He tossed them one by one over his shoulder until he handed a green foiled mask to me. “It's got vitamin C too.”
“Perfect.” I took it from him. “You’re home early.”
“I have to head right back out, but I came to check on you.”
I arranged a stem. “Oh, well, you can go back out now.”
He leaned back, deep in some thought that made him grin. “Go over to the back of the couch and bend over.”
32
Dig Graves
At first, he thought he was having a heart attack.
Dig Graves flung a punch at the man who had punched him moments ago. He landed the blow and curled over from the sudden racing of his heart. He got into fights a lot at bars. People liked to mock him about his face and who he looked like. This fight was routine, it shouldn't have made his heart thump faster. Yet, his heart was racing as if he were running for his life.
Was it a heart attack?
He clasped his chest and breathed through it, trying to tame his body before it landed him into hospital or an early coffin. He couldn’t die. Not yet. He still had three months left on his gym membership.
Days scattered and Dig’s heart refused to calm down. It had been delicate at first. Just a flutter. Like butterfly wings. Though it beat fast, it wasn’t heavy, it was light and sometimes he could ignore it when he needed it to.
It wasn’t until he was strolling down the street, keeping his face hidden in his hood that a cry forced him to turn around.
Two young men on either side of the street ran to each other and met right there in the centre of the road. Under the wash of the streetlamp, they collided into each other, tears streaking their faces, happy sobs leaving their throats. They embraced, pressing their chests together and tore down their shirts.
Their blood slithered under the skin of their chests and the Soulmate insignia appeared.
Dig watched.
He watched as they found each other.
He watched as they hugged.
He watched as they kissed.
He watched their first moment that would span the beginning of an entire lifetime.
When he witnessed two people connect like this, he always reached up and touched his heart, feeling over the emptiness.
“Oh, fuck,” he said to himself.
His heart was no longer empty.
His heart wasthumping.
That night he listened to those butterfly beats, soft and timid, but they were there. Not quite heavy enough to twist his feet and guide him to his person.
But his person was out there. His person was waiting.
Perhaps they were only just turning eighteen, still fresh and new, not fully ready for them both to find each other. Or perhaps their first Soulmate had just died, and their grief was not yet over.
But soon.
He laid in bed, discarding his music, his sketching, his screens… he laid in bed for days, listening to that precious tune in his chest, cupping his hand over it as if he could hold the organ. As if he could nurture it.
He thought of his Soulmate with a smile and who they might be and how they would embrace him.
