Archive of Our Own

He realizes he needs a pair of those pretty, plastic shoes in the middle of a game of tag on the playground.

It isn’t like he sees a kid with them, or anything. 

He just has the thought in his head. On the walk home, he tells Mommy that he really, really needs those cool, colorful Jelly shoes, like all of his friends at school have. He can’t stop thinking about it.n

“Jellies?” she says.

He nods.

“Okay,” she says.

He needs them. The more that he thinks about, the more certain he is. He needs them.

He is five years old, and he has never, ever needed anything in his life as much as he does right now, in this moment, when it feels like he’s going to die if he doesn’t get his hands on those shoes.

He needs them.

He is crying, all of sudden, crying and crying and crying.

“Garrett!” Mommy says, alarmed.

He explains, in the circle of her arms, gulping, and gasping, how he needs a pair of Jelly shoes, all of the girls at school have them, he needs a pair of Jelly shoes, please, Mommy, please, it hurts, please, he needs a pair of Jelly shoes.

“Okay,” Mommy says. “It’s gonna be okay. I think I know what this is. It’s gonna be okay.”

He is crying again.

She calls Nana.

He rubs at his heart, at that deep, desperate hurt in him, rubs and rubs and rubs at his heart.

She talks with Nana for a couple of minutes, glancing at him throughout, and giving him a lot of soft, secret smiles.

“Okay,” she says after.

She takes him to Payless at the mall, and when they find the selection of Jelly shoes at the back with the rest of the shoes for kids, she asks him, softly, a kind of eagerness in her eyes, to pick a pair.

He looks them over and knows immediately that he wants the pair in hot pink, with glitter, size 11.5.

She can’t stop smiling at him when she buys the shoes for him.

He carries the box from the store under his arm. They decide to get ice cream to celebrate their success at finding the shoes, and they sit on hard plastic chairs by the fountain in the middle of the mall after, each of them with a cone of mint chocolate chip. He holds the box protectively in his lap.

Mommy wants to take a picture.

He takes the shoes from the box, unwrapping the tissue from around them, and holds the shoes up for the camera, smiling.

“She’s going to love seeing this someday,” Mommy says.

“Who?”

She doesn’t answer him immediately.

“Who, Mommy?”

“Do you want to wear those shoes?” Mommy asks.

He is startled.

The need is a soft, sated thing inside of him now, because he’s done it, he’s gotten the shoes, he’s done it.

“Sweetheart?” Mommy says.

“I don’t want to wear them,” he says.

She smiles.

“I swear I wanted them—it really felt like I needed them, like—I swear I wanted them.”

“You didn’t want them because you wanted to wear them,” Mommy says.

“I didn’t?”

“You wanted them because a girl who you’re going to love very, very much when you grow up wanted them.”

He’s confused.

“Garrett, my sweet, sweet boy,” Mommy says, taking his hands in her own. 

“What?”

“You have a soulmate.”

—

He’s heard about soulmates before. In Spider-man, Peter Park’s soulmate is MJ, which is why they fall in love and marry and have a baby, so, yeah. He knows what soulmates are, sort of.

Still.

He’s got a lot to learn.

His mother explains to him everything he needs to know.

Only about 1 in 100 people have a soulmate, meaning it’s a rare, rare thing, ‘cause 1 in 100 is not a lot. 

“You’re special,” Mommy says.

People are bonded to their soulmates in a variety of ways. 

“The way you’re bonded to your soulmate is that when your soulmate needs something, you need it, too,” Mommy says.

“Like the shoes,” he says.

“Others, they feel the emotions that their soulmate feels, or they aren’t able to see in color until they meet their soulmate, or they get a bruise on their body when their soulmate gets a bruise.”

She reads him The Beginning of Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel.

Frog has a soulmate who needs chocolate chip cookies. He has never met his soulmate, but he knows that his soulmate needs chocolate chip cookies, lots and lots of chocolate chip cookies. Frog bakes chocolate chip cookies for a soulmate. 

His house is full of cookies: on trays in the kitchen, in stacks on the table, on plates on the sofa, in boxes in the attic, on the side of the bed where nobody sleeps.

And, then, Frog meets Toad.

And Toad says “Frog, you are green!” and is delighted because Toad has never, ever seen a color before.

“Yes, I am green,” Frog says.

“I think you are my soulmate,” Toad says.

They decide they are going to celebrate, because a soulmate is a very, very special thing, and they like to celebrate, both of them. That is something they have in common.

“I need chocolate chip cookies to celebrate,” Toad says.

“I have chocolate chip cookies!” Frog says.

“Really?”

“I think you are my soulmate,” Frog says.

As soon as she finishes reading the book, Garrett wants her to read it again, and she does, she reads it to him over and over.

There’s a lot of explanations for why soulmates exist. 

Some people think soulmatism is a gift from God. Some people think soulmatism is like dreams, a weird, chemical thing that our weird, chemical brains cook up. Some people think soulmatism is the result of evolution.

The why isn’t important.

If someone is your soulmate, it means that person’s soul is connected to your soul.

“Your soulmate is made for you, and you are made for your soulmate,” Mommy says.

It isn’t a piece of cake to find your soulmate, though.

“You have to search for your soulmate,” Mommy says.

“How?”

“You just have to try.”

He nods.

“You’re fated to meet them, but you might not know it’s them when you meet them, and you can’t rely on fate to do everything for you.”

She’s become very, very serious now.

“You have to search for your soulmate,” Mommy says.

“I will.”

She strokes his hair.

“And we’ll get married after,” he says.

“Maybe.” She smiles.

He is going to start the search as soon as possible.

“It’ll be your job to take care of her,” Mommy says.

“I will.”

“You know what your soulmate needs, and that’s something really special," she says. "You're going to know how to keep her safe and happy and loved. And that’s such a gift, sweetheart. You're going to be able to take better care of her than anyone in the world.”

“I’m gonna take super good care of her,” he says.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

—

She’ll move into the house at the end of the street, he thinks, and she’ll wait for the bus where he waits for the bus, and she’ll wave at him when she sees him on his way over.

He can picture it perfectly.

She’s going to be pretty.

He’ll meet her, and she’ll like mint chocolate chip ice cream and Spiderman and hockey and Gorilla Grove at the zoo and the donuts from Dunkin’s with maple icing, and he’ll know that he’s found her.

And she’ll know it’s him, too, ‘cause she’ll see him, and she’ll say, “Garrett, your shirt is red,” and she’ll be excited, because she’ll have never, ever seen a color before.

“Yes, it’s red,” he’ll say.

“I think you’re my soulmate,” she’ll say.

He’ll ask if she wants to go to the zoo with him.

“I need hot pink Jelly shoes to go to the zoo,” she’ll say.

“I have hot pink Jelly shoes!” he’ll say.

“Really?” she’ll say.

And they’ll go to the zoo together, and she’ll wear the hot pink Jelly shoes that he got her, and they’ll have the most fun that anyone has ever had at the zoo ever. 

And his mommy will buy them each a stuffed animal gorilla at the gift shop.

And they’ll live happily ever after.

—

He is determined to be ready for his soulmate when he meets her, to have a collection of all of the things that she’s needed over the years, and to show his soulmate that he’s going to take really, really good care of her.

And, over the course of the years that follow, his soulmate needs a lot of things. 

Once a month, maybe, he’s struck with a need for something, and he learns very quickly to recognize the feeling that fills his heart, and he loves it, the feeling of need, and the knowledge that it’s her.

She needs the L’Oreal Kids Shampoo fish bottle in strawberry scent and she needs a Happy Meal from McDonald’s with a Beanie Baby penguin for the toy and she needs a rainbow, cheetah print Lisa Frank scrunchie to wear.

“She needs all of this shit?” Dad asks, half amused, half annoyed, in that way of his.

“She’s a kid,” Mom says fondly.

His mom buys him a Happy Meal day after day for weeks until he finally, finally gets his hands on a penguin.

He places it carefully in the drawer of things for his soulmate.

There are obstacles.

Like, she needs a dog.

And he begs and begs and begs his mom to take him to the shelter to get a dog, but, for his mom refuses, explaining that his dad isn’t going to want a dog around, and his begging isn’t able to sway her.

“You’ll be grown up someday with a house of your own, and you can get a hundred dogs for your soulmate if you want,” Mom says.

“Fine,” he says.

“It’s a plan,” Mom says.

And, over the years, though all of the things he knows that she needs, he gets to know her.

She likes bright, bold colors and wants to listen to music constantly and tries to get A pluses in school.

“I’m not sure where you’re getting shit as specific as that from,” Dad says.

“I can feel it when she’s on the bus, and she forgets her CD player, and she is bored,” Garrett says, ten years old now, and an expert on his girl, “because she needs music.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re making up stories in your head,” Dad says.

“I’m not!”

"You can't lie to me, kid.”

He balls his hands into fists.

From where she sits in the passenger seat up front, Mom catches his eye in the rearview mirror, and she smiles at him softly, placating.

He lets out a breath, looking away. 

They talk about it later, just the two of them, when Dad isn’t around to roll his eyes at them, because they both know that it’s easier to talk about big, important stuff when it’s just the two of them. 

She’s done a lot of research online, she says, and it seems like he knows the details of his soulmate’s needs because he’s got a really, really strong bond with her, and she’s so happy for him.

That’s another thing worth knowing about soulmates.

The bonds vary in strength, too.

“Sometimes, I can—it’s like I can hear her voice in my head,” he says.

“Really?” Mom asks, and her gaze is earnest, encouraging

“Sometimes, and I can’t explain it, how I just know it’s her, but I just . . . I know,” he says.

“How’s she sound?”

He tilts his head from side to side, unsure of how to describe it, and settles eventually on something that he knows is true about his soulmate. “She sounds cool,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, she’s really cool, I think.”

“Makes a lot of sense, if she’s meant to be with a cool little guy like you,” Mom says.

He’d be so pissed if one of his friends called him a cool little guy, but he doesn’t mind when Mom does it.

“I can’t wait to meet her someday,” Mom says.

“Me, neither.”

They don’t bring up the fact that his mother was diagnosed with cancer a couple of months ago.

He can’t imagine a world where his mother never gets to meet his soulmate.

—

He likes to talk about his soulmate a lot.

His friends, his teachers, his neighbors, his relatives, his coaches—everybody knows there’s a girl out there that was made just for him.

And, yeah, okay, the principal at Westview is concerned that he is bragging about his soulmate a lot, but the principal at Westview does not seem to understand the facts of the matter.

He’s proud to have a soulmate.

Who wouldn’t be?

He’s got the best, coolest type of soulmatism, too.

He knows when his soulmate is in ballet and needs to be cast in the production of The Nutcracker. He knows when his soulmate sprains her ankle because she jumped off the swings, and she’s done that hundreds of times, but she landed weird and wrong, and she needs needs needs the nurse. He knows when his soulmate is obsessed with rock climbing and needs to go to a camp in July to hone her skills.

It’s cool, okay?

He knows when his soulmate needs to bedazzle her backpack and her jean jacket and her shoes and her water bottle and her notebooks and her hairbrush and her nails. 

Why would you want to bedazzle your nails? he thinks.

It’s fun, and it makes your nails look really, really pretty! I’ve got blue flowers and diamonds on my nail right now, in a pattern, and I’ve gotten a ton of compliments. It lasts for at least a week, too!

You’re such a girl, he thinks.

He loves her.

His mom buys this book on soulmates that says the majority of people with soulmates are bonded to them in a simple, straightforward way: the words that their soulmate will say to them when they meet is written on their skin.

That’s it.

They don’t get to grow up with their soulmate. They haven’t got the superpower of knowing, better than anyone in the world, how to take care of their soulmate. They don’t get to know their soulmate.

They’ve just got something like can I borrow a pencil? inked on their skin.

They don’t get to know that their soulmate has bedazzled blue flowers and diamonds on her nails right now, in a pattern, and has gotten a ton of compliments.

“You really shouldn’t look down on a type,” Mom says.

“I’m right, though,” he says.

“Odds are that’s your soulmate’s type,” Mom says.

He doubts it.

“You wouldn’t want to be like a guy in a movie, insulting her to her face before you realize she’s your soulmate, and having to convince her to forgive you for the fact that your insult is written on her skin forever.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“What?”

“Our connection is deeper than that,” he says.

“O-kay,” his mom says, in her happy, sing-songy, don’t-come-crying-to-me-if-you’re-wrong voice.

He knows it, okay? 

His bond is special, and his girl is, too.

So, yeah.

He isn’t going to shut up about it.

It’s a thing.

You know how everyone has a thing, right?

You think of Luke Peterson, and you think of how he knows everything about Fortnight and wears coke bottle glasses. You think of Jenny Kirsch, and you think of soccer, ‘cause she is obsessed. You think of Tyler Hackett, and you think of how he is the White Sox’s biggest, number one fan and can burp the alphabet.

Garrett?

You think of Garrett Graham, and, yeah, you think of how he’s A1 at hockey, obviously, but, also, you think of the fact that he’s the kid with a soulmate.

And, by the way, if you were wondering, his soulmate is probably the most awesome girl alive.

He’s happy to tell you about her.

—

He has to stand up for her. He’s eleven years old now, and it isn’t as easy as it was, once upon a time, for his dad to push him around, and he has to, he has to. He has to stand up for her.

She allows her face to crumple with a sob before she closes the door of the bathroom, hiding.

He is going to stand up for her.

She needs him.

He finds his dad in the kitchen.

“You’re supposed to take care of her,” he says.

“Excuse me?” Dad says.

“Mom.”

“What about her?” His dad’s eyes are hard, glinting.

“You’re supposed to take care of her,” he says.

“Is that so?”

“She’s sick!” It bursts from him.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“You’re supposed to take care of her,” Garrett says again, stubborn.

“Who do you think is paying for all of those doctors? You think that shit is cheap? Who do you think is paying those doctor bills? I do. Who do you think pays for this house, huh? Me. And, what about all of your shit, kid, who do you think pays all of your shit, for your skates and your pads and your sticks? I do.”

He’s going to cry, only he can’t, he can’t cry in front of his dad, he can’t.

“And do I get any thanks for it?”

“I hate you,” Garrett says.

“Yeah, you say that now. But, someday, you’re gonna shack up with that spoiled little soulmate of yours, and you’re gonna realize life ain’t all cupcakes and roses, and you’re gonna be stuck with your soulmate anyway, and when that day comes? Trust me, you’re gonna have a lot more respect for your old man.”

“I HATE YOU!”

His dad lunges at him, and he books it from the room, and his dad is chasing after him, yelling at him, but he reaches his bedroom, and he slams the door and locks it, and his dad can only bang angrily on the door.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” Garrett says.

He ends up sinking to the floor, even after his dad has given up shouting at the door, gone away, and left the house in silence, and he stays there on the floor while the sun goes down, and the room grows dark.

How’s he supposed to take care of his soulmate when he can’t even take care of his mom?

There’s a knock on the door.

“Sweetheart?” Mom says, gentle.

He opens it.

She wraps him up in her arms immediately. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she tells him.

He wishes he believed her.

She says his dad has gone to meet his friends at Stella’s to watch a game.

Good.

She wants him to pick a record for them to play.

He chooses a Tracey Chapman record, because he knows it’s one of her favorites to sing to.

She is singing immediately, spinning, and swaying her hips.

He joins in.

"Don't you know
Talkin' 'bout a revolution
It sounds like a whisper
Poor people gonna rise up
And get their share
Poor people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs

Don't you know
You better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run
Oh I said you better
Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run

'Cause finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' bout a revolution
Yes, finally the tables are starting to turn
Talkin' bout a revolution, oh no
Talkin' bout a revolution, oh.”

He runs in place as fast as possible when he sings about how you better run, run, run.

She laughs.

She makes them mac ‘n cheese for dinner after, from the box, and with bacon bits. It’s one of her favorites from her childhood, a meal that Nana had made for her when she needed to be cheered up, and it’s one of his favorites now, too.

He can’t keep his gaze off the red, angry swelling along her cheek.

She is humming to herself.

“I wish you had a soulmate,” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“You deserve somebody who’s made for you. Dad is—he’s not good enough for you. You deserve somebody who’ll be really nice to you and buy you whatever you want and never, ever touch you.”

She smiles at him sadly.

“Somebody who’ll take care of you,” he says.

“You take care of me,” she says.

He looks away from her.

She’s wrong.

He isn’t able to do a thing for her. He tries to, and it never helps anything, never changes anything. He isn’t able to help her at all.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asks.

“What?”

“I had a soulmate.”

He snaps his gaze to her in surprise.

“I couldn’t see colors when I was growing up. But when I was in college, I was, um, I was on the bus, and, suddenly, it happened. I was able to see colors for the very first time.” There are tears in her eyes.

“Your soulmate was on the bus?” he asks.

“Must have been.”

“But—”

“I didn’t get off at my stop. I stayed on, and I talked to everyone on the bus, or I tried to. But I couldn't. find them. I stayed on ‘til midnight, when I had to get off, and I thought—I told myself I’d see them again, that I had to, that it was fate, but . . . it never happened.”

“But that can’t really happen,” he says.

“Sweetheart.”

“You have to meet your soulmate.”

“It’s fated you’ll meet them, but you might know them when you meet them, and if you aren’t looking for them . . ."

He shakes his head.

“Things don’t always go the way you want them to,” she says softly.

“Why would you marry Dad if you have a soulmate?”

“I loved him.”

“But—”

“I don’t have any regrets, Garrett,” she says.

He doesn’t believe her. The idea of growing up and giving up, of never knowing his soulmate? It’s unfathomable. To marry a girl who isn’t his girl? No. He couldn’t live with that. No.

“If I’d held out hope for my soulmate, instead of marrying your dad, I might have found my soulmate eventually, but I wouldn’t have had you,” she says.

“Yeah, but—”

“And if I had to choose between a world with a soulmate, or a world with you? That’s easy. I’d choose a world with you, every. single. time.” She smiles at him softly. “You’re my soulmate, Garrett Graham.” 

He swallows.

“You take care of me,” she says. “I don’t need a soulmate when I’ve got you. You make me smile, and you make me strong, and you make me so, so proud. I stopped needing a soulmate the day I had you.”

He hugs her.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she says.

“You could still find them,” he says softly, into her shoulder, in spite of himself.

“Maybe.”

The next time that his dad comes after her, he’s not gonna hide while it happens, and he’s not gonna wait until after to confront his dad, and he’s not gonna run away when it gets scary.

He’ll be brave.

He’ll get in his dad’s way before.

He’ll protect her.

—

He is happy to have his soulmate interrupt his life.

It’s not like everybody doesn’t know about her, so it’s easy to explain to his aunt or his teacher or his friend when he gets distracted by her and isn’t listening to them suddenly, or fails his test, or whatever.

She’s the priority, y’know?

If his soulmate needs a girl who’s mean to her at school to shut up, and he’s lost in his head about it, listening to how his soulmate needs this girl to SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, and that’s why he misses the bus?

Well, okay, his mom can drive him to school that day.

Why do you want her to shut up? he thinks

She is telling EVERYONE that I have a crush on Baxter, and I don’t.

What kind of name is Baxter? he thinks.

And, yeah, the counselor at Westview tells his mom that his “lack of boundaries” with his soulmate is concerning, but the counselor at Westview has no idea what it’s like to be connected to someone the way that he is.

How is supposed to have boundaries with his soulmate?

His mom isn’t worried about it.

She says that caring about your soulmate is important, that it’s okay if he isn’t able to finish his homework because he needs to go to the mall to buy a basket for his soulmate’s bicycle, that caring about your soulmate is a way of caring about your future.

So, there.

She gets it.

And she loves to talk about his soulmate with him, to share the things that she’s learned in her book about soulmates, and to give him advice on his soulmate, and as long as she’s on board with his soulmate, he is, too.

“You should have something you say when you talk to a girl you’ve never talked to before,” she says.

“Why?”

“In case her type is to have your words on her, we’ve talked about this!”

He scoffs. “That’s not her type, Mom.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah, actually.” He isn’t budging on this. His soulmate has a cooler type than that, a better type than that. He’s made up his mind.

“Did you know owls have eyetubes instead of eyeballs?”

“What?” he says.

“That’s what you should say. It’s perfect! Nobody will have said that to her before, so she’ll know right away that it’s you. And it’s cute, too—a fun little animal fact! That’ll be your line.”

“I can’t just go around telling people that owls have eyetubes,” he says.

“Can, too.”

“You’re crazy,” he says.

She laughs.

Why should he worry about the fact that his soulmate is interrupting his life a lot?

She’s his soulmate.

It’s her job to interrupt his life.

He might be interrupting her life, too, if her type of soulmatism is similar to his, and he loves the idea of that, him distracting her, but he isn’t going to hold it against her if that isn’t the case.

He loves her regardless.

He hopes she continues to interrupt his life forever and ever.

—

He starts to skip a lot of school. It’s not like school matters that much in 5th grade, and the year is nearly over anyway, and everybody at the school understands that he just wants to be with his mom right now, and he isn’t allowed to skip hockey, but school? He starts to skip a lot of school.

They hang out.

He sprawls on his mom’s bed with her, and they watch Murder, She Wrote for hours, and he reads her the articles in Vanity Fair, and he paints her nails, and he lays round after round of Old Maid with her.

Today?

She is playing a Lynyrd Skynyrd record.

He wakes up to the sound. 

He finds her in the kitchen, singing, and swinging her hips. It’s rare for her to be out of bed like this, on her feet, and dressed. He stands in the doorway of the kitchen, watches her spin around stupidly.

She isn’t wearing a wig.

Her head is covered in a fuzz of soft, dirty blonde hair, and her eyes are sunken in her pale, thinning face.

She’s smiling.

The doctor says her days are numbered.

“Pancakes?” she says, at the sight of him.

“Yeah,” he says.

She serves them in their favorite way, slathered in peanut butter, and with slices of bananas on top.

He’s glad his dad is away in LA right now.

She wears a wig around his dad, even though it makes her head itch, and even though his dad shouldn’t care what his mom looks like right now.

She knows Garrett is cool with it.

He can smell her perfume in the air, though.

She says it always makes her feel pretty to wear her perfume.

He is going to clean up, filling the sink with warm, soapy water, and gathering all of the dishes, but she stands up and tugs him away, says the cleaning up’ll keep, and he isn’t able to argue with her.

“Come on,” she says.

Mississippi Kid is playing now on the record.

She is shuffling her feet now, moving her arms, and swaying her hips, and she raises her eyebrows at him.

“Well, I'm not looking for no trouble, but nobody dogs me 'round,” he sings.

She grins.

He dances, too.

They haven’t done this in a long, long time, been this silly, or danced this much, had fun like this, and he's missed it.

After a while, they reach the end of the record, and the sound of the static is familiar and friendly.

They are beaming and out of breath, the both of them.

She stumbles.

He’s at her side immediately, his arm around her waist. He’s nearly as tall as her now, and with all of the weight that she’s lost, he’s able to help her around like this easily. He’s quick to ease her into a chair, holding her hand.

“I’m fine,” she says.

He hovers.

“I think I can handle one more."

"Mom, no."

"Put on Simple Man,” she says.

“But—”

“Who’s the parent here, huh? If I want to dance with my boy, I’ll dance with my boy.”

He gives in.

She’s taught him how to read a record, and how to find the grooves for each of the songs, and she’s way, way better at it than he is, but he can do it pretty easily on the records he’s familiar with.

This is one of those records.

She stands up.

They don’t really dance now. It’s okay. They shuffle around the kitchen together slowly, her arm around his shoulders, and his arm around her waist.

He sings, too.

“Oh, take your time, don't live too fast
Troubles will come and they will pass
You'll find a woman and you'll find love
And don't forget, son, there is someone up above.

And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby, be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me, son, if you can.

Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul
And you can do this, oh baby, if you try
All that I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied.”

He knows all of the words to all of the songs on this album.

“And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby, be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me, son, if you can."

She smiles.

“Oh, yes, I will," he sings.

They slow to a stop.

She hugs him tightly, and he closes his eyes, presses his face into her neck and clings to her, and she hugs him tighter and tighter.

He never, ever wants her to let go.

“I love you,” she says.

He skips hockey that afternoon.

—

He wonders if his soulmate is able to feel what he needs. It isn’t common for soulmates to share a type of soulmatism, but it’s possible, right? He wonders if his soulmate knows how much he needs her.

Is she overwhelmed with the need to hug him right now?

He pictures it.

He’s thought a lot over the years about how his soulmate is bonded to him.

Is she able to feel his emotions?

That’d be kind of cool.

Can she not see color and is waiting for him to introduce her to how amazing the world really looks? That’d be nice, if only because it means she’ll recognize him right away and they won’t have to dance around each other. But, also, that can’t be it, ‘cause he’s pretty freakin’ positive that she loves colors, like, the girl needed her bike to be Racing Red, so she’s got to be able to see them already.

Are all of the bruises he gets blooming on her body, too? 

No. He can take the beating that hockey doles out, but her? No. Absolutely not. No. 

And the thought of red, raised skin on her cheek to match the red, raised skin on his cheek, because he’d yelled at his dad at the funeral, and his dad had dragged him off, held him by the hair, and smacked his face again and again, telling him to stop it, stop crying, stop it? 

No.

There’s a type where if your soulmate tells a lie, you hear your soulmate’s voice saying the lie in your head as clear as if your soulmate was standing at your side, telling the lie to you.

That’d be weird and fun and different.

There are people with a timer on the inside of their wrist that reveals how long until they meet their soulmate, down to the second, which, okay, yeah, useful, for sure, but . . . he wants his soulmate to know him.

What if she is able to feel his needs?

What if they’re a perfect, matching pair?

What if she is able to feel right now, deep, deep inside of her heart, that his mom is dead, and she is desperate to hug him?

It doesn’t really matter.

She isn’t here.

—

She continues to pop into his heart periodically in need of things, although less and less, and in a calmer, quieter way now.

She needs to go to the concert that all of her friends are going to. She needs to win the Spelling Bee this year because she needs to beat Oliver. She needs to learn to play the guitar that she saved and saved to buy. 

He isn’t able to help her with a lot of the things that she needs these days, but he’s okay with that.

Honestly?

He likes that the needs linger in him longer, a reminder of her.

And, once in a while, if he is able to buy the thing that she needs, he buys it, and he feels closer to her for it.

He gets a lot of flack from his friends when he leaves the box of tampons that he bought for her on the floor of his room.

They’d gotten a 12-pack of beer from Mikey’s brother, which is a score for a bunch of teenage boys at a strict, stuffy boarding school, so they’re hiding up in the dorms for the rest of the day to drink their way through all of the 12-pack before the contraband is discovered.

“It’s for my soulmate,” he says, annoyed.

“Sure,” Jason says.

“Why would I make that up?”

“You didn’t really go into a store to buy those,” Austin says.

He raises his eyebrows. “I did, though,” he says

“Why?” Jason asks, laughing.

“She needed them.”

“You can’t actually give them to her,” Mikey says.

“It’s not about that,” he says.

“She’s got our boy whipped,” Jason says.

He shakes his head.

“What are you gonna do if she’s ugly?” Peter asks.

“What?”

“Shit,” Jason says, with a kind of glee, “I’ve never thought about that, but, yeah, man, what if she’s got, like, a pig nose and buck teeth and a lazy eye?”

He glares.

“You’ve really never thought about if she’s a ugly?” Peter asks.

“She isn’t ugly,” he says.

“Yeah, but—”

“You think you’re gonna be getting a lot of girls with those craters on your face?” he says, because he is sick of Jason’s shit.

There’s laughter, and Jason shakes his head and shuts up finally, sipping his beer.

“She isn’t ugly,” he says again.

She’s his soulmate.

And, yeah, he doesn’t know what she looks like, but he knows he’s gonna like her looks, ‘cause she’s his soulmate, so he’s gonna like everything about her.

She’s gonna be his family.

He wishes that he got to know how things turned out for her. Did she get to go to the concert? Did she win the Spelling Bee? Did she learn to play the guitar? He wants her to have everything she wants.

He’ll have to remember to ask her.

Someday.

—

He wakes up early in the morning, when the sky is gray to herald a day that hasn’t quite arrived yet, and his room is quiet, but he is wide, wide awake.

He needs his mom.

And, yeah, he’s missed her a lot in the years since her death, but he isn’t missing her at that moment.

He just . . . he needs his mom.

All of a sudden, he’s crying.

He needs his mom.

As groggy as he is, it takes a minute for him to put it together, to wake up properly, and to understand.

It’s his soulmate.

She is desperately in need of her mom.

And he can’t seem to call up an explanation for her need like he usually can.

She needs her mom so badly that she can’t think of anything else, the need is too great, too raw, too important, she needs her mom, please, please, please, she needs her mom.

He wants to cry again.

He is fifteen years old, which means he’s known his soulmate’s needs for a decade now, but he’s never known her to need something as badly as she needs this.

What the hell is going on?

A sick feeling surfaces in him, and he can’t help but consider it.

Did her mom just die?

The need fades away after a couple of hours.

He hopes it’s because her mom is with her, because her mom is alive, because her mom is holding her tight right now.

—

He has to leave the rink in the middle of practice. His coach is shouting at his back immediately, but he ignores him, skating off the ice, and stumbling down the hallway. He can’t even think about practice right now.

He crumples against the lockers with the need that overwhelms him, her need, a need that makes his heart hurt.

She needs him to believe her.

It’s not a kind of need he’s ever really felt before, since usually the things she needs are things, to have a thing, to do a thing, to learn a thing, but it’s a real, raw need: she needs him to believe her.

“I believe you,” he tells her, uselessly.

He isn’t able to escape the feeling. 

She needs him to believe her with a desperation that she’s never, ever needed anything before.

Except, wait.

She needs music.

It takes him by surprise, but it’s true, and he’s certain of that, as if her sad, soft voice had come into his head. Can you sing to me? And as crazy as that is, there’s no way he’d ever say no to that voice, even if it’s only in his imagination.

She needs music.

He wants to pick a song that’ll reassure her, a song to say I believe you and I’m here and I believe you, I promise, I believe you.

Sweet Child o’ Mine, he decides.

He sings as loud as he can, off-key, and shameless, sings and sings and sings. 

“She's got a smile it seems to me
Reminds me of childhood memories
Where everything
Was as fresh as the bright blue sky
Now and then when I see her face
She takes me away to that special place
And if I'd stare too long
I'd probably break down and cry
Oh, oh, oh, sweet child o' mine, oh, oh, oh, oh, sweet love of mine!”

After?

She is quiet.

He imagines that he reached her, and he reassured her, that he hears her voice in his head say thank you softly.

But.

He hasn’t made it back to the rink to eat crow, apologize to his coach, and continue practice before he feels it again.

She needs him to believe her.

And he tries to ignore it, because there’s nothing he can do for her, so he has to ignore it.

But, fuck.

The need stays with him for longer than any of her needs have before. The rest of the day, it’s there, and when he wakes up in the morning, it’s there, and day after day after day, it’s there. The need is constant, a dull, dark feeling in the back of his head, inescapable, clinging to him.

I need you to believe me.

I do, he thinks, over and over.

But he can’t put that answer into a drawer with a bunch of junk and forget about it. And he can’t give it to her, despite how badly she needs it, because he doesn’t know who she is, or where she is, or how he’ll find her. So he’s just got to hold the answer in his hands and feel like a complete fucking loser.

And the very worst part about it?

He doesn’t know what’s going on with her.

And that’s not how it works with them.

He knows things about her needs.

Like when he’s thirteen, he knows when she needs a sweatshirt, and he knows it’s because her period has bled through her pad, so she needs a sweatshirt to wrap around her waist, otherwise she’ll have to stay trapped in a stall in the bathroom at school, forever, with blood on the butt of her jeans.

How the fuck does he know that?

No idea.

He just knows it.

It’s a really strong bond, remember?

The need in him now, though, her need for him to listen to her, to believe her, to love her anyway, this need, it’s inexplicable to him. 

And, according to Reddit, that’s the way it’s supposed to be for people with his type of soulmatism, and maybe the strangers on Reddit are right. But that’s never how it’s been for him. So Reddit can go fuck itself, actually, because her needs aren’t supposed to be a mystery to him, aren’t weird or funny or random. 

Her needs are crystal fucking clear to him.

Or they used to be, dammit.

I didn’t want it, she says. She needs him to believe that fact so badly it feels like her voice is right in his head, telling him. I didn’t want it, I swear, I didn’t want it.

What is she talking about?

And why does she need him to know that?

How can he help her?

I need you to believe me.

He starts to sing to her a lot.

All of the 80s love ballads he can think of, Take My Breath Away and All Out of Love and I Want to Know What Love Is.

He feels her need for music flood him, over and over, and he can’t help but feel that as impossible as it really is, he can finally actually fulfill her need.

He sings Sexual Healing to her, too.

He imagines throughout that she is laughing at him in her head, muttering about how it’s fucked up, you know, for him to choose that song right now, but she is laughing, and he loves it.

He’s delusional.

It’s just—that dark, despairing need for him to believe her?

It’s eating him alive.

And, yeah, he gets a lot of shit from everyone at school about how he’s going around singing all of the time, but he shrugs it off.

He'll do anything for her. 

—

She needs her mom. It hits him late at night this time, and he stays in a sprawl on his bed, his phone in his hand, and stares unseeingly at the NHL stats in front of him while he allows the need to sink in, but it doesn’t overwhelm him this time, and he’s able to sit with it. She needs her mom. 

And the need fades away more easily this time, leaving behind a soft, empty space.

She’s with her mom, he thinks.

She’s crawled into bed with mom, he imagines, and she’s falling asleep while her mom strokes her hair, and, absurdly, he is convinced that Dirty Dancing is playing on the TV screen in front of her.

It’s stupid.

He just really wants her to be okay.

—

She doesn’t need much in the months that follow, which, yeah, okay, he doesn’t like feeling cut off from her, but she deserves to be happy, instead of constantly in need of things.

It’s for the best, if you think about it.

She’s not a kid anymore, so she’s not confusing every little thing she wants with something she needs, and, instead, the things she needs are big and scary and hard, so the fact that she’s quiet now? 

It’s good.

Yeah.

It’s good.

Hockey is his life now. It had kind of always been, if he’s honest, but there isn’t anything left apart from it, now that his mom is gone, and his soulmate is quiet. Hockey is the priority, day in and day out.

There is a girl in the picture for a while.

Isabelle.

He isn’t thinking about it a lot, when he asks her if she wants to hang out, except he’s thinking, of course, that she’s hot, and she likes him, is fun to talk to, and laughs at all of his jokes.

And, yeah, he’s made out with girls at parties, but he’s ready for more than making out with girls at parties.

They keep going out, and when he asks her to go to the Spring Fling Dance with him, she agrees immediately, beaming at him, and they are going on more and more now, into the summer, on and on.

It’s fun.

Also, blowjobs?

Best thing ever. 10/10. Cannot recommend enough.

“Are you my boyfriend now?” she asks, after a couple of months.

“Yeah, totally,” he says.

He loses his virginity to her at sixteen years old in the back of his jeep on July 4th.

He is forced to miss her birthday a couple of months after that, though, because conditioning for hockey is kicking off, and he isn’t allowed to pick anything at all over conditioning for hockey, including a girl’s birthday.

Isabelle is devastated.

He apologizes over and over, but she just won’t let it go, and he isn’t going to apologize to her forever.

He yells at her about it.

Yeah.

He’s a jerk.

She can’t be that surprised, he says. Hockey is his priority, always has been, and always will be, he says, and she ought to know that if she cares about him half as much as she says she does. She can’t really hold this against him, he says. 

He’s defensive, okay?

He isn’t the villain because he chooses to prioritize his team and his sport and his future over a girl.

“You don’t have to be mean to me,” she says.

He looks away from her.

“Hockey isn’t everything.” There are tears in her voice now.

“It is, though,” he says.

“You’re supposed to care about the people in your life, like your girlfriend, more than you care about a game.”

“Yeah, except, it isn’t a game to me. Don’t—don’t do that, don’t scoff at me like that. I’m serious, it’s not just a game to me. Okay? I’ve been working toward it literally all my life. It’s my future. I’ve been putting everything I am into it for as long as I can remember.”

“And I’m not a part of your future, is that it?”

“I have a soulmate,” he says.

She gapes.

“I mean, I just—I guess I’ve never mentioned it, but I—”

“You can stop talking now,” she says, clenching her jaw, and crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

He is quiet.

“I want to break up,” she says. 

“Okay.”

She wipes at her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“I never wanted to be your placeholder, Garrett.”

He swallows.

“And I guess this explains why you never—you never wanted to talk to me about anything real, about your mom, or—you never—I guess this, just, this explains a lot.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m gonna go now.”

He is straightforward with girls after that.

Hockey is the priority.

And, yeah, most of the girls he meets aren’t interested in going all the way with a guy who isn’t going to be their boyfriend.

It’s okay.

He’ll have a girlfriend again.

And when he’s with his soulmate, it’ll work, because she’ll get it, how important hockey is, she’ll get it, and she’ll support him.

He does kind of wish that she would need him again, once in a while. He hasn’t had tug on his heart from her in ages, and he misses it: his girl, calling him up on her own personal, private line, and putting in her requests. He just wants the reminder that she needs him, just, you know, once in a while.

Whatever.

Fate will put her in front of him eventually.

There’s no way to rush it.

—

The need to get the hell out of here rises inside of him suddenly, angry, and aggressive, like she is screaming the words at the top of her legs, I’ve gotta get the hell out of here, she needs it, she needs it, she needs it.

He’s at practice.

The need is a loud, living thing inside of his heart, though.

He does his best to complete the drill that he’s in the middle of, although he doubts anybody is fooled by his sloppy, half-hearted shots, and as soon as he’s done with the drill, he skates off the ice.

And, yeah, he is supposed to sit on the bench, while Brody Anderson subs in, but that isn’t going to happen. 

He waves off his teammates, grabs a bottle of water, and goes. 

She needs to get out of here.

He waits for the why to wander into his head, leaning on the wall in the hallway, and listening, wanting to know what’s up.

She needs to get out of here.

That’s it.

She needs to get out of here.

He can’t do anything about that.

He returns to the rink, after he’s had a second to get a hold of himself, and after he reassures his coach that he’s ready now.

Her need remains in his head, and in his heart, deep and desperate.

He ignores it.

The damage is done, though.

His dad hears about Garrett’s failure to put 100% of himself into practice. 

That’s what you get when your coach is a tattletale.

His dad is a part of his life again now, retired, and ready to focus all of his attention on turning his son into his successor.

It’s awful.

His team is playing like shit this year, so his dad has been on his case about it already, saying that Garrett is the captain, and that means all of the loses this year are his responsibility, that the team is counting on Garret, that it’s time for him to put an end to the embarrassment of loss after loss.

He lets his dad lecture him.

He’s already been accepted at Briar U, and he isn’t worried about what happens with his team now.

“Your focus is split,” his dad says.

“It’s not.”

“You left the ice today!”

“I needed to piss.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not allowed to piss?”

“You were worrying about your soulmate, weren’t you?” his dad says. 

He looks away.

"You can't keep letting your soulmate distract you. You’re not a kid anymore, Garrett, and it’s time to get a grip, and grow up. You gotta move on from this obsession with your soulmate.”

“Uh-huh,” Garrett says.

“Hockey is your soulmate now,” his dad says.

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’m serious.”

“I said okay, jeez.”

His dad starts to turn away from him, only to spin around again, and slam his fist into the wall. It cracks the plaster of the wall in his room at school. His dad stares at him, and shakes his hand in the air slowly, as if to shake off the pain. “You want to try that again?” his dad asks.

“Hockey is my soulmate now,” Garrett says, flat.

“Good.”

She’s in his heart again that night because she needs, needs, needs to get out of here.

Me, too, he thinks.

—

He isn’t prepared for her to hit him over the head with the need to orgasm in the middle of the afternoon.

What the hell?

He is trying to memorize the names of emperors in Ancient Rome for a test tomorrow, and, yeah, history is kind of his thing, but he isn’t going to memorize the names of emperors in Ancient Rome without a bit of trying, okay?

This isn’t the time to be horny.

He’s rocking an A in his Ancient Civilizations class right now, and he wants to keep it that way. 

It isn’t that he’s forgotten the feeling, but it’s been a while, is all, so it isn’t the thing he thinks of first, when he feels it.

He needs an orgasm.

He’s a sophomore at Briar U now, and his life is a whirlwind of hockey, his friends, and hooking up, and if he needs an orgasm, he’ll find a girl to fool around with later, and he’ll get an orgasm, but this isn’t the time.

He needs an orgasm.

Just one. Is that so much to ask for? Just one. It makes him want to scream that such a small, silly thing is impossible. He can get himself off all day and all night, so what’s the problem? It shouldn’t be this hard. Just one.

He needs an orgasm.

His boyfriend is trying so, so hard to make him feel good, and it’s useless.

What the fuck?

His boyfriend is hot and sweet and fun, come on.

And, suddenly, it clicks, what this feeling in him is, it clicks, and he huffs to himself, because this is crazy.

His soulmate does not need a single damn thing for a year and a half, only for her deep, desperate need to orgasm to slam into suddenly with all of the fury of a brutal, bruising check on the ice?

He rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes, and laughs.

He loves her.

She needs to orgasm with him, just once, please, just once, with her sweet, sexy boyfriend who loves her, just once, please, just once. He’s her boyfriend, but she’s broken, and he feels like a terrible, terrible boyfriend because of her. She needs to orgasm with her boyfriend just once, please, just once.

He frowns.

She’s got a boyfriend who isn’t able to get her off, and she’s pleading with the universe for help, like it’s her fault, instead of her boyfriend’s? 

Unacceptable.

She needs to orgasm.

He jerks off.

He doesn’t know what else to do.

He imagines her, and, yeah, he has no idea what she looks like, but he imagines her anyway, soft skin and colorful underwear and loud laughter, and he imagines, more importantly, how good he’d make her feel.

What if she’s able to know it?

There’s a type of soulmatism where a person is able to hear their soulmate’s thoughts in their head when their soulmate is thinking of them.

It’s possible.

He imagines the heave of her tits when she’s close, imagines the pink of her pussy under his tongue, imagines the tremor of her legs when she’s close, close, close.

He imagines the way she scrambles to clutch at the sheets.

He comes.

“You aren’t broken,” he says, hoarse.

The need is quieter in him after.

He’s able to study.

But.

The weeks that follow are the weirdest of his life.

She isn’t pestering him day in, day out with her need to orgasm, but she is popping in regularly again, needing to orgasm so, so bad. 

Specifically, with a guy.

What’s the phrase from that movie?

I volunteer as tribute.

But, of course, he can’t do shit to help her, since he has no idea who she is, or how to find her.

It’s infuriating.

He has a pretty healthy sex life.

College is much, much different from high school.

He had a lot of girls into him in high school, to be sure, and plenty of those girls were happy to make out with him as much as he wanted, and, sometimes, to mess around a little, too, but that’s as far as it went.

Girls want boyfriends in high school, y’know?

He gets it.

But, since the moment he started at Briar U, he’s had his pick of fun, friendly girls. And he’s learned that a lot of girls in college are okay with casual, just a night, no strings attached hooking up. So, of course, in his time at Briar U, he’s made the most of that with all of those fun, friendly girls.

And, yeah, obviously, he’s upfront that he doesn’t do relationships, because he doesn’t want to lead anyone on.

Thankfully, that doesn’t seem to bother the majority of the girls he’s hanging out with.

He has a lot of sex these days, is the point.

He could make it so good for his her. He could get her off over and over. He could make her cry with how good it is. 

It doesn’t fucking matter, though.

There’s nothing he can do for her right now, short of jerking off to the thought of her over and over.

Whatever.

It is nice to be reminded of her.

—

He’s in the middle of chatting up Olivia Holtz when he is struck suddenly with the need to save his relationship, which isn’t a need he wants to be having right now, since, you know, he's in the middle of chatting up Olivia Holtz.

He’s at a party.

Olivia is hot, with long hair and legs for days, and Olivia is here, batting her eyes at him, and brushing her boobs against his arm.

He’s busy.

Except.

She is spiraling over her issues with her boyfriend, to the point that he’s able to picture her pacing, although, obviously, he isn’t able to picture her pacing, since he has no idea what she looks like, but she is spiraling.

He brushes off Olivia, says his phone is blowing up, and he needs to check on that, says he’ll find her later.

She needs to orgasm with him.

He grabs a beer from the fridge.

She doesn’t know how much longer her boyfriend will put up with this. Who wants to date a girl who’s defective? She can feel her boyfriend pulling away from her, more and more.

He steps into the yard, where a group of people are gathered around the fire, but he stays by himself.

She needs to orgasm with him.

You should break up with him, he thinks.

He isn’t the problem.

If he can’t get you off, he is absolutely the problem.

It isn’t his fault that I’m broken.

Baby, the fact that a guy isn’t able to get you off does not mean that YOU are broken, he thinks.

What?

He pauses.

Can she—?

He thought he was imagining this conversation, like always, but the way she’d said that word, as if she were confused, as if she’d heard him, as if she were answering him—why would he imagine it that way?

Are they—?

He swallows.

Am I losing my mind?

Can you hear me right now? he asks.

Yes?

Holy shit.

I am losing my mind. 

You’re my soulmate, he says, grinning.

How do you know that?

Are you kidding?

What?

I know that because of this conversation that we’re in the middle of right now.

You don’t talk to people in your head a lot?

No, actually.

Weird.

He laughs. 

She’s perfect. He’d known she would be, of course, but her tone of her voice in his head right now, the attitude, and the humor, fuck. She’s perfect. And he is talking to her right now, inside of his head. His soulmate.

I’m Garrett, he says.

I’m, um, I’m freaking out right now, in case that wasn’t clear.

Take your time.

Have you been in my head before? Like, is this your type of soulmatism? Are you able to come into my head?

I’ve never been in your head before, I promise. 

Good.

I mean, I do know things about you, ‘cause I know what you need, but I haven’t been, like, spying on you. 

You know what I need?

It’s my type, that I know what my soulmate needs, and, like, I need it, too. You can look it up if you want. It’s not a super common type, knowing your soulmate’s needs, but it’s not one of the really rare, weird ones either.

Oh.

That’s how I know you need to orgasm with a guy.

I am not okay with you knowing that.

He grins.

It’s an invasion of privacy.

I’m your soulmate, he says, amused.

Allegedly.

What’s your type?

It’s quiet.

Hello?

She’s gone.

He feels it, somehow, and he doesn’t know if she’s done it on purpose, or if she’s slipped away by accident, but the result is the same, regardless.

She’s gone.

There’s a peal of laughter from inside the house, where the party is carrying on, like this night is ordinary. 

He can’t fucking believe it.

They’ve been talking for years, haven’t they?

He’d thought it was his imagination when he’d heard her voice in his head, ‘cause it’s the silly, sappy stuff of movies to be able to share your thoughts with your soulmate, so he’d written it off.

She must have done the same.

It’ll happen again.

He thinks it over, and all of the times he’s imagined that he heard her voice in his head happened after she came barging into his head with a deep, desperate need, so he knows—she’ll need something again. 

He isn’t sure what’ll happen after that, once he knows her name and where she is and how to get in touch with her.

They’ll exchange numbers, obviously, so they can talk in their heads and over the phone, and they’ll . . . ?

He’s never really thought about what it will be like to have a soulmate for real, in practice, instead of simply in theory. Obviously, he’s thought about it some, in a shallow, shapeless way—how it’ll be perfect, how she’ll understand him, and he’ll take care of her, and how the sex will be hot and fun and crazy, crazy good, for him and for her, but that’s as far as he’s gotten. He’s never really thought about the details of what his life will look like day-to-day with a soulmate at his side, instead of simply in his head.

They’ll figure it out.

The problem is—

It doesn’t happen again.

She needs to orgasm with a guy. It isn’t a week before that feeling rises in him, late at night, tinged with a frustration that threatens to bring tears to his eyes, and he sits up slightly in his bed. She needs to orgasm with a guy.

Are you there? he asks.

It’s quiet.

Can you hear me? he asks.

She isn’t there.

He can tell that he is alone in his head, in spite of the need that burns in his heart, and he has no idea how to pull her into his head with him, or how to go into her head.

He jerks off, thinking of her, and replaying their conversation, thinking of her voice.

He feels the need in his heart soften just slightly after.

Are you there? he asks.

Nope.

And that’s the way it goes.

She needs to orgasm a couple of times a week, but she isn’t talking to him, despite how she needs, needs, needs to orgasm.

He gives up.

There’s a lot on his plate.

Hockey, primarily.

And, yeah, it’s the start of the season, but they aren’t going to get to the Frozen Four again this year if they slack off at the start of the season, so they need to shape up and show up, now, at the start.

Hockey is first, always.

He’ll find her when he is fated to find her, through her voice in his head, or in person.

He fucks Olivia Holtz in a bedroom at Beau’s frat house, a month to the day he met her at that party, and he feels really, really good after, with Olivia’s perfume in his nose, and the buzz of an orgasm in his blood. 

It’s easy.

It’s fun.

It’s enough.

—

He isn’t surprised when her need to orgasm hits him in the middle of a class at 10 in the morning.

She tends to need to orgasm throughout the day.

He wonders, idly, why it's happening right now. Is it because she’s with her boyfriend right now, and the asshole is underperforming, or is it because she’s suffering from, like, anxious, intrusive thoughts? He isn't sure which he wants it to be, since it doesn't really make a difference.

She needs to orgasm.

It’s distracting.

Why can’t she need stuff again, like a jacket or a Squishmallow or a necklace, or whatever? Those are things girls are into, right? Why can’t his soulmate have a deep, desperate need for one of those weird, toothy monster keychain things?

He is supposed to be listening to his professor’s review of Sampling Methods for a test on Friday that he really, really needs to ace, since Introduction to Statistics this semester is kind of kicking his butt.

If she were desperate for a purse, he’d be able to buy the purse, and that would calm the urge in him to help her, but she isn’t desperate for a purse.

She wants an orgasm.

Brat.

She needs to orgasm. She’ll lose her boyfriend if she can’t stay in the moment, just shut off her brain, and stay in the moment. She needs to orgasm.

He is supposed to be the one to shut off your brain, he thinks.

She needs to find a way to fake it.

He’s alarmed.

She’s out of her mind.

He doesn’t know what other explanation there is. Her lack of orgasms has gone to her head, and it’s taking her to a dark, dark place—a place where you have to fake it. He can't be a party to this bout of insanity.

She doesn’t really think she needs to fake it because her boyfriend is a sad, selfish sack of shit who isn’t able to get her off, does she?

He ought to skip his English class after this, return to his dorm, and spend half an hour with his hand.

It helps, sometimes, if he jerks off to the thought of her.

He doesn’t know if it helps her, of course, or if it helps him, making him feel like he’s capable of meeting her needs, and quieting the feeling of her need in him, but he doesn’t have a lot of options right now.

It’s something, isn’t it?

He tries.

He returns to his room in between his classes.

He imagines she’d keep her socks on, and they’d be brightly colored, fuzzy socks, like the pair that he’d bought for her when he was twelve.

He imagines the way she’d clutch at the pillow under her head, imagines the arch of her back, and the way her tits would bounce when he pounded into her, hitting that sweet, sweet spot inside of her, again and again and again.

He imagines the sight of her pretty, parted mouth, and the sounds that would slip from that pretty, parted mouth.

He comes.

The need is quieter again, in a soft, sated way.

He hopes it is for her, too.

Somehow.

The need crops up again eventually, of course, like always, because, apparently, her need to orgasm is the new, ridiculous normal of his life, and there isn’t anything he can do except feel the need, over and over.

When they’re together, he’ll get her off. 

He’ll prove to her that she was never the problem, that her ex-boyfriend was a loser, that she isn’t broken at all.

She’ll never have to fake it with him.

He’d hooked up with a girl a win against Yale the year before, when he was a freshman, and she was a senior, and he’d had a lot of fun, holing up in her apartment, and going round after round after round.

Abby Mrad.

He’d never hooked up with anyone as hot as her before.

She’d told him after that she’d be up for hooking up with him again.

And when he’d warned her that he wasn’t interested in a relationship, she’d rolled her eyes at him, and she’d informed him that she wasn’t looking for a relationship either, thank you very much.

“Do you know how rare it is for a girl to get off during a hook up?” she’d asked. 

And that had thrown him for a loop.

She’d ranted to him about how guys are terrible at sex, how they can get off easily, and they don’t think about the fact that girls can’t get off easily, and how a lot of hooks up are fun regardless, but, yeah, in case you weren’t aware, guys are terrible at sex, and girls have to fake it a lot.

He’d been pretty fucking proud of himself after that.

Because, you know.

He’d gotten her off repeatedly.

And he is happy to report that his ability to get Abby off wasn’t a one-time, this-girl-only kind of thing.

He gets off the girls he hooks up with, all of them, even if it isn’t easy, and even if it takes a while.

It’s a point of pride for him, actually.

He likes to think it’s a part of his reputation, that he can be counted on to get a girl off, and it’s a part of the reason that girls are interested in him.

And he hates that his soulmate is saddled with a guy who can’t be counted on to get her off.

I’ll make you see fucking stars, he thinks.

—

There’s a snowstorm at the beginning of December that blankets the campus in a foot and a half of thick, icy snow.

Classes are cancelled.

He winds up at Dean’s apartment for the day, since Dean’s place is off campus, has a huge TV, a gaming system, and a lot of beer, and he figures it’s the place to waste the hours away comfortably.

Logan, Dean, and Tucker want to play NHL on the xbox.

He passes.

Later, maybe.

He sits nearby, and he sips on a beer, scrolls on his phone.

She needs to get out of this dorm.

He sighs.

Her boyfriend broke up with her.

The knowledge arrives in his head suddenly and all at once: according to her boyfriend, he cares about her a lot, but his inability to get her off has become too much for him, and he can’t do this with her anymore.

Jackass, he thinks.

He pauses.

How had that knowledge arrived in his head?

Hello? he thinks.

Nothing.

It’s about time you got rid of him, he thinks.

She isn’t there.

She needs to get out of this dorm.

He pulls up Google on his phone.

It’s been over a month since they talked in his head, and, yeah, he is aware that he isn’t able to force it, and it could be months and months before they talk in his head again, but it can’t hurt to ask the internet for advice.

Who knows what answers might be out there?

How do you find your soulmate? he searches.

The results aren’t helpful.

Sign up to attend a speed dating, soulmate search party in your city. Join an app like MateLoveMatch. Try to participate in activities around you that’ll lead you to interact with people. Put your faith in fate. Search the listings on r/areyoumysoulmate.

Yeah, he isn't doing any of that.

How do you talk to your soulmate in your head? he searches.

You can’t. That’s only a thing in the movies. It’s impossible. That’s one of the types, to hear your soulmate’s thoughts, but it’s rare. It’s impossible. The odds of having a True Bond are, like, one in a billion. You can’t.

What’s a True Bond? he searches.

There’s a post on reddit about types of bonds with a link to download a PDF of a book.

He clicks it.

The Science of Soulmates by Franklin T. Loursh, Ph.D.

It’s about the ways in which psychology, sociology, and physiology have attempted to understand soulmatism over the years.

He skims it.

There are signs that soulmates existed in Ancient Mesopotamia. Jane Goodall was the first to discover that chimpanzees have soulmates, and this discovery transformed our understanding of soulmatism in humans, too. There was a search in the 1970s for evidence of soulmates in our genes.

It’s interesting, although he isn’t sure how any of this information is helpful.

There are 127 types of soulmatism.

He reads the list of types with a kind of fascination, because he had no idea there were this many types, and, also, there are some weird, weird types out there.

You can smell the scents that your soulmate smells if the scents are strong. If your soulmate breaks a bone, you break that bone, too. You become very cold if your soulmate is very hot, or vice versa.

You are mute until the moment that you meet your soulmate.

You know when your soulmate is peeing.

He pauses for a moment to ponder the idea that her type is to know when he is peeing, which is hilarious, and, you know, horrifying, before he pushes the thought away, because there’s no way that’s her type.

You are paralyzed with terror when your soulmate is having a nightmare.

It’s wild.

Scientists have sorted the types into a couple of big, broad categories.

Category One: recognitive types, or types in which the purpose is for a person to recognize their soulmate.

Category Two: supportive types, or types in which the purpose is for a person to support their soulmate.

The type of bond that forms between a pair is dependent on the combination of these categories.

This is what he was looking for.

Combination One: two recognitive types, leading to a “surface bond,” the benefit of which is that each in the pair is able to find their partner easily. According to a survey of 10,000 pairs in the United States, approximately 26% of pairs are Combination One.

Combination Two: a recognitive type and a supportive type, which is the most common bond, considered, therefore, a “typical bond,” and one that combines the strength of identifying a soulmate with the strength of understanding a soulmate. According to a survey of 10,000 pairs in the United States, approximately 71% of pairs are Combination Two.

Combination Three: two supportive types, leading to a “core bond,” the benefit of which is that each in the pair is able to understand their partner easily. According to a survey of 10,000 pairs in the United States, approximately 3% of pairs are Combination Two.

All of the combinations have the capability of becoming a “True Bond,” or a bond in which the connection between the pair becomes a channel of communication, but the odds for each of the combinations is different.

He sits up slightly.

There it is.

They have a True Bond. That’s how they were able to talk. They have a True Bond.

For Combination One, the odds of soulmates having a True Bond are 1 in 10,000, or 0.01%. For Combination Two, the odds are 1 in 2,500, or 0.04%. For Combination Three, the odds are 1 in 300, or 0.33%.

They’re Combination Three.

He doesn’t know what her type is, but his type is definitely a supportive type, and her type has to be, too.

Because, according to the math that is swimming on the screen in front of him, the odds of having a True Bond are highest if they are Combination Three, and he and his soulmate have a True Bond, there isn’t a question of that.

It’s what he wanted as a kid.

The book is acting like all of the combinations are equal, each of them with pros and cons, but come on.

There isn’t a way to deny that Combination Three results in the deepest bond, and that’s what the Garrett Graham of his childhood wanted: the best, coolest, deepest bond.

So.

They’re Combination Three.

He isn’t sure what to do with that information.

How does a True Bond work? he searches.

You can’t form a True Bond until you meet your soulmate in person.

Well, that isn’t true, he thinks.

In the 1950s, there was a series of attempts by scientists at Harvard University to force the formation of a True Bond, but all of the attempts were unsuccessful, and, today, the experiments are considered to be unethical.

Unhelpful, he thinks.

True Bonds are known to vary in strength, to cause a lot of confusion, and to be volatile.

Yeah, that’s pretty fucking clear, he thinks.

According to a qualitative study of over 100 pairs of soulmates with a True Bond, undertaken at the University of Virginia in 2005, a True Bond is something that builds slowly over years and years.

How does he speed it up?

“You doing okay over there?” Logan asks.

He glances up from his phone.

They have finished the game they were playing, and Dean is rummaging in the kitchen now.

“Yeah,” he says.

The guys at Briar are his ride-or-die. A lot of his friends from high school were pretty cool people, but the friendships quietly faded as soon as he was out of high school. The guys at Briar are different.

Logan, Dean, Tucker—they’re friends who are going to stick with him for life.

But, somehow, his boys at Briar U don’t know that he has a soulmate.

It’s just never really come up.

He’d listened to a lot of adults lecture him when he was a kid that soulmates are personal and private, and that’s why he shouldn’t brag about his soulmate, and he’d scoffed in the faces of those adults, because he’d wanted to shout about his girl at the top of his lungs, and he was going to, thank you very much.

But, now, he gets it, kind of.

She’s special.

And, yeah, he’s always known that she’s special, but he’s older now, and he understands the world better, and he feels like she is special in a way that he has to protect.

His friends, though.

There isn’t a reason for them not to know.

“I’m . . . researching stuff about soulmates,” he says.

“Why?” Tucker asks.

“Because I have a soulmate,” he says.

“For real?” Logan asks.

“Yeah, and, ah, and a month ago, we talked in our thoughts. But we got cut off, or something. So, yeah, I’ve been trying to find a way to talk to her again. I’ve been looking up stuff about True Bonds, trying to figure it out. Haven’t gotten anywhere with it.

“You talked to her in your thoughts?” Tucker asks.

He nods.

“That’s a thing?” Tucker asks.

“Apparently,” he says.

“Yeah, it’s a fucking True Bond,” Dean says. 

“Fuck,” Logan says.

“But, shit, a True Bond is intense, bro,” Dean says.

“Yeah.”

He tells them about his type, and when Logan claims that explains the “big ass box” of weird, random shit that Garrett keeps under the bed, he tells them that he’s saving up the stuff he’s brought her to give to her someday.

They aren’t weird about it.

They ask him how he learned he had a soulmate. 

They bring up that movie where Scarlett Johansson is soulmates with a robot, and, oh, do you remember that movie where Maggie Gyllenhaal learns that her soulmate is her dad’s old, married friend? 

They reassure him that he’ll find his soulmate when he is fated to. 

They go back to their game.

The xbox isn’t going to play itself, Logan says.

He looks at his phone.

How do you talk to your soulmate in your head? he searches again.

You have to know your soulmate’s type. If you know your soulmate’s type, you can use that information to encourage your True Bond. For example, if you know their type is to bruise when you bruise, you can give yourself a bruise, and the moment the bruise is forming on your soulmate, you’ll have an opening to speak to them. It’s key, that information. You have to know your soulmate’s type.

Otherwise?

You’re SOL.

The screen on his phone goes dark with inactivity.

Whatever.

The xbox isn’t going to play itself.

—

He is hyped up when he arrives at Malone’s, grabs a booth in the back with the guys, and orders a pitcher.

It’s Karaoke Night, so the place is packed with people.

He needs a night like this. The end of the semester has been a shitstorm of hockey, snow, and exams, and he is exhausted. He needs to relax, needs a release.

They haven’t been there for long before they have company.

Michelle, Kendall, and Melanie are happy to crowd in close with them, complimenting them on their win against St. A’s that night, and Kendall’s gaze lingers on him longer than it needs to, an invitation in her eyes.

He sings Bye, Bye, Bye with Dean, Logan, and Tucker. He agrees to a round of shots with the boys, and another, since they haven’t got a game tomorrow. He sings Under Pressure with Logan.

Kendall finds him at the bar after, sidles up, and flirts.

“You want to get out of here?” he asks.

“I could be convinced,” she says.

“Yeah?”

She shrugs.

He slides a hand up her back and leans in, swipes his lips over her cheek lightly, and he whispers into her ear what he wants to do to her.

“Let’s go,” she says immediately.

He smirks.

He flags a waitress down to pay his tab, and Kendall intertwines her arm with his, pressing up against him. "Closing out?" asks the waitress, already turning away from him again to fetch a receipt for him. He can't really do math right now, so when the waitress slides the receipt to him, he just tips $50, signs it sloppily, and calls it quits, and Kendall tugs him away from the bar.

And that’s when he notices the phone in Kendall's hand, and he stops, because it’s covered in cutesy, colorful jewels that catch the light, glowing and glittering.

“What?” she says.

“Your phone.”

She looks at her phone.

“It’s bedazzled,” he says.

“Yeah, actually,” she says, amused.

“Did you do that yourself?”

“Why?”

He considers her.

They’ve never really talked before.

He’s known her for a while, but they’ve never really had a conversation, meaning in spite of how long he’s known her, he doesn’t actually know anything about her.

What if . . . ?

No.

Kendall is hot, fun, and a fan of hockey, and he is very, very into the idea of taking her to her dorm, but Kendall isn’t his soulmate.

“No reason,” he says, shrugging.

She looks at his lips.

He doesn’t try to stop her.

It’s a hot, heavy kiss, her hand on his jaw, and her tongue in his mouth. “You ready to get out of here?” she asks.

He leaves Malone’s with her.

—

The need is there when he wakes in the morning, and it grows and grows throughout 7 am practice, until he’s in the showers after, and the deep, desperate need is a hot, heavy feeling in his chest, demanding his attention. 

She needs this job.

He runs his fingers through hair to rinse the shampoo out.

Briar is already so expensive, even with a scholarship, and if her parents are going to work their asses off to pay for Briar, the least that she can do is work her ass off to pay for food and clothes and fun.

He chokes.

She needs this job.

You’re at Briar U? he thinks.

Garrett?

Her voice is clear in his head, and his heart is pounding in his throat suddenly.

Can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Hi.

He snorts.

I’m sorry we got cut off when we talked before. I think it was my fault because my roommate asked me a question, and it distracted me, and the internet says a distraction will cut off communication. I didn’t mean to disappear on you.

You’re a student at Briar? he asks.

There’s a pause.

You were talking about how expensive Briar is.

It is expensive.

I’m at Briar, too, he says.

This is crazy. He shouldn’t be surprised that she’s at his school, considering they’re fated to meet, so it makes perfect sense. But, somehow, it had never occurred to him to consider that his soulmate was close.

I’m a sophomore, he says.

I know.

What?

You’re Garrett Graham, she says.

How do you know that?

I’ve known you’re my soulmate for a while now. There’s an apology in her voice.

Are you fucking with me right now?

All of the excitement in him at the thought that his soulmate was here, at his school, has evaporated in the blink of an eye. 

Why didn’t you say anything?

Because.

He raises his eyebrows.

You’re Garrett Graham.

Yeah, I am.

You don’t really do relationships.

You’re my soulmate, he says, incredulous.

Apparently.

You’re aware that we’re talking in our thoughts right now?

I noticed.

We have a True Bond, he says.

And you’re happy about that?

Obviously.

Huh.

He laughs. 

I wouldn’t have thought you’d want a soulmate.

Well, you don’t know me very well.

There’s a burst of laughter from the direction of the lockers, and, for a split-second, it distracts him.

What’s your name? he asks.

She’s gone.

They’d gotten cut off again, and it was before he’d gotten any information about how to find her again. 

She’d warned him, too.

He scrubs his hands over his face.

Fuck, he thinks. 

—

He can’t get the conversation out of his head, what she’d confessed, and how confused she’d been.

“So,” Logan says.

He doesn’t bother looking up from his phone.

“That was a choice.”

“What?”

“We are sitting in our dorm with nothing to do, and a bunch of really hot, really eager girls dropped by to see if we wanted to go to a party, and you told them you needed to study.”

“I do,” he says.

“It’s Friday,” Logan says.

“And?”

“And I’m gonna need you to tell me what’s up,” Logan says, spinning his desk chair around, and straddling it.

“You can go to the party,” Garrett says.

“I don’t want to go to the party,” Logan says.

“So then what’s the problem?”

“You tell me.”

He scoffs.

“G,” Logan says. “You’ve been off for days.”

“I . . .” He sighs. “I talked to my soulmate again,” he says.

“Isn’t that good?”

“She’s at Briar.”

“Dude!”

“She knows who I am,” he says.

Logan is gaping at him. “I don’t—dude, this all sounds good to me, I don’t—what’s the problem?”

“She’s known who I am for a while.”

“And she never said anything,” Logan says, in the voice of someone who is catching on.

“Nope.”

It’s quiet.

“And we got cut off again before I could get her name,” Garrett says.

It isn’t the end of the world. They’ll talk again eventually, and they’ll figure it out, because they have to, because they’re meant to, because they’re soulmates. It's just that he's kind of in his head about it.

“My parents were soulmates,” Logan says.

He snaps his gaze to Logan in surprise.

“Seriously,” Logan says.

“I thought your parents were . . .”

“Divorced?”

He nods.

“Yeah, they split up when I was a kid. Because they might have been soulmates, but they were not right for each other, and they never should’ve gotten married, never would’ve, I bet, if they hadn’t been soulmates. It was a relief when they called it quits, honestly.”

He had no idea. “I’m sorry, man.”

“I’m just saying . . .” Logan sighs. “If I found out I had a soulmate, after everything with my parents, I’d be kind of on the fence about it, and it wouldn’t be because I didn’t like my soulmate, or anything.”

“I get it,” he says.

“But?”

“I just—I want to meet her. She’s been in my head for literally my whole life. I want to—I want to know her name, I want to put a face to the name.”

“Sure,” Logan says.

“I’m not saying we have to get married, or—it’s not like I’m big on relationships, and I’m not expecting us to . . . I’m not saying we have to get together immediately and be in love and stay together forever.”

“You should tell her that,” Logan says.

He will.

It’s just—

What if the problem is him?

You’re Garrett Graham, she’d said, like that was an explanation in and of itself, like she thought that made it clear why she’d never introduced herself to him, like it was obvious what the issue was.

What if she doesn’t want to be his soulmate?

It’s stupid.

He just can’t get the thought out of his head.

“Let’s go to that party,” Logan says.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m not taking no for an answer.” Logan stands. “It’ll be good for you to get your mind off her. Come on, I’ve decided already. It’s happening.”

He sighs.

It can’t fucking hurt to try.

—

The need finds him early in the morning again, creeping up when he is shoveling his cereal into his mouth, and he rubs at his chest, at the need, need, need that is crystalizing inside of him by the second.

She needs this job.

He wonders if she is trying to get the job from a week ago, or if she is after a new, different job now.

She needs this job.

Or is she worried about losing a job?

She can’t ask her parents for money again. And if that means she needs to get a second job to stay at Briar, fine, she’ll get a second job. She isn’t going to put more of a strain on her parents that she already has.

Can you hear me? he asks.

Garrett?

He smiles.

There is something about the way she says his name like that, sweet and surprised.

Hey, he says.

Hello.

So.

So?

Where were we?

What?

You’re a student at Briar, he says.

We’ve established that.

I’m Garrett Graham, he says.

Yup.

You’re under the impression that I’m an asshole who isn’t interested in having a soulmate, he says.

That isn’t what I said!

I’m reading between the lines.

Well, stop doing that.

He can’t help but think that this silly, stubborn girl of his is cute. That isn’t really a thing he thinks about girls, but, well. He has a feeling he’s going to find her cute a lot, if he can just convince her to give him the chance to find her cute a lot.

You keep things casual with girls.

I’m busy.

And there isn’t anything wrong with that.

But I’ll make time for you.

Why?

You don’t really need me to answer that, he says, half-annoyed, half-amused.

Because I’m your soulmate?

Nailed it.

But you don’t know me.

I’d like to.

It’s quiet.

What’s your name?

I’m a sophomore, too.

Okay?

There’s no need to rush.

What’s your name?

And, naturally, that’s when there’s a knock on the door of his dorm, and he makes the mistake of hearing it.

She disappears.

He asks if she’s there a couple of times anyway, in spite of the fact that he knows she’s gone, can feel her absence in a way that is hard to describe but is nonetheless.

He hadn’t gotten anything out of her.

And his cereal is soggy now, too.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! he thinks.

—

He decides in January that he is going to search for his soulmate, instead of sitting on his ass in hopes of speaking to her for a split-second.

And, yeah, the internet says it’s impossible to find your soulmate before fate allows, but the internet doesn’t know what the fuck it’s talking about.

He’s going to find her.

She is somewhere on this campus, after all.

And he knows her, all of her needs over the years adding up into a picture of her.

It had never really occurred to him to ask the girls around him about their interests in search of his soulmate, but it had never really occurred to him that one of the girls around him was his soulmate.

Now?

He thinks of his mom.

She had made him promise, all those years ago, when he was a small, stupid kid, that he’d search for his soulmate, and she had been so, so serious, asking him to promise her he’d search for his soulmate.

He will.

He chats up girl after girl.

In his classes, at Malone’s, in the cafeteria, at the gym, in the library, all of the girls, in all of the places.

He asks if they like blue raspberry jolly ranchers better than the rest of the flavors, if they wanted to bedazzle everything they owned when they were a kid, if they like butter pecan ice cream with the passion of a little old lady.

Nothing.

He talks to Kendall again.

He’d written her off too quickly before. And, yeah, he can’t help but think that Kendall would tell him if she were her soulmate, but he really doesn’t know her that well. He shouldn’t dismiss her so easily.

She sidles up to him at a party at Hawks House, says “Hey, Graham,” and smiles at him, and he decides.

He needs to give her a chance.

“Were you into the Spelling Bee when you were a kid?”

She laughs. “What?”

“I’m curious,” he says, shrugging.

“I was, actually,” she says, amused. “I was actually a finalist in 7th grade. But I missed the word anonymously, on stage, in front of everyone, and it was awful. I’m still not completely over it, and, again, it was 7th grade.”

“I . . . am not sure I know how to spell anonymously now,” he says.

“A-n-o-n-y-m-o-u-s-l-y.”

“Huh,” he says.

She laughs again.

He carries on, asking question after question, without a lot of explanation, and without an ounce of shame.

She is happy to answer.

And, well.

She collected the Beanie Babies from McDonald’s when she was little. She was obsessed with bedazzling for a couple of months in 4th grade, and she isn’t that into it now, but she likes to bedazzle her things once in a while for fun. She asked her parents for a dog for Christmas year after year.

He ought to be excited.

She just doesn’t really fit with the picture of his soulmate that lives in his head. The more that he talks to her, the more certain he becomes. She’s fun and flirty, but she isn’t the girl in his head.

And, obviously, he doesn’t know for certain that the voice in his head is his soulmate’s real, regular voice, so he isn’t going to write off a girl because her voice is different from the voice in his head.

There is something about Kendall’s voice, though, that isn’t right, the tone, or the inflections, the cadence.

“You like music?” he asks.

“Of course,” she says.

“What, ah, what was the CD when you were a kid?” he asks.“The CD?”

“Yeah, you know, everybody had the CD, the one you, like, listened to on the bus over and over again when you were ten, the CD.”

“Oh, my God, were you that kid on the bus?” she says, delighted.

“What?”

“The emo kid, listening to your CD player on the bus, and leaning your head on the window, ignoring the rest of the kids?” 

“I mean, yeah, maybe,” he says. 

“Well, I was busy talking to my friends on the bus,” she says.

“Right.”

She isn’t his soulmate.

He slips away from her as soon as he can, saying he’s going to see what the guys are up to, and she accepts it easily, which he is glad for.

Kendall is cool.

There are lots of girls at the party.

He talks to Claire and Addison and Emily and Sophia and Poppy.

It’s a bust.

“Why were you quizzing that girl?” Jules asks.

He startles. 

He hadn’t known they were right behind him, but, then, he never really knew when they were right behind him, because that was part of how Jules operated, and how they kept the Fifth Line current.

“I wasn’t quizzing her,” he says.

“You were, though.”

“I’m not allowed to chat up a girl at a party?”

“Sure,” Jules says.

He isn’t off the hook, though.

“But a lot of guys, when they chat up a girl, they don’t tell her to take a hike if they find out that she wasn’t into bedazzling when she was a kid, ‘cause, you know, they don’t usually care about that.” 

“I didn’t tell her to take a hike,” he says.

“You really can’t hook up with a girl who was never into bedazzling as a kid?”

“I’m not looking to hook up with a girl.”

They raise their eyebrows at him.

He gives in. 

After they promise that they aren’t going to put this on Fifth Line, he reveals that he is searching for his soulmate, that he knows she’s on this campus, and he knows a lot about her in general, so, yeah, he is quizzing the girls he talks to.

He is going to find her.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to post this?” they ask, a look of delight on their face.

“Positive.”

“What if your soulmate follows Fifth Line? If she’s your soulmate, she’s gotta be a fan of hockey, so it would make sense. What if your soulmate sees a post on Fifth Line’s that says you, the Garrett Graham, are in search of a soulmate?”

He sighs.

“What if she decides to seek you out to see if she’s the one?”

“She wouldn’t.”

“It isn’t arrogant to assume that your soulmate would be excited about the idea of you,” Jules says.

“I’ll pass,” he says.

“You let me know if you change your mind.”

He isn’t going to.

His soulmate isn’t excited about the idea of him.

And, unfortunately, if he advertises that he is searching for her, there’s a chance it’ll scare her into hiding from him, which is ridiculous, and, also, a very, very real possibility, so he is going to keep his search as quiet as possible.

He hooks up with Zoe that night, when it’s after 2 am, and the party is breaking up, and it’s time to call it quits, and Zoe comments he seems pretty stressed out, if he wants a hand with that.

He isn’t giving up, though.

He is going to find her.

—

He’s on a run around campus with Dean, the crunch of a dusting of snow under their feet, and the warmth of their breath quietly billowing up around them, when he realizes that he is running faster and faster and faster, and Dean is struggling to keep up.

“Sorry,” he says, easing up.

He’s in his head.

“It’s fine,” Dean says.

They stop outside Emerson Hall to stretch.

“You doing okay over there?” Dean asks.

“Yeah, I . . .”

“Your soulmate?”

He squeezes a spray of water into his mouth.

“You want my help?”

“Your help?”

“Yeah, I, ah, I don’t talk about it a lot,” Dean says, “but I am kind of an expert on soulmates.” 

“You’re kidding,” Garrett says.

“Nope.”

“How?”

“Soulmates run in my family. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins—all of them have soulmates. Literally, all of them. My siblings, too. Soulmates are, like, a part of my family’s DNA.”

“Shit,” he says.

“There isn’t anything to know about soulmates that I don’t know,” Dean says.

“Do you have a soulmate?” he asks.

“Nah.” 

He steps on the curb and leans forward slightly, stretching his hamstring for a moment, before he switches his legs.

“Come on, tell me where you’re at right now,” Dean says.

“Okay, um.” He pushes his hair out of his face. “I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve been searching campus for a couple of weeks now, and I—I don’t know if she’s avoiding me, or if she runs in totally different circles than us, or what, but I’m getting nowhere with it. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“And you’ve given up on trying to talk to her about it?”

“I don’t know when that’s gonna happen again,” he says.

“Why don’t you make it happen again?”

“I have no control over it,” he says.

“None?”

“She has to need something, and she has to feel chatty about it, or something, I don’t know, but she has to need something, I’ve figured that out.”

“What about doing it the other way around?”

He frowns. 

“She’s able to slip into her head when she’s in need of something, ‘cause that’s your type,” Dean says.

“Right.”

“What about doing it the other way around?”

“I . . . don’t know what her type is, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he says.

“Yeah, you do.”

He scoffs. “No, I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do.”

“I think I’d fucking know if I did,” he says.

“You have a True Bond, G.”

“And?”

“And," Dean says, exasperated. "It’s not like one day you wake up and you’re chatting with your soulmate in your head. That’s not how True Bonds work, how they form. It’s not this crazy, magical thing that you and your soulmate luck into.”

“I know,” he says.

“It happens slowly, bit by bit.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And it happens when you're obsessed with your soulmate, and your soulmate is obsessed with you.”

That gets Garrett to shut up.

“There isn’t a way for a True Bond to form unless there's reciprocation. So, how about this. Think about all of the times you’ve had her voice in your head. Like, when you were in high school, or whatever, before you could hold a conversation with her, when you thought it was your imagination. Think of all of every single time that you heard her voice in your head.”

He’d never told Dean about the times he’d imagined her voice in his head.

“Are you thinking about those times?”

He nods.

“Was there a time when you talked back?

“No.”

“It had to have happened. You can’t just have jumped straight to talking to her the way you have been recently with, like, whole ass sentences, and shit. It doesn’t work that way. For you to have a True Bond, things had to have started out small. You just have to think of a time when you heard her voice in your head, and you talked back, and you had a feeling that her voice in your head heard you. It had to have happened.”

“I don’t . . .”

“And I’m telling you, once you figure out when you did it, you’ll know how you did it, and you’ll know her type.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“What’s not making sense here?” Dean asks.

He shakes his head.

He can’t remember a time when he’s been able to talk back to her. He would have noticed, would have known. He remembers a lot of instances of her talking to him, but he can’t remember ever talking back

“It’s not as easy as you’re making it sound,” he says.

“Universe isn’t trying to make it easy for you,” Dean says.

“Yeah.”

“You got this, G.” And when he says it like that, with a kind of easy, breezy confidence, clapping at hand to Garrett’s shoulder, it’s easy to believe he’s right. “You’re gonna find your way into your girl’s head.”

“Thanks, man.”

“It’s what I’m here for.”

He squeezes a spray of water into his mouth again, and he eyes his friend. “Are you sure that you don’t have a soulmate?” he asks.

The smile on Dean’s face slips just slightly.

“It could be you’re a type that doesn’t show up ‘til you’re older.”

“Yeah, so, my granddad . . ." Dean sighs. “My granddad didn’t have a soulmate either, ‘til he met my gran. She had a soulmate, but the guy was a dick, and when she fell in love with my granddad, she ended up changing soulmates—a transfer, if you’ve heard of that? My granddad only got a soulmate after that, after my gran made him her soulmate.”

“Isn’t a transfer like one in a million?” Garrett says. 

“Basically,” Dean says.

Well, shit.

And, yeah, lots of activists are big on how it ought to be about choice, how you don’t owe your soulmate anything, and should be with whomever you want to be with, and, obviously, the activists are right about that, and Garrett is totally on board with the importance of choice.

A transfer, though.

That isn’t choosing to be with someone who isn’t your soulmate.

A transfer is when you choose your soulmate, when you take the connection that you have with someone, sever it, and connect to someone new, someone different, someone better—your soulmate by choice.

It’s the stuff of sappy romance stories.

“But, yeah, granddad is convinced that’s what I’m meant to do. That I gotta go find a girl the universe already paired off, steal her away, and tell the universe to fuck off. But even if it worked for my granddad, it’s one in a million, so, yeah, I’m not about to hold my breath.”

It’s quiet again.

“It’s cool, though,” Dean says. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m living the Life of Dean,” Dean says, smirking, and spreading his arms stupidly.

“Come on,” Garrett says, with a shake of his head.

They start up their run again, circling the back of Emerson Hall, and heading to the quad. His lungs are used to the cold by now, so the chill in the air is nice now, keeping them cool. They’ve gone a couple of miles already, but they have many, many more to go, 

He thinks of his soulmate.

It had to have happened, Dean said.

He thinks of the moments with his soulmate that are warmest in his memories, when his soulmate had seemed to be with him, when he could have sworn he was hearing her voice in his head, when his soulmate had seemed to be real to him.

What about when he was fifteen?

She was going through something, and she'd needed her mother, and she’d needed him to believe her, please, please, please, she’d needed him to believe her, and it had made him sick to his stomach how desperate he was to help her when she'd needed help so, so much.

And—

She’d needed music.

He’d felt like he heard her voice in his head, asking for him to sing to her, and, after, when he’d been out of breath from belting the words of Sweet Child ‘o Mine to her, he’d felt like she’d heard him.

Shit.

She’d thanked him, or at least he'd imagined that she had.

What if that wasn't his imagination?

He stops.

“G?”

He pulls up Google on his phone.

Are there types of soulmatism that involve music? he searches.

There are a handful of results.

You can’t hear music until you meet your soulmate. No, that’s not it.

You hear whatever music your soulmate hears. Maybe?

You hear the sound of music in your head louder and louder the closer you get to your soulmate until you meet them. No, that’s not it.

He pushes a hand through his hair.

“What’s up?” Dean asks.

“I’m . . .”

When your soulmate sings, you can hear it in your head. 

He stares. That would make perfect sense. He can't believe it didn't occur to him sooner. That's it. Holy shit! That’s it.

Dean’s hand waves in front of his face.

“I figured it out,” Garrett says.

“How to talk to your soulmate?” Dean says, catching on.

“She can hear me sing.”

—

He isn’t sure how exactly he’s supposed to get into head by singing, but he figures if he sings and sings, for as long as he can, he’ll find a way in eventually.

That’s the plan anyway.

“Baby, now that I've found you,
I can't let you go,
I’ll build my world around you,
I need you so,
Baby, even though,
You don't need me,
You don't need me!”

He sings his way through his breakfast.

At practice, a new, urgent need starts to seep into him, but when he asks if she’s there, he isn’t able to reach her, so he carries on, encouraged by that need, and by the fact that he knows, without a word, that the need is for silence.

He sings at lunch with the guys, and under his breath in the back of his classes, and while he’s weightlifting.

He’s a man on a mission.

He sings in between the bites of his dinner.

“Baby, baby, since first we met
I knew in this heart of mine,
The love we had could not be bad
I played it right and bide my time.”

He sings on the way to a party at Beau’s frat house.

He sings in spite of the fact that it’s evening now, and his mouth is dry, and his voice is hoarse, and the words are as good as gibberish in his mouth now, sings and sings and sings, because the need is burning in him now.

He sings in between shots with Beau’s joking, jeering frat brothers.

“Baby, now that I've found you,
I can't let you go,
I’ll build my world around you,
I need you so,
Baby, even though,
You don't need me,
You don't need me!”

“I have to ask,” Jules says.

“He’s got a plan to annoy his soulmate into announcing herself to him,” Tucker says, sighing.

“Seriously?” Jules says.

“Unfortunately,” Logan says.

Jules is delighted.

“All my life I've waited for somebody,
To give me love like you,
Now you tell me that you wanna leave me,
Darling, I just can't let you.”

Shut up.

He sits up from where he’s sprawled on the sofa.

She needs him to stop singing. I have a life, I have classes, I have a job, and I am losing my mind. She needs him to stop signing. Now. She needs it.

He heads upstairs immediately, singing, and taking the stairs two at a time, and finds an open, empty room.

I am begging you, dude.

“Baby, now that I've found you,
I can't let you go,
I’ll build my world around you,
I need you so,
Baby, even though,
You don't need me,
You don't need me!”

Shut up. Her voice is cute and low and grumpy in his head. SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!

Can you hear me? he asks.

YES!!!

You can hear it when I sing, he says, smug.

Yes, and you’ve been singing to me for, like, 12 hours now!

You could have told me to shut up 11 hours and 55 minutes ago, he says.

I tried!

He laughs.

How did you figure it out?

Your type? I've been thinking about it a lot, and I finally remembered this time in high school when you asked me to sing to you, and I sang a Gun n’ Roses song, and you told me thank you after. I thought it was my imagination at the time, you asking me, and you saying thank you, but it wasn't.

Sweet Child o’ Mine, she says, soft.

Yeah.

I was . . . I was dealing with a really hard thing at the time, and when you started to sing constantly, I thought—and this is kind of silly, but—I thought you were singing for me, like . . . like you knew that I was struggling, and I needed . . .

It's not silly, he says. I was singing for you.

It’s quiet.

So, he says.

So?

What’s your name?

There’s a pause.

Are you there?

Can I think about it?

He does not understand her.

Things don’t always work out between soulmates. All of the movies end when the soulmates realize they’re soulmates, because you’re supposed to assume that the soulmates live happily ever after, but it isn’t as simple as that. Things go wrong between soulmates.

And that’s why we can never meet?

That’s not what I’m saying.

It seems like that’s what you’re saying. 

It’s not.

He doesn’t know how to respond. 

She doesn’t disappear on him, though, and they sit there in a strange, comfortable silence for a moment, each of them aware of the other in their head.

He takes a breath.

Okay.

What if I guess it? he asks.

My name?

Yeah.

Go for it, she says, amused.

Abigail.

No.

Amelia.

Nope.

Anna.

No.

If I guess a version of your name, like, if your name is Amy, which is a version of Amelia, that counts.

Is there a reason you’re convinced that it starts with an A?

I’m going in ABC order, obviously.

She laughs.

He isn’t sure how he knows that, if the sound is real, or in his imagination, since he isn’t sure if it’s possible to laugh in your thoughts, but he is sure, somehow, that she is laughing at him, and he grins.

We’re going to be here for a while, she tells him.

I’m fine with that.

I need to sleep.

Audrey?

No.

He sighs.

Can’t we just keep things in our heads for a little while longer?

Are you okay with that?

It’s my preference.

No, I mean—are you okay with talking in our heads? Now that I know how to get your attention? Are you cool if I want to call you up telepathically, or—whatever?

Because if she is shy, and that’s why she isn’t ready for him to know who she is, he’ll try to understand, and he’ll wait.

But if the problem is him, if she doesn’t want him for a soulmate, and that’s why doesn’t want to meet him?

He needs to know now.

I’m okay with that, she says.

Yeah?

I’d like that, she corrects.

Ava.

Nope.

Can I have a hint?

Where’s the fun in that?

I’m gonna look up a list of names on the internet.

And I’m gonna go.

To sleep?

I’m opening at work tomorrow.

He files that fact away.

But I want to talk again soon, if you want to? Her voice is hesitant and hopeful, and he softens.

Deal.

So, to be clear, we’re done singing for today?

We’re done, he says, amused.

Promise?

Promise.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Goodnight.

Sweet dreams, he says.

She leaves.

The timing is perfect, too.

The door to the room he’s in slams open a second after, and a couple stumbles into the room, kissing sloppily, only to startle apart at the sight of Garrett on the bed. He’d have murdered them if they’d interrupted his conversation, but, thankfully, there’s no need for murder today. They are welcome to have the room now.

Downstairs, the party is raging.

He greets the people he passes with a nod of his head, and he gets a glass of water, finding his friends at the air hockey table.

“You aren’t singing,” Tucker says.

“Nope,” he says.

He wants his girl to get a good night’s sleep.

—

He is arguing with Logan about neutral zone positioning when he is interrupted by a hand on his arm.

They’re in a booth at Malone’s on a Tuesday night, squeezed in with Dean and Tucker, too, plus a couple of girls, and they’ve been there for an hour now, so they’re settled in, with plenty of beer in front of them to prove it.

He figures it's one of the girls.

“Garrett, I—” Her fingers dig into his arm.

He glances over.

It’s a waitress.

She isn’t looking at him, but her hands are clawing at him.

What the fuck?

She is pulling at his arm, at his jacket, at his shoulder. “Garret, please,” she says again, urgent, and there’s a stab of need in him, and his friends have gone quiet, confused. She is trying to haul him up, out of the booth.

“What is happening right now?” Logan asks.

“Garrett, I—”

“Are you okay?” Tucker asks.

“I need—”

He follows her gaze to the bar.

She’s got a hand in the collar of his shirt now, and the need is a bright, burning thing inside of him.

He scoots from the booth and stands, because there’s a look of real, raw panic on her face that he isn’t able to ignore, and he stumbles just slightly under the urgency of her grip. “What’s going on?” he asks.

She looks at him finally. “He put something in her drink,” she says.

“What?”

“That guy, at the bar, in the—the striped henley, he put something in that girl’s drink, I saw, and he—I don’t know what to do.” She has both of her hands wrapped around his arm now, holding on. “I—she was looking in her purse, and I—and I saw it, he dropped something into her drink, I saw it.”

“Shit,” he says.

“What’s going on?” Logan asks.

“A guy over there put something in a girl’s drink,” he says.

“What?”

He’s on his way over to the bar already, the waitress at his heels, and he spots the guy immediately, wearing a henley, and with a swoop of shaggy, styled blond hair, sitting on a stool at the bar, and smirking at a girl.

The need in him is lodged in chest now, pulsing like a bloody, beating heart.

“Hey,” he snaps.

“Can I help you?”

“Did you put something in that drink?”

“What?” says the girl at the bar, stiffening.

“Answer me.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” says the guy.

“She saw you put something in that girl’s drink,” he says, undeterred. 

“She’s lying.”

From where she hovers half at his side, half at his back, the waitress makes a small, strangled noise.

“Look, I don’t know what she told you, but—”

“I’m not lying,” the waitress says hotly.

“You dropped something into her drink,” Garret says, loud.

A crowd is starting to surround them, his friends at his back, and a couple of girls pushing in, reaching for the girl at the bar, and others, too, watching and waiting.

“I’m gonna go,” says the girl at the bar, standing.

“This is bullshit,” says the guy.

“Do you have those things to test a drink?” Jules asks, appearing out of nowhere, and aiming her phone at the guy.

“Are you filming this?”

“We do!” says the waitress, and she is hurrying off suddenly.

“I’m outta here,” says the guy.

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Logan says, stepping forward suddenly, and standing in the way, crossing his arms.

“Get the fuck out of my way.”

“No.”

“Got it!” says the waitress.

Garrett doesn’t take his eyes off the guy, though, because the guy is acting like a crazed, cornered animal now, proving his guilt, as far as Garrett is concerned, and who knows what the guy will try to pull next.

“Here, I have it, here,” says the waitress, and she is at his side again, fumbling to open the box, and fumbling to pull out a strip.

He takes it from her.

Her hands are shaking violently.

He glances at the back of the box, reads the instructions. It’s simple. He dips the strip into the drink and pulls it out again, lays it on the bar. “We need to give it a minute to dry,” he says.

The bar is quiet around him.

The waitress’s fingers brush his arm again, and he takes her hand in his.

“Should we be calling the police right now?” Dean asks.

“The police?” says the guy, sneering.

“You were never taught to call the police when a crime was committed?” Dean asks.

“I didn’t—” 

The end of the strip turns a dark, damning blue.

“He drugged it,” Garrett says.

Logan punches the guy in the face immediately, and the guy stumbles into the bar, only to straighten, push off the bar, and swing at Logan, so, of course, Logan punches the guy in the face again.

“I didn’t fucking do it!”

Logan punches the guy in the stomach.

There’s a circle of lights around them from all of the phones that are filming the asskicking.

And when Logan grabs the guy by the back of the neck, a path is cleared, and Logan gets the guy to the door, shoving him into the street. 

There are cheers, and it leaves a strange, sour taste in Garrett’s mouth. A guy had attempted to drug a girl. There's nothing to celebrate, as far as Garrett is concerned.

The crowd starts dispersing after that, though.

“Are you okay?” Logan asks.

And Garrett is reminded of the waitress, still at his side, and holding his hand tightly. “I’m fine,” she says.

“Yeah?” Logan asks.

The waitress nods. She still looks shaken up.

“I am glad you saw that guy drug her drink,” Jules says.

“Me, too,” she says.

“The girl he was after is going to the hospital with her friends,” Dean announces, striding up.

“Good,” Garrett says.

“Wait, so, why have I never met you?” Jules asks.

“Oh, um,” says the waitress, and when Jules’s eyes dip to the way the waitress is clinging to Garrett, hugging his arm, and clutching his hand, the waitress abruptly pulls away from him.

“Sorry, I assumed you were friends with the guys,” Jules says.

She flushes. “No, um, no, actually, I just . . .”

“It’s cool,” Jules says.

“I panicked,” the waitress says quickly, “and I needed someone to help, and when I saw Garrett, I don’t know, I needed someone who’d believe me, and who’d . . . help.” Her cheeks are pink.

“And you knew in your heart of hearts that Garrett Graham was your guy,” Jules says, with a twitch of her lips.

The waitress's face goes flat. “Apparently.” 

There’s a pause.

“Thank you, by the way,” the waitress says, turning to Garrett, and trying to smile.

"No problem," he says.

“I, um, I would have gotten help from Sammy, the cook, but we don’t serve food after 11, so Sammy was gone, and I, yeah. And, honestly, I would have called him out myself, except. I mean, I—I’m the reason we bought those test strips, I made Delia buy them. So I would’ve called him out, but. She shakes her head. “I panicked, I don’t know, I—I had a friend in high school who drugged at a party, and I just . . .”

“Seriously, I was happy to help,” he says.

She nods.

“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,” Dean says suddenly, breaking the tension, and holding out his hand. “I’m Dean.”

“Hello,” says the waitress.

“Tucker,” Tucker says.

She nods.

“I’m Logan,” Logan says, smiling at her softly.

“Hi.”

“So how did you know Garrett was going to help you?” Jules asks, conversational.

“Seriously?” Garrett says.

“I’m curious!”

“I’m gonna—you need ice,” the waitress says, looking at Logan, and at Logan’s bruised, bloody knuckles, swollen to twice their size now. “I’ll—hold on, and I’ll be right back.” 

“Sure,” Logan says.

She hurries off.

“What the fuck is your problem?” Garrett says.

“What?” Jules says.

“Are you being a dick for a reason?”

“She’s cute,” Jules says, shrugging.

He shakes his head at her.

The waitress returns with a bag of ice, wrapped in a towel.

“Thanks,” Logan says.

“I hope you’re not going to get in trouble for . . .” the waitress says.

“I’m not worried about it,” Logan says.

There’s a shout from across the bar.

And the waitress is swallowed up suddenly in the arms of a girl who sprints to get to her, says “oh, my god, Han Han, oh, my god!” into the waitress’s hair, and sweeps her away from them, talking a mile a minute.

“We should get out of here,” Tucker says.

It’s true.

They’ve got practice at 7 am tomorrow.

He doesn’t realize until an hour later, when he’s lying in bed, and living the night over again in his head, that he never got the waitress’s name.

And he’s reminded of the need that had seized him for a couple of minutes, when he was in the thick of things at Malone’s, the need that he’d ignored in favor of the need that was right in front of him, despite how deep and desperate the need inside of him was.

He can’t feel that need now.

It’s gone.

He hopes that means his soulmate is okay.

—

He isn’t surprised that Jules’s video of their confrontation with that asshole goes viral, garnering over a thousand likes in 24 hours, plus hundreds of comments.

To quote Jules, it’s “broken containment,” and people who aren’t part of the Briar U world are finding it. 

He watches it once.

It starts as soon as Garrett confronts the guy, because of course Jules was there from the jump. The waitress is visible at times, although mostly Jules has kept her out of the frame, but he realizes now, watching the video, that the waitress had been hiding behind him for a lot of the confrontation, and his chest is tight at the realization. It continues through, and Jules had the camera zoom in when Garrett tests the drink.

The video includes the beatdown that Logan gave the guy, too, which surprises him. He wouldn't have thought Jules would post that part.

The police never come knocking on the door of their dorm, though.

He finds the waitress on instagram.

Hannah Wells.

Logan has to tell him what her name is and looks at Garrett in disbelief when he does, claiming she’s waited on them, like, 17,000 times, and Logan is right to give Garrett grief, since he has no idea how he hasn’t noticed her before.

She’s cute.

He hadn’t really taken much stock of her looks that night, but it’s hard not to when he scrolls through all of her pictures now.

She’s got shiny hair and nice tits and this big, bright smile.

There’s a video of her singing, and he watches it, attempts to look up the lyrics of the song, and watches it again, wondering if she wrote it.

She loves music.

There are pictures of her in a studio, and pictures of her with a keyboard, with a guitar, with a clarinet.

He follows her.

—

He decides to try to get in touch with his soulmate again, to test their telepathy, and to check in. 

They haven’t spoken at all since their conversation after he discovered his type, and he’s hoping that he won’t have to sing to her for hours again, but he will if he has to, because they are going to speak again, and regularly, too.

He’s determined.

“So 1, 2, 3, take my hand and come with me
Because you look so fine
And I really wanna make you mine
I say you look so fine
That I really wanna make you mine
4, 5, 6, c’mon and get your kicks
Now you don't need that money
When you look like that, do you honey?"

He isn’t finished with the song before need blossoms in him. He sits with it for a second, allowing the need to solidify, and he’s able to recognize that she needs, needs, needs to talk to him. He smiles to himself at the need, and he abandons the song.

Are you there? he thinks.

Hi, Garrett.

I can’t believe how easy that was.

I guess we’re getting the hang of things.

We should try it in reverse.

In reverse?

You think about how you need to talk to me, and when I feel your need, I’ll sing to you, and we’ll see if that works, too.

Now?

No time like the present.

She disappears from his head.

It’s abrupt, and he doesn’t know why that amuses him, but it does. 

They probably should’ve talked about logistics. How long should he wait to feel her need before he gives up and sings to her again anyway, unprompted? They haven’t really discussed how their types work.

How long does she have to need something before he feels it? A couple of minutes? An hour? 

She needs to talk to him.

He grins.

“So 1, 2, 3, take my hand and come with me
Because you look so fine
And I really wanna make you mine
I say you look so fine
That I really wanna make you mine
4, 5, 6, c’mon and get your kicks
Now you don't need that money
When you look like that, do you honey?"

Can you hear me?

Loud and clear.

We’re amazing at this.

We are so amazing at this.

She laughs.

I, ah, I wanted to ask you about Tuesday, he says.

Tuesday?

You needed something at, I don’t know, 9 ish at night? 

I did?

It hit me over the head, but I was right in the middle of something, so I couldn’t really pay attention, and by the time I could take a breath, your need was gone, so I just wanted to check in. 

Are you trying to get me to ask you about what you were up to at 9 ish at night on Tuesday? Her voice is playful.

What?

Your heroism at Malone’s after a guy drugged a girl? I saw the video on instagram.

I wouldn’t call that heroism, he says.

What would you call it?

I don’t know, being a decent fucking human being?

It’s quiet.

Are you still with me?

I’m here.

So—were you okay on Tuesday night?

Oh, yeah. I was fine. I needed . . . to find my charger. So. It was nothing.

Really? He finds that hard to believe.

Yes?

It seemed like a way bigger deal than needing a charger.

You’ve never had your phone on 2% and realized you have no idea where your charger is?

Baby, I’m way more responsible than that.

I bet, she says, dry.

Here’s the thing.

He might not have understood the differences when he was a kid, but he’s 21 years old now, and he’s known the things his soulmate needs since he was five years old, and he understands how many different needs exist.

He knows when one of her needs is more of a wish or a want. He knows when one of her needs is a momentary thing, a passing fancy. He knows when one of her needs is powered by emotion, by fear or anger or sadness. 

He knows when one of her needs is rooted in her, to the point that she might not know herself that she needs it, a need that lives in her, like her need for music.

And on Tuesday night?

That was a deep, desperate need, the kind of need that hurts.

So.

She is lying to him.

He’s certain.

She wasn’t in need of a charger.

Are you there? she asks.

I’m here.

It was sweet of you to check up on me, she says.

You’re welcome.

I have class across campus in half an hour, though.

I’ll let you go.

Talk to you later?

Count on it.

She slips away from him.

He’s alone at his desk in his dorm. 

The screen on his computer is dark, and his European History textbook is sitting in front of him, marked up with highlighter and sticky notes.

He sighs.

The reading for class tomorrow had been a breeze, but he was putting off coming up with a comment on the reading to post in the class’s online discussion board, and he’d decided to talk to his soulmate instead.

Why would she lie to him?

Because she was in need of an orgasm again, and she was embarrassed to admit it? Because she isn’t able to trust him fully, in spite of the fact that he’s her soulmate? Because she had no idea what she was in need of that night but she didn’t like the idea of him knowing her better than she knows herself?

Because she thought the truth would give away who she is?

Oh.

The idea occurs to him quietly, and with a quality of oh, there you are, and it grows, this idea, it grows and grows.

Is it possible?

He doesn’t know for certain that the voice in his head is his soulmate’s real, regular voice, but he thinks of the voice in his head, and he thinks of her voice, and they tangle up together in his mind.

Hi, Garrett.

Garrett, please.

You’re Garrett Graham.

And when I saw Garrett, I don’t know, I needed someone who’d believe me.

Garrett?

He holds the idea up to the light to look at it closely.

It’s possible.

—

He pulls up Hannah’s instagram on his phone again.

She is following him, he realizes, and she hadn’t been before, but, then, it isn’t odd for someone to follow a person after that person follows them, and she’s a fan of his, judging by the way she’d turned to him for help at Malone’s.

He scrolls down to stare at each of her pictures, as if that’ll do it, as if the sight of her will be enough for him to know.

She doesn’t really have a lot of posts, and there’s a gap, like she had forgotten about her instagram for a while, but he pours over each of the posts anyway.

The video of her singing is from a few years ago.

He watches it again, and again, before he pulls up the comments on the video.

The comment at the top is from her aunt, based on the fact that she’s replied to it with thanks, aunt nicole <3, but who wrote the comment isn’t important.

This is beautiful! You’re so talented!!! I can’t stop listening to it! Someday you’ll have to sing it to your soulmate! ;) Lots of love!

His heart is galloping in his chest.

Someday you’ll have to sing it to your soulmate! ;)

He clicks onto her aunt’s instagram. It’s public, thankfully. Her aunt posts a lot, mostly of a dog, the beach, and a couple of brown-haired, gap-toothed children, and he scrolls through it mindlessly for a minute, until it occurs to him that he is being totally insane right now. What's he doing? He should not be on her aunt’s instagram.

And then he finds a video of a young, chubby-cheeked Hannah with a guitar in her lap.

He hits play.

“Are you filming?” Hannah asks.

“I am!”

Hannah starts to play a tune on the guitar with a small, nervous smile, takes a breath, and starts to sing, too.

“And be a simple kind of man
Be something you love and understand
Baby, be a simple kind of man
Oh, won't you do this for me, son, if you can.”

There’s applause, Hannah smiles, and it's over.

He expands the caption below.

Look at my niece! 12 years old, and THIS talented!!! So proud of her! She says she had to learn this song because her soulmate loves it! Such a sweetheart!

He isn’t sure how many times he watches the video.

—

He heads to Malone’s in the middle of the afternoon, reminding himself repeatedly on the way that he doesn’t know her schedule, that she might not be there, that he can’t expect to find her as easily as that.

She’s there.

He sits at the bar.

She doesn’t notice him immediately, but he pulls out his phone, answers a couple of texts, tries to keep from staring at her.

“Hey,” she says, approaching.

“Hey.”

“What can I get you?”

He forces his eyes away from her face, glancing at the menu on the board above the bar, as if he isn’t familiar with everything on the menu already. “I’ll, ah, I’ll do a grilled cheese. With fries, please. And a water.”

“You want anything on the grilled cheese? Bacon? Tomato? Avocado?”

 He lets himself look at her again. “Tomato, please.”

“Gotcha,” she says, smiling, and she bustles off.

He has a moment of doubt, watching her. She’s acting like there isn’t anything between them, like he’s simply a customer, like it’s business as usual right now. He wonders if he’s made it all up.

She brings him a glass of water with ice and a straw.

“Thanks.”

She is walking away again already, taking a pot of coffee to a table.

His phone buzzes with a snap from Chloe. He ignores it.

She is back.

“Hey, um.” He clears his throat.

She offers a small, service industry smile. “What’s up?”

“I’ve heard that you serve jolly rancher shots at this establishment.”

“We do,” she says slowly. “Would you, um, would like a jolly rancher shot at—” She glances at the clock over her shoulder. “—2:47 in the afternoon?”

“I might.”

She raises her eyebrows at him.

“What’s your number one, no question favorite jolly rancher flavor?” he asks.

“I . . .” She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“If you had to choose.”

“Blue, I guess.”

“You ever broken your ankle?” he asks.

She blinks.

He isn’t using a lot of finesse right now, but it's her, he knows it's her, and this is going to prove it, so he couldn’t possibly care less about finesse.

“Once, in 3rd grade.”

“How?”

“I jumped off the swings,” she says.

“Fuck, marry, kill,” he says.

Her eyebrows fly up her forehead, but he isn't deterred.

“Mint chip. Strawberry. Butter pecan.”

“You want to play fuck, marry, kill with ice cream flavors?” she asks.

“I do.”

She bites her lip.

“Well?”

“Fuck mint chip. Kill strawberry. Marry butter pecan.”

“Interesting,” he says.

“Is this like a thing that you do?” she says, putting a hand on her hip.

“What?”

“Ask weird, off-topic questions?”

“I want to say no, but I gotta be honest, I am kind of getting that reputation these days, so, yeah, I guess it is a thing, but I’m thinking this’ll be the last time I do it.”

“Oh?”

“Were you into the Spelling Bee when you were a kid?”

“Not really,” she says.

He eyes her. “Are you being honest with me right now?”

She sighs. “I mean, I did do really well one year. You know how they make everybody do the bees in English class in middle school, and the winners go to the school-wide bee? Well, I was the best speller in my class by accident once.”

“And how’d you do in the school-wide bee?” he asks.

“I didn’t really care about winning—initially. But there was this boy that always won, Oliver Martin, and he was insufferable; I can’t even explain to you how much I hated this kid. I had to step up my game, and I became . . . obsessed, if I’m being honest.”

“You’re really making me work for this,” he says.

“I won,” she says.

“Congratulations,” he says, grinning.

She splays her hands under her chin for a split-second and laughs after, smiles at him sweetly.

He can’t take his eyes off her.

She’s gorgeous.

“How do you feel about mushrooms on pizza?” he asks.

She huffs. “You are aware, aren’t you, that you owe me a really nice tip for making me answer all of these questions?”

“Obviously.”

“I think mushrooms on pizza is how pizza is meant to be consumed.”

“Well, okay,” he says.

She turns away from him.

And that’s when need booms in his heart, and he gives it all of his attention immediately, allowing himself to feel it fully, how it’s new, how it’s silly, how it’s nervous, this need to play it cool.

He grins.

She needs to stop freaking out.

He takes a sip of his water.

She puts his food in front of him, a basket of fries with a gooey, grease grilled cheese on top, and she pulls a couple of napkins from a dispenser for him, too.

“You were lying to me before,” he says, conversational.

“Excuse me?”

“You didn’t need your charger on Tuesday night.”

“I—I did, too, I . . . I was at the library, and I hadn’t packed my charger, so I—” She freezes.

He watches it dawn on her.

“No,” she says, a look of horror on her face. “No, no, no.”

He grins.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I’m an idiot."

“I know this ruins your whole keeping-it-in-our-heads-for-now thing, but once I figured it out, I couldn’t stay away. I’m sorry. I’d offer to go back to keeping it in our heads after this, but, honestly, I don’t think I have that kind of discipline.”

She covers her face with hands, muffles a small, strangled scream into her hands, and uncovers her face again, taking a couple of deep, deep breaths.

“You’re doing great,” he says.

“How did you figure it out?” she asks.

“A combination of things,” he says. “Your instagram that I may or may not have stalked a little. The fact that you lied to me yesterday about what you needed—that’s what really put me on the trail. Your answers to my questions just now.”

"Right."

“And, you know, the fact that I saw you, and I wanted it to be you.”

 “You’ve seen me before,” she says.

“Yeah, that’s true.” He sighs. “But I’ve never really looked at you, ‘til now. I don’t know what took me so long, and I’m kind of pissed at myself about it, actually all that time I wasted. But I’m looking at you now.”

She bites her lip.

“Are you free this weekend?”

“I . . .”

“What?”

“How do you know that I was in the Spelling Bee once, or that I like blue jolly ranchers and butter pecan ice cream and mushrooms on pizza, or that I broke my ankle jumping off the swings?” Her expression is incredulous, but there is something in her gaze, a kind of awe.

“I told you,” he says. “If you need things, I know.”

“And I’ve needed butter pecan ice cream?”

“I’m not here to judge, Hannah.”

She breathes a huff of laughter and looks away, busies herself at the bar, moving the bowl of limes and wiping at the counter, moving the bowl of limes again.

“I’m a cookie dough guy myself,” he says.

“Is that what you want to do for our date?”

“Go for ice cream?”

She nods.

He tilts his head from side to side, considering. “We can work that into the plan, if you want.”

“The plan?”

“How’s Saturday for you?”

She hesitates.

“We don’t have to,” he says, and he works to keep his feelings at her reluctance off his face.

“No, I—I want to, I just can’t do anything in the morning, but I’m free after noon, if that works for you.”

He offers his phone to her.

“What?”

“Put your number in,” he says.

“You have to unlock it.”

“44 44,” he says.

She blinks, but she puts in his pin, and she pulls up his contacts.

He takes the time to look at her, letting his eyes linger on the slope of her shoulders, the way a lock of her hair falls into her face before she tucks it behind her ear again, the curve of her tits in that t-shirt.

“There,” she says.

“I’ll text you.”

“I should really get back to . . .” She nods her head to the side, as if to nod at the rest of the restaurant. “I’m the only waitress here right now, so . . .”

“Right, of course,” he says.

“Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” he says.

She hurries off.

He doesn’t really want to leave.

He wants to follow her around and flirt with her. He wants to look at her, look and look and look, at her face, at her hands, at her head, shoulders, knees, and toes. He wants to make her smile at him and make her sigh at him.

He wants to be with her.

But this is clearly a lot for her, and he’s gotten what he wanted already—the confirmation that she’s his soulmate, and a date with her in the books.

He isn’t going to push.

Tomorrow, he thinks.

—

She is waiting for him at the door to her building in a cute, colorful sweater, a tight tank, and jeans.

He ought to get out of the Jeep to open the door for her, or something.

She is climbing in already, though, smiling at him. “You still haven’t told me where we’re going,” she says. She buckles her seat belt and hugs her purse to her chest, clearing her throat.

“Lunch, obviously,” he says.

She hums.

He pulls his car onto the road, starts across campus.

“Do you know you can buy those little air fresheners you hang from the rear view mirror at pretty much every gas station?” she asks.

“Ah, yeah?”

“And they come in a lot of scents.”

He glances at her.

“I like cinnamon,” she says.

“Are you telling me that my car smells bad?”

“Maybe?”

He laughs.

He takes her to lunch at Jose’s.

They have basket after basket of Jose’s chips, which are the best, with salsa, queso, and guacamole, and they order all of the tacos on the menu to try, since Jose’s is famous for the variety of weird, wild tacos on the menu.

She tells him that she is working at the mailroom on campus now, in addition to working at Malone’s.

“This is the job you needed a few weeks ago?” he asks. 

She nods.

He asks her about the kind of music she’s into, shaking his head at her at the revelation that she’s a fan of One Direction, and shushing her when she attempts to justify her terrible, terrible tastes.

“What about you?” she asks.

He tells her that rock is his favorite, probably, that he likes a little of everything, but, in general, he likes, you know, Poison, Guns n’Roses, AC/DC, that kind of rock, oh, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, for sure.

“What about a little of . . . One Direction?”

“You’re really turning me off right now, Wellsy.”

She laughs.

She tells him about her friend Allie, who she says, with the sincerity of someone who really, really loves her friend, is “probably the coolest person you’ll ever meet” and who had done her makeup for this date.

“Is she rooting for me?” he asks.

“She is rooting for me.”

He insists on paying the check, and when she offers to leave the tip, he insists on paying that, too. 

She glances at the receipt after he signs it, and he assumes that she is going to comment on how expensive it was, but she glances at him again, and her eyes are soft, sweet.

“What?”

“You left a thirty percent tip,” she says.

“And?”

She smiles. “That’s something I’ve always liked about you.”

“My tips?”

“It’s why I always wanted you to sit in my section at Malone’s,” she says.

He raises his eyebrows at her. “Not the fact that I’m an athlete, the most desirable man on campus, or your soulmate?”

“Most desirable man on campus?” she repeats.

“I said what I said.”

“We have got to work on your ego.”

He takes her to Franklin Park Zoo next.

She doesn’t think he’s serious at first, when he’s driving into Boston, and she asks him where they’re going, but she is forced to take him seriously when he pulls into one of the zoo's parking lots.

“It’s a good thing I have sunscreen in my purse,” she says.

She wants to talk to all of the animals, to learn their names, and to compliment them, to tell the giraffes how tall they are, and the gorillas how strong they are, to tell the spotted turtles that she loves their spots.

It’s cute.

He impresses her with all of his facts about animals.

Did you know that flamingos poop on their legs to keep cool? Did you know that snakes don’t have ears? Did you know that penguins can’t be trained because they stop eating as soon as they’ve eaten the amount they are required to eat to survive, so trying to tempt a penguin with a treat is a waste of time?

Did you know that gorillas can be identified by their noseprint?

Did you know that lemurs are matriarchal?

“How are you a wealth of facts about animals?” she asks.

“I contain multitudes, Wellsy.”

She’s wearing her hair in a ponytail that swings from side to side when she walks, and she smells like sunscreen and a fruity, flowery something, and she slips her hand around his elbow and squeezes it softly when she is excited.

She’s perfect.

He takes her to dinner at Bob’s Frozen Treats.

She says she isn’t hungry, as full as she is from the mountain of tacos they ate earlier, but when he suggests they have dessert for dinner, she says, well, actually, she is sort of hungry. 

He buys her a banana split with three scoops of butter pecan, extra whip cream, extra nuts, and extra hot fudge.

“So you know things about me from being my soulmate,” she says.

“I do,” he says slowly.

“I, ah, I know things about you, too, I think.” She scoops a bite of half-melted, ice cream-coated banana from her dish, and she isn't looking at him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, like . . . like, when you were little, you’d listen to records with your mom, and you’d sing with her, and you’d dance, too, and you . . .” She trails off.

“How do you know that?” he asks.

“I’m right?” Her eyes are bright, eager, hopeful.

“100 percent,” he says.

She smiles. “I wasn’t sure if I was making it all up, but you’d sing sometimes, and I’d . . . know.”

“She had a huge record collection,” he says. “We’re taking ‘70s rock, R&B, ‘80s glam tracks, Motown, folk, pop, dance.”

“She sounds cool.”

“She was cool.”

“And, um, when we were eleven,” she says, hesitant, “you . . . you sang Amazing Grace, and that was because you were . . .” She swallows.

“At her funeral,” he says.

“Cancer?”

He nods.

“I wanted to hug you so bad,” she says softly.

“Yeah?”

She breathes a smile, avoiding his eyes at the confession, and busies herself with a bite of her ice cream.

“You know, Wellsy, I’m available to be hugged now.”

Her lips twitch. “Is that so?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll have to take that under consideration.”

He doesn’t want the night to end. By the time he pulls up outside her dorm again, they’ve been together for ten hours, and he isn’t sick of her. He doesn’t want to say goodnight yet.

What are the chances she’ll want him to come up to her dorm?

They can watch a TV show, or play a game of cards, or listen to Spotify on her laptop, or—

“So,” she says.

“So.”

“What happens now?”

“What do you want to happen now?”

She bites her lip. 

“Ball’s in your court,” he says.

“Allie met her soulmate like a month into freshman year.”

He blinks. “That is . . . nice to know?”

“And she was so excited to have found him, and they were hot and heavy immediately, and she would talk about how lucky she was to be with him.”

“Okay . . .”

“But she’s not happy. I don’t think she’d ever admit it, but she’s my best friend, and I know her, and, yeah, Sean is her soulmate, and he loves her a lot. But she’s not happy. And, honestly, I don’t think they would have ever gotten together if they weren’t soulmates, and I know that’s kind of the point of soulmates, to put you with someone you never would have put yourself with, but sometimes I think the universe was wrong about them. Because she deserves to be happy.”

He frowns. “And you’re worried they’re a cautionary tale?” he says.

“Would you want to be with me if I weren’t your soulmate?”

“Yeah, probably.”

She doesn’t look like she believes him.

“Look, I’m not about to propose to you, I promise.”

“I wasn’t—”

“And I can’t tell you for sure what’s gonna happen in the future, Wellsy, ‘cause it hasn’t fucking happened yet.”

She crosses her arms. “I know that.”

“But I want to be with you right now.”

“Are you okay with dating?”

“You’re aware that I asked you on this date, right?” he says, amused.

She narrows her eyes at him. “You don’t usually date.”

“Yeah, my life is pretty much all hockey, all the time, but for you, I’m willing to make time in between all of the hockey.”

“Because I’m your soulmate.”

“Because I like you,” he says.

She opens her mouth.

“And maybe we’re not meant to be together, maybe the universe is wrong, and we’ll be like Allie and her soulmate, and we’ll make each other miserable. But I want to try this, us, test out the universe’s grand design, and see how it goes. And if it turns out that we’re like Allie and her soulmate, then, fine, when we figure that out, we’ll call it quits, and we’ll go our separate ways, and we won’t make each other miserable forever. In fact, I’ll make you a deal. You agree to try things out, and I agree that if either of us isn’t feeling it, we’ll be honest, and we’ll call it quits, no hard feelings.”

“That could work,” she says.

“It's a deal?”

She holds out her hand.

He smothers a smile and takes her hand, shaking it.

“Deal,” she says.

He lets go of her hand.

“Okay, well, now that’s figured that out, I should probably . . . I’ve got a ton of homework to do tomorrow, to make up for everything I didn’t do today, like the stuff for my composition class alone is gonna take, like three for four hours, so I should, you know . . .” 

“I’ll text you,” he says.

“Cool.”

He looks away from her, clearing his throat, and checking the mirror.

“Hey, um.”

He glances at her.

“I’m curious,” she says, unbuckling her seat belt, and turning in her seat, facing him.

“About?”

She eyes him and reaches forward suddenly, touching his cheek, and sliding her hand around to the back of his neck, brushing her thumb over his ear.

He needs to kiss her.

It takes a moment for him to understand, past the pounding in his heart, and how dry his throat has gone.

It isn’t that he needs to kiss her, although he does.

It’s her need right now, taking him over.

She needs him to kiss her. There’s a burning in his chest, building and building, brighter and brighter. She needs him to kiss her.

Kiss me. Please. Kiss me. I need you to kiss me, Garrett. Kiss me.

She needs him to kiss her.

He leans in abruptly and kisses her. She squeaks in surprise, only to sigh against his lips a second after, sliding her tongue into his mouth. He leans in further, over the console, kisses and kisses her.

He’s out of breath after.

“It worked,” she says, in awe.

He laughs, kisses her quickly, and laughs again.

“I should probably go now.”

“Okay,” he says, and kisses her.

“Seriously,” she says, smiling.

He smacks a kiss to her neck, and she gasps and laughs and grabs at his shoulders, and he sucks sweet, open-mouth kisses into her neck again and again, swirling his tongue.

She curls a hand in his hair and tugs on his head up, kisses him.

This kiss is deep and dirty, and he tugs her closer to him, hooking his fingers in the waistband of her jeans, tugs her closer and closer.

She needs—

She grabs his hand and guides it up under her shirt, and he groans because, suddenly, he’s holding the warm, heavy weight of one of her gorgeous, gorgeous tits in his hand, squeezing it softly, and she gasps.

He bangs his knee on the console and swears, breaks away from her.

You can not crawl on top of the girl of your dreams while you’re sitting in the driver’s seat of your car.

He looks at her, and, fuck, she’s panting, her tits heaving and her cheeks flushed with color and her lipstick smeared, and when she smiles at him, fuck, fuck, fuck, he has to look away from her again.

He is not sixteen years old.

She lets out a little, breathless laugh.

He is not going to come in his pants.

“I’m going for real now,” she says.

“Uh-huh.”

“Text me.”

“Yup.”

He takes a minute to get it together before he pulls his Jeep out onto the road again.

He’s never needed to jerk off this badly in his life ever.

—

He hasn’t got a lot of time on his hands for dating, especially since they are down to the wire now with hockey, on their way to winning their conference, but he’s determined to make the most of the time that he has.

She’s a priority, too.

He takes her on a date to the movies, meets her for dinner at the cafeteria, takes her on a date to mini-golf.

They make out in his car like teenagers.

He learns that she likes a dirty chai with oat milk, and he learns that she is done with her calculus class at 10 am, and he combines those very, very important things he’s learned to be ready with a dirty chai with oat milk as soon as she emerges from her calculus class at 10 am.

After all, she needs caffeine.

She kisses him on the steps of the building in thanks.

Lately, it’s like they’re kids again, the way that the smallest, simplest needs are invading his heart constantly, her need for a pair of socks and her need to get this essay over with and her need for a hair tie.

He loves it.

He stops by her dorm to study with her, only they end up watching a bunch of episodes of Breaking Bad on her laptop instead, snuggling on her bed, and sharing a batch of Rice Krispie Treats. 

He’s never spent this much time with a girl before.

She’s sweet and funny and encouraging, easy to talk to, and easy to laugh with.

They text constantly now, too.

He convinces her to come to a party at the house with him.

“The house?” she asks.

The House of Hockey, he explains, is the house where the team celebrates their wins and commiserates their losses, a house passed from Hawks to Hawks years after year, aka Hawks House.

It’s going to go to him and his friends next year, by the way, after the guys who live at the house now graduate.

The team is having a party at the house on Saturday after the game.

“Can I invite my friends to come?” she asks.

“Sure.”

She shows up in a red corset, skinny jeans, and black heels, a few of her friends in tow, and a small, nervous smile on her face.

“You look incredible,” he tells her.

She beams.

He wraps his arm around her.

They’ve been dating for a couple of weeks now, and they haven’t been keeping it a secret, but they haven’t really been advertising it either.

Now, though?

He can already feel the eyes on them.

Let ‘em look, he thinks.

He hasn’t got anything to hide. She’s fun and smart and hot, and she’s his date to this party, leaning into his side, and laughing at his jokes. He isn’t going to hide that.

And if there were a question of how things between them would be when they allowed their relationship out in the open, that question is answered now.

It’s fun.

To be at a party with her.

To see her goofing off with Dean. To see her dancing in a crowd of girls before she crooks her finger at him, raising her eyebrows, and convinces him to dance with her. To see her goofing off with Tucker.

To see her teasing Logan.

To see her chatting animatedly with Beau.

She fits in.

“You and Hannah, huh,” Logan says.

“Yup.”

He’d asked Hannah if she’d want something to drink that wasn’t from a keg, and she’d said she was fine, really, she was fun, but, well, something in can might be nice, if they have that, so, obviously, he’d assured her that he’d find her something in a can, which is why he is scouring the kitchen right now.

“We’re dating,” he says.

“I wasn’t aware you were a guy who dated,” Logan says.

“I am now.”

“Cool.”

He finds the jackpot in the crisper of the fridge, a bunch of IPAs, plus a couple of ciders, and a White Claw, buried in with the rest.

“I guess, ah, I guess you guys connected after that night at Malone’s?” 

“That, and—” He tilts his head to the side.

“What?”

“It's her,” he says.

“It's her? What’s that—oh, like, she’s your—she's your soulmate? It's her?”

He grins.

“Shit,” Logan says.

“Yeah, it’s crazy, and she’s . . . everything. Like, I know she’s my soulmate, so that shouldn’t be a surprise, but, still. It’s like, I don’t know, like I’ve won the fucking lottery, ‘cause she’s just . . . fucking incredible.”

“Congrats, man.”

He brings Hannah a cider, since he has a feeling that’s her preference.

She lights up.

He’s exhausted at practice in the morning, after staying up past two in the morning at the party with Hannah, but, this once, he is willing to be exhausted at practice.

“Yo, Graham, that girl you had with you at the party,” Bobby says.

“What about her?”

“Are you done with her?” 

He turns his head slowly to look at Bobby, who is smirking at him. “Am I done with my girl?” he asks.

Bobby’s face pales. “Oh, I didn’t—I just meant—you know, she’s hot, and—but you know that, obviously, ‘cause she’s your—but I didn’t know—”

“Relax,” Dean says.

“I’m sorry,” Bobby says.

“Good,” Garrett says.

She isn’t up for grabs.

On Saturday, they secure their bid for the NCAA tournament after they win their conference.

He takes her on a date to the rink the day after to celebrate, putting her in a pair of skates that he ordered online for her specifically, and pulling her along, trying to teach her how to skate.

They make out in his car again after.

He is gone for this girl.

—

She looks fucking adorable in her big, oversized blue striped shirt, a pair of shades, and a floppy straw hat, a beach bag over her shoulder.

“Ready?” he asks, amused.

She pats her beach bag in answer.

He opens the door of the Jeep for her like the gentleman that he is. 

She’s never actually been to the beach before, which had floored him, despite her insistence that it’s normal for somebody from Indiana because “it’s landlocked, Garrett,” so she’s in for a treat today.

He hadn’t actually had the chance to take her on a date in a couple of weeks now, since his world had narrowed to focus on the Frozen Four 24/7, but he’s done with that now, and he wants to take her on a date that’s worth the wait.

They'd won the Frozen Four again, of course.

She hadn’t been there for it, but she’d watched on TV, and she’d shouted her way into his head immediately after the win because she’d needed him to know how excited she was, how amazing he was, how proud she was.

He takes her to Old Silver Beach in Cape Cod.

She asks him about the Frozen Four, on the drive, what it was like to play in front of a crowd that large, and what it was like to play on TV.

Was any of his family able to come?

“I would have rather had you there,” he says.

It isn’t really the time of the year for the beach, a chill in the air, but the beach is the beach, and it’s fun regardless.

He sets up the chairs that he brought on a patch of soft white sand, situating the cooler of beer in between, and smiling at the way her gaze is caught on the bright, endless blue of the ocean in front of them.

She strips off the big, blue shirt that is serving for a cover up to reveal a fitted blue one-piece bathing suit.

“You’re staring,” she says.

“You’re hot,” he says.

She laughs.

“You want me to help you with your sunscreen?” he asks.

“In a minute,” she says, amused.

He sighs.

She does her arms and her legs, and her neck and her face and her chest, and he busies himself by opening a beer, instead of, you know, staring at her openly, until, finally, she asks him to do her back.

He is thorough, pulling the straps of her suit to the side to rub the sunscreen into her shoulders and pushing the tips of his fingers under the sides of her suit, just in case.

She is blushing when she turns to face him after.

“Did you do your ears?” he asks.

“My ears?”

He rubs the sunscreen on the shells of her ears for her.

“Thanks,” she says.

“What about the tops of your feet?”

She bites her lip.

He kneels in front of her and squirts a dollop of sunscreen into his hands, rubbing it into the tops of her feet.

She’s got sparkly blue polish on her toenails.

He rises to his feet.

“My turn,” she says.

She does all of him, his arms and his chest and his shoulders and his back, squatting to do his legs and his feet, too.

He is going to pop a boner on the beach, like a pervert.

She stands up slowly when she is done, smiling at him shyly.

He needs to kiss her.

“Come on,” she says.

He lets her lead him to the water.

The sun above is keeping them fairly warm in spite of the chill in the air, but the sun isn’t enough to warm up the water.

It’s freezing.

He promises her they’ll warm up once they’re in the water completely.

They count down, three, two, one, and they run into the water together, like ripping off a bandage. 

A wave knocks her off her feet immediately, and he tugs her into his arms, laughing at her, and tilting her chin up, kissing and kissing her, before a wave knocks the both of them off their feet. 

They jump the waves together for a couple of minutes, her hand holding his hand tightly, and delight in her eyes.

They aren’t really able to bear the cold for long, though.

It’s okay.

She sits in his chair with him instead of her own, wearing her towel around her shoulders like a cloak, and she steals a lot of sips from his beer instead of bothering to open her own, her head on his shoulder, while the sun warms them up again little by little.

He tells her how his grandparents loved the beach.

He spent a week of the summer at Cape Cod with them for years. They’d rent a cabin right on the water, and they’d go fishing off the pier, and they’d watch Muppet Treasure Island when it’d rained, and they’d search for seashells for hours at a time, and by the end of the week, he’d be brown from the sun, and he’d beg to stay just one more day, please, just one more day. He loved those weeks at Cape Cod with them.

He tells her how his grandparents wanted custody of him after his mom’s death, but his dad would never, ever have allowed that.

“Would you have wanted to live with them instead of with your dad?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says.

His grandma died when he was thirteen, when a lifetime of smoking caught up with her, and his grandpa died a couple of months after.

He hasn’t been here since, actually.

He hasn’t really had anyone to be here with.

He takes her to the pier after they warm up because the lobster rolls from the shack at the pier are the best.

They look for seals in the water while they eat.

He asks her about her grandparents.

She tells him that her dad’s parents were really, really big on movies, and her love of scores in movies is from all of the movies that her dad’s parents wanted her to watch over the years.

“Which are your favorites?” he asks.

“That I watched with Grams and Paw Paw? Hmm, The Magnificent Seven, definitely, and Chariots of Fire and Lawerence of Arabia and Out of Africa . . . ooh, and E.T., of course.”

He hasn’t seen any of those.

“We’ll work on that,” she says.

He doesn’t want the date to end.

The campus is silent and sleepy when he pulls up outside her dorm around one in the morning.

If he had practice at 7 am tomorrow, it’d be a disaster, but his time is his own for now.

“Today was fun,” she says softly.

“Good.”

She reaches for him.

He deepens the kiss immediately, taking her face in his hand, and tilting her chin up. 

She smells like sunscreen and salt and sweat, and her hair is tacky with sea water when he combs his hand through it, and she's his, warm and soft and willing.

They unbuckle their seat belts, and they surge in closer, kissing and kissing.

She pulls away from his mouth to press a line of kisses to his jaw.

He closes his eyes.

Her hand is warm on his thigh.

He needs his hands on her, too.

He sneaks a hand under her big, loose button-up shirt to toy with the strap of her suit, to tug it down. 

She arches up, and her tits slip out of her suit, as easy as that.

He groans.

Her tits are mouthwatering.

He drags his lips down her neck and lower, mouthing at the top of her tits, and lower, until he’s taking one of her pretty, puckered nipples in his mouth.

She is making these needy, breathy noises into his mouth now, her hand fisted in his hair.

He slides a hand up the soft, silky skin of her thigh. 

Her legs are clamped together, a tremor of tension in them, and she is squirming in her seat.

He can help with that.

And that’s when a car drives by, splashing the windshield in light suddenly, bathing them, and blinding them, and the car is already driving away, but the damage is done.

She pulls away from him abruptly, panting, and hugging her chest with her arm to hide her tits, panicking.

“It’s okay,” he says.

Her cheeks are crimson. “We’re in a car,” she says.

“We can change that,” he says.

She looks away from him, tucking her tits into her suit again, before looking at him again, apologetic.

He sits back against his seat with a sigh. 

“Text me?” she says.

“Yeah.” He’s as hard as a brick right now.

She starts to leave the car, only to stop. “Are you still okay with this?” she asks. She is smiling at him oddly.

“This?” he says.

“Dating.”

“Yeah, of course,” he says.

“Yeah?” She isn’t able to hide the anxiety in her eyes.

“Hey,” he says, and he takes her hand, squeezes it softly. “I really liked today.”

“Me, too.”

“And I really like you.”

She softens.

“I’ll text you,” he promises.

She waves at him from the door of her building before she disappears inside because she’s the sweetest, dorkiest soulmate alive.

He sighs.

He’s going to need to jerk off for hours tonight.

—

She texts him that he’d like One Direction if he listened to some of the songs that aren’t played on the radio over and over, which he informs her is untrue, and she texts him after that she’s made a One Direction playlist for him.

He invites her to come to his dorm to play her terrible, terrible playlist for him.

She isn’t going to change his mind.

He’d listen to an hour of a monkey with a kazoo for her, though.

She shows up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, her laptop under her arm, and she shoots up on her tiptoes to smack a kiss to his lips in greeting. 

They sit on his bed, side by side.

She attempts to impress him with Gotta Be You, tells him that their lyrics transformed over time, which is obvious if you listen to anything from 2011 followed by anything from 2015, attempts to impress him with Fireworks and Stockholm Syndrome and Long Way Down.

She explains how who wrote each of the songs makes a big, big difference in the tone of the song.

“You’re a fangirl,” he says.

She shushes him.

He has to admit he’s enjoying this, if only because he finds her enthusiasm to be adorable.

“This is my favorite,” she says.

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you ready?”

“Hit me.”

She gives the song a minute before she glances at him hopefully.

“It’s okay,” he says.

“Come on!”

“You want me to lie to you, Wellsy?”

“I’m starting it over again,” she says.

“Why?”

“You aren’t listening to it right.”

He laughs.

She starts to play the song over again, and she is singing under her breath at first, before, suddenly, she is scrambling off the bed, she is singing it at the top of her lungs, spinning around the room.

“Waking up beside you, I’m a loaded gun
I can’t contain this anymore
I’m all yours, I’ve got no control, no control
Powerless, and I don’t care, it’s obvious
I just can’t get enough of you
The pedal’s down, my eyes are closed, no control!”

She snags a highlighter off his desk to be her microphone, shimmying her shoulders.

“Lost my senses
I'm defenseless
Her perfume's holding me ransom
Sweet and sour
Heart devour
Lying here, I count the hours.”

He can’t take his eyes off her.

“Waking up beside you, I’m a loaded gun
I can’t contain this anymore
I’m all yours, I’ve got no control, no control
Powerless, and I don’t care, it’s obvious
I just can’t get enough of you
The pedal’s down, my eyes are closed, no control!”

She collapses on the bed after, out of breath, and beaming at him.

“Okay, that wasn't terrible,” he says.

“Yes!”

He kisses her.

And, well, they aren’t in a car this time, so when she’s pulling him closer, threading her hands into his hair, and plunging her tongue into his mouth, there is nothing to stop him from taking it further.

He rolls on top of her.

She’s into it. She is kissing him hotly, and when he slips his hand into her underwear, she’s wet, and when he pushes a finger into her, thumbing at her clit, and curling his finger, she grinds into his hand in answer, gasping. She’s into it.

He fucks up, though.

She stiffens under him suddenly, and he lifts his head to look at her, wanting to see what’s up, only what he sees is that she’s squeezed her eyes shut, and she is stiffer and stiffer by the second, and the tremor in her legs is gone.

He slides his hand out from between her legs, shifting away slightly.

She looks at him.

“Hey,” he says.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks.

He blinks.

She smiles and sits up, kissing his cheek. “Get it,” she says.

“Hold on,” he says.

“What?”

He moves further away from her.

She is acting like she is okay, but she isn’t an actress.

He doesn’t want her to do that with him, to pretend, and to play it cool.

“What’s the matter?” she asks.

“We’ve, ah, we’ve never talked about how your ex wasn’t able to get you off,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“You were dating a guy at the beginning of the year who wasn’t able to get you off,” he says, “and you were in my head about it constantly, thinking about how the guy was trying to, so hard, but it was a bust.”

She flushes.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed,” he says.

“Why do we have to talk about this right now?” she asks.

“I’m not your ex,” he says.

She isn’t looking at him now.

“If he wasn’t able to get you off, that’s on him. You weren’t the problem. And I know you think you were—I had you in my head, and I know. It wasn’t your fault, though. The fact that he wasn’t able to get off was totally on him.”

“Okay,” she says.

“You seemed like you stopped being into it a second ago, and—”

“Sorry.”

“Wellsy, can you look at me, please?”

She looks at him.

“If I’m doing something you don’t like, you gotta tell me.”

“Okay.” 

“Or if there’s something that you want me to do, and I’m not doing it, tell me. Seriously. Because if there’s something you want, something that works for you, I want to fucking do it, but you gotta tell me, or I’m not gonna know.”

“Okay.”

“You need me just to make out with you for like an hour first? Cool, I’m on board. You want me to use a vibrator on you, or you need lube? You got it. You need to be in charge, in control, telling me what to do? Great, sign me up.”

“Garrett, I . . .”

“You need me to dress in a monkey suit and fuck you upside down on a motorcycle? Let’s go.”

She snorts. 

There she is, he thinks.

"I do not want you to dress in a monkey suit and fuck me upside down on a motorcycle," she says.

“What do you want?” he asks, smiling.

She hesitates. “I actually . . . I don’t really know what I like—in bed, or . . .” she says.

“We can figure it out.”

She draws in a tentative, trembling breath, and suddenly, there are tears in her eyes.

“Hey, no,” he says, alarmed. “It’s okay. I promise. It’s okay.”

“You’re not gonna be able to get me off, Garrett,” she says.

“Wellsy—”

“You should have just let me fake it. That’s why you stopped, right? You’re a guy, and you have this whole pride thing about a girl faking it with you, and I’m not—I’m not any good at faking it. But, Garrett, you don’t understand. You should have just let me fake it.”

“Yeah, no,” he says.

“It’s better, if I fake it.”

“For who?” he says, outraged.

She sits up, draws her knees protectively to her chest. “This is what I was afraid of.”

“Afraid of?”

“I—Garrett, I can’t get off with a guy. I can’t.”

He shakes his head. “Your ex—”

“It isn’t about him,” she says, insistent.

“What’s it about?

“This is why I didn’t want to meet you yet, because I wasn’t ready, because I hadn’t fixed it yet, and I was afraid that this would happen, that we’d get to this point, and I’d ruin it. And now it’s happening, and you’re being so sweet, but you don’t get it. Because, I promise you, you’re not gonna be able to get me off, and you’re gonna try, but you won’t be able to do it, and you’ll get so frustrated, and eventually, you won’t even want to be around me.”

He’s stunned.

“And I’ll lose my soulmate.” She is crying now.

“Wellsy,” he says.

“I like you. I like you so much. I’ve liked the you who lived in my head for years, but this you—the real you, in front of me now—I like you so much, Garrett—you’re sweet and you’re funny and you’re driven, and I really, really like you.”

“I like you, too.”

She covers her mouth with her hand.

“Hey.” He touches her knee, and when she doesn’t pull away from him, he scoots up the bed, and he gathers her into his arms. “Hey, hey, hey.”

“I’m sorry,” she gasps.

He has no idea what the hell is happening right now.

She is letting him hold her at least.

It takes a couple of her minutes for her to calm down, for the sobbing to stop, and for the shaking to stop.

She sits up eventually, though, wiping at her cheeks, and when he catches her gaze, she smiles at him, or tries to. It’s a weak, wobbly thing.

“What can I do?” he asks.

She sniffs.

“Name it.”

“You can sleep with other people,” she says.

He gapes.

“If you—we’ve never said we’re exclusive, so it’s okay—I’ll get it, if you want to. I won’t be offended. There’s a reason we’ve been going slow and being casual, so—if you want to, it’s okay, I promise.”

“I was asking what I can do for you,” he says, incredulous.

“I know,” she says.

He pushes a hand through his hair. “Yeah, okay, we’re exclusive now, no more going slow, and no more being casual.”

“What?”

“You’re my girlfriend now.”

She huffs. “We’ve never talked about that.”

“We’re talking about it now.”

“Garrett.”

“Listen, Crazy,” he says. “I’m not gonna go sleep with other people. I haven’t slept with anyone since I met you, and I’m not going to, even if I’m not sleeping with you, okay? I don’t want to sleep with other people.”

She bites her lip.

“I would like to know what I’m missing here, ‘cause, clearly, I am missing something, but—I’m not going anywhere. You maybe could have pulled one over on me a month ago, right after we met, but—now? I’m way too into you now, and no matter what I’m missing, I’m here for the long haul, so—you’re not getting rid of me.”

“I . . . I don’t want you to look at me differently,” she says.

“I won’t.”

“You can’t promise me that.”

“How about . . . I promise that I won’t like you less, no matter what you tell me?”

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

She scoots further away from him. 

He swallows.

“I’m gonna tell you something, and you’re gonna want to dwell on it, but you shouldn’t, okay?”

“Okay . . .”

“Do you remember how, after that guy drugged that girl’s drink at Malone’s, I told you that I freaked out because I . . . I had a friend that had that happen to her, and I flashed back to that?”

“Yeah.”

“It was me, Garrett.”

He stares.

“I was at a party, and a guy I went to school with, he drugged me, and he raped me. And I know that’s really dark, but you don’t need to freak out, I can see you freaking out right now, but you don’t need to freak out, because—I’m okay now, I am, really, I am. I had this amazing therapist who helped me see that the rape does not define me, and my parents were really supportive, and I got past it.”

“How old were you?” he asks.

“Fifteen,” she says.

He remembers.

“And I’ve done so much work to get past it, and I have, I’m past it, and I promise you that I am okay.”

“Did people believe you after?” he asks.

“Um.”

“Sorry, I—”

“It’s okay,” she says. “No, um, no, actually, nobody really believed me. My parents did, of course, but the rest of the town . . . not so much. When the guy you accuse of assault is the mayor’s son, nobody tends to believe you.” She swallows. “Why?”

He gets up from the bed and squats, gets the box from under the bed.

“What are you doing?

“I have something for you,” he says.

The box is pretty jam packed at this point, but he finds the piece of paper, torn from a notebook, and folded up, and he sits on the edge of the bed, and hands it to her.

She takes it tentatively. “What is this?”

“I wrote it for you when I was fifteen,” he says.

She unfolds the paper carefully. He waits, remembering what he’d written: I believe you. I believe you. I believe you. She hugs the paper to her chest suddenly.

“I didn’t know what it was about,” he says, “why you needed me to believe you, but I needed you to know that I did, I believed you.”

“And you sang to me, too,” she says softly, tearful again.

He nods.

“Sometimes, when things were really bad at school, I’d beg in my head for you to sing to me, and you would, and I’d use it to drown out all of those assholes at school, and it was—it helped me so much.”

“Good,” he says.

“Anyway, um, we never got to the part of all of this that I wanted to get to,” she says.

He frowns.

“I can’t orgasm with a guy. I’ve tried with a couple of guys, one I was dating when I was a freshman, and my ex, but I—I can’t. But it’s like I’m in it, and I’m enjoying it, and then all of the sudden, I . . . I zoom out, and . . . It doesn’t matter what position, or how long I try for, nothing works. By myself, sure, fine, fireworks. But as soon as I’m with a guy? I can’t orgasm, no matter what I try, no matter what he tries.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he says.

“What if I’m . . . like, what if I’m broken?”

He takes her hands in his. “You’re not.”

“What if I am, though? What if what happened—what if after everything, my body isn’t capable of—?

“I’ll love you anyway.”

She draws in a breath.

He squeezes her hands in answer. “Look, we can take it off the table right now, if you want. No pressure. But when the day comes that you want to put it back on the table, I’ll be ready. And I promise that I’m not going anywhere, as long as you promise that you’ll never fake it with me. We’ll figure it out together.”

“Okay,” she says.

“Good?”

She nods.

He squeezes her hand softly.

“I want to be with you,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never been attracted to anybody the way I’m attracted to you.”

He grins.

“I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

“Did your ex—did he know about what happened to you? Did you tell him?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you think maybe since I know, that might make it different for us?” He toys with her hand. “Like, do you think I might be able to help, like, keep you in the moment, so you don’t zoom out, or whatever?”

“Maybe,” she says.

He isn’t going to push it.

She is caving in on herself again, the width of her shoulders getting smaller and smaller.

“There’s a movie about One Direction, isn’t there?” he says.

“It’s on Netflix,” she says.

“You want to watch it?”

“Okay, I know that you’re only offering this because you feel bad for me, but I don’t even care. Yes, absolutely, yes, let’s watch it. You can feel so bad for me if it gets you to watch this movie with me.”

“Great,” he says.

The rest of the night is softer, sweeter.

He piles up the pillows against the back of his bed to lean against, makes a bowl of popcorn for them in the microwave, and pulls her into his arms as soon as she hits play on the movie.

He can’t stop thinking about what happened to her.

He thinks of that morning when he was fifteen, when he woke up early, overwhelmed with how desperately his soulmate needed him, and now he knows why, and he thinks of her, fifteen, after a party, hurt.

He isn’t supposed to dwell on it.

She is curled up against his chest right now, patting at his arm, and telling him to pay attention.

She’s okay.

He wakes up around one in the morning to the realization that he’d fallen to sleep in the middle of the movie.

She must’ve, too. 

He gets up carefully, puts her laptop on his desk, turns off the lights, and pulls the blanket out from under her in order to pull it over her, before he gets back into the bed, curling up around her.

She snuffles at him sleepily.

He wakes up repeatedly after that to her knee in his thigh, or her elbow in his ribs, or her hot, sticky breath on his shoulder.

The beds in the dorms aren’t meant for two.

He manhandles her around in answer again and again, hugging her to his chest.

When his alarm goes off at 6 am, she rolls her face into a pillow, and when he returns from the bathroom, she is squinting at him.

“I’ve got practice,” he tells her.

She hums.

“Stay,” he says.

“M’kay.”

He is smiling to himself when he leaves, soft at the thought of her sleeping in his bed. It’s probably a macho, cave man thing, but there's something about the thought of his girl in his bed, safe and sound, that gets to him.

The text comes through a couple of hours after that, when he’s on his way to class.

Hope your practice went well. I know last night was a lot. Thanks for being so great about it. If you’re up for coffee sometime this week, let me know. No pressure.

She’s ridiculous.

He pauses outside Potter’s Hall, where his European History class is supposed to start in a couple of minutes.

This isn’t going to take long.

He puts in his AirPods, starts the song on Spotify, and pulls up the lyrics, clearing his throat.

“Waking up beside you, I’m a loaded gun
I can’t contain this anymore
I’m all yours, I’ve got no control, no control
Powerless, and I don’t care, it’s obvious
I just can’t get enough of you
The pedal’s down, my eyes are closed, no control!”

She needs to talk to him.

He smiles.

I love your voice.

When I sing?

It’s my favorite.

My voice is terrible.

I know.

You free to hang out this afternoon?

After my seminar?

Perfect, he says.

He hopes his willingness to sing a One Direction song to her when he’s in public has proven his point.

She’s not gonna scare him off.

—

He comes up with the idea after a couple of hot, heavy make out sessions in which he isn’t allowed to do a thing for her.

The end of the year is passing in a blur of papers and exams and presentations, but they are together constantly now, and in between all of the studying, they are kind of all over each other, like the happy, horny people they are.

He can’t get her off, though.

She won’t let him try.

She wants to get him off, to kiss his neck and take off his shirt and lick his chest, to unbutton his jeans and wrap her small, soft hand around him, and she is happy after, like she is satisfied with that.

“I’ll take care of myself later,” she says, smiling.

He is trying to be patient with her, to respect what she says she wants, and to let her pick the pace.

It’s hard, though.

He thinks and thinks about it, researches it online, thinks and thinks and thinks about it, until it pops into his head.

What if she took care of herself then and there, instead of later?

She’s at his dorm to watch Breaking Bad with him. 

They haven’t been able to watch it much lately, but they finished the last of their finals today, both of them, so they have time now to watch it as much as they like.

They’ve earned it.

They’re going to an end-of-the-year bash at Beau’s frat with the guys later to celebrate properly, of course.

Now, though?

She is snuggled up at his side on the sofa, her tits against his arm, and the smell of her shampoo in his nose.

He isn’t sure how it happens, only that, suddenly, he is hauling her into his lap, and she is laughing, and he is hushing her up with kisses.

And he’s into it, holding her ass in his hands, and rocking up against her, until he feels her hands on his belt.

She slips off his lap to kneel on the floor in between his legs.

He grabs her hands.

“I want to,” she says softly.

“Yeah, but I . . . you won’t let me do anything back for you, and I . . . it feels wrong to get and get and never—give.”

The smile on her face is starting to fade away. “I’m fine,” she says.

“Really?”

“I can take care of myself after.”

“Yeah, about that, you always say that, and—”

She looks away from him.

“I have an idea,” he says.

She shifts to sit on the sofa beside him again, tucking her hair behind her ear, and trying to compose herself. “Let’s just watch the show,” she says.

He hesitates.

She hits previous on the screen, again and again, rewinding. They’ve missed a couple of minutes, and it isn’t really a show where that’s okay. She hits play, tilting the screen, and turning up the volume.

There’s space on the sofa between them now.

She needs . . .

He frowns. The need feels small and strangled, and he realizes after a beat that it’s because she is trying to make it small, to strangle it—to hide it.

She’s never done that before.

The need works its way through to him, though.

She needs . . .

His chest goes tight with hurt when he feels it, when he knows.

She needs to orgasm with a guy.

“Hannah,” he says.

She covers her face with her hands.

“Hey, no. C’mere. Hey, just.” He turns and reaches for her, tugs her toward him, into his lap. “C’mere.”

She straddles him.

“Talk to me,” he says.

“If I . . .” She swallows. “If I try with you, and it doesn’t work,” she says, “I can’t keep pretending that it will work with you, and I know that probably sounds crazy because what’s the point in pretending, but I . . .”

“It’s not crazy,” he says.

She slides a hand up from his shoulder to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“I, ah, I have an idea, if you’re willing to hear it.”

“Okay.”

“I just, I’ve been thinking about our—situation. And I’m not trying to pressure you, or anything, I swear. I just, I had—I had a thought, you know.”

“I’m listening,” she says.

“You can make yourself come,” he says.

She blinks.

“You said the problem is when you’re with a guy, you, just, you zoom out, but you said on your own you’re fine, right?”

“What are you getting at?” she asks.

“Let’s go to my room,” he says.

She stands up and steps back slightly, giving him room to stand up, too.

He takes her hand and leads her out of the small, shared space and into his bedroom, and when he closes the door behind them, she opens her mouth, but he tugs her in close and kisses her.

She relaxes.

He walks her backwards to the bed and she sinks down slowly, before he kneels in front of her.

“What’s your idea?” she asks.

“Show me,” she says.

“What?”

“You can make yourself come, right?” he says.

“I do it all the time,” she says.

He smirks. “Oh, do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then, show me.”

She stares.

“Show me,” he says, standing up, and stripping off his shirt, “and I’ll show you.”

“Okay,” she says, soft.

And.

It works.

It’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen in his life, the sight of her on his bed, naked, her legs spread for him to see, and her fingers on herself, glistening, and, more importantly—

It works.

He collapses on the bed beside her after, on a high.

She thanks him, before she rolls on top of him, and she rains kisses on his face, on the bridge of his nose and his eyebrow and the corner of his lip, on his cheek again and again, on the dimple in his chin.

It’s his best idea ever.

—

They go to Beau’s frat with the guys that night, but they aren’t there for an hour before they call it quits, since they have much, much better things to do with their time than hang out at Beau’s frat.

He needs her naked in his bed again, like, asap.

They are kissing as soon as they reach his dorm, tearing off their clothes, and leaving a trail to his room, before they tumble onto his bed together, kissing and kissing.

“I need—”

He kisses her neck and the soft, sweet curve of her tit and her belly, lower and lower.

“I need—”

I know, he says.

He goes down on her.

Her need is there inside of him, encouraging him, and her need isn’t detailed, or direct, which he imagines is because she hasn’t really had the chance to learn the specifics of what she wants from sex, but it’s there, her need, it’s there, and it’s simply for him, for Garrett, for him, him, him.

It’s intoxicating.

She comes with his lips on her clit and one of his fingers curling deep, deep in her.

She tears up after.

He’s alarmed.

“I’m happy,” she says.

He hugs her to him and hides his laughter in her neck, holding her close. “You’re welcome,” he says.

“There’s so much I want to try,” she says.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Can we have sex on a table like in Bull Durham?”

He laughs.

“And I’ve really only ever been on top, ‘cause it freaked me out before to be on my back with a guy above me or to do it from behind, but it’ll be different with you, so I want to try it those ways, too.”

“Baby, we can try it all the ways,” he says.

“Allie wanted her boyfriend to do her against a wall, but her boyfriend is kind of a stringbean, so—”

“If you want me to do you against a wall, I will absolutely do you against a wall,” he says.

“Yeah?”

He kisses her.

She takes over, pushing him onto his back, and pinning him to the bed, and when she peers at him from between his legs, he nods at her desperately, and she puts her mouth on him.

He isn’t able to think after that, with her warm, wet mouth on the tip of his cock, sucking him, and her hand at the base, stroking him in tandem.

The sight of her perfect, pouty lips around his cock is going to be burned into his brain for the rest of his life.

He comes in a matter of minutes.

“You’re welcome,” she says, smug.

He kisses her again.

They get out of the bed eventually, to clean up, and to pull on clothes, before they get back in the bed.

And, fuck, the sight of her drowning in one of his shirts, with messy hair, and sleepy eyes?

He’s going to file that image away to keep forever, too.

Can you hear me right now?

Yeah.

“It’s easy now,” she says, smiling.

“Our True Bond is officially in place,” he says.

“My parents aren’t soulmates, you know.”

“Really?”

There’s a reason that soulmatism has remained fairly rare, if his research on the internet is to be believed.

It’s genetic, and only a small, small part of the population has the gene.

It isn't guaranteed that you'll have a soulmate just because your parents do, and situations like Dean's family where literally everyone has a soulmate aren't common.

But the chances of having a soulmate if neither of your parents have a soulmate?

Slim.

It's possible, of course, for a person to have a soulmate without a parent with soulmatism. It's labelled “spontaneous soulmatism,” and it's the subject of a lot of debate and discussion. But as possible as it is, and in spite of the fact that movies love to gift the main character with spontaneous soulmatism, it remains pretty rare.

“But they were also so happy together," she says, "and it was the same with all of the couples in my family, my grandparents, and my mom’s cousins, and my aunt and her husband, so I know you don’t have to have a soulmate to be happy with someone.”

He tucks her hair behind her ear. “But?” he says.

“But I’m really happy that I have a soulmate,” she says.

He smiles. “Me, too.”

“My mom told me that the voice in my head that sang to me was my imagination, and it wasn’t until I told my mom when I was eight that the voice in my head likes to dance to records with his mom, that my mom was, like, wait, hold on, what, and my parents took me to a doctor, who diagnosed me with soulmatism.”

“How’d they react?”

“They were really excited about it.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re going to love you,” she says.

He swallows.

“How did you figure it out?”

“My mom, she knew. She had a soulmate, um. Not my dad. She never found her soulmate, actually. But, yeah, I guess maybe she was hoping for it, for me to have a soulmate like her, because as soon as I started to cry about how I needed these hot pink, plastic shoes, my mom put it together.”

“I needed hot pink, plastic shoes?”

He grins.

“I have no memory of that.”

“Hold that thought,” he says, climbing off the bed.

She sits up curiously.

He gets the box out from under the bed and lifts it up, onto the bed, and in front of her.

She’d seen it the night he’d pulled it out to give her his note, but that night had been a lot, to put it lightly, so he doubts it had really held her interest. 

“Here,” he says.

“What am I looking at?” she asks.

“If you need something over the years that I was able to get for you, I got it.”

She opens the box, and her expression is calm and careful when she sweeps her eyes over everything inside.

He is nervous, all of sudden.

She picks up a bottle that’s filled with a filmy yellow liquid. 

“It’s water with lemon,” he says.

“And I needed this because . . .?”

“You wanted your hair to lighten in the sun,” he says.

“Wait,” she says.

“Remember?”

“It was the beginning of 5th grade, and a bunch of the girls had highlights in their hair!” she says, delighted.

He grins.

She picks up the items one by one, a kind of reverence in the way she holds the items gently, gingerly, a Lizzie McGuire-themed notebook and a box of tampons and a Michelle Branch album on CD, and he explains each of the items to her.

“A sweatshirt?” she says.

“You needed a sweatshirt once, when your period bled through your pants,” he says, and she runs her fingers over where it says the name of his school, Oak Hill Academy, on the front in big, blocky white letters. 

She tugs the sweatshirt on.

It fits her.

She picks up the pair of hot pink, sparkly Jelly shoes.

“There’s a picture that goes with those,” he says.

She finds it.

He hasn’t actually seen the thing in years, not since his mom had it developed at CVS, wrote the date on the back, and tucked it safely into the box.

He leans in to look.

There he is, five years old, and at the mall, holding the pair of shoes proudly in his hands.

“My mom thought you’d want a picture of that moment,” he says.

“I wish I had a box of things to give to you,” she says suddenly, swallowing, and looking at him with soft, shiny eyes.

“You’re enough,” he says.

She kisses him.

He takes the sweatshirt off her again, and the t-shirt under that, too.

“Do you have a condom?” she asks.

He pulls away from her to rummage in the drawer by his desk and he holds the square up for her to see.

She tugs him on top of her.

“Do I need to find a table, too?” he asks.

“Shush.”

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

She is touching him everywhere at once, sliding her hands up his back and over his shoulders, into his hair, and down again, over his chest, and he kisses her everywhere in answer, until she is digging her fingers into his shoulders, pleading.

She tenses up, though, when he is above her, looking at her, and about to push in.

“It’s me,” he says.

She nods.

“Stay with me, okay?”

Her eyes are soft, clinging to him, and she smiles at him slightly, sweetly. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” he says.

She is the one to reach between them, to take his cock in her hand, and to tilt her hips up, to guide him in.

“Are you still with me?” he asks.

“Yeah.” She kisses him.

“You feel really fucking incredible right now,” he says.

She hikes her leg up around his hip.

She is smiling now, and rocking her hips in time with his slow, steady thrusts, encouraging him with these soft, sweet “oh oh oh” noises, smiling and smiling, here, and with him.

He fucks her faster, harder.

“There, Garrett, there,” she says, arching up.

He gets her off again.

He comes right after, overwhelmed by the way her head tips back, and that moan, and the way she clenches around his cock over and over when she comes, and he can't really control himself, collapsing on top of her, boneless.

She hugs him to her, holding him tightly.

"I'm crushing you," he says.

"I'm okay with that."

After, when they've cleaned up and are back in the bed, the lights turned off, and the covers drawn up, she cuddles into his side again, her cheek on his chest, and her arm around him, and they lay there together in the quiet.

He could do this forever.

“The universe was right about us,” she says softly.

He smiles.

It's decided.

He's going to keep her forever.

—

He leaves to find a beer for them. He’d done shots with the guys earlier, but there isn’t a game tomorrow, so a beer on top of that isn’t going to kill him, and she hasn’t had anything at all. He wants a beer, and he wants her to have a beer.

She remains pretty reluctant to drink in public, but if he happens to be holding a drink, she has a habit of stealing a sip, and another, and another, and another, until he happens to be holding her drink.

He gets a bottle of Blue Moon, which is one of her favorites, and he grabs a slice of orange, too, to shove in the bottle.

They're at a Block Party, and she ought to be able to enjoy a drink.

She is right where he left her, although a guy is with her now, instead of her friends, a guy who is smiling at her slyly with a look that Garrett knows very, very well.

He heads for her.

“I’ve heard some of your stuff from high school,” she says.

“You’re a fan?” says the guy.

“She’s a musician,” Garrett says, butting in.

“Yeah?” says the guy.

“She’s amazing." Garrett slings an arm around her shoulders, since, apparently, the fact that she is wearing Garrett’s jacket isn’t enough.

“He’s biased,” Hannah says.

“I tell it like it is,” Garrett says, shrugging.

She shakes her head at him, pursing her lips, and ignoring the flood of pink in her cheeks.

“Hey,” Garrett says, turning to the guy with a jerk of his chin in greeting, “I’m, ah—”

“I know who you are, man,” says the guy.

And, yeah, Garrett is polite, accepting the compliment when the guy brings up the game against Eastwood, but Garrett isn’t fooled.

Relax.

You aren’t the one who has to beat the guys away from your girl with a stick.

There is literally a name for the girls who are obsessed with my guy.

Shhh.

You’re ridiculous.

“Are you okay?” asks the guy.

“I’m fine,” Hannah says, smiling.

“Okay, ah, well, it was nice to meet you, ah, officially,” says the guy.

“You, too.”

He heads off.

“Who was that?” Garrett asks.

“Justin?”

"He's a friend of yours?"

“Acquaintance, maybe. He’s at Malone’s a lot with his band, so we've talked before. And when he saw me here, he thought he’d say hi. He's a really good singer. And he's nice.”

“Uh-huh,” Garrett says.

She wraps her arms around his shoulders.

“I’ve seen him eyeing you at Malone’s before,” Garrett says.

“I am not in charge of his eyes.”

He heaves a sigh at her.

“You know you’ve got nothing to worry about,” she says, amused.

“I know,” he says.

She raises her eyebrows at him playfully.

He isn’t worried.

But, come on, is it a crime to be annoyed with guys like that, who eye his girlfriend from a distance, and as soon as he isn’t there, swoop in, wanting to talk to her, to flirt with her, to ask her if things with him are serious?

“He really is a good singer," she says.

"Great."

"But I like my guys to be lousy singers. Like, off-pitch, voice cracking, completely tone deaf."

“Oh, yeah?”

She smirks at him and leans up slowly, turns her face into his, taking her sweet, sweet time.

He can feel the curve of her smile against his cheek.

“I’m your girl, Graham,” she says.

He kisses her.

Fin.