it him during Thanksgiving break instead.
As I’d told him that first night we’d met, I wasn’t sure I believed in soulmates. But I also remember feelingofffor the first two months of the fall semester. Jo and I lived together and hung out basically every day. But she was also always on the phone with Macy, who was spending their senior fall semester studying abroad in Argentina, and even when she wasn’t on the phone, I could tell her head was elsewhere.
It was lonely. Not lonely in a literal, spending time alone kind of way, but in an emotional way. I remember feeling like Jo had a right to feel lonely. Her feelings were valid—she was in a long-term relationship. I, on the other hand, felt insane for the way I was missing Harrison.
My feelings didn’t feel justified. I told myself it was weird and creepy of me to miss him the way I did, as if I were missing a part of myself.
When I landed at Charles de Gaulle on the first Saturday of our weeklong Thanksgiving break, I expected to follow the detailed instructions Harrison had given me to take the train from the airport to the apartment he was sharing with three other students from our college. Turns out that was just a distraction. He was planning on picking me up at the airport all along because, well, of course he was. This is Harrison we’re talking about.
The moment I saw him at the airport, I realized a few things:
My feelings were justified, because
Soulmates do exist, and
I had one.
And if I thought being separated by the Atlantic Ocean was hard, that’s nothing compared to this unbreakable barrier, physically manifested in my droopy popcorn ceiling. Plato didn’t account for the fallout from an excessively tight vagina when he wrote about soulmates.
Once I’ve been in bed for so long that all the light has disappeared from outside, I finally peel myself out from under the covers, intending to get a glass of water and use the bathroom. But just as I’m standing up, there’s a knock at the door.
I pause.
I blink.
Another knock.
I scamper to the entryway, peering through the peephole. It’s dark out, but I’d recognize that face in pitch blackness.
Cracking the door so he can hear me but can’t see me, I wait for him to speak. When he doesn’t, I finally say, “Hi?” My voice is scratchy and nearly unrecognizable.
“Hi,” he says, clearing his throat. He takes his hands out of his pockets, looks at them, then puts them back into his pockets, clearing his throat again.
“Hi?”
“Hi,” he repeats. “Um, can you come with me?”
In the faint moonlight, I can see a thin sheen of sweat on his face, and his hands—back out of his pockets again—are visibly shaking. His eyes are slightly too wide, and his waves have fallen flat, covering his eyebrows. Apparently the mere act of speaking to me is making him physically ill.
“Are you trying to kidnap me?”
“No?”
“You don’t sound sure.”
He blinks at me.
