Finding Cupid

Chapter 2

Alice:

Love is stupid. Love is just an illusion of the mind. It's a trick, a fairytale that mothers feed their daughters from the day they are born to try and spark some form of hope in them, so that they will believe in something stronger than hate. In reality, love is just another four letter word, something that they slip in to our drinks when we are too young to know the difference. I don't believe in it, I don't want to believe in it; if love is coming home every day to watch your father crying over an old dress, then I want nothing to do with it. It is a mental handicap, and I would much rather live by myself than love someone with no guarantee that they will stay with me.

"Hurry up, or I'm just going to leave you," Eros snapped, his forehead wrinkling to emphasize his irritation. I picked up the pace, jogging to keep up with him. "Seriously, don't you want to be rid of this stupid disease?"

"You think I want to be in love? Oh God no. Love is an institution for the mentally insane. But right now, I'm feeling happier than I have felt in years, and I do not want to lose that." Now that I was next to him, I could see the rigid lines of his face, the sharp, square angles of his jaw. He was too chiselled for my taste. When I did manage to make it through a date with anyone, I liked the imperfections. The too-sharp cheekbones, the scars that they did not even try to cover up because they were so perfectly okay with who they were that criticisms did not matter to them. 

But I could not pretend that the view was disappointing in any meaning of the word. He looked every bit like the God he claimed to be, every bit like the type of man that one would carve out of marble and breathe life into. 

"Look, I'm sorry I shot the damn arrow, okay? But you need to listen to me when I say that you are not going to want this. You want a love story, I can tell. You are broken, just a little bit, and you want someone just as flawed to come along and weld all the broken bits of your heart back together, to tug the strings and tie them in a pretty little bow and say, 'You're the one I want to wake up to every day for the rest of my life.'" The way he spoke, the way his velvety voice ran through my head made me want to scream. He was pretentious and he thought he knew everything about me, but he knew nothing. He was just as in the dark about this as I was.

"Jesus Christ, I thought you were supposed to be a chubby naked baby, not a full grown man in a polo shirt." I muttered. He cast me a slightly amused glance before staring straight again, pretending to be annoyed. "But really, shut up. You're really irritating. Why'd you have to shoot me with that damn arrow in the first place?"

"You're, like, bipolar or something. One second you love the way it makes you feel, the next you're practically killing me with the acidity in your voice. I don't need the attitude, I have enough to do anyway. And, I already told you, I didn't mean to shoot you so that you would fall in love with me. I meant for you to fall in love with the boy next to you!" He threw his hands up in the air and groaned. His mouth twisted down even further and I suppressed the urge to laugh at the way he fought to keep the anger out of his eyes. 

"I really don't like you," I said, stomping my feet. That was the end of the conversation. He sped up, leaving me to try and keep pace with someone who so obviously went running more than I did. I was lucky my metabolism was good with all the eating I did, because, besides dancing, I rarely did much exercise. 

It took another fifteen minutes of walking before we finally got back to his house... if you could call it that. It was more like a palace, with a wrought iron gate and an elaborate garden. There were rose bushes lining the front of the mansion and a guard standing at the door.

"How have I never noticed this before? This is crazy. I can't believe that I haven't seen this... this... castle before!" I stammered. My home was a shoddy apartment in a bad area of the city, and places like his practically made me salivate.