Chapter 21
Twenty-One
My ex-fiancé sat in my dark office like a hitman in a movie. I flicked on the light without tearing my eyes from the traitor.
“Why are you sitting in my chair?” I asked, working to keep my tone even.
Wells rose. He had the presence of mind to look chagrined. “I brought you flowers,” he said, gesturing at yet another signature
Amica Georges bouquet.
I pressed my lips together. “I’ll ask you only once to leave. Unless you’re here to confirm that our wedding date is officially
canceled, in which case I’ll still ask you to leave.”
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you.” He produced a phone from his slim-cut pocket. It was newer than the one I’d thrown
across the room with the arrival of Cambrey’s If she’s working this morning, I can come over again ?? text.
Sourness filled my throat. My gaze landed on my work tote, where an expired pepper spray and pocket air horn lived. A distraction.
In my wildest dreams, I had never thought about using them on Wells, who had mastered heart-shaped bacon, who loved me in
spite of his mother not liking me, who dutifully donned his sweatpants and watched Lachey-hosted reality TV. But right then
and there, I was full of rage. I was ninety-nine percent sure I wouldn’t use those self-defense tools on him, even if one
hundred percent of me wanted to. I could imagine the headlines now: Spicy Soulmail Darling Pepper Sprays Handsome Ex. The Soup Du Jour Is Jealousy. The Cost Per Diem Is High.
My fingers itched to flail, to yank a drawer, to do something. “Wells.” My tone was even, but my heart broke around his name.
It was impossible that I had wondered what it would feel like to gaze at his face, standing together at the altar. And now,
here we were, on display in the newsroom of the third-most-watched news media show (on average) in the country. The computer
monitors whirred, the HVAC hummed at the lowest possible decibel; the hush of staff voices made very plain we were being watched—easy
within these glass-paneled walls.
“If you don’t leave right now, I’ll call security,” I said. My lips felt puffy, slick with the touch-up paint.
But he simply stared at me.
I swallowed. “I’m not kidding, Wells. This will get out. We’ve already had articles written about us. Us. Don’t make me call—”
Wordlessly, Wells handed me his phone. The screen was on.
“I—” I bit off my words when I took in the image. The email.
More specifically, his Soulmail.
My name. My birthday.
The edges of my vision vibrated, my brain’s nerves crackling from fire to embers to ash. My saliva vanished. I put one hand
on my chest, which was trying and failing to suck in oxygen. Breathe, I thought, and oxygen came rushing in. I almost wished it didn’t.
I shoved Wells’s phone back into his hand. “How could you?”
Smudgy circles lined the skin beneath his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “For everything, Olivia.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, my telltale sign of anger. “Move,” I ordered. I tapped keys on my laptop, the pads of my fingers
skating over them, bumbling. I raced against myself, as if the outcome would be, could be different, if I could just get it over with. Ripping the Band-Aid off on the count of two instead of three.
Sure enough, there was my starred email. Subject: Your Soulmail is Attached.
WELLS STRATTON.
His birthday—January 5. And our shared birthyear.
On his last birthday, I outdid myself to please him.
It had taken me three months to pay off my credit card for that event.
“I never wanted to know who mine was,” I said.
Fury leeched from every syllable I spoke.
I clung to that, the first thing that felt good, right, since I’d stepped in here.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” Wells said. “But Olivia, we only have one life. If I’m going to live it, I want to do it with
the person I’m destined to be with—”
I made a choking sound.
He swiped his mouth with his knuckles. “And if we’re going to do that, I have to start by making amends for the things I regret.”
My soulmate wasn’t Caleb. Not that I’d really thought it would be, but it was of course a bullet point in my list of worries
from last night’s seesaw. I used the back of my hand to blot the tears from my cheekbones. Thankfully, my on-camera time was
over. I felt undone, unkempt, when just moments ago I was ready for the weekend, eager to get on a plane with my adult best
friend and my childhood best friend, to laugh and jump in waves and have a wine headache. I’d bought zinc to put on my nose,
which always gets burned, and remembered to pack the shampoo I liked to use after going in the ocean.
I gave my head a small shake and glanced beyond my glass walls. Sure enough, people were trying to hide the fact that they
were watching us, rousing themselves like their hiding spots were discovered, bending toward computer monitors and phones
and each other. Embarrassment raked my throat.
“I never wanted to know,” I repeated quietly. It felt illegal, dishonest, to have this information ripped from me in this
way. I’d entered into the Soulmail stratosphere now in the way I’d never meant to, and the violation dirtied my insides. The higher you climb, the harder you fall, Mom always said. For the first time, I considered the science in that proverb: gravity.
Gravity had more than one meaning. One illustrated how somber and dignified a situation was, and another was a force that
kept everyone and everything on earth.
The whole thing was physics. I felt dizzy.
“I didn’t step out because of you,” Wells said, earnest. “I did it because of me. And because I felt bad for—for her.” He
winced at his own language. “I know how it sounds.”
But he didn’t. Step out. The cleanest, purest way to describe cheating, as if he’d leaned outside for a package, toed the street instead of the sidewalk.
I almost laughed. “I’m not talking about you cheating, Wells. You certainly didn’t cheat because of me. The person who cheats
is the one who’s trying to fix something that’s not broken, not the person being cheated on.” I curled my hands into fists
and clenched my teeth. “I’m talking about Soulmail. I didn’t want to know who mine was. Ever. And in one second, you just
took that from me.”
I sank into my chair, my head in my hands. The violation was deep. Unrelenting. And unless whoever or whatever was behind
Soulmail could also produce a time machine, there was nothing I’d be able to do about what I now knew.
Other people had gone through this violation, at least in some way. Not like Dola and Trent Foster, who had been thrust into
this new thing before we all understood it. Now I’d bathed in the surface of Samantha’s pain when she spoke of her infant,
born so secretly. I knew Natalie’s combined joy and pain about being soulmates with her mother. And all the experts I’d interviewed,
all the government information I’d been delivered, everything. It whirled together in my head.
A fact: Soulmail was real.
And now, I’d learned something else that made me feel like ice had been painted on my skin. My destiny was my past. Wells
Stratton was my soulmate.
From behind me came an unexpected voice. “Are you all right?”
Dazed, I pivoted. Phoebe, the host approximately sixteen to twenty-six percent of the country loved to wake up with, whose eyes had flashed disapprovingly in the company-wide meeting that announced the launching of my Du Jour segment.
Who in this instant appeared to be staring at me with an actual modicum of concern. I would be touched if I wasn’t so numb.
The HVAC system gushed filtered air into the workspace. Dust lined the rim of my monitor. I swallowed. “I’m fine,” I lied.