The Cupid Touch

The Cupid Touch Chapter 17 - History

I wasn't going to achieve much work for the rest of the day. Joe-Moe actually offered to keep himself occupied while I worked, but the effect of all the sadness, lust, happiness, anxiety and resignation that had thundered through me was a wasted, empty feeling. 

"What do you want to do?" he asked me quietly, lying with an arm over me on the grass. "We could bike somewhere, drive somewhere, walk somewhere..."

"I don't think I have the get-up-and-go for biking," I admitted. "I'm feeling kind of nuked."

"That's good, cos I'm supposed to be taking a rest day," he said, with a grin. "So what about a movie, and some dinner, and then an early night?"

"That sounds pretty amazing," I muttered, turning on my back to look at the very deep blue overhead. "You'll have to let me pay, this time. And maybe we should... not go to that Italian again."

He laughed. "It's ok. Alfeo wasn't offended. He thought I'd said something to offend you. And Rita thought it was her fault."

"Well," I admitted, feeling heat in my face, "it sort-of was her fault."

"Really?" He sounded surprised. Not quite as emotionally-aware as I'd thought, then. Or maybe he was just being polite.

"Not her, exactly," I added. "More what she represented."

"Oh." It didn't sound like he'd had a revelation about it, so I turned onto my elbow to talk directly to him. 

"You know what I mean?"

"Not really." He gave me such a relaxed grin that it made me smile. 

"She's obviously into you in a big way," I told him, and shushed him when he tried to protest. "She is. It's not difficult to tell. And I saw her, and imagined how it would feel if you reciprocated, and I hated it. Just... hated it. And given that it's pretty inevitable, I knew I had to get out." 

"It's not inevitable," he said, giving me a steady look. "If I can control what I do, then so can you."

"I don't think it's that simple," I said, a little irritably. I wanted him to be right, but this was my particular cross to bear in life. I hated the idea that he'd just been tougher at handling his strange ability. "How do you control yours?"

"I keep my temper," he said. "I don't let myself hate. It usually involves seeing all the good things in someone, no matter what they've done, or all the human things. If it's really hard, I imagine how I'd feel if something awful happened to my brother, and I stop myself that way."

"Yeah," I said, nodding, "which is the problem. I can't not care about people. That's what I've spent my life trying to do, and it leaves you alone. I can't be in a relationship with someone without caring about them, obviously. I can't not care about you."

"So it has to be done another way," he said, shrugging. "I mean, what about working out how to make it happen for yourself?"

"I've tried," I said, trying not to be grouchy. He was trying to help me; to help us. "I've thought about it, about how much I want someone to come along and for us to just...connect like that. I mean, I was a heart-broken teenage girl like everyone else. I tried it a lot. But nothing happened."

He nodded, thinking, then said, "It happens when you come to care about someone, right? So... maybe you need to learn to love yourself a little more."

I met his gaze, nodded slowly, and then said, "You know, that's the biggest load of self-help crap I've ever heard."

He grinned. "I kept a straight face, though."

"You did. Well done. But if you really believe that, we might not be able to date."