Page 55 of Something Like Fate

Desperate to calm my nerves, I slip into bed and try to fall asleep. Whenever I close my eyes, my mind runs amuck, replaying my night with Caleb and then picturing Teller with Riley. I need a distraction, stat. So I try calling my aunts.

It’s almost midnight, which means it’s evening back home.

“Lo, I was just thinking about you,” Mei says, whir of the treadmill in the background. A steeply inclined walk, followed by yoga and a peruse of the latest grocery store–sale flyers is her post-dinner routine. According to her, quiet evenings are when she feels most connected to the spirit world, so she likes to take advantage.

“It’s like you’re psychic or something,” I tease. It happens often enough—that she’s thinking about me right before I call her.

“I read a woman’s palm yesterday at an estate sale.” That’s the norm. She likes doing readings for people at random. Sometimes people recoil, assuming she’s a very well-dressed crazy person. Or they won’t let her leave, convinced she can talk to the dead (she cannot). Apparently, Mei determined there was something amiss with this lady’s health. She slipped her her business card, and the woman contacted her later that night. Turns out, she had appendicitis and ended up in the hospital.

“That’s wild. Is she going to be okay?”

“I think so. I’m going to visit her in the hospital after work to do a full reading. Anyway.” She pauses, shutting her eyes for a brief moment. “Things are going well with Caleb.” She says it like a statement, not a question, because she justknows. She may not be able to read my mind, but the woman is intuitive as hell. An “intuitive empath.” That’s what she and Ellen call it—the ability to connect with a living person’s energy and emotions.

I confirm, recounting my dates and conversations with Caleb in vivid detail, how we’re both basically dogs masquerading as humans, how I want to travel the world with him, and how much fun we have together, all while the treadmill whirs in the background. The more I say out loud, the giddier I feel.

“He sounds like the blueprint for your perfect guy,” she says, not even a tad out of breath.

“Honestly, I think he is. Everything just feels right and easy. Almost too good to be true. Is that how it’s supposed to feel?”

“When Layla and I reconnected again, it felt more than easy. It was like coming home after a long, harrowing journey. A wild sense of belonging I’ve never felt before. Suddenly, it was like every dull, empty bit of me was full, alive. Not that I didn’t have to put in effort, but when it’s your soulmate, it doesn’t feel like work, you know?”

Mei already knew Layla from summer camp when she had The Vision. She saw an anonymous figure standing at the edge of a dock at sunset. Despite reconnecting with Layla as camp counselors the following summer, she didn’t put two and two together. Not even after a secret footsie under a blanket by the crackling campfire, followed by a starlit rendezvous on the dock. See, Mei hadn’t realized that her soulmate may be a woman, that she might like both men and women.

After a few years of self-discovery, Mei finally reconnected with Layla. They happened to be reaching for the same pair of leopard-print loafers in the bowels of a thrift shop. Layla let Mei have the shoes, and Mei let Layla have her heart.

Finally, I understood what my family members had told me all these years. That feeling of total harmony deep within your soul. It’s like I’ve always known Caleb.

“Have you told him yet?” Aunt Ellen asks. She’s just joined the call.

“Told Caleb he’s my soulmate? No. Isn’t it a little too soon?” I ask.

“No—” Ellen starts.

“Way too soon!” Mei cuts in.

There have been many little moments where I wanted to tell him. But it’s only been two weeks since we’ve met. Tomorrow also happens to be our last day in Florence, and our last day as a big group. We’ll be parting ways for our own adventures. Jenny and Riley are headed to Cinque Terre, Lionel is going home, and Caleb is coming with Teller and me to Tuscany and then Amalfi for the last leg of the trip.

“I told Uncle Hank I’d had a vision about him ten minutes after we first met,” Ellen says smugly.

“Yes, and scared the bejesus out of him in the process. He avoided eye contact with you for weeks,” Mei reminds her.

Ellen lets out a witchy cackle. “He was convinced I could read his mind and hypnotize him or something. To this day, he still doesn’t know for sure. Sometimes I still say things to mess with him. The poor sucker.”

“This is exactly why I’m scared to tell Caleb,” I say. Based on our conversations, I know he believes in spirituality, karma, energy, and the like. But you never know how people are going to react to the whole psychic thing. Knowing psychics exist in theory is one thing, but being told,Hey, by the way, I’m your one true loveis a different story.

“I say wait until things get more serious,” Mei suggests, leaning so close to the camera, I can see straight up her nostrils.

“How much more serious can things get in two more weeks? I feel like I have to tell him before I come home,” I point out. It’s wild how fast the days are flying by. We’re at the halfway point of the trip. It feels like yesterday Teller and I took that first water taxi into Venice.

Mei disagrees. “If he’s really your soulmate, you have your whole life to tell him.”

I close my eyes for what feels like a few minutes before the sound of the door wakes me up. Teller. He’s back.

“How was your night?” I ask, peering down from the top bunk and flicking the light on.

Teller squints, eyes adjusting to the light. He paces around the room in search of something to clean or arrange. “It was good. Listen, I’m really sorry. I completely forgot we were supposed to watch a movie. I got my days mixed up. I thought it was tomorrow, but then when you texted, I realized tomorrow is the cruise. It’s my bad—”

“No worries at all. I’d rather you be hooking up with Riley,” I say, even though I’m not sure that’s entirely true.

---