<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Cupid and Me<\/strong><\/p>\n The day Cupid lost his arrows Dan never walked over to Paula on reception and asked her to the cinema, so they never kissed on the back row and that, in turn, meant that he never asked her to marry him that night at the fair, in front of the candy floss stand and all those people clapping for them in gloves.<\/p>\n When Cupid lost his arrows it meant that that night, instead of saying Hi, and accepting that drink, Jenny never found out how much she and Mike had in common. It meant that, two weeks later, she never said, \u2018I didn\u2019t realise I\u2019d spent my whole life looking for you until you mentioned Elvis and bird watching in the same sentence.\u2019 Instead, Jenny walked by, eyes straight ahead and chest out, and she ended up meeting Tony who bought her shots and who, in eighteen months, won\u2019t deal as well with her cancer as Mike would have. Because Cupid lost his arrows, Jenny will die alone and with bruises.<\/p>\n The day Cupid lost his arrows I didn\u2019t have the nerve to ask you to the party. I know you\u2019d have enjoyed it.<\/p>\n And I wish I\u2019d been more forgiving. If I had then maybe I\u2019d have helped him when I found him on his hands and knees in the alley. He was drunk, and I was too, and when he asked me to help him look for something behind the bins I told him no. He started shouting his mouth off then, said stuff about you, and I lost it. I grabbed him by his collar and sent him to the wall and I hit him hard in his fat face.<\/p>\n The police came when you called and they threw us in a cell together and when we sobered up, we talked. And that\u2019s when he told me about it all, about everything that had been lost. He said he was sorry. When he mentioned you, that time, I cried.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve asked him about second chances and he\u2019s said no. Said what\u2019s done is done, that those moments have all gone.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll help him look for those arrows when we get out. I\u2019ve promised him that. It\u2019s the least I can do. I think we\u2019re friends now, Cupid and me. One day, we\u2019ll go for a beer. And I guess that\u2019s something. It’s just that something doesn\u2019t seem enough.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nik Perring<\/strong> is the author of five books including the short story collection, Not So Perfect (Roastbooks 2010); he\u2019s the co-author of Freaks! (The Friday Project\/HarperCollins, 2012) and his latest, Beautiful Trees<\/em> is out now. His online home is www.nikperring.com<\/a> and he\u2019s on Twitter too @nikperring<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note: This short has been previously published in Downtown<\/em> and Driftwood<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cupid and Me The day Cupid lost his arrows Dan never walked over to Paula on reception and asked her to the cinema, so they never kissed on the back row and that, in turn, meant that he never asked her to marry him that night at the fair, in front of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[136,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12388"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13221,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12388\/revisions\/13221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}