Who Needs Cupid?

by Debra Salonen, Molly O’Keefe

  She bit her lip.

  God, I’m really, really sorry. And I promise to save up my allowance and give it to Elle as soon as I have enough. And I won’t complain about going to church, and I’ll even be nice to Joe when he’s being gross. I’ll do the dishes and won’t walk into the bathroom when the door is shut.

  She looked over her shoulder to make sure Dad wasn’t watching, then lifted the hem of her pink skirt and slid the card into the waistband of her jeans.

  “Excuse me?” a voice behind her asked, and Penny spun around to find Elle.

  Oh, no. Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no.

  She was caught. And she was caught by Elle. Tears burned her eyes and her stomach cramped.

  “What are you doing, Penny?” Elle touched her shoulder and Penny just wanted to die.

  “Stealing,” she whispered and the tears slid down her cheeks.

  “I see that, but why?”

  “I wanted to give this to my dad.” She handed the card to Elle.

  “That’s a strange valentine to give your dad.” Elle’s eyes were so nice and understanding, Penny cried harder and the truth flew out of her mouth before she could think of something better to say.

  “I was going to sign Becca…Ms. Potter’s name.”

  Elle’s mouth dropped open.

  “Don’t take me to jail,” Penny whispered. “I won’t ever do it again.”

  “Oh, you sweet little genius, I won’t take you to jail.” Elle crouched down and wrapped Penny in a big hug. Penny wiped her eyes on Elle’s shoulder. She smelled like roses and something spicy that made Penny’s nose tingle. “I’m going to help you.”

  “Help me steal the card?” Penny asked.

  “No, I’m going to help you play Cupid.” Elle smiled and hugged her close.

  Adults are so weird, Penny thought.

  REBECCA SHUT THE DOOR to the storeroom behind her and, with only the foam cups and bowls as witness, did an ecstatic, out-of-control happy dance. She shook her butt and screamed into the stack of aprons Elle kept in the milk crates.

  She didn’t even care when Lucky walked in during the middle of her wild woman routine.

  “What is going on? I came in to talk to you about the church and saw you duck in here like you were on fire.”

  Rebecca wrapped her arms around Lucky’s neck and forced her to do some happy dancing with her.

  “I think I am going to do an art program for at-risk kids.” Rebecca gave the lesser news first, because the big news, the heat in Will’s eyes, his stammer and long look, his touch on her arm, those things were too precious. She couldn’t just say, I think maybe he might like me, too.

  “That’s a fantastic idea!” Lucky said.

  “I know.” Rebecca shivered again and Lucky laughed hard in her ear. “I know. It’s all so perfect.”

  “What else has gotten into you?” Lucky managed to get Rebecca’s arms from around her neck and hold her out at arm’s length.

  Rebecca put her hand over her mouth, keeping the wonderful news to herself for just one minute longer. But finally she burst. “Will called me pretty. He just said it. He tried to pretend he was talking about something else, but…” She closed her eyes. “He kept blushing and he like…” she shook her head, “looked at me and stopped talking for a second and then sort of twitched and shoved half his muffin in his mouth.”

  “Really?” Lucky asked. “So…”

  “I think I’m going to ask him out. I mean for a drink or something. Right? That’s what I should do? Or should he do it? Who does that?” She swung right back into doubt. “Oh, I should forget it. Right? He’s probably just sleepless or something… He has heartburn. Or…”

  “Stop it.” Lucky shook her. “Stop it, just stop it. If you got a vibe from him then of course you ask him out.”

  “But what if the vibe was wrong—”

  Lucky started to laugh, and Rebecca realized how she sounded. “Okay, you’re right. I’m an adult. I’m…” She shrugged and laughed, feeling like a kid before her first bike ride sans training wheels. “I’m going to ask him out.”

  “Yes!” Lucky hissed. “Good for you.”

  “You know the last time I asked a guy out—”

  “I know, I know. Eric Northfield in the fifth grade.” Lucky brushed back Rebecca’s hair and started to straighten the red T-shirt she wore. “And he told you he liked your best friend. Heartbreaking, but seriously, get over that.”

  “Right.” Rebecca took one last bit of strength from the adoration in her friend’s eyes. “Off I go.”

  Lucky pulled open the door to the storeroom and there in the alcove in front of her precious Valentine’s Day cards stood Will.

  Due to sudden paralysis Lucky had to give her a shove, and she stumbled out next to him. He looked up from the two cards he held.

  Your Kiss Heals Me and Baby, You Move Me with the picture of a man carrying a woman on the palm of his hands.

  He’s getting me a valentine. He doesn’t realize they’re all for him. That he’s the Love God, that his kiss…

  “I don’t understand how people can believe in this,” he said.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “This Valentine’s Day stuff.” The sadness was back in his eyes, but her own sudden pain made her immune to his.

  “You don’t?” she asked, her mouth sticky. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.

  He put down the cards. “Romance is for people still foolish enough to believe in true love. Love is work.” He shook his head. “And most of the time it doesn’t work at all.” He touched the corner of You Are My Best Day.

  She was unable to move or laugh or say anything.

  “Think about what I said.” He turned to her. “About the class for kids from broken homes.”

  “I will,” she whispered with a weak smile and then took two steps backward and ducked into the storeroom.

  Stupid. She collapsed onto the stacked milk crates and thunked her head sideways against the wall. So stupid.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  January 31—Wednesday

  “YOU’RE JOKING about these, right?” Lucky asked, looking up from the cards Rebecca had given her. It was Wednesday and Elle and Lucky had called an emergency shortbread night on account of “everyone’s crappy mood.”

  They’d skipped the tea and gone straight to wine.

  “Who’s joking?” Rebecca asked around a mouthful of shortbread.

  “Well…” Elle set her stack down on her knee. “Clearly we’re having some Valentine’s Day issues.”

  “No issues.” Rebecca poured herself some more wine and set the bottle back on the windowsill behind her. Snow gathered in quiet heaps against the glass. The winter storm all the weathermen were talking about was on its way. “I just want to reach out to a new audience.”

  Lucky howled and red wine sloshed on to her black sweater and all over the cards.

  “Hey,” Rebecca protested. “Just because you don’t like them…”

  “Becca!” Lucky held up one of the cards, now with a big burgundy stain on the pink paper and read it. “‘Sorry to hear about your broken heart. Get well soon.’” She set that down on her lap and read the second one. “‘My cats and I wish you a flealess Valentine’s Day and a quick, painless death.’ That just screams happily ever after.”

  “The older—”

  “I like this one,” Elle chimed in, holding up the card with a trail of broken hearts across the front. “‘Careful, it’s spreading.’ Very clever.”

  “We can’t sell these,” Lucky said.

  “I can’t even read them, they’re so depressing.”

  Rebecca drank some more wine and studied the red tassels of her favorite blanket. She didn’t know what to say. They were right. Of course they were. Those cards were awful, but it was all she had inside of her. Every time she sat down with that red card stock in front of her the only thing she could see were the hollow depths of Will’s eyes. He’d never feel for her what she felt for him, and it ha
d taken those moments, those stupid moments when he had proved it, to highlight the fact that her feelings weren’t just a crush.

  “We must be the saddest trio in Fenelon Falls tonight,” Rebecca sighed. She hadn’t been locked up in her own grief so much not to see what was happening to her friends. Elle was fighting with Jane and her daughter was on the other side of the country and something was going on with Max, but she didn’t seem too happy about it. And Lucky was losing Josh to a bigger church in the city. Rachel Conner, the little girl with cancer, was back in the hospital for testing, and Lucky was right in the middle of all of it. As usual.

  It seemed this Valentine’s Day was bound to be the worst on record. “Let’s go back to those Cupid assassination plans we were talking about.”

  “Hear, hear,” Elle agreed, raising her glass in a mock toast. “I’ve been thinking of hiring a merc…”

  “I for one am tired of this.” Lucky sat up. “From now on…no more whining. Not about men. Not about our families. No more bitch sessions.”

  “But I don’t have anything else to talk about,” Rebecca groused. And that depressed her further. She finished her wine and set the glass by the chair. More booze was a bad idea. She sighed and looked up at the ceiling, as if answers were there.

  Cheer up.

  Get over Will.

  Tell your mother you don’t want to be an accountant.

  It’s not like the answers were secret. She knew them. She knew them by heart. She just lacked the courage to implement them.

  She and Will had more in common than she thought.

  “Of course you do!” Lucky plunked her fist down on the arm of the rocking chair.

  “No, I don’t. My mother gave me four more clients and I didn’t fight her. Today I prayed for snow so I could cancel class tomorrow—just so I wouldn’t have to see him again.” She looked at her two friends. “See, I’m totally pathetic.”

  “Well.” Lucky shook her head. “Pathetic or not, it’s two weeks to Valentine’s Day. I need cards for my shop. Elle needs cards for her shop. So in the immortal words of Cher—snap out of it!”

  Rebecca smiled—her first real smile all night. “I guess I’m lucky you’re not slapping me.”

  “Trust me,” Lucky’s eyes twinkled. “It’s been tempting. Count yourself fortunate that I am a woman of restraint, and I love you.”

  Rebecca reached out to grab her friend’s hand. “I love you, too. And your violent tendencies. Let’s talk about something cheerful.”

  “What about you, Elle?”

  “Well.” Elle smiled and lifted her eyebrows. “The Cup is doing better than ever. The dateathon is going gang-busters.”

  “You mean your Web site is going gang-busters.” Lucky winked at Rebecca. “I’ve heard how well you’re doing in the dateathon.”

  Elle blushed but waved her hand. “So far, it’s been nothing but weirdos and kids. I think I’m sending out some kind of cosmic signal that’s keeping the good guys away.”

  “Good guys like Max?”

  Lucky, dark eyes dazzling, grilled Elle mercilessly about the finer points of her love life and Elle turned the table on Lucky. Soon, despite their previous bad moods, all three of them were laughing again.

  The room was filled with the kind of love Rebecca could take for granted. These women buoyed her in all her worst moments. They kept her laughing. They kept her sane.

  Suddenly, from the corners of Rebecca’s mind—the place where lately only images of hairy legs and long empty nights had been found—a new kind of valentine emerged. Something affirming. Something different.

  Rebecca threw off the blanket. “Toss those cards. I’ll get you some new ones in a few days.”

  She said hasty goodbyes to her startled friends and headed, not to her apartment, but upstairs to her studio. She was tired of being a victim of Valentine’s Day. Tired of being a victim to feelings she couldn’t control, a mother who didn’t listen, pining after a man who either didn’t like her, or was too scared to take a chance.

  Victim no more.

  It was time for Cupid to grow up.

  February 1—Thursday

  REBECCA STOOD AT HER DESK and waved goodbye to Penny, who kept turning around in the doorway and looking at her with a perplexed expression. Maybe the little girl saw through her big fake smile and overcheery voice. Thank God her aunt Elaine had picked her up. If it had been Will standing there with his tousled hair and cold heart, she might have just exploded under the pressure of all her fake cheer.

  “See you tomorrow!” she called, and Penny nodded and finally was gone.

  Rebecca blew out a breath and collapsed back in her chair. Penny had been eyeing her all afternoon. Maybe it was Rebecca’s overactive imagination, but the girl seemed like some kind of emotional Sherlock Holmes.

  Her brainstorm last night for her new line of Valentines had manifested itself into about ten cards. She wanted to finish twenty more, so that Lucky and Elle each got plenty.

  Hopefully her friends would like the results.

  She’d even signed them, which made her feel a little like she was taking long, slow steps toward the edge of a cliff. She couldn’t go back after this. She couldn’t be the silent Cupid.

  She stood and circled the room to straighten the endless mess the kids had left.

  As she passed the bank of windows, she glanced down at the sidewalk. A group of kids loitered outside of the café. Which might have been the least cool place in town to loiter, but maybe Elle was giving them the day-old cookies. Rebecca knew the Chess club had been hanging around a lot more often, but these boys didn’t look like the chess types. One of the boys, without a hat or gloves or scarf, turned, and she recognized Tony, who hadn’t shown up to her class for the past week.

  She’d been so stupidly depressed about Will that she’d forgotten the idea for a program for kids from broken homes. Before she could think twice, she flew down the stairs.

  “Hey, Becca!” Elle cried from behind the counter where she was counting inventory. “What are you doing in such a rush?”

  “I’m not sure, Elle. I’m really not sure.” If she paused or slowed, her courage would be gone and the moment wasted.

  She opened the door and blinked into the snowy twilight.

  “Tony!” she called and the three kids turned to her. “I need to speak to you.”

  One of the boys mocked her and punched Tony in the arm, but she kept her gaze locked on Tony’s guilty brown ones and refused to acknowledge the other boys. “Can you come in for a minute?”

  Tony looked at his friends and Rebecca couldn’t help but feel the next minute was all important. “Tony?” She arched an eyebrow and channeled a little Clint Eastwood.

  “Yeah.” He ducked his head and walked away from his friends. She stood to the side and Tony entered the café. She turned back to the boys. “You guys can come in, too, if you want. It’s warm.”

  They took off before she’d even finished the sentence.

  “Let’s go up to the studio,” she said and Tony nodded, casting one last glance at the counter of baked goods. She grabbed a chocolate chocolate chip cookie from the jar and Elle winked at her as she walked by.

  She took the stairs two at a time.

  So what if she was going to be a spinster with twenty cats and tissues stuffed up the sleeves of her sweater, she’d make a difference in this town, in some kids.

  “Sorry, Ms. Potter,” Tony said, slinging his book bag on one of the tables. “I skipped art class this week.”

  She’d make a difference for Tony.

  “Yeah, I noticed.” She smiled at him and handed him the cookie. “Why don’t you grab some scratch paper and whatever you want to draw with. Then we can talk about a few things.”

  Tony nodded, a tentative smile on his lips. He shoved the cookie in his mouth and grabbed a box of colored pencils and some of the paper she had stacked around the room.

  She wasn’t sure how to begin, or where to begin for that matter. But f
or once she was going to trust herself. She was going to trust her instincts and her art and this kid’s good heart and see what happened.

  She took another step toward the edge of that cliff.

  “MOM, I’M SORRY, I just can’t make it tomorrow,” Rebecca said into the receiver and then held the phone about five inches from her ear. It made her mother sound like Charlie Brown’s teacher.

  “That’s two weeks in a row!”

  “Mom—”

  “You haven’t been at the office.”

  “I did the work at home. Mom—”

  “I can’t ever seem to get a hold of you. I’m tired of—”

  Rebecca couldn’t get a word in edgewise and finally her top, usually secured with superglue, blew right off. “Mom, I can’t come to dinner because I’m behind on the cards. I have an appointment at Tilton School about my at-risk kid’s program and because I’ve had all I can take of the guilt you serve with your roast lamb.” She felt dizzy, light-headed. “Which is always too dry, by the way.” She added that comment for spite, but it still felt good.

  The silence from her mother was eerie. “I see,” she finally said.

  Rebecca rolled her eyes. “I’m an adult, Mom.”

  “You don’t act like one.”

  She almost proved it by hanging up, but instead she lowered her forehead to the edge of her desk and looked down at her tennis shoes. “Can we just call a truce? Please? I can come over Sunday evening.”

  “Are you on drugs?” Jane asked, and Rebecca jerked upright.

  “What?”

  “I read an article in the church bulletin about how drugs can alter a person’s personality. And frankly, sweetheart, you’ve been acting so strange lately. You’ve been argumentative and difficult at work. You’ve been sullen on Friday nights. I’m just…” Jane sighed and it sounded like she might be fighting tears and Rebecca was so surprised, so absolutely shocked, that she could only blink and gape like a fish on dry land.

  “I’m just worried that you’re changing. You are not the little girl I thought you were.”