The Trouble With Cupid

Love.

It made the world go round. When two people fall in love, really fall in love, it’s nothing short of magical. Sparks fly, the angels sing, and butterflies erupt. A warm happy feeling spreads through body and soul and all of sudden, the world makes sense. The person standing in front of you is yours and yours alone.

Nothing in heaven or on Earth could chance the feelings the two people in love feel for each other. Well, at least not after the connections were sealed. It sometimes took a couple tries, but once that connection snapped into place, well.

A Cupid’s job was complete.

For Amelia, or Ace as she was called, the job may as well have been eating cake for hours on end. She’d honed her skills, mastered the art of spreadsheets, and now? She was the number one Cupid in Hearts Anonymous, the world renowned online dating site.

The simplicity made the tasks borderline menial. Ace just had a knack in finding matches and she essentially created soulmates on the regular.

Walking into the lobby of Hearts Anonymous, Ace waved at the receptionist sitting behind a lavish counter top. The lobby was nice, all sleek surfaces and pastel colors off setting the crisp white tiles. Flowers decorated the tables, a mixture of deep red roses, peonies, pink lilies and ranunculaceous.

There was a bit of pep in her step as she made my way across the lobby, a smile stretched across her face.

“Another success, Ace?” she asked, raising an eyebrow as she tip-tapped away at her computer.

Ace leaned on the counter, shrugging her shoulders with the confidence of someone who knew they did good work. “Yep. Those two are about ready to Netflix and Chill to their hearts content. All uphill from here, I guess.” She peeked over the counter, trying to take a look at the computer screen. “Got anything new?”

The receptionist, Melanie, glared at Ace and turned the computer screen away. She smacked Ace’s hand when she tried to turn it back, saying, “If someone new comes in, it’ll come down the proper lines and channels. I’m not throwing you extra’s cause you’re bored. Be patient.”

Ace pouted and slumped over the counter with a groan. Being patient was not her strong suit. “Fine. I’ll wait like a good little cupid. But seriously, please send me something soon? Talk to you later!”

Slapping the counter, Ace pushed herself back up and wandered off to her office, hoping she would catch her supervisor on the way. She wanted to give him a heads up that she ran empty on clients. Maybe she could even sneak in a nap. That would be nice.

Passing other Cupids off to make the world a better place, Ace couldn’t help but think of how much better things were now, how much smoother operations were. The modern era took a long time to infiltrate the agency, with Eros valuing the old ways for far too long.

Before Ace earned her wings, before she could even start making matches, Hearts Anonymous did things the old fashioned way. Lots of paperwork involved, lots of flying, and arrows. Lots and lots of arrows.

And while those things were all still part of the agency, things were far more civilized now. Arrows were better targeted, the paperwork was streamlined, and flying was just faster. But computers with spreadsheets made the process of searching for matches much quicker. The agency received data like a dating site, except once the profiles were created, the Cupids started their own digging. It’s what gave them such a high success rate.

Now there were still failures. Cupids weren’t infallible. But the numbers of wrong matches were small and almost unheard of.

The wings were the best part of the whole job, in Ace’s opinion. She loved to use the to get from point A to point B with zero traffic issues. Technically, Cupids weren’t supposed to use their wings off duty. But Ace had made so many matches that no one really bothered to nitpick the details. And as long as she used invisibility while she flew, no fusses were kicked up.

Ace opened the door to her office, kicking off her shoes like she was returning home after a long day. The reality was Ace might as well have lived in her office. She wasn’t the best Cupid for no reason. She took pride in her work, despite the cavalier attitude.

Cupids were important.

Ace didn’t realize she carried the Cupid genome until she was a teenager. It took two months into high school for her to get a reputation for being a matchmaker., fitting people together like puzzle pieces.

By the time she made it through her entire class and was working on matching her teacher with an old family friend, she recieved a visit.

The Greek Pantheon was nothing more than a myth…until her first year of High School. Eros dropped in to her school, stating he wanted to scout her for his business. Naturally,she was suspicious of the strange man making wild claims.

During the scouting visit, Eros proceeded to tell Ace that her great, great, great, grandfather was a Cupid and the gene passed down to her. She obviously didn’t believe him at first. The whole thing was bizarre. A man showing up, claiming to be a god from the Greek Pantheon, and telling Ace she was one of his underlings?

Yeah. Sure.

But Eros didn’t give up. If anything, he doubled down on his claims, finding Ace after each succesful match to give her a knowing look.

It took a lot of cajoling, a lot of proof, and a metric ton of Eris tiredly going through the motion of firing arrows to match a handful of people before Ace finally gave in and believed him.

Shaking herself from the memories, Ace flopped down into her soft, cozy office chair. She had a late night and a nap sounded so good. She closed her eyes, sinking into the chair.

Maybe just a few minutes…

“Hey! Ace! You in there?” The banging on Ace’s office door made her eyes creak right back open and she sighed.

“Well, I did want a job,” she muttered, shoving herself into an upright position. “Come in.”

Devon, the supervising Cupid on Ace’s floor, poked his head into her office with a wide grin. “Ace. The one. The only. The truest of all Cupids, the light of my entire -”

“What do you want, Devon?”

He at least had the decency to look bashful as he entered the office, coming to stand in front of her desk. Often times, Ace felt like she was the supervisor when Devon stood in front of her desk like this. She never wanted the position, but it was fun to think of anyways.

Ace’s eyes were drawn to the folder in Devon’s hand, the one he had yet to address as he fidgeted in place. She really couldn’t understand why Devon was so nervous when he was the boss.

“Wanna tell me what’s up with the paper files? Didn’t forget my email, did you?”

Devon shot her an unimpressed look, dropping the folder on her desk with a sigh. “This guy is becoming a massive pain for me.” He looked it too. Even as the folder left his fingers, Devon dropped into the seat on the other side of her desk with a grimace. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but I literally cannot get him matched.”

Ace frowned, taking the file from him and flipping it open. The profile page was surprisingly bare. sporting a whole two pages which Ace flipped and forth repeatedly. Like she was waiting for more information tomagically pop out that didn’t exist.

“Not a whole lot there. That’s odd.”

Even without anything extensive, Ace had eyes. The guy was good looking, with strong features. She couldn’t imagine why it would be so difficult to match him. Girls had to be tripping over themselves to date him.

Peeking up at Devon through her lashes, Ace realized he was still ranting about the case he was passing off to her and decided to tune him out. Her time would be better spent reading through the sparse information.

For only two pages, Ace could tell he was a good guy. He seemed solid, enough, so why the rough time finding him a match?

" - and it just feels like no matter what, I can’t -”

“I’ll take him,” Ace said, cutting Devon off.

“Really?” he replied, looking at her all starry-eyed and staring like she just told him he’d be getting a promotion to Lead Cupid. “You’ll seriously take him for me?”

Ace nodded and Devon sighed in relief. “Thank you. Thank you so much. For real, I owe you one. Hopefully, our number one matchmaker can work some magic on him.” Devon backed out of Ace’s office, giving her a two finger salute. “Let me know how it goes. I want wedding pics!”

Rolling her eyes, Ace reutrned to the folder in her hands with renewed interest, laying it open on her desk. Dark brown hair, deep blue eyes, and a crooked smile were seared into her mind.

Keith Barragin wouldn’t know what hit him.