Either Cupid blows at archery, or it’s fate that Michael’s sitting in a dingy restaurant staring at raw fish slapped on a wooden plank, and Jan’s sitting across from him, not talking, just eating her California rolls.

“So…” Michael says in an attempt to be enthusiastic, banging his chopsticks on the table in a drum roll. “Do you have any surprises for me?”

Jan glances up from her food and gives him that appraising look where her eyes narrow in on him. “Why?”

“Oh, just…” Michael taps his chopstick against his water glass. “It’s Valentine’s Day… You went for a job interview… I thought that you might want to surprise me with any news.”

She shakes her head and goes back to her California roll.

Michael blows the air out through his lips. “Those aren’t even Chinese. They’re Californian.”

“Michael, we’re at a Japanese restaurant.”

“Well, raw fish is raw fish.”

“California rolls are vegetarian.”

“Fine.”

He sits silently, scrunching his nose at the smell his sushi is giving off. He doesn’t like it.

Jan reaches over the table, her chopsticks poised to grab his sashimi.

“I’m going to eat that.” He cuts her off.

She eyes him angrily and huffs as she eases back down into the seat. “Do you even like it?”

“No.”

What if Cupid didn’t mean to hit her? What if that arrow was bound for an African beauty with a long neck, an edgy rocker who doesn’t wear a bra, or one of those German girls in lederhosen? Maybe it was even headed for a busty receptionist, but Jan got in the way when she noisily burst through the doors coming from corporate one day and got in the way of the arrow.

That would make their relationship an error, a miscalculation, a erasable mistake, like putting a red sock in with the white laundry. It stains everything. Jan is the red sock. She’s ruining him.

If Cupid gets drunk like Michael does on Fridays, he probably mistook Jan for someone else, someone who Michael could be compatible with, someone he could be happy with, someone who didn’t try to steal food off of his plate. Cupid must have taken a few too many sips of dark red wine, positioned his arrow, and just let loose. That would explain a lot.

It would explain why their relationship wasn’t win/win/win, win/win, or even a compromise. Jan takes. Michael gives at first, then holds on, engaging in a tug-of-war, where one is holding on continuously, but only pulling slightly every once in a while, enough to keep the rope taut and catch the other unaware.

Why would Cupid do this to him?

Because his aim really sucks.