Duping Cupid (A Valentine's Day Short Story)

by Gina Ardito

  At last she spotted him, and her face broke into a beaming smile. “Mister Bass, where have you been? You never come around by us anymore.”

  He took the shopping bag from her and nearly staggered under the weight. “Good God, what have you got in here? Bricks?”

  “I’m fine, Mister Bass, thank you for asking.”

  Chastened by her sarcasm, he brushed his lips across her plump, weathered cheek. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Melendez. How are you? Happy New Year.”

  Frowning, she strode into his apartment through the open door and, after switching her tote bag from one shoulder to the other, removed her fur-lined parka. Beneath, she wore a thick gray fleece sweatshirt that proclaimed her the World’s Greatest Grandma, a white turtleneck, and a red-and-white checked apron tied around her barrel belly.

  For a moment, while he took her coat, he considered telling her to remove an additional layer, but then remembered her Cuban heritage. His heat was only set at sixty-eight degrees. The tropical Mrs. Melendez would never be comfortable at that temperature.

  “Happy New Year,” she grumbled. “Hmmph. You no answer my question about where you’ve been the last few weeks.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve been working.”

  “That’s what Miss Cupid say, too.” She looked around, her frown creasing deep furrows around her mouth. “Show me the kitchen.”

  He led her toward the stainless steel gourmet stove and double oven in his chrome and glass kitchen behind the living room area. While he placed the shopping bag on the forest green granite counter, she dropped her tote bag onto a nearby chair.

  “How is Miss Cupid?” he asked.

  “Lonely.” She began pulling items out of the shopping bag and setting them on the counter: rice, a whole chicken, mussels, shrimp, tomatoes, and two cooked lobsters. “How you think?”

  “Why would she be lonely?” He leaned across the counter, one foot hooked on the rung of the barstool on his side. “Doesn’t she have some guy staying with her?” As he waited for her answer, he feigned interest in the tomatoes she’d removed from the grocery bag, pinching the red flesh.

  She slapped away his hand. “You mean that man with the dark hair I saw with her on Christmas Eve?”

  His heart plummeted, taking all his senses over the edge of a cliff. There really was a Wulf. He stared up at the ceiling and bit his tongue, but the thought still blasted through his mind. Thanks a lot, Ava. What had possessed him to listen to her? Ava Featherstone knew as much about life—and Vivi—as he knew about rocket science.

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “That guy. What’s with him?”

  Mrs. Melendez clucked her tongue and yanked at the drawers in his cabinets. “He’s not for her.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You want to know about Miss Cupid and that man, you ask Miss Cupid. Where are your knives?”

  With a jerk of his head, he indicated the butcher block near the stove. “Over there.”

  She turned, nodded, then turned back to him, a cooked lobster clutched in one hand. “Good. Go away. Go work. I make your paella.”

  “I thought you already had it made.”

  “Bah. Paella needs to be fresh. All that fish.” She twisted her lips in a grimace of distaste. “I cook it now, you eat it for dinner. Now, out of my kitchen while I cook.”

  “Umm…this is my kitchen.”

  She said nothing, her scornful gaze communicating all.

  “But it’s your kitchen for today.” He thrust his hands in his back pockets and looked past where she began cutting up a chicken on his cutting board.

  Now what? He could log onto his laptop, handle some financials, but he wouldn’t be able to focus on debits and credits. Not with questions about Vivi racing through his head. And by the way…

  “Hey, Mrs. Melendez? Didn’t Vivi ask you to bring something else for me? A Christmas gift or something?”

  “Okay, okay.” On a heavy sigh, she put down the knife, then washed and dried her hands. Grabbing her tote bag, she fumbled inside until she pulled out a package wrapped in silver and green foil paper, the shape of a large cylinder. She grunted over the bulky size as she cradled it against her chest. “Here.”

  “She bought me a roll of paper towels?” Acid dripped from the question. “This is what couldn’t wait?”

  “I don’t know what Miss Cupid put in the box.” She passed the gift to him. “Go open it over there.” Picking up her lethal carving knife, she pointed to the leather sectional in the living room. “Get out of my kitchen.”

  Rather than argue again—and possibly lose a limb in the process—he nodded. “Right.” On a second inspection, he realized this gift was no paper towel roll. The weight alone made such a guess ridiculous. Best estimate: the package weighed a good ten pounds. The shape also baffled him. Taking the package into the living room area, he sank onto the couch, and gently shook the box.

  “Don’t shake that!” Mrs. Melendez scolded. “Miss Cupid said it’s fragile, and you should be careful with it.”

  A flush of heat warmed his cheeks at getting caught. “It didn’t move anyway,” he mumbled.

  Okay, so Vivi had him pegged. How often had she chastised him for that very habit? He loved presents, in particular, her presents. She never let him down. Guessing was part of the fun—which reminded him about a certain missing element. “Mrs. Melendez? Do I have a stocking in that bag, too?”

  “Ai, ai, ai.” Wagging a finger at him, she said, “Miss Cupid said you had to do things differently this year. Big tube present first. Then card. Stocking last.”

  He shook his head. “We never do it that way.”

  After wiping her hands on her apron, she dove back into her tote bag. Instead of the stocking he expected, she pulled out a mini tape recorder, held it up and pressed a button on the side. Vivi’s humor-filled voice drifted out of the tinny speaker. “Don’t argue, Bass. Package, card, stocking. In that order.”

  He closed his eyes and pictured her in his mind, standing there in front of him, hands planted on her hips, toe tapping with impatience. Opening his eyes, he glanced down at the still-wrapped gift in his lap. His enthusiasm dimmed. This break in tradition meant something significant; his churning gut told him so.

  “I don’t think I should open this,” he said.

  Once again, Mrs. Melendez brandished the knife. “Open it. Miss Cupid went to a lot of trouble for you.”

  He set the package on his cocktail table, pushing it far from his reach. “No.”

  “What you mean, ‘no’?”

  “That’s a goodbye gift, not a Christmas gift.”

  “Who says?”

  “No one has to say it. I know.”

  Bang! She broke the lobster’s shell with a wooden mallet. “Stop being silly. Open your present. Miss Cupid made me promise.”

  Suspicion wrapped icy tentacles around his stomach. Why? Why had Vivi made Mrs. Melendez promise to watch him open this particular gift? So she could finally write him off?

  “No.” He folded his arms over his chest and leaned into the supple leather of the couch back. “If Vivi cared, she’d have waited to see me open this in person.”

  “She wanted you to have it now.”

  “Too bad.” He didn’t care what Vivi wanted. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet.

  ****

  Bass refused to open his Christmas gift. The minute Mrs. Melendez told her how he’d stubbornly left the gift and stocking on a shelf in his living room, a part of her died. Any hope she’d harbored that he still cared about her evaporated with the news.

  His hesitancy could only mean one thing: he’d already said goodbye to her. If he didn’t open her gift, he didn’t have to reciprocate or thank her or hang onto her in any way. He could simply walk away, unfettered, free to pursue Ava Featherstone and slip a ring on that bony finger.

  Rather than brood about what she couldn’t change, or drown her sorrows in tequila and chocolate, she threw herself into her business. After keeping the office clo
sed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, Vivi had plenty of work to catch up on. Including finding a date for Julian. No small feat.

  Although Julian was difficult to please when they dated ten years ago, he’d become even more discriminating in the time since. Every available agent met with harsh critique. Too young, too curvy, too tall, too perky, too plastic, and on and on and on. For close to a month, he returned to the office sporadically to meet with some of her most popular agents. He turned down every single one.

  “I need someone like an Ava Featherstone,” he insisted in the first week of February. “Someone older, sophisticated, and worldly, not a bimbo.”

  Catching herself staring at her desk blotter, Vivi looked up at him and shot daggers from her eyes. Where were you the Monday before Thanksgiving?

  Wouldn’t that have been a blessing? Ava could’ve sunk her claws into Julian, her perfect mate in ego, arrogance, and selfishness. And she would still have Bass.

  Not that she really ever had Bass, but he’d still be with her. He would’ve opened her Christmas gift. For all she knew, he’d thrown it in the trash weeks ago.

  She thought she’d outdone herself with that gift this year. One of the stories Bass had told her about his childhood dealt with the last Christmas present he’d ever received from his father: a gold telescope that had been passed down from his father, and his father, and so on. Six months after that holiday, Bass’s dad left and his mom, in resentment, pawned the telescope then proceeded to drink away the profits.

  Over their years together, Bass had told her several details about his telescope, and she’d filed away every iota in a notebook, making it her life’s ambition to find that one perfect memory for him. Despite exhaustive online searches and hundreds of phone calls, she hadn’t been able to locate the damned scope. Then, last March, she’d hired a private detective to track down this holy grail of astronomy, and he’d found it within six months—in a pawn shop fifty miles outside of Philadelphia.

  If Bass had just done as she’d planned, if he’d opened her Christmas gift by now, he would’ve understood how much he meant to her. Or maybe he did open it, but was too in love with Ava to care.

  “I think you should be my date.”

  Vivi shook herself aware and stared at Julian, seated across her office desk from her. “I’m sorry. What?”

  “You should come with me to the partners’ dinner.”

  Her lips twisted in a smirk. This man was seriously delusional if he thought she would fall right back into his arms simply because his divorce was pending. “Umm…no.”

  “Why not? You’re the right age with a successful business, you already know a lot of the people who’ll be there. You’d be perfect.”

  Perfect. Did you hear that, Bass? Julian finally thinks I’m perfect. Naturally. Because she didn’t love Julian anymore—if she ever really did. No, she loved Bass. Cripes, what a mess. Some Cupid she turned out to be—always falling for the guy who got away.

  “Whaddya say, Vivi? You wanna go with me?” Sensing her brewing argument, he added, “Just as friends.”

  As friends. She reconsidered her hasty denial. Why not? The irony didn’t escape her. Back in November, Ava had needed a mature, successful businessman and set her sights on Bass. Now, Julian wanted the female version and chose her. Talk about rotten timing.

  Still, the idea made sense from a business standpoint. Of course, the more cynical of her former coworkers would probably view her as the Rebound Queen. After her breakup with Julian years ago, she’d shown up at this annual affair with Bass. Now, having lost Bass, she’d reappear on Julian’s arm.

  Sardonic laughter bubbled up inside her. She’d come full circle. Not that she’d fall for Julian again. This would be a one night thing. For old times’ sake. “Okay.”

  “Yes? You’ll do it?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “Why not? It might be fun.”

  He shot to his feet, his grin blinding her. “That’s great. Thanks, Vivi. February thirteenth. I’ll pick you up at your place around eight. We’ll have a blast, I promise.”

  Before he could skip out the door, she held up a hand. “Hang on, hotshot. We’re not done yet.”

  “Huh? Whaddya mean?”

  “I mean this is a business relationship, Mr. Bruno. There are terms to negotiate, contracts to sign, and my fee to agree upon.”

  “You’re going to charge me for a date?” He sank into the chair again. “I thought you and I…since we used to be a couple…you know.”

  She shook her head. “I told you on Christmas Eve. No one in my company works pro-bono. That includes me. Better pry open your wallet.”

  This was going to cost him. Big time. Poor Julian was about to do penance for Bass’s sins. And for his own years ago.

  Leaning back in her chair, she hid a victorious smile. For the first time in months, she had the upper hand with a man, and she intended to savor the experience as long as possible.

  Chapter 8

  In contrast to the unseasonable cold of December and January, the groundhog somehow missed his shadow on his special day. February’s weather wafted in with a fairly mild manner. Bass saw the warmer temperatures as fate’s way of allowing him to check on Vivi. And he had the perfect method in mind.

  Lucky for him, her office sat directly across the street from a city park. Let the reporters follow him. He was just a typical New Yorker taking advantage of a spring-like day to stroll and commune with nature.

  The walk rejuvenated him. Sure, the trees were bare, and the ground was muddy, but birds chirped, the sun brought welcome light to the dreary city, and people who strolled past smiled or nodded in greeting. The entire excursion became a renewal of spirit, a necessity after the last three months.

  Dating Ava—even in the loosest terms—had worn him down. Toss in his worry about Vivi, and Bass found himself hovering inches above a bottomless pit of despair. He hadn’t called her since New Year’s Day. He couldn’t, not with that unopened gift sitting in his apartment like a five-hundred-pound neon gorilla. His logic, flawed to the extreme, suggested that if he didn’t talk to her, if he didn’t open that gaily-wrapped tube, he still had a window of opportunity. He could finish his prison term with Ava and fight to get back into Vivi’s good graces. He just had to make it to March. Only a few weeks to go. Meanwhile, he’d circle her orbit, and maybe he’d get lucky enough to see her for a minute or two.

  Around him, several business professionals walked the tree-lined path or sat on the benches, soaking up the meager warmth of a winter sun. Bass paid them little attention, his focus riveted on Vivi’s office building. Forty-five minutes passed in the blink of an eye, with no sign of her.

  He kicked an errant pebble down the asphalt path. This was a stupid idea. What had he expected? That she’d somehow sense he was down here and walk outside at the precise time he was in the vicinity?

  As if summoned by his thoughts, a figure pushed through the glass revolving door across the street, and Bass stiffened. Nope. Not Vivi. A man.

  A familiar-looking man.

  No. It couldn’t be.

  He stared harder as the figure brushed fingers through his thick, dark hair and glanced at his reflection in a neighboring shop window.

  Yeah, it could be. And was. Julian Bruno, scum king.

  Coincidence? After all, that building housed dozens of businesses besides Cupid To Go: a neurosurgeon and a psychologist, an attorney who specialized in adoption cases, a dance studio, and a nail salon, to name a few. Maybe Bruno suffered from a brain tumor. Or a hangnail.

  Fury slammed him with the force of a cannonball. Or Julian Bruno had come to see Vivi. As a surprise? Or at her request? Had she thrown him out or welcomed him with open arms? The jaunt in the moron’s stride suggested whatever had occurred between him and Vivi went well.

  He kicked another rock, this one bigger, and he sent it farther. “Smart move, Bass,” he muttered. “Are you happy now?” He’d wanted to see Vivi. Instead, he saw more th
an he should have. Well, if nothing else, the sight of that jerk leaving Vivi’s office stirred up Bass’s courage to call her. Yanking his cell out of his pocket, he fumbled to hit the keypad and dial her office.

  Sarah answered on the first ring. “Cupid To Go.”

  “It’s Bass.” He didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Put her on. Now.”

  In true passive-aggressive mode, Vivi made him wait. Rather than cooling him off, the time lapse only increased his ire. Striding deeper into the park, away from prying eyes and pricking ears, he relived the sight of Julian Bruno exiting the building. His brain simmered. He’d probably walked half a mile in circles before Vivi finally picked up.

  “Cupid To Go. This is Vivi.”

  “Tell me I didn’t see Julian Bruno leaving your office right now,” he demanded.

  “Well, hi there, stranger,” she cooed. “Long time, no hear.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Vivi. What was he doing there?”

  “How do you know he was here?”

  “In other words, I did see him. And to answer your question, I’m in the park across the street. Are you dating him again?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but he was here on business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “None. Of. Yours.”

  He forced himself to calm down with deep inhales and exhales. Anger would get him nowhere when dealing with her. “Look, Vivi, you’re right. I just don’t want to see you get hurt again.”

  The reply was terse, each syllable like a red-hot pellet. “Too late. Have a nice life, Bass.”

  Before he could argue, she hung up. He immediately hit redial.

  Once again, Sarah picked up. “Cupid To Go.”

  “Put her on again.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Lawrence. Ms. Maxwell is unavailable. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Yeah. Tell her this isn’t over.”

  But in his heart, he knew it was.

  ****

  The Christmas gifts mocked him. Every time Bass walked into his apartment, white light, whether from the sun or his interior lamps, glinted off the silver foil. He should just shove the box into a closet, along with the stocking that leaned against it. Instead, he kept them in the open, on the middle shelf of his étagère, where they sat at eye-level, a constant reminder that he’d lost his best friend and the love of his life.