Page 64 of The Cupid Chronicles

“Chef Cupid! It’s too perfect! Can’t you see that as the title of a movie?!”

I ignore her and walk outside.

She follows. “So, C.C., how does that work?” she says with a lilt in her voice.

I cock my head at her.

“Okay, okay, fine,” she surrenders. “I’ll only use it in dire emergencies.”

I take a breath and try not to be amused. It’s getting harder to hide my smile around Iris. It’s been a while since someone made me laugh, but her ability to amuse herself is contagious.

“Usually, I’m just the guy who initiates the meeting.”

“The meet-cute,” she says.

I glance at her. “The what?”

“The meet-cute. Good grief, how do you not know this?”

“Is that a real question?”

She ignores me. “In romance, they’re called meet-cutes. The first cute meeting between two people.” She bumps my shoulder with hers. “You’re the meet-cute guy.”

I roll my eyes.

“It actually makes sense that the magic chose you,” she comments, almost as an aside.

“Why?”

She looks at me like I should know. “You’re a chef. An amazing one, to be fair. What better way to bring people together than over food? That’s like the whole point of food in the first place.”

In all the three years of doing this, that has never once occurred to me.

Huh. Maybe she’s right.

“Speaking of, you will come when Winnie invites us to dinner, right?” she asks.

“Sure,” I say. “But after that . . .” I shrug. “She’ll move on. I’ll move on. That’s the way this works.”

Her forehead crinkles. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“Oh, really? You don’t know if that’s true?” I say in a repeated scoff. “In the seven days since you found out about the magic, you’ve figured that out?”

“I’m just saying—I don’twantthat to be it.” She jogs to keep up with me.

“Are you going to barge into my kitchen again?” I ask, fully expecting her to realize I’m going to work.

“If you’re lucky,” she jokes as she falls into step beside me.

A pause.

“I want to see Winnie again. I like her. And think about what we did for her. I mean, she was so lonely, and now she has Jerry.Anda cat. And us. Also, it’s kind of nice to have people to say ‘hi’ to in the lobby.”

I glance over and find her struggling to keep up with me. I have no idea why I’m walking so fast. I slow down, not sodrastically that she’ll notice, but enough so she can stop half-jogging.

She goes on. “I’m trying to figure out what to do now. I mean, do I just pretend this never happened? Wait for the next newspaper? You said it could be months, but I want one now. Now that I know I’m not hallucinating, I think this is kind of fun.”

I stop walking and face her. “This isn’t fun, Iris. It’s disruptive and annoying, and yeah, maybe you give some old lady a cat and maybe you help two people meet, but it gets in the way. Of everything.”

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