Chapter Text
"No way.” I said to Fiona “Absolutely not.”
“Come on. We’ll have the time of our lives.” She twirled her brown hair around her finger with a frown. “What don’t you like about it?”
“I don’t like flying. I don’t like boats. I don’t like the ocean. I hate being hot and sweaty. I hate mosquitoes and spiders. I hate-”
“Your mother pressuring you to look for your âme sœur?” She said the last bit in french, with an exaggerated accent. I wasn’t fluent, but I knew what she meant. I didn’t respond, other than to scowl more than before.
“I know, it sucks. I get it.” Fiona grabbed my hand, trying to comfort me. I pulled away.
“Says the one who found her soulmate a month into college.” I am not amused, and I show it. “That brings up another reason not to go. I’m not going to be your pity-friend, tag-a-long while you spend the vacation fucking your husband. I’m not going to be your third wheel.”
“Will isn’t coming.” She says it sheepishly, completely ignoring my foul temper. I look at her with a raised brow.
“What do you mean he isn’t coming?” Soulmates were sickening to be around. They seemed to use any excuse to be together. Always touching, being affectionate. It was a saccharine nonsense that threw excruciating loneliness in my face. Honestly, I was surprised Will wasn’t with her right now. Somehow he was able to keep himself upstairs in his office. I disgusted myself imagining him tentatively pacing, waiting for me to leave.
“He has to work.” The smile on her face wasn’t quite a smile.
“So? Schedule it when he can go.” I narrowed my eyes at her suspiciously.
“The vacation package deal is for a limited time only. He couldn’t get the time off.” She offered an excuse but the flinty way she said it made me more dubious.
“Fiona, what’s really going on here?” It was a question but my face was stern. “You and Will can afford to go wherever you want, deal or not.”
She sighed wearily and ran a hand through her long, wavy hair, tousling it a bit as she went. Her eyes were sort of sad, faraway.
“I wanted a b-break.” She looked ashamed. I thought I could hear a muffled groan coming from upstairs.
“What?” I ask dumbfounded. Soulmates didn’t want breaks. Did they? I didn’t know, I hadn’t had one. What I’d been led to believe - what I’d observed - was that you craved each other, like an addiction. Again, I didn’t buy it. Something was going on. Not just in this moment, at Fiona’s breakfast table. It was happening all the time, wherever I was. I couldn’t escape. No one was saying anything to me, but all the people in my life were treating me like a bratty kid. Everything I said wasn’t taken seriously. They would give each other worried glances after I would get upset when they thought I wasn’t looking. It was maddening; treating me like I was a lunatic or child. They didn’t understand my frustration or pain. Worse yet, they blamed me for it. Like it was my fault I hadn’t found my “âme sœur”. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been trying for the entirety of my 27 years being alive.
“Fuck you.” I said quietly to Fiona, getting up from the table and grabbing my bag. I tried to hold in the rage consuming my heart, not very successfully. “If you can’t tell me the truth, am I really your best friend?”
“Stop! I’m sorry.” She said, clinging to my wrist. “I’ll tell you the truth. Just sit down.”
I gritted my teeth and sat down again. Fiona withdrew her grip on my wrist.
“You aren’t okay.” She said.
“No shit.” I retorted.
“I’m serious.” She gave me a firm look, I rolled my eyes and laughed bitterly. “Don’t. Don’t talk. Just listen. After I’m done you can speak, but I can’t tell you anything if you are shouting at me.”
She sounded tired and frustrated. I nodded reluctantly. Had I really been shouting so much?
“You are not okay, and getting steadily worse.” She had a hand to her forehead emphasizing her weariness. “We’ve all noticed.”
I wanted to defend myself, attack them for their callousness and ignorance of my situation. I had to grit my teeth hard to keep my mouth closed.
“You have a hair trigger. At the drop of a hat you attack everyone. You can’t appreciate anything, you only criticize and complain. Things you used to love doing, you don’t do anymore. I can’t remember the last time I heard you really laugh or genuinely smile.”
I couldn’t argue with her. It was true. I found myself aimless, restless and thwarted at every turn. No one bothered to help or understand. They all just told me to find my soulmate. That it’d all be fixed if I found my soulmate. “Soulmate” the fucking miracle cure! I couldn’t fucking take it anymore.
“I love you. Everyone still loves you.”
I couldn’t help but scoff and fold my arms in disbelief. No one loved me. That was the fucking problem.
“We looked into it and talked to some people.”
“Who?” I demanded, breaking my promise. Fiona eyed me with a frown, warning me to remain silent.
“We called some doctors and they said that you might be having symptoms that can occur when you go a long time without finding your soulmate. It’s a real condition. I don’t remember what it’s called.”
I shook my head and scoffed again. Fucking doctors. My mother had me going to a therapist every week already. Nothing changed, no matter how many meds I took. I was still this way. I hated it, feeling like I was losing myself to rage and cynicism. Unable to respect the happiness of others because my happiness didn’t exist. Biting back whenever I was reminded of what I couldn’t have, but wanted so badly. My condition was called “loneliness.” Any other title was bullshit.
“The doctors recommended taking you on a vacation, a sort of soulmate hunting trip, somewhere far away from home.”
I closed my eyes and furrowed my brow. I was being dealt with. Taken care of. Placated.
“This trip is just going to be me and you, in the islands for two weeks. You don’t have to worry about being a third wheel. You don’t even have to worry about money. You just have to pack and go.”
I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. The anger in me was boiling up, making me shake.
“NO!” I shouted. “I’m not going on some pathetic husband hunt! This is so typical. None of you get it! My mom put you up to this didn’t she??”
I was lachrymose and it made me more upset that my body was betraying me as well as everyone else I knew.
“Stop it! Your mom doesn’t want you to go!” Fiona yelled. I gasped at her sudden outburst. She never yelled. I’d never heard it, not once.
“You are going on this trip! I’m not going to watch you waste away like this, becoming more and more jaded and hateful! I won’t do it!”
“I’m not going on a soulmate search.” I whispered, shocked but not enough to ignore my feelings.
“So don’t.”
“I’m not going.” I said again, a little louder.
“It’s better than staying here where your mom will nag you everyday, and force you to date.”
I sighed long and heavy. The unaddressed emotional hurt that consumed me every waking moment ached in my chest. I was surfeited with my life. I was tired of feeling worthless and incomplete. Sick of having to realize that in this fucked up world I couldn’t feel whole on my own. I was also tired of my mother’s desperate antics. She was probably going to start forcing me to touch random strangers in a mall soon.
“Fine.” I agreed. “But only to disappoint my mom and only if we skip the ‘find your soulmate’ shit.”
“Deal.” She smiled and I couldn’t help but grin back, tear-streaked cheeks and all.
The flight was dismal. I sat next to Fiona, but next to her was a grump of an old man who would frown and hush us every time we would talk to each other. I wanted to pound his face in after a while. Fiona suggested that we watched movies and napped the rest of the trip. I don’t think I slept more than ten minutes.
I got through by listening to a playlist I had the forethought to download to my phone before the trip. The music would have made my mother chide me. She hated the various metal genres that spoke to my pain and took off my edge. It was a sly satisfaction in the midst of my misery.
The last few hours of the flight were the roughest. We hit some particularly bad turbulence and I spent the rest of the time on the plane in a death grip with my armrests and trying to pretend that my life wasn’t completely out of my hands. I hated flying.
The rest of the trip felt downhill from there.
The hotel seemed luxurious, until I found the biggest spider I’d ever seen in the shower, while there was still shampoo in my hair. Someone came and took care of it. When I laid in bed I was searching the shadows for large monstrosities that might attack in the vulnerability of sleep.
During the day, I drifted between bouts of fatigue. Fiona took us on tours, bike rides, sightseeing. If I didn’t drink metric tonnes of caffeine I was barely awake to appreciate it. At night, I was wired. My drowsiness evaporated.
Fiona insisted on partaking in the night life. We walked into a club and in the darkness and flashing lights I noticed that everyone was touching someone else. At first I thought we’d wandered into a soulmates only club or something.
Supposedly, if you touched your soulmate you both knew it. So touching was usually an accident or done with express permission. The objective part of me thought it was stupid. Though I didn’t like my mother’s treatment of me a lot of the time, I could do simple math. Touching as many people as possible was the quickest way to find your mate. That was the evident philosophy of this club.
A man passed me and ran his hand down the bare part of my arm and I cringed. It was so forward, vulnerable feeling… It was just wrong or sure as hell felt wrong. Perhaps it was the way they were touching me? It wasn’t a quick tap or bump. It was more intimate, like they wanted their first touch with their soulmate to be special. I could appreciate the sentiment, but I didn’t want to participate.
Fiona thought my reluctance was sort of funny. She didn’t bat an eye when someone would touch her.
“It’s different when you have a soulmate.” She was blasé. “Touches from strangers don’t mean as much.”
Someone shoot me. I felt like a whore every night when I finally put my face to a pillow. I could still feel the fingers on my shoulders, arms, hands, face… Ugh. It was all for nothing. Every touch was worthless and it took a little piece of my dignity with me. I’d try to abandon the world in sleep, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep until Fiona had finished her daily call to Will. Then, when the lights were out I’d remember the spider, and my eyes would refuse to close. I would eventually pass out from exhaustion, but it was usually after three in the morning.
The trip wasn’t panning out for me, for all that I tried to force myself to be enthusiastic. None of the activities available were really my cup of tea. I found myself wanting nothing more than to hide away in the hotel room, alone. Wallow in my despondency. Fiona didn’t let me. There was always more and more to do, to see.
On our second to last day, she scheduled a private boat to some small islands nearby. She was telling me how we’d get to snorkel and swim, explore the gorgeous islands without huge crowds. I didn’t have the heart to remind her that I hated boats AND the ocean. Instead I put on a brave and smiling face. The cost of the trip made me feel obligated at the very least.
The boat trip was terrible. I forgot my motion sickness patch and threw up over the side half way to the island. After I emptied my stomach, I did start to feel better. Though the captain of our tour would look at me like I had a dick drawn on my face for the rest of the ride. I wanted to punch him in the face.
When we reached the island, I had to admit it was beautiful. Pristine. The water was clear and blue, the beaches had white sands.
“Here you go.” Fiona handed me a snorkel, goggles and some flippers. I exhaled and began pulling my shirt off. Though I stopped when I noticed the captain looking me over, with a dark smile. I really hated him.
I had a swimsuit underneath, obviously. Fiona had tried to get me to pick a scandalous two-piece. I settled for a modest, black tankini. According to her, it made my pale skin look completely white, like a corpse. Part of me hoped it did. If I looked dead, maybe no one would want to touch me. Even if I cared how undead I looked, I wasn’t going to wear any of the swimsuits she forced me to try on. They barely covered the important bits. It made shopping with her annoying and the dressing room experience embarrassing. But at least she wasn’t a hypocrite. Her own swimsuit was revealing, and metallic. A pale gold, crocodile pattern bikini. A blind man couldn’t miss her.
After we put on our equipment, Fiona jumped off the boat and started swimming toward the island. I set my goggles on my forehead and dove after her.
Most people had assumed my hatred of the ocean was due to not being able to swim. I could swim. I love to swim. I had been on the swim team. I loved water, and swimming pools. I just didn’t like sand and weird, gross or potentially dangerous animals in the water with me while I swam. I had an appalling encounter with an urchin as a child. There was still a series of small dark scars dotted on the bottom of my left foot.
Though she started before me, I easily beat Fiona to shore.
“Alright, show off.” She laughed while she panted, leaning on her knees as she stepped out the water. I smiled.
“There it is! That’s what I wanted to see! The whole trip was worth it.” She pointed at me. I was confused. “You smiled.” I couldn’t help but smile more. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. The water was warm and crystal clear. Not an urchin in sight.
After she caught her breath she went back into the water to snorkel in the shallows around the little cove we were in. I was more happy lying on the damp sand trying to improve my glorious tan regardless of the semi-overcast sky. Relaxing came surprisingly easy listening to the wind and waves. It was like a lullaby. With my usual daily enervation it wasn’t long before I closed my eyes and drifted off.