gently swatting at my arm. "Be nice. Just enjoy it. Besides, only one more episode until Family Guy comes on and I'm not a fan of that show so then I have to go do some work."
​Alice tugged at my arm and moved it so it was wrapped around her shoulders. Leaning into me, she sighed softly. Addy was too focused on Bob Belcher and his crazy family to notice us, so I took advantage of the situation and buried my face in her hair. She smelled like the coconut shampoo she bought while we were at the supermarket and her hair was still damp from the twenty-minute shower that she took the second we got back from the store. I gently pressed a kiss to the top of her head and she mewled like a kitten. I tugged her closer until she was on my lap.
​What are you doing, Eros? I ignored the voice in the back of my head that was nagging me to back away and, against my better judgment, cuddled closer to her. Her curls tickled my skin like feathers - I couldn't help but wish she were impossibly closer than she was.
​"Well, I'm going to call it a night. You two enjoy your couple time," Addy yawned, stretching her arms and standing up. She bopped Alice on the head and walked past us to her room.
​ Neither Alice nor I made any move to deny being a couple, but Addy's assumption hung between us, weighing down the air. I felt her tense in my arms, her body clenching up out of nerves before relaxing once again and cuddling closer into me. Soft fingers traced the veins on my arm, winding up and down my skin until she was all I could feel. She drove me crazy; her simple allure drove me insane. I was a mad man.
​"You're comfy," she murmured, snuggling closer to me and pressing her hand against my chest. "If this whole Cupid thing doesn't work out, you should be a professional teddy bear."
​"I think someone has had enough to drink," I chuckled lowly, taking the glass of wine form her hand and placing it on the coffee table beside me. "And 'this whole Cupid thing' is sort of my identity. I can't really do anything else."
​"You can always do something else, Eros. It's your choice." Alice would never understand how much I had to do. I had to 'be Cupid' because it was what I was born to be. It was my job to help people fall in love when they could not do it themselves.
​"It really isn't. My life is so different from yours, Alice. I don't get to go to college to be a doctor and graduate an artist. I was born for the purpose of shooting people with arrows and making them fall in love. If I don't fulfill that expectation, I have no other purpose in life. It is literally my identity. Just like if you were forced to move to another country and pretend to be another person, you would not feel like yourself."
​"But there's something fun in that! You can reinvent yourself," she slurred. The wine had intoxicated her and she was already too far-gone to get any work done. "That's what I did when my dad married my step-mom and we moved schools."
​"Alice, you're inebriated, I think it's time you go to bed."
​"Mmm but I have work to do! I just have to drink some coffee and take a shower or something." Her words sounded like they had been put through a meat grinder, they were so mangled. "Help me?"
​"I'll make you coffee," I offered. Alice smiled coyly, or at least as coyly as she could when her motor skills were seriously compromised, and shook her head.
​"Why don't you shower with me?" She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.
​"Are you actually even aware of what you're saying right now?"
​"I only had... thr-four glasses of wine?" Alice counted on her fingers, asking me to confirm how many drinks she had. "I'm still self-aware. I'm into you, Eros. I'm not sure if it's the arrow or not, but I genuinely don't actually care. I wanna do you," she slurred, batting her eyebrows in a way that was probably supposed to be sexy but only had me concerned that she had something in her eye. She twisted in my lap, making me widen my eyes and take in a sharp breath. Alice snuck her fingers under the hem of my shirt and tried to tug the white cotton tee shirt off my body.
​"Alice, you're so drunk right now. You're going to regret this in the morning." I grabbed hold of her wrists, trying to ignore the fact that she was incredibly attractive when she was attempting to drunkenly seduce me, and I pulled them back so that she was no longer touching me. "I think you should go to bed, alright?"
​Alice pouted, but she climbed off my lap, tugging her wrists from my grasp and backing away from me. I stood up as well, following her to make sure she got to her room without hurting herself. She had walked backwards all the way to her door when she stopped and turned to face me.
​"Eros, I'm almost positive this isn't the arrow. I'm almost positive I'm just attracted to you. So I'm just going to kiss you this once, and then I'm going to go to bed and that is going to be that." She seemed so confident, so sure of herself, that I was frozen in front of her, my hands resting on the sides of her doorframe. Alice lifted onto her toes and tentatively placed her hands on the sides of my face. I didn't realize she was nervous until she took in a shaky breath and squeezed her eyes shut, so I decided to help her out. I placed my hands gently on her waist and tilted my head down to match her height. "Okay, I'm just going to try this one thing and then we can move on."
​"Alright," I murmured. She took another quick breath, nodded to herself, and then placed her lips on mine.
​Any doubts that I had about my feelings for Alice were immediately erased - she kissed me like the world depended on it, like if our lips moved apart then we would die, and I honestly thought that I might perish if we ever broke apart. She tasted of wine and mint lip balm and I wanted to capture the flavor and remember it forever. Alice wrapped her hands around my neck and grabbed onto the curls at the back of my neck, gently yanking them in a way that had me gasp into her lips. She smiled against mine, the movement making me smile too, and I nearly melted right there. My hands twisted around Alice's waist and wrapped around her back, pulling her closer to me and eliminating any space between us. I wanted there to be no air separating us. The soft sounds of her breathing were like music, a song that I could replay over and over and never get tired. How had I ever been so adverse to this? How had I stopped myself from kissing her in the past?
​We stumbled backwards into her room until her legs touched against the back of her bed and she nipped at my lip lightly. Lost in the kiss, I gently coaxed her lips apart. She allowed me to, encouraging me by pulling me closer by my hair.
​"Whoa, I guess I'll come back later," an amused voice teased from behind us. Alice fell backwards onto the bed and I jumped away from her. "I just wanted to tell you that we got invited to a party on Friday so I'm going out tomorrow to shop for some new clothes to wear to it and I wanted to know if you needed anything. But I'll just text you about it tomorrow. Carry on."
​Dammit, I groaned, running my hands through my hair and reliving Alice's fingers sifting through the strands. Addy left the room, closing the door behind her - quiet laughter floated past the door and Alice snorted a chuckle in response. I gathered up the courage to look at her and couldn't help but feel a flicker of pride. A dazed look inhabited her eyes and her lips were swollen from making out for a few minutes.
​"That was... better than I expected," she murmured. Nodding in agreement, I moved to sit next to her on the bed. "Well, I'm going to go to work early tomorrow morning, so I think I should... um... Eros, what are you doing?"
​Forgetting how it might come across to Alice, I had pulled my shirt over my head and gotten up to tug my jeans down.
​"I'm getting ready for bed," I clarified. Alice blushed in response, pressing her lips together. I wasn't sure if her face was red from the kiss or from the wine, or the combination of both, but she looked like she was overheating. She pulled her shirt off, too, leaving her only in a tiny green bra and a pair of spandex shorts. "You're going to sleep?"
​"Mmm," she nodded. Alice climbed back on the bed and crawled under the covers. "G'night 'ros."
​"Goodnight, Alice," I whispered in response, pressing a kiss to her forehead and curling up beside her. "Sweet dreams, darling."