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whirlybirbs · 5 years

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Oh my god... Cassie wanting to play Beauty Salon and cutting hair for R E A L all while (possibly?) babysitter has to calm her down while silently freaking out and Scott is just “she’s so good with my kid 😍 and the slightly fucked up hair but that’s fine ☺️“. Besides, you know it’s the Real Deal when your crush/significant other gets a hair cut and you still like them.

⇝ CHOP CHOP !

summary: you’re cassie’s babysitter and scott’s... well, i mean, you two really haven’t talked about it or given it a label, but it’s not really very casual anymore because you both really, really, really like each other, y’know? and you kiss and sleep together and all that, but you’re his partner in crime and you’re great with cassie but -- you get the point. anyways, cassie’s bad at giving haircuts. scott loves it.pairing: babysitter!reader x scott lang, from my other drabbles!a/n: listen......... scott is a dad he loves his daughter and he loves you

“Cassie, I’m trusting you --”

“I’ve got this.”

You grin, settling criss-cross on the floor beside her bed. Cassie leans over your shoulder and peaks into the mirror you’ve got in your hands. You can see her smile, bright as day, and the scissors she’s got in her hands glint in the late-afternoon sun.

Scott is due back from work any minute, there’s a bottle of wine in the fridge, pizza is on the way and Cassie is going to her friend’s house for a sleepover... life is good.

“Okay, so,” you say, gesturing to the ponytail holder that’s an inch up from the bottom of your hair, “Remember, even and slow.”

Cassie has been on a hairdressing kick -- she’s been trimming her Barbie’s hairs, her American Girl dolls, and playing some weird hairdressing app on your phone for days now; one well-aimed puppy-eye look later, here you are, letting her trim your dead ends.

She’s so happy right now though, so it’s totally worth it.

I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?

With confidence and a even hand, Cassie starts -- and you decide that closing your eyes is probably the best way to go about this. Not that you want to freak her out, but the fact you’re trust a 12 year old with your hair is kind of a big deal.

And then, you both hear it.

The chirp of the la cucaracha coming from the X-Con Security Consultants van. The horn blares the tune as Scott rolls into the drive-way. You can hear it clear as day and so can Cassie through the open window of her bedroom.

And this is when the haircut goes side-ways. Literally.

Cassie jumps, face splitting into a grin as she realizes her dad is home -- her confident poise and steady hand is lost, the scissors taking a dramatic angle; her hands fly from your hair and she jumps up, eyes wide. The scissors hit the rug.

“DAD!”

You slap a hand over your mouth, eyes shooting open to see the absolute carnage Cassie had reaped in the matter of a minute. She’d gone above the hairband, chopping at least four whole inches off your head and half-way across, you’ve got nearly a bob that stops at you chin. There’s a strip, an inch across, that sits untouched by the hairdresser in training.

You’re slow to rise.

Cassie is gone, meeting her dad at the door.

You come down the stairs a minute later.

Scott’s eyes light up when he hears you enter the kitchen, moving to kiss your cheek out of habit.

And then his jaw hits the floor.

You give him a look. Keep it together, don’t say anything, Scott. Through a fake smile, you laugh -- half torn between pain and terror, not that Cassie notices -- and gesture to your hair.

“Cassie gave me a hair cut.”

Scott, in that moment, blinks between you and his daughter. Cassie is busy with her afternoon snack from the local donut shop that Scott had stopped at on the way home. Offhandedly, Cassie shrugs and takes a big bite of her jelly donut. “I think I need to practice more.”

You turn then, sparing Scott a tight lipped smile.

“Whatcha think?”

He’s trying -- god, he’s really trying, you can see it -- to keep it together and nod his head as he moves you to rotate, brows set as he inhales through his nose; his hands are on your waist now, green eyes roaming the carved out landscape that is now your hair. It’s... bad. Cassie isn’t kidding when she says she needs more practice.

The doorbell rings.

“That’s Marissa!” Cassie cries, “Bye!”

You and Scott help her to the door, overnight bag in tow as she hops out to the driveway -- once her and her friend and her friend’s mom are out of sight, Scott closes the door and turns on his heel.

His smile is so wide and he’s shaking his head as you crumple, hands running though your hair. He’s already laughing when he meets you back in the kitchen. You plant your forehead on the counter.

“You let her cut your hair.”

It’s not a question. You groan. “She wanted to trim the ends, but --”

“She chopped your hair off.”

“I was humoring her --”

“It’s bad.”

“God, I know,” you say, “But you can’t tell her I hate it.”

“Oh,” Scott shakes his head, hands on his hips, “Never.”

“No. It’ll crush her.”

“Absolutely, it will make her never want to cut hair again.”

“-- And, I mean, she’s a prodigy --”

“Just more practice, that’s all.”

The kitchen grows silent and you bite your lip, biting back the evident laughter that’s threatening to boil over. You exhale, close your eyes and knock your knuckles on the counter. Scott is beaming, eyes so full of affection at the jagged haircut you think he’s going to cry.

“You are so hot.”

That catches you off guard.

“I thought it was bad.”

“Oh, atrocious,” Scott says as he rounds the kitchen island, hands moving to latch to your waist as he pulls you flush to his chest, “But you let my kid cut your hair.”

You can’t help but grin, face splitting into a laugh as Scott begins to press excited kisses against the apples of your cheeks. He speaks, words muffled against your skin. You grip the collar of his X-Con Security Consulting t-shirt in vain, squirming from his roaming hands.

“Is it weird that that turns me on?” he mumbles, planting a love-bite on your jaw, “It’s so hot -- you know, the whole actually letting my kid take scissors to your hair.”

“A little bit, but I’m not complaining.”

Scott laughs, shaking his head as he moves to lift you up into his arms. “You are the best babysitter.”

Your bottom lands on the kitchen island and when the pizza guy rings the doorbell, you and Scott are a little too preoccupied to answer. Something about how turned on he is.

#scott lang imagine #scott lang x reader #scott lang x you #ant-man imagine #ant-man x reader #marvel imagine #Anonymous

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eddiespagheti · 6 years

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and dream of sheep

CHAPTER TWO: AMY: Part 1

Read on AO3

When the dreams begin, Amy is far too young to remember them, at least for the first few years. But, she does remember the first one. Yes, she remembers, even after their awful first meeting and the sordid aftermath that was her staring at the walls of her hotel room in quiet contemplation, trying to clutch at dreams that were no longer there.

That night, she compared their loss to the evaporation of a wide sea or the destruction of a sandcastle by a powerful wave, attacking the sandy building quickly and fateful. Instead, in both her mind and in that metaphorical beach, a smooth trail of sand remained, desolate and alone.

But this one, the first one, stays; remaining in her mind like a song she can’t stop hearing--an earworm digging itself into the center of her mind.

This dream is of little hands playing in a sandbox, toy trucks, and a cold winter’s breeze.

When Amy is three, her mother explains the dreams to her. With wide unblinking eyes, Amy listens as her mother speaks. Her mother’s tone is the one she reserves for speaking to a non-family member, the one Amy calls her ‘grown-up voice’. It’s the tone that states she means business and a tone Amy knows she should not take lightly.

Despite her sharp inflections, her mother’s eyes are calm behind the brown, like smooth silk. Amy replays the sandbox dream in her mind, running it again and again like a fast film. In the dream, it was stormy, like a winter was fast approaching and she nearly shivers as she thinks that she’s seeing the day she was born through her soulmate’s eyes.

Her mother had once told her about the night she was born; she told her of the burrowing snow outside the hospital and her father’s elated face at his fourth child and first girl. But today, outside the sun glares down wickedly, like God beating a giant fist of irate fury and heat upon Queens.

“Do you have any questions?” her mother asks afterward and Amy shakes her head.

All the doubts in her mind had been quelled and all the questions now had answers. Even at her youthful age, Amy understands that out there, somewhere in the world, there is a person that’s going to end up with her. This person is going to be the father to her mother; a person so wholly only hers down to the fact that they shared their memories telepathically.

Half of you, her mother had said and though her heart and body feel whole, Amy knows exactly what her mother means. She sees it in the face of her mother when her father returns home from work and she sees it in the face of her father when her mother wobbles out, pregnant belly before her.

Her mother stands then, groping the edge of Amy’s bed with white knuckles as her knees nearly buckle. She rubs her stomach as she walks towards the door. She was nine months pregnant and two weeks past her due date. Her body was in a state of constant exhaustion, skin and bones alike pushed to their limit. This was her sixth child and the last one, she promised, but her mother was never too good a liar.

“Did you dream about dad?” she asks before her mother is gone. Her mother turns then, resting her tired back against the door frame. She grimaces as the edge digs into her back.

“Yes. For eighteen years.” She pants lightly, now pressing her hand tighter against her stomach. A thin sheen of sweat resides on her forehead and hairline. A bead trickles towards her chin and her mother doesn’t bother to wipe it away; it lands with a quiet splash onto her pink shirt, staining it red. Her mother grimaces again, pressing her back tighter against the door. “Amy, amor, can you-”

Her mother grunts loudly then, clutching her stomach with both hands. Then, Amy notices the sweat that has pooled against her mother’s neck and the puddle now on her carpet, right between her mother’s legs. Her mother pants from the door frame, mouth still stretched in the last syllable she spoke. An endless “you” on her lips.

“Mami, look!” she points to the puddle at her mother’s feet, thinking her mother’s wet herself but her mother’s face goes white with worry, or maybe pain. Or, both.

“No, no, no.” Her mother mutters, shaking her head but another wave of pain rides through her and she lowers herself onto Amy’s carpet slowly, like she’s tiredly crawling to a finish line.

Between screams, her mother calls 911 and her father. Her father, away on a case, doesn’t answer the phone and her mother curses at his voicemail angrily in Spanish as Amy holds the phone to her ear. Moments later, Amy holds the wet rag to her mother’s face as she groans and pushes.

For a moment, she’s glad her brothers are away at a friend’s house and that she gets to step in and be the big girl in the scenario. She holds her mother’s hand and pushes her sweaty hair back like she’s seen lots of people do in movies.

When a baby so red pops out onto Amy’s pink carpet, her mother starts to wail at his little blinking face. She makes Amy bring her some scissors and cuts the cord herself. The paramedics find them like that minutes after.

Her father rushes into her mother’s hospital room hours later and grins widely when he spots the little dark-haired baby at his mother’ breast.

“It’s a boy?” he asks and her mother rolls her eyes ‘yes’.

He carries the baby around the room, laughing and cooing at it, and Amy watches alongside her mother, swinging her legs up and down the chair. She’s still a little high on the ambulance ride and on the lollipop, the paramedics gave her for being such a good helper to her mother. She feels accomplished like she’s done something grand or marvelous.

After her new brother falls asleep, her father tells her just how proud of her he is and together, her parents let her name him. Her brothers, staying at Aunt Cecilia’s for the time being, would later lament their not being there, telling her how she could have named him something cool like ‘Megatron’ or ‘Tyrannosaurus’.

But, Amy thinks back to the movie she saw with her father the week before and thinks of the fun afternoon with her dad, just the two of them enjoying a movie.

“Oliver.” She grins, pink tongue peeking over her missing tooth. “Like Oliver Twist.”

Later, Amy remembers this day as the day she helped her mother give birth, the day she learned about the person who got her memories like daily mail and the day she saw life draw its first breath into another human.

When it’s Amy’s first child’s turn to learn, her stomach balloons like her mother’s but she doesn’t give birth in her child’s room. No. Amy gives birth to her second child on the floor of her new precinct.

When Amy turns eight, her mother starts taking her to piano lessons. When she’s nine, however, is the last time she plays the piano. That day her mother picks her up halfway through her lesson and in the van packed with her brothers, they race towards the hospital. Amy yearns to know what’s going on, but knows better than to ask.

Instead, Amy sits between her brothers and in harmony, they remain silent, casting wide-eyed worried glances to each other's eyes. Do you know what’s going on? No, do you? No.

Her mother is in that weird stage where she’s heavily worried but calm like there’s an eternal storm brewing in her mind. Once again, her belly is bellowing beneath her shirt, like the wind was being blown directly underneath and she rubs it in worry as her presses her foot presses on the gas pedal.

It’s not until later, when they arrive, that she finds out her father got hurt. The kids remain in the corner, bunched like a cluster of a Santiago constellation and her mother speaks quietly to the doctor. Amy’s heart races, thinking of her dad hurt somewhere and the rest of her brothers share the same emotions.

Her big brother Manuel holds her hand while they wait, acting like an adult instead of an 11-year-old boy. Her mother paces around the waiting room as the rest of them sit and wait for answers.

The doctor appears and quells their worries two hours later. He’s fine, he says, and you can see him. Her mother and two of her brothers go first. Amy sees him last with Manuel.

Her father is pale under the hospital lights and there’s a white red-speckled bandage on his arm, wrapping the wound tightly and securely. Amy’s steps falter but Manuel pulls her forward.

She knew that her father was a detective just like her grandfather Oscar and she knew that it was sometimes a scary and dangerous life. But this, this is truly scary. She’s stunned at how much he’s changed.

Her father opens one eye slowly, smiling at her. She can see that he’s still in pain, no doubt feeling the ghost of the bullet on his arm.

“Hi, Tiger. Hi, Manny.”

“Hey, Dad,” Manny says, pulling Amy forward.

“Hi,” she says quietly.

Earlier that month, she told him that she wanted to be a detective when she grew up, just like him and his father. The next day, her father had arrived with a child’s police playset and Amy played cop the whole afternoon, arresting her Barbies and listing random police codes she’d heard her father speak as she did.

But now, she’s scared. Her father is not the warm sun that brought peace to her worries; he was shrunken and pale. Hurt and quiet.

Someone had shrunken and dimmed her sun and what if they did that to her, too?

When her father comes home days later, she spends days hiding in the background, aligning herself with the wallpaper. She’s scared that he’s going to be able to read the regret in her face and that he’s going to be disappointed in her.

One day, after days of hiding, her father calls her to his room. She begrudgingly makes her way and finds him resting, as he’s been for several days.

He sits up as she walks in, “Hey, Tiger.”

“Hi, dad,” She says from the door, lingering in the in-between. She feigns a poker-face but something tells her that it’s not convincing.

“So, you’re regretting being a cop, huh?” he begins as he sits up, wincing in slight pain. Amy takes a step back subconsciously and her father stops sitting up, letting himself fall back on the pillow slowly. “These kinds of things happen and that’s why we need people like you. Smart people like you. People that are going to keep us safe.”

Amy furrows her eyebrows in confusion, unsure of what he was trying to say.

He continues, “Out of all my kids, I was sure you were going to be the one that continued the legacy to be a detective but you’re better. You’re way too smart to limit yourself, Amy. You’re smart and strong--you helped your mother give birth and didn’t once cry. I know you have it in you. Smart and strong mix well, Amy. And you know what happens to people who have both?”

“No,” she says quietly.

“They become Captains or leaders. They’re the ones who tell people like me what to do and the ones that ensure that we’re properly equipped so things like this,”-he points to his arm-”don’t happen.”

Her eyes widen, remembering her dad’s last precinct holiday party. His Captain, Captain Rogers, was there and the world revolved around him at that party. The detectives and their spouses, circling him like the sun. Her father telling her that she could do that, be that person who directs and makes sure her detectives don’t get hurt, opens a brand-new world for her.

Her little feet patter to the edge of his bed, listening intently and her father smiles, relieved at the hopeful look on her face.

“Like Captain Rogers?”

“Yes,” he says. “Or even better.” Amy blinks, trying to fit that into her head. It was too much to grasp, like trying to grab at stars.

Being the only girl, it was only natural that her mother and she carry a special bond in a household full of men.

But, it was the opposite.

She was her father’s favorite and he wasn’t afraid to show it. He liked that he was going to be a police officer like her and that she fought with tooth, nail and with every shred of strength in her bones.

He saw himself in her and Amy liked that. Because, she saw herself in him, too.

“I could be your boss, dad.” She says with a grin and her father laughs.

“Only if I could have holidays off.”

The same smile shines on their faces.

When her mother is pregnant with her eighth child, her father gets offered a sergeant’s position. It means more money but also, longer days, more responsibilities, more power, more danger.

What follows this is long talks in her parents’ room, a shut door between the six boys and Amy. Through the Nordic wood travels the quietly whispered arguments, rising like an orchestral score.

In the end, her father turns it down when her mother gives premature birth to her brother, Leo. Leo stays in the hospital, trapped in a plastic box, while her mother comes home and paces around the house in worry.

The flowers bloom during this time in her dreams. It’s as if her soulmate knows of her little brother behind his plastic dome. The flowers that dance and shriek with color, make her feel better. She knows she’s probably wrong but the inquisitive part of her wants to know if this premeditated or if he’s trying to tell her something.

She begs her brother to walk her to the public library two blocks down and when he breaks, she grabs the big flower informational book by the encyclopedia section. She spends hours poring over the flowers’ meanings, Latin translations, and their nation of origin.

She finds the meaning behind the tulips, behind the roses, but it’s the oleanders that stick with her the most.

The book tells of the Greek myth behind the name of said flowers. In it, a young man named Lander drowns as he struggles to grasp a spec of oleanders to bring home to his beloved. His body is washed away by the ocean and his lover mourns his death, shouting, “O, Leander! O, Leander!” into the night sky. Later, when his body was recovered, they found the bundle of oleanders still clutched in his hand.

And thus, came the name.

She thought it was ironic that a man died whilst trying to grab those deadly blooms but, fitting, seeing as love could be like that too. Amy thinks back to her parents and the quiet fights between their bedroom door and the grim sadness in her father’s eyes when he trudged into the hospital room. She thinks of the shared look in her parent’s eyes as Leo slept bundled in wires and she thinks of the love that sung brightly in their faces.

How love, like the oleanders, was beautiful but maybe poisonous, too.

How love was real and flawed.

How, like the oleanders, someone could also drown trying to grasp it. While elsewhere someone chanted their name in distress with only the stars left to listen and only the moon left to cry along.

When her baby brother Leo arrives home three months later, he takes over as her father’s favorite and Amy doesn’t mind it one bit.

The flowers continue for years and then, one day, they stop. Amy recites the names of the flowers in her head as she sits in school, thinking of the missing flowers. Tulipa, rosa and nerium. Tulipa, rosa and nerium. Tulipa, rosa and nerium.

(In a hospital in Brooklyn, the woman behind the flowers asks Amy’s soulmate about the Latin name of oleanders and in Queens, Amy answers for him.)

The flowers don’t return.

What follows is a month of wallowing grief and Amy sends some form of prayer but she’s uncertain if it ever reaches them. She hopes it did; he helped her before and now it’s time to help him.

Later, years later, in times of hardship, she thinks about these memories. Of the flowers and the sun like a splintered yolk across the sky and despite the time, the comfort feels brand new.

When Amy turns fourteen, her brother Manuel finds his soulmate. She’s a short girl with shy green eyes and caramel skin. Amy is forced to watch them hold hands after they pick her up from school. As she does this, she can’t help but think of her own soulmate and the life he was living now.

The memories that were shared nightly told her that there was someone out there whom he was holding: a pretty dark-haired girl whom Amy dreamt nightly about.

It made her things that she had never felt before. Not jealousy, per say, but lonely, a feeling like a pool. Like she was filled with clear blue water and there was no end, just dark depth.

She finds this in Jackson.

Jackson Lewis and Amy are in jazz band together. He plays the flute while Amy plays the French horn and stalks him from behind her music stand. He’s tall and handsome, but nerdy in an awkward kind of way. While every other freshman is pining over the seniors, Amy pines for sophomore-Jackson.

She pines after him for months but despite Kylie’s urging, doesn’t ask him out. She signs up for volunteer tutoring her sophomore year and two weeks in, she gets assigned a tutoring project.

It’s Jackson. Her skin blushes and blisters as she tutors him in the library after school.

When he finally kisses her a month later, she nearly explodes. It’s awkward and not really what she pictured her first kiss being like, but, despite it, she floats among the clouds.

Amy wonders if this is what her soulmate felt with that dark-haired girl. Because if this is it, she forgives him for the long dreams of sorrow-filled grey after their breakup.

She forgives him for it all.

Because Amy feels it. Amy feels it, too.

Jackson goes to college in California towards the end of her junior year. Between apologetic eyebrow furrows, he tells her that he enrolled in the summer term to get started right away. She knows that this is probably the ending of it all; most likely where the metaphorical period is set in their relationship.

But, the relationship doesn’t end.

Their relationship continues well into his college years, with him visiting as much as he can and with long, winding long-distance calls. Her mother, annoyed with Amy’s constant use of the family landline, buys her a clunky cellphone.

When college applications start, Amy applies to different colleges in California and a sprinkle of some on the East side. She feels silly, like a girl blown up with helium making rash decisions, but she thinks back to the last three years and she almost floats out of the room.

Things are good, really good until they aren’t.

Jackson calls her two weeks into March, the spring of her senior year.

They’d been doing long distance for a while now and the calls were as frequent as ever, but that night, when his name flashes on the phone, she knows exactly what it is.

Amy sits on her bed, staring into her closet and listens to his apologetic voice in her ear.

She can hear the furrowing of his eyebrows in quiet apology and the earth splintering around her as he does.

I couldn’t stop it, he says to her prolonged silence. She’s my soulmate, Amy. I just saw her and that was it.

Amy hums a response but her heart keeps breaking. She feels like china as she cracks from one small corner and falls into crumbling white debris. When he hangs up, Amy throws her UCLA acceptance letter into the trash and begins drafting her NYU college plans.

Little did she know that across town, her soulmate was attending said college and that right then and now, as he slept off a hangover, he felt the sadness that seeped into her soul like water, making her bones heavy with grief.

When Amy graduates high school, her older brother Vicente graduates from college with a “useless gender studies degree”, as her other brother, Luis, so lovingly exclaimed. He planned to get his Masters and later Ph.D. to teach at university level. Their parents supported him in this decision but with Amy starting college soon, they needed him to get a job to help them with tuition.

He had a lot of trouble getting a job in relation to his degree and started working for the father of an old friend of his, Sal, who owned a pizza shop. The hours were not very good and the money was even worse, but Sal let Vicente do his homework while on the job and sometimes slipped him some money under the table to help with school.

Amy spent long afternoons in the red vinyl booths, her favorite being one by the window. Usually, Amy would read a book as she drank her coke and waited for Kylie to get out of work and meet her there. They would do their homework together and daydream about college in the Fall. They were attending the same school for the thirteenth year in a row.

“There was a guy here earlier,” Vicente says, one day. “He was here for like eight hours waiting for his soulmate. He told Sal that she was here earlier, or something.” Vicente leans against the jukebox, taking advantage of the empty restaurant. His gum pops as he blows a bubble.

“Hmm,” Amy says, leaning over the jukebox, looking for a song. She’s not paying much attention; her brother was quite the chatterbox and she had learned to drown him out.

“Oh, my god,” He says quietly and Amy raises her head, already dreading whatever words are going to escape his mouth.

“What?”

“What if it’s you?”

Amy snorts and pushes her brother away. “Why don’t you go work before Sal fires you?”

“I’m serious. He even sat in the same- “

“Hey, Vicente,” Sal calls from the back, distracting her brother. “Can you get some cheese from the walk-in?”

“Run along.” Amy teases, back to playing with the jukebox. Her brother walks away with an eye roll.

“I have a degree in gender studies and here I am getting bullied by my little sister.” He mutters under his breath.

Amy settles for an old 80’s song her mother always played when she was young, and sits back in her favorite booth. Usually, she’d crack her book open but right now she’s distracted and it sits untouched beside her.

The sugar packets at the table are out of their compartment and they lie in disarray around the table, no doubt by the person that was there before her. She hums under her breath and starts putting them back, arranging them by color. As she does this, her mind travels, thinking of what her brother had said. She thinks it’s slightly insane to wait that long for someone, even if that someone is someone you’re destined to end up with.

But, the longer she glosses over it, the more her mind changes.

It’s kind of sweet, romantic even. Waiting an entire day to meet someone you’ve spent your whole life literally dreaming about?

It was sweet and something she’d do had she known what her soulmate really did or where he was.

Then, she thought of Jackson and her heart panged in the way it always did when she thought of him. Jackson, who felt the west singing to him and who found his soulmate when he chased that song.

But, what sung to her? She pauses for s moment, pink sugar packets still in her hands. She continues putting away the packets and tries to make sense of her thoughts.

Was it being a cop? Was it staying here in New York? Or was it something closer, like red vinyl booths and boys who waited for eight hours?

But truth be told, the thought of soulmates sort of scared her. The dreams were safe and constant, like holding someone back with the sheer force of a palm—but meeting them?

Just knowing they’ve seen your whole life replayed like an after-dark matinee in their heads?

It was nothing short of an invasion of privacy.

Done arranging the sugar packets, she brushes the stray sugar specks from the table and cracks open her book. Still, as she glances up from the book and purses her lips, she wishes that the boy finds his soulmate.

And in her heart, she wishes she finds hers, too.

When Amy first starts at NYU, she majors in criminal justice. She figures this will be her next step in attending the academy after college, although a Criminal Justice degree isn’t required. Two months into her fall semester, she changes her mind. Instead, Amy changes her major to Art History after a showing at the MET.

The ancient pieces in the museum smell like dusty books and behind their glass houses, they look ready to disintegrate like moth wings.

Kylie tugs on her arm if she spends too long on one piece but, the idea that behind every piece there is a whirlwind of history, lives, hearts and ancient ideas make her dizzy with glee.

It reminds her of the first time that her mother told her of soulmates when she thought back to the first dream that she had of her soulmate. And the weird monumental feeling that came from knowing where he was the day she was born and that he was out there existing and waiting for her.

Most of the time Kylie would roll her eyes at Amy when she described this, calling it ‘dumb’ and ‘cheesy’. All of this changes when Kylie finds her soulmate their spring semester. After that, Kylie spends long stretches describing the color of her soulmate’s eyes and the taste of her lips.

Amy marvels on the irony and wonders how Kylie had met hers so easily. Just a bump in a sandwich shop and a Hi, I think we’re soulmates. Or, like her brother Vicente, finding your soulmate in the girl whose pizza you just burned and whose coke you just dropped on the floor.

Nobody really knew why you met your soulmate the day or way that you did. Some wrote it off as a just coincidence and others thought that you needed to strengthen your soul before you met them. Amy always hoped it was because of finicky fate and not because of the growing part because it made her feel like there was something wrong with her. Or them.

Amy doesn’t date much while in college. Kylie does everything in her power to push her out to parties and towards meeting new guys. Amy remembers Jackson and the heartache she experienced afterward and doesn’t want a repeat. That doesn’t stop Kylie from setting her up with a few guys and it also doesn’t stop Amy from adhering to her self-made rules.

Her next Fall semester, she has her first one night stand with a guy from her British Literature class. The next morning, she glances at herself in the mirror, feeling different. Grown-up. Her back straightens and her smile startles her. Her first one night stand. It feels monumental. A rite of passage of sorts.

Her younger brother, Oliver, now 16, surprises the whole family when he announces that his girlfriend Lydia is pregnant. Her mother nearly faints and her father goes off in a quiet stroll around the neighborhood, trying to keep the anger at bay. Oliver drops out of high school despite Amy’s parents negating and begins working to support the baby that was coming in just four months.

The idea of growing up overnight and having a child with someone that wasn’t even your soulmate frightens Amy. She crafts her life calendar after her baby niece is born. Every single thing she wants to happen she puts into little neat boxes in clear writing. It makes her feel safe and secure, although she feared the future was anything but that.

Find soulmate, one of the notes reads and Amy hesitates. She wants to press it to her mid-late twenties but knows and feels it’s not then.

So, she stops and presses it between sergeant and lieutenant. It’s more of a dry, almost computic way of putting it there. No heart or soul put into it. Just a mechanical and prudent way of looking it. She looks at it like she looks at a math problem, everything so clean-cut and easy set.

If she was being true to herself, it’d be right now. Right now, before graduation and before the academy; right now, when there’s this sonder feeling in her heart that makes her feel really, really lonely.

But, on her 21st birthday, the day that Kylie nearly drags her to some bar in Brooklyn, is the first time she’s in the same room as her soulmate and the first time she hears him say her name or touches her.

She doesn’t think that he’s probably inside the same bar she was walking into and even if she did, she could never fathom the weight of such knowledge.

Amy doesn’t really understand the appeal of bars, especially this one. The bar is packed tonight, bodies flush against one another like neatly packed sardines. It seems everybody is celebrating something. It makes it hard to breathe, hard to think.

Around all the tables and booths sit occupied and Amy stands alongside Kylie awaiting a booth.

A little while later Kylie pushes her way to the bar top to get another drink and Amy concentrates on the pattern of mildew on the ceiling as she tries to ignore her claustrophobic mind. Someone almost steps on her foot and she stumbles back.

It’s at that moment when she decides that enough is enough and battles to find Kylie and push her out of this hell hole, that a hand touches hers.

She stops her trek, disoriented among the constellation of people, like a star colliding into another.

She doesn’t see him five feet away from her. Doesn’t even spot him, but their hearts beat at the same beat and her blood rushes through her veins in discomfort and in surprise.

It’s like she’s shocked down to her marrow, the surprise burrowing deep into her bones, etching itself into every single crevice. It’s what she’s imagined birth to feel. Not the act of giving but receiving, a single shudder and a sigh breathed into one soul and one body.

She runs to the now empty booth in the corner of the room, angering the people that waited for it. With dilated eyes, she shakes and stares at her hand, but no burn mark is present. She scratches it, leaving a red mark etched on her skin.

She hears Kylie call for her and she clears her throat, but nothing comes out. Then, she hears it, a man’s voice, “Amy.” Her neck cranes but she doesn’t see the culprit.

Kylie finds her then, with her pupils as big as Mars but Kylie doesn’t notice.

“Good, you got us a booth,” she says, setting the drinks down. Amy clears her throat.

“I-I heard my name. Did-did you call me?”

“Oh, right.” Kylie rolls her eyes, sipping her drink. “Just some guy I almost bumped into. He was probably drunk. Or high.”

“Or both,” Amy adds although her voice shakes like leaves dancing in the wind and she takes a sip of her drink to stabilize them. Kylie laughs in reply, shrugging one shoulder. They drink in silence for a second and then Amy says, “Tell me about the time you met Evelyn.”

Kylie furrows her eyebrows. “Are you okay? You never want to hear about how I met Evelyn.”’

“I just…” Amy trails off, shaking her head. Kylie raises her eyebrows and Amy licks her lips, leaning in. It’s like she’s telling her a secret or baring her soul. It feels strange and she feels so silly but she can’t stop herself. “I touched someone and I felt like-”

“Woah, wait. You hooked up with someone?” Kylie asks. “God, how long was I gone?”

“I don’t mean-” she starts and shakes her head. “I mean, their hand brushed against mine and I...I don’t know. It was like being electrocuted or something.” she glances back down at her hand again and clears her throat, cheeks blushing in embarrassment.

“I think you’re drunk, Ames,” Kylie says, letting out a small laugh.

Amy shakes her head, ready to continue but clears her throat, letting it drop. Maybe she was making a big deal out of it or maybe she really was drunk. She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that’s probably it.” she lets out a small laugh, almost a hiccup. “I’m just drunk.”

“Yup,” Kylie says with a grin “and you’re going to get drunker. I’ll be back.” She nods but doesn’t listen.

She thinks back to the moment their hands touched and shivers again. She doesn’t care what Kylie says, she knows what she felt because she still feels it now, like a scar left behind after a bad accident. She chugs the rest of her drink and blinks rapidly, trying to calm her beating heart.

And, there, in that same booth where he would find out who she was. There, in that same bar, they would meet again after a drunk night out. There, she sat and thought about him.

Not knowing that he had walked moments prior and not knowing he was standing outside the bar thinking the same thing.

Not knowing that it would twelve years again till she felt the shock of his touch again or his voice saying her name. Not knowing just how much could change in twelve years and just how in twelve years her neatly arranged life calendar would sit in the trash.

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