Page 2 of Something Like Fate

After he fetched me a spare T-shirt from upstairs, we bonded over the shared trauma of being left-handed in a right-handed world, our love of cherry Jell-O shots, and watching videos of lost dogs being reunited with their owners. The stuff of substance.

For a frat boy, turns out he’s an above-average human who genuinely wants to make sure I’m comfortable. He always pays for my Ubers home and responds with enthusiasm to the baby animal videos I send him. But there’s absolutely no lingering eye contact, no zap of electricity when we touch, not even an ease or comfortability from investing so many hours together over the past few months.

I’ve always wondered what it would feel like with someone who feathers the tips of his fingers across my jaw, stares lovingly into my eyes, and tells me I’ve “bewitched him heart and soul.” Who blesses me with a passionate, toe-curling kiss, altering my body chemistry forevermore. As you can tell, I’ve puta lotof thought into it. Hundreds of hours,actually. But what do you expect when your whole family falls madly in love with their soulmates?

This is nowhere close. So I’m not sure why I’m so fixated on hooking up with Mark B. one last time. Maybe I’m settling, or desperate. Probably both. But it just feels like the right way to mark the end of the semester before flying halfway across the world for a whole month. I must salvage the situation.

“I want to!” I practically yelp, yanking him by the collar of his pilled campus-crested hoodie.

His brow quirks, amused by my sudden enthusiasm and sultry bedroom eyes peeking out from self-cut (okay, hacked) seventies curtain bangs. I’m really selling it here.

His lips are sopping wet when they fuse against mine, like drenched pillows. All my justifications go out the window when he shoves his tongue in my mouth without notice. It’s heavy, like a gigantic slug.

My mind knows I’m in desperate need of mental escape, because the image hits again, exactly the same as before. The city skyline, the espresso scent, and the hearts.

I abruptly pull back, shaking the image (and the moisture) away like a wet dog. “Um, be right back. I need to use the bathroom,” I mumble, bolting for the nearest exit.

The vision fades when I close the door behind me, but only partially. It’s nagging at me, like a scratch that needs to be itched.

I need to talk to my aunts. ASAP. But first, I need to get out of here.

I blink, groping in the darkness for a light switch. There’s a soft knock on the door.

“Lo?” Mark B. says.

I should tell him the truth—that I’m having some strange, intrusive vision that won’t go away. And that even if I weren’t, things between us still don’t feel right and never have. But because I’m incapable of intentionally hurting people’s feelings (a.k.a. a complete and total coward), all that comes out is a painfully cheery, “I’ll be right out! Just finishing up.”

“Finishing up what?” He sounds alarmed. “That’s not a bathroom.”

As soon as my eyes adjust in the darkness, that unfortunate fact becomes clear. I’ve locked myself in a storage room filled with dusty boxes, broken furniture, bikes that have seen better days, and likely a frat-boy ghost or two.

Another, slightly more urgent knock. “Lo? Please tell me you didn’t go to the bathroom in there.”

I slap my hand over my mouth, remaining silent. Get. Me. Out. Of. Here.

And that’s when I spot it. A window. Bless. Sure, it’s barely large enough to squeeze a small toddler through, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Braving the sticky cobwebs, I comb through the junk in desperate search of a ladder, a step stool, any object tall enough to reach the window. My results yield a rickety end table and a dust-caked Crock-Pot box from the nineties. The table is wobbly, but it gives me just enough height to reach the window. Bangs plastered to my forehead, I contort my limbs through the small space and emerge onto the crowded lawn victorious. And byvictorious, I mean running-from-a-deranged-chainsaw-wielding-back-country-serial-killer aesthetic.

No one seems to notice, which is both a relief and seriously concerning.

The lawn is a complete zoo. I weave through a group of sorority girls cradling matching bedazzled bottles of strawberry wine like newborns. I narrowly avoid a head-on collision with a very drunk guy in a Cowboys jersey double-fisting two frothy beers.

“Sorry!” I call over my shoulder as I round the front of the house.

My best friend, Bianca Alves, waves me over. She’s leaning against the red brick, chatting with a muscly guy in a backward baseball cap who is absolutely not her type.

She beelines it to me. “Did you guys hook up?” Bianca asks, thick, dark brows raised in anticipation. Tonight, she’s opted for an argyleminiskirt shorter than mine, paired with a white cropped T-shirt that flaunts her bronze competitive-dancer abs.

“No,” I croak.Why did I flee from Mark B. like that?I shamefully avoid all eye contact as she swiftly shuttles me inside and upstairs. I feel like a disgraced pop star being ushered into rehab through a pack of ravenous paparazzi.

We filter into a random fraternity bro’s room littered with bongs, crumpled papers, dirty laundry, and overturned beer cans.

“Did you do anything? At all?” Bianca asks, the disappointment dripping in her voice. She stands in front of the smudged dresser mirror, retying her hair into her iconic Ariana Grande–esque ponytail—styled the same as the first day we met in Intro to English Lit.

At the request of the TA, we went around the room and told everyone our favorite books. All the die-hard English majors shared some variation of depressing literary fiction or Austen classic. As a science major taking the course as an elective, I shoutedThe Great Gatsbyout of panic, despite only having watched the Leonardo DiCaprio film. When it came Bianca’s turn, she declaredTwilightwith the unshakable confidence of a middle-aged white man. She’s been my hero ever since. So much so that I tried copying her ponytail on multiple occasions, only to more closely resemble a balding US founding father. Hence the curtain bangs.

“I mean ... he put his tongue in my mouth for about two seconds before I fled through a window,” I admit, omitting the crucial details of my strange vision. I really need to get out of here and talk to my aunts.

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