Soul Mate Countdown [You may post] Romance

[mr.kingrichard]

Plot: Ten different stories of ten different couples, living in a world where you're issued with a watch that counts down the years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until you meet your soul mate.

PART ONE: BARRIERS
Ch. 1 : Carmela (unfinished)

PART TWO: DEFIANCE
Ch. 1 : Meeting and the Treehouse (Finished)

[mr.kingrichard]

Part One
Barriers

Samantha Cox and Carmela Diaz

Chapter one
Carmela

For a long time I’ve watched the timer on my watch tick down slowly. According to my mother, even when I was very young, I was transfixed on the watch. The watch that counted down the years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until I’d meet my soul mate. I’d always been a romantic person, mother said, and ever since I was old enough to understand what it meant, I’d practiced what I’d say to my soul mate when I met them. What I’d do. I had everything planned, our first date, our first kiss, our wedding. I always had everything in my life planned.

Except for the circumstances under which I met my soul mate, that was.

On the day when my counter hit zero, I was sitting in my usual spot at the coffee shop I worked at part-time and also visited often. I’d been watching the watch almost nonstop for the past week, daydreaming about what my soul mate would be like. I knew that, rarely, a mistake was made and the person you met wasn’t your soul mate, but none of that mattered. I was doing my best to remain calm as the minutes ticked away. I was sure that I looked perfectly cool and calm on the outside, reading one of my favorite books (Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden), legs crossed at the knee, stringy red hair pulled back and made to look presentable. The bell on the entrance door to the shop tinkled, and I looked down so fast that my thick-rimmed glasses slid down my nose. I couldn’t take it, I had to glance down at the watch.

Thirty seconds. Thirty seconds?! Panic rose inside of me, but I forced it back down. When did it get so low? How did the time fly so fast? Caught up in these thoughts, I barely noticed as a lightly Spanish accented voice murmured;

“Um, ma’am? I-I saw that the shop was hiring and I wondered if you—oh.” I looked up suddenly, into her eyes, as the watch hit zero.
She was a short little thing, a bit stocky (I was no twig myself though, mind you). She had long, wavy, thick black hair that shone like her eyes. Her eyes themselves were a very dark brown, and her skin was a dark tan color. Her face was round, and she had a cute, pudgy nose that looked very deserving of a kiss.

I knew then, right away, that even if she wasn’t what I expected, I loved her.

“Y-your counter,” she stammered, and I noticed her eyes flickering from my wrist to hers. “It’s at zero. A-and mine…” She trailed off, and I smiled at her. Don’t mess this up, Sammy. Don’t be stupid.

“And yours is at zero, too. That means we’re soul mates.” Nailed it. The other girl flushed and looked away, tugging nervously at her hair. So she was just as nervous as I was. That made things a lot easier. “My name is Samantha Cox, but you can call me Sam, or Sammy. Whichever you prefer.”

“I’m Carmela Diaz,” my soul mate said after I’d spoken, and I felt a wide grin cross my face before I could think about it or stop it.

“Carmela,” I repeated. I liked the way it sounded. “I’m sure that the coffee shop would be delighted to have you. I know I am.” A little nervous smile appeared on her face.

“Okay, Sammy,” she said, and my fingers laced with hers so fast that it would’ve made your head spin.

---

After she'd gotten her job application form filled out (we'd both almost forgotten about that), I learned that she had no place to stay, so I took her back to my apartment. Although she insisted that she would be fine, I wasn't about to leave my soul mate behind. She blushed madly when I told her this, but she accepted my proposal nonetheless.

“Welcome to my happy home,” I announced as I opened the door to my small apartment. And small it was; there was a living room with a T.V., a kitchen with a mini-fridge and a microwave, a stove, and then my bedroom at the end of a short hall. “It's not much, but it's my own. And now it's yours, too, if you'd like it to be.”

“It's perfect,” Carmela said, smiling as she admired the apartment. Wow, she had a gorgeous smile. “I've never shared a-a house with just one p-person before. I-I have a big f-family. M-my mom, grandparents, and siblings a-all live in the s-same house. T-they're not too far from h-here. I just c-came into town to find a-a job to bring i-in some extra money. I completely f-forgot about my c-counter.” I found it almost ironic that I would be paired up with someone who could forget so easily about her counter, whereas I'd been intensely focused on mine for years.

“I'm an only child, and so are both of my parents. My grandparents died before I was born, so my parents are the only family I've ever known.”

“O-oh, I'm s-sorry,” Carmela murmured quickly, but I said just as quickly;

“No, no, it's fine. I mean, I never knew them, so it's not like it hurt me at all.” We stood in awkward silence for a few moments, since I was unsure of how to continue this process. Although I'd spent my whole life preparing for this day, it was like I'd suddenly forgotten how to function. How did speaking work, again? What was breathing? Finally I managed to force out, “So, ah, you wanna get dinner or somethin'? So we can get to know each other better?”

[sicknasty]

Sounds very cool. More?

[mr.kingrichard]

Part Two
Defiance

Nicola Ramone and Benito Anspagh

Chapter one
Meeting and the Treehouse

Eighteen is a young age to meet your soul mate, I knew that. Most people I knew didn’t meet their soul mates until they were in their twenties; hell, my parents didn’t even meet until they were thirty. Still, here I was, eighteen, scraggly haired and dull eyed, watching numbly as my counter displayed “00 y, 00 m, 00 d, 00 h, 05 m, 47 s”. Five minutes and forty-seven seconds until I met my soul mate. And I was absolutely nowhere near ready. Even though I’d seen the time slowly ticking down over the past few days, I tried to ignore it, but now it was impossible to do so. I had been on my way home that Friday night when I noticed the rapidly shrinking time on the counter and stopped in my tracks. What was I supposed to do? What could I do? I had no time to fix my hair or fix my clothes or anything.

And so, with my counter now at two minutes and counting down, I did the only thing I could think of: cried like I was a kindergartener who just scraped his knee. I must’ve been crying for a good while, because when I felt a tap at my shoulder, the counter was at zero. Straight zeroes across the board.

My soul mate.

“Why are you crying, love?”

Oh, dear. He sounded very handsome, and had a deep, gravelly voice that made me melt like a candy bar in the sun. I felt a blush spread across my face, and I turned. My own hazel eyes met a pair of very blue ones set behind wire-rimmed glasses. God, I loved glasses. His skin was a lovely dark tan, a bit darker than my own, and his hair was thick and black. He looked very Indian, but his blue eyes suggested traces of something else. Never mind that, though. My mother’s family would have to get used to it, because this man was my soul mate. Even if he was almost too beautiful to be true.

“Y-you must be my soul mate, I’m Benito Anspagh,” I managed to squeak out. His eyes lit up as he smiled, and his arms wrapped around my waist. Well, that didn’t make my legs any steadier.

“Nicola Ramone,” he said, and I gulped. Even his name was perfect.

“Nicola…I don’t know what to say.” It was the truth, I really was running out of things to say. Nicola laughed, a gorgeous laugh, and the blush deepened.

“Then don’t say a word, Beni,” he murmured, and before I knew it, his lips were covering mine and any thought process I might have had ended.

---

We didn’t spend too much time together that day after the impromptu make out session in the street, but Nicola did give me his cell phone number, e-mail, and a final parting kiss. I didn’t know it was possible to fall in love so fast, but now that it had happened, I didn’t want to go back. As I walked home with the feeling of his lips still on mine, it suddenly occurred to me that my parents wouldn’t like this at all.

Although everybody knew that you couldn’t choose your soul mates, that didn’t seem to matter to my parents. All of my five siblings had been lucky enough to have Indian or Italian (or both) mates of the opposite sex, except for my oldest sister, Henrietta. Her soul mate had been a petite but pretty Russian girl, and despite our parents’ desperate attempts to keep them apart, they eloped to New York and got married last year. I envied my sister’s ability to so easily defy my parents, because I sure couldn’t. I didn’t dare challenge their judgment about anything.

Hey, you’re an adult, I reminded myself as I approached the door to our big house, which seemed even bigger now. You can make your own choices. Don’t be afraid. Not giving myself time to think about it anymore, I opened the door and walked into the house.

My mother was the first to greet me, as usual. “Beni!” She cried, putting her arms around me and running a hand through my messy hair. “Oh, Beni, today was the day wasn’t it? And you went out looking like this!”

“It’s fine, Mom,” I said as I wriggled out of her boa constrictor-like grasp, only to run into my father.

“Well, tell us about the girl,” he demanded, and I kicked at the carpet a little. “What’s she like? Pretty? Smart? Talented? Funny?”

“More importantly, is she from a good Indian family?” Mom asked, then under Dad’s sideways glance, “Or, Italian family? Or maybe she’s both, like you! Wouldn’t we be lucky?”

“Well, they are Indian,” I murmured under my breath. “But they’ve got these gorgeous blue eyes so they might be Italian…” My mother gave a happy squeal, and my father smiled. My shame grew inside of me like a rapidly dividing tumor. “I…I don’t know too much about them, though. We didn’t have a lot of time to talk.”

“Tell me you got her name at least?” Dad asked, and I took a deep breath. It was now or never, and I knew it.

“Nicola Ramone. He’s a great guy.”

---

I spent the next few hours in my room, listening as my parents yelled and cried and argued. They were seriously overreacting, and I knew it. I wasn’t going to die, I wasn’t in jail. My soul mate just happened to be a man, that was all.

Speaking of soul mates, I suddenly remembered that I had his number. The computer was downstairs (I didn’t have one of my own), and there was no way I was entering that warzone. So, I turned on my cell phone, added him as a new contact, and sent him a text;

My address is 6150 Banyan Rd. The back gate’s unlocked. Try to be quiet, my parents might hear. There’s a Treehouse in the tree closest to the left side of the house. Meet me there. Not two minutes later, my phone buzzed with a response;

I’ll be there in five.

I scrambled over to my window and opened it, looking around. The old Treehouse sat, looking much more inviting than my house at the moment. Pulling myself out of the window, I scrambled onto the roof, trying to keep myself steady. The main branch that supported the Treehouse was a mere two feet from the roof, and even with my lack of stability, I managed to climb onto the branch. The door hadn’t been opened in a long time, and a green vine had snaked its way around the door handle. I carefully opened the heavy door and eased inside, taking time to look at my surroundings and re-familiarize myself with the Treehouse.

My siblings and I built it ten years ago, when all of us lived in the same house. Although it was a group project, it was mostly me who inhabited the Treehouse. I hadn’t been in it at least a year, and the only thing that was there was a pallet, a desk under a single dirty window, and a bookshelf filled with books. Books that were so very precious to me that had been squirreled away in the Treehouse for years.

I opened up the trapdoor at the bottom, and I noticed someone standing there. Nicola. A wide grin spread across my face, and I didn’t try to stop it. There was no use, anyway, I wouldn’t be able to stop it if I tried.

“What’s the password?” I called down playfully, and Nicola smiled back up at me.

“I didn’t know a password was required.” Everything about him was just so catching. So perfect. How could my parents hate him without even knowing him?

“Not for you, dear.” I threw down the rope ladder to him, and he climbed up with ease and sat next to me on the floor. I shut the trapdoor after I rolled up the ladder, and I sighed, falling backwards onto the pallet. “Sorry it’s so sudden. And so late.”

“Late? The night has barely begun, love,” Nicola purred, climbing next to me. He was so close, and I pressed up against him, leaning into his warmth. His arms wrapped around me, and immediately I felt safe. “And I don’t mind it being sudden. Neither did my parents, they practically threw me out.” A bad feeling rose in my stomach, and I turned to look into his eyes.

“Are yours mad, too?” He laughed, a deep laugh, and I felt myself blush again.

“No, they’re ecstatic.”

“So they don’t care that I’m a guy?”

“Not in the least.” I went quiet, rested my head on his shoulder. His fingers went to my hair, and I shivered a little. “But yours do, huh?”

“Yeah. They hate it. They…they think it was some kind of mistake. They want to take me back to the watchmaker to see if it messed up. They did the same thing with my sister.”

“Your sister had a mate of the same sex?”

“Yeah. My parents tried to break them up, but they ran off to New York. They got married last year.”

“We could do that, you know. Elope.” Nicola smiled at me, and fear rose up in my stomach. Elope? Run away from everything I’ve ever known? I didn’t think I could do that, so I shook my head.

“No. They’ll come around. They’ll have to, I’ll make them.” I buried my face in Nicola’s shoulder, and he pulled me close. It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep in his arms.

[mr.kingrichard]

Also, about the format of these stories: I will have more than one in-progress at the same time, so simply because part one and two are both out that doesn't mean part one is finished.

[mr.kingrichard]

UPDATE: Added part two of chapter one of "Defiance"

[mr.kingrichard]

UPDATE: Finished chapter one of "Defiance"

[mr.kingrichard]

UPDATE: Added part two of chapter one of "Barriers"

[mr.kingrichard]

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