“Like, if particles can be entangled across distances, connected to each other no matter how far apart they are, maybe people can be, too. Maybe that’s what fate is. Or soulmates. That sort of thing.” She’s looking at me carefully now, like she’s bracing for me to laugh at her.
I don’t laugh. “I’ve never believed in soulmates.”
“No?”
“No. Statistically speaking, there are probably a million people in the world who could be compatible with you or with me. What makes relationships work isn’t some cosmic predestination or a mystical connection. It’s the work you put into it. The effort. The communication. The willingness to choose the same person over and over again even when it’s hard, even when you’re exhausted, even when love isn’t enough to carry you through.” I pause, thinking about Rebecca, about all the nights we went to bed angry, about all the conversations we should have had and didn’t. “Because inevitably, love won’t be enough. It’s the starting point, not the finish line. You need compatibility and timing and shared values and the ability to navigate conflict without destroying each other. And even then, sometimes it still doesn’t work. I’m living proof of that.”
Annie’s quiet for a moment, processing. “I think I mostly agree with you.”
“Mostly?”
“I know it’s cheesy and probably naive, but part of me is still a hopeless romantic. Part of me wants to believe there’s someone out there who’s just meant for me.” She looks away, watching a pigeon hop aimlessly along on the windowsill outside. “I have to believe there’s an actual, inevitable, terrifyingly North-Star sort of person. Because the alternative—the idea that it’s all just a series of logistical compromises—is a bit too much to bear, isn’t it? What am I meant to do otherwise? Just pick someone because they have a steady job and a reasonably symmetricalface and the ability to remember to buy milk? Am I supposed to wake up every day for the next forty years next to someone I’ve simply…tolerated?”
She studies her cuticles with the intensity of a diamond merchant. “I can’t do the ‘going through the motions’ bit. I won’t. I want the kind of love that’s actually a bit of a nuisance. One that keeps me awake and makes me slightly worse at my job because I’m thinking about them all day. One that scares me because it’s big enough to break me. And I want to beseen, and I don’t just mean the ‘going-out-for-dinner’ version of me, but the version of me that’s grumpy on a Sunday morning and forgets to pay the water bill.”
Outside, a car alarm starts its frantic, rhythmic chirping and there’s the muffled roar of a bus pulling away from the curb. This is the soundtrack of the city; the constant, mechanical reminder that life is happening somewhere else.
Annie gives a small, self-deprecating shrug, though her eyes stay bright. “Maybe what I’m talking about doesn’t exist. Maybe I’m just being a romantic idiot in a city of eight million skeptics. But I think I want a great love or nothing at all. I don’t want to just share a lease and a phone bill. Do you know what I mean? I want the thing the poets died for. I want to know why people in the old novels lost their minds over it and why people are willing to burn their lives down for it. I want to know why it’s the only thing anyone ever writes about.”
She stops abruptly, the way people do when they realize they’ve accidentally been talking for too long. A flush creeps up her neck, a deep, panicked pink that matches the faded roses on the bedsheet above us. She returns to the stray thread wrapped around her finger again.
I can’t help it. I feel a smirk tugging at the corner of my mouth. “Well,” I say, shifting my weight so as not to crushEmma’s discarded stuffed rabbit. “If that’s the criteria, you’ve picked the right place to be.”
She glances up at me, her eyes wide and confused. “What?”
“New York City. Eight million people pinned to a rock in the Hudson. Statistically, it’s a veritable buffet of profound, song-worthy soulmates.”
“Oh. Right.” She considers this for a moment, her eyes narrowing as she probably starts to calculate the grim reality of today’s dating scene. “Though, let’s be honest, half of them are probably already married or have deeply concerning opinions about jazz. We’re down to four million, tops.”
“Four million is still a healthy sample size,” I counter. “Most people in the Midwest settle for whoever’s left at the end of the high school dance. You’re spoiled for choice.”
“Am I? Once you subtract the age gaps, lack of shared interests and the fact that fifty percent of the men in Manhattan believe a pinstripe suit and a pager make them some sort of god…”
“That feels pointed.”
“I live in the East Village. I’ve seen things, Leo. Dark things.” A small, reluctant smile finally breaks through the earnestness. “So, realistically? We’re looking at a few thousand viable candidates. A stadium’s worth of potential heartbreak.”
“A few thousand people who might make you understand the poets?” Itsk.“I’d take those odds. Most people live and die in a dating pool of maybe six people they went to school with.”
“I suppose. Although I have officially blacklisted anyone who forcibly removes women from taxi cabs. That thins the herd significantly.”
A laugh escapes me before I can pull the drawbridge up. “That was one time. A momentary lapse in chivalry.”
“One time is all it takes to establish a pattern of behavior.”
“A pattern requires at leastthreeinstances. That’s basic statistics.”
“Oh, so you need to drag me out of two more cabs before I’m allowed to form a jaded opinion of your character? Good to know. I’ll bring my elbow pads the next time we’re on Broadway.”
“There won’t be a next time,” I say, watching the shadows of the pillow fort dance across her face. “I’ve been thoroughly humbled.”
“And what was the lesson, exactly?”
“That you fight like a street urchin and I should just let you have the cab for the sake of my own shins.”
She laughs—a genuine, unvarnished sound that seems to vibrate through the sheets. “See? There’s hope for you yet.”
“I’m a slow learner. Evolution takes time.”
