Page 5 of Something Like Fate

I giddily send my location, and he texts that he’ll be here in fifteen minutes.

“Teller’s coming to get you?” Bianca asks knowingly, pulling herself from the bed.

“Yeah. I’m getting kinda tired anyway,” I lie, suppressing my massive grin. We leave the relative quiet of the bedroom, and the abrupt chatter of chaos makes my ears ring as we head downstairs. “Want a ride back to your dorm? Teller won’t mind.”

I feel guilty for leaving her, but Bianca isn’t the kind of girl who needs a sidekick. And Teller is also the only person I can talk to about what I saw tonight, aside from my aunts. He’s the calm, logical presence I need right now. And no offense to Bianca, but she can get a littletoointo this whole psychic thing. While I love how naturally she accepts (loves!) that aspect of my life, she’d want the vision to be true so badly, it would just get my hopes up.

“As much as I’d love to finally meet this guy, I told Chris I’d head back with him,” she yells over the music. Chris is her flavor of the month, a guy she met at the gym with a nipple piercing. He writes his own poetry and makes exaggerated eye contact while reading it, which is a blood-red flag (look, I don’t make the rules). Bianca disagrees. She finds his creativity and way with words a turn-on (shudder). Though to be fair, he seems reasonably nice and offered me the rest of his fries when the three of us went to Five Guys last week.

We promise to text each other when we get home, and I head outside to wait for Teller.

I’m cloaked in darkness, sitting on the front step, when he pulls up in his old Toyota Corolla (champagne color) in exactly fifteen minutes. Teller is nothing if not punctual. Before I can stand, he exits the car. Odd. He’s never been one to head toward a crowd if he can help it.

It hits different this time, seeing Teller Owens in the flesh after almost a whole year.

Teller is not classically hot. You wouldn’t pick him out of a lineup and think, “Wow, that guy should be an Abercrombie model.” He’sjust Teller. A bit nerdy, with ears that stick out slightly and a mouth that appears a little too big for his face. He’s the kind of handsome that grows on you once you get to know him better. His contemplative expression (brow quirked and subtly pursed lips) is the same. He always looks deep in thought, lost in the labyrinth of his mind.

But my findings are surprising. First, there’s his jawline. Since when did it become so square? And then there’s the rude angle I have to crank my neck to absorb his towering height. He’s always been tall, but lanky, with limbs too long to be functional. But now, he’s grown into his height. He’s ... dare I say, muscly? And not in a bulky, imposing way. He’s solidly lean, almost graceful in his movement.

I take in the way his shoulders and biceps fill out his plain T-shirt. The sudden firm broadness of his chest. I blink to ensure I’m not seeing things. It’s like he’s just stumbled upon this brand-new body. I don’t know what to make of him as he sidles up the path, wayward mop of dark hair swaying with each step.

He flicks his caramel eyes, scanning the crowd for me. When our gazes snag, a gentle, earnest smile spreads across his face, lighting him up from the inside out. It reminds me of how much I’ve missed it. Missed him.

He stops short a couple feet in front of me, absorbing me in totality, and says, “Your hair.”

I pat down my tame-resistant hair, which is now both frizzy in some places and flat in others, a result of aggressive layering. It’s one of my biggest beefs with the universe—that I did not inherit silky, straight locks from Mom’s side of the family. The injustice.

A couple weeks ago, I had an existential crisis while memorizing useless formulas for a chemistry exam. My hair kept falling in my eyes, but instead of waltzing to the nearest hairdresser on Google Maps like a normal person, I gave myself the student equivalent of the Mom Chop, a layered bob just above the shoulders. A far cry from the one-length style I’d had since I was ten.

It was a mistake, particularly the bangs. Little did I know, shorter hair actually requires more styling. Otherwise, I look like a feral child who’s joined a pack of wolves. I’ve taken to pulling it into a messy bun, aside from nights (like tonight) where I felt inclined to make an effort.

Instinctively, I tug a few strands of my wavy bangs, suddenly feeling self-conscious. “I know you hate change, but it’ll grow back—”

“I do hate change, but this ...” He leans back, seeming to appreciate it from another angle. “This is a good change. It suits you. More, actually, than your old hair.”

“Because it’s somehow more unruly?”

He snickers and conveniently doesn’t confirm nor deny. “Get over here.”

I do a dramatic slo-mo run to close the distance between us, practically knocking him over with my bear hug. Usually, when I propel myself into him like this, he coughs and shrugs his way out, affronted because personal space and all that. But tonight is different. And it’s not just that I can no longer touch my fingers together when I wrap my arms around his torso.

He’s actually hugging me back, like he knows how much I need this right now. He pulls me so close, my feet lift off the ground. His familiar scent folds around me, the same as always, laundry hanging on the line of a freshly mowed yard with a dash of existential angst.

It’s only when he sets me back down that I draw back to get a good look at his face. There’s something up. It’s evident in the sag of his shoulders. The droop in his brows. The tenseness in the corners of his mouth. He’s holding something in—something big.

Before I can even ask, he blows the air from his cheeks and says, “Sophie broke up with me.”

2

Wait, Sophie broke up with you?” I repeat for the seventh time as I slide into the passenger seat, rocked to my core.

“Yup.” He crumples over the steering wheel, head down, wholly distraught before passing me a bright-purple Slurpee (grape) from the gas station and a box of Raisinets from the console between us.

It’soursnack. We drank Slurpees after every shift, every hangout. He’d complain that they were going to rot our teeth, and I’d be too busy nursing a brain freeze to defend it.

I squeeze the Slurpee cup so hard, the flimsy plastic cap pops off. All I see is red, and my mind floods with ill wishes toward Sophie, like getting the one grocery cart with a squeaky wheel, a harsh sun glare while driving that manages to evade the sun visor, or getting declined from using a one-day-expired coupon.

I’m not a spiteful person by any means, but at the thought of someone knowingly crushing Teller’s heart, I go into protective mode. To me, he’s like one of those palm-size sea turtle hatchlings that struggles through sand mounds in hopes of making it to sea. Innocent. Pure. Filled with good intentions. And right now, he looks as though Sophie flipped him over, shell-side down, and abandoned him, leaving him helpless.

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