Chapter Text
Most people had their marks deciphered by their early twenties. It’s common knowledge that you’re more likely than not to have met your soulmate before you even come of age, but Lenore’s twenty-fifth birthday was inching closer with each passing day and yet for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what the signs meant.
She liked it, though; her mark.
She often found herself running the tip of her index finger along the small inky bumps that ran vertically along her breast bone. It helped that the gesture was flirty. The confidence it gave her had half to do with the knowledge that her soulmate was out there somewhere, bearing that exact same mark along their sternum, and half to do with the certainty that the person standing in front of her was not them – that she didn’t need magic or destiny to turn eyes glassy with lust or to make them close completely as the men shook with laughter at her wit.
And yet, some nights, when the man of the week had dropped her off on her front porch with a chaste kiss goodnight and the memory of him was little more than foggy heat and clinking glasses, she laid on her bed, limbs splayed wide, eyes staring unblinkingly at the ceiling, and she thought of that person that was hers and hers alone, and of the small symbols on her chest that tied her to them.
At least hers was pretty. Just between her breasts sat a small white triangle, above which were two bronze circles, slightly askew. One half of it was hers, she knew it, but which? She couldn’t even tell that much. As for what it meant, only her soulmate could help her understand when they finally met.
It could be way worse – this she knew for a fact, because Annabel, her best friend, had a black smudge besides a set of tiny turquoise waves on her right hip and it just looked weird.
And she wasn’t the worst among their friend group.
Oscar had such a complicated pattern on his thigh that he had apparently decided to get every single person he met into his bed if only for the chance to see them naked and compare marks. It was even less recognizable than Lenore’s.
Almost as many people had seen Ernest’s, because he had a tendency to expose himself when inebriated, which happened more and more these days. Lenore understood. He too had yet to find to whom the golden orange sun setting over his tiny gray sailboat shape belonged, even though he had bought the boat itself two years ago when he happened upon it in an auction.
In a way, they weren’t making this easy on themselves, she sometimes mused. Half of the world could find their soulmates in minutes if there was a database somewhere which would match the pairs, but there was a general ambivalence about soul marks – actively hiding yours was seen as weird, but exposing it was even worse.
A few years ago, she had heard on the news about these two women who had found one another because they had both been filmed naked at some point, revealing a set of twin black circles on their pubis, and a pervert on reddit had inadvertently posted pictures of both thinking it was the same person. Turns out the camera lenses they bore on their skin had matched them better than any dating site.
This was the good ending. Exposing yourself to anyone without the pretext of sex or intoxication seemed very desperate, even to her who was trying very hard – very hard – not to judge people.
There was also the matter of placement. Statistically, there was more of a chance that your mark was on your trunk or on the upper part of your limbs than in any place you could casually show. Crop tops and daisy dukes coming back into fashion must have been a blessing for a large subset of the population. But unless she wore a very daring neckline, her mark was too low to be shown easily without flashing everybody in the vicinity.
So like most people, she kept it hidden. Hell, she had never even seen her own brother’s. Who knew where Edgar’s was, or what it represented.
Some were very peculiar about this, dressing super modestly or even, in the case of one weirdo she knew in highschool, wearing black leather gloves constantly to hide his palm or wherever else the mark had appeared on the skin. In Edgar’s case, it was the former, just his uptight sense of fashion and general oddness showing themselves in this form of enforced privacy.
She would readily admit to being curious about it, but after more than twenty years, it was just a part of life. It was socially impossible to ask anyway.
And then there was a rumor that some people just didn’t have one, and you just couldn’t risk asking someone who didn’t have one. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must feel like. What if her brother – no, she couldn’t. She just had to believe that, like her, he was a late matcher.
Her mother, like many of her parents’ generation, thought the matching moment was predestined.
Lenore, however, had never been one to let fate dictate her life, which is why she had decided that Guy de Vere was The One.
They had been dating for a while, longer than she had with anyone before, and even though she had never seen his chest, she knew it was him.
So here she was, dragging Annabel into a wedding dress boutique on Main Street despite her protestations.
“Lenore, please, let go of my hand! I won’t be complicit in you throwing your hope away on-“
She was cut off by Lenore barging into the shop.
“Hiiii,” beamed Lenore at the shopkeeper. “We’re here for a fitting. I am getting married next week and I need your most fabulous dress,” she added with a flourish.
Besides her, Annabel waited with her arms crossed. As Lenore was giving the specifics of what ‘fabulous’ meant to the shopkeeper, she steamed quietly. However, the minute the woman had disappeared into the back room, she turned to her friend and whispered angrily:
“This is ridiculous, Lenore. You barely know Guy, and while I will admit that he is very nice to everyone and very handsome, but you can’t marry someone who is not your soulmate!”
She pronounced that last word with the same kind of breathy reverence as everybody, but for some reason, today it got on Lenore’s nerves.
“And why couldn’t I? Besides, maybe he is my soulmate and I just don’t know it yet because we haven’t matched marks, have you thought about that?” she answered with a stern wave of her finger. “Also, many people marry someone unmatched to them and they are perfectly happy, so I can be too!”
Annabel looked at her with what she hoped was coming across as commiseration and not pity.
“I’m not saying you wouldn’t be happy. I’m sure Guy adores you, and you two do make a cute couple, but soulmates are supposed to be... something else, you know? You’re supposed to know when you meet them. My dad always says he got this feeling in his stomach when he saw my mom, like he had met her before and he saw this light around her-“
“Yeah, yeah, I know the story,” cut in Lenore. “Maybe it’s just- maybe just not the right time. Like, when we finally see each other’s marks on the wedding night, there will be the light and the explosions and everything. But I know it, AnnaBee, I have to do this. Trust me. Guy is the love of my life.”
“Isn’t that just the cutest thing to say about your groom!” gushed the shopkeeper as she came back, her arms wide around a stack of white fabric covered in ribbons and lace. “Now all we must do is find you the perfect dress for your perfect day,” she giggled. “Sit, sit!”
With a last look toward Annabel, Lenora sat on the large satin ottoman in the center of the room and started pointing out things she didn’t like on each dress, ignoring Annabel’s quiet sigh.
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After almost an hour of nitpicking, Annabel was sitting too, and growing more and more tired. Lenore, on the other hand, was getting crankier by the second.
“No!” she cried at the sight of the last dress, a plum colored number cut in crushed velvet with a high collar and bell sleeves. “What do I look like to you, a goth queen from the seventies?!”
The shopkeeper’s answer had slowly degraded from bubbly to curt. She seemed to have even transcended that state now, and simply nodded silently, before disappearing once again into the back room.
“Oh my god,” sighed Lenore heavily, shaking her dark curls.
“You were a little harsh with her,” suggested Annabel.
Lenore sighed again. “I know,” she frowned, “but it’s just so... frustrating. I’m starting to think you might be right, this is the universe telling me not to go through with the wedding. I’m doomed, I swear,” she concluded somberly, her right hand coming to rest naturally on her chest. Under her fingers, she could feel her heart beating, and between the pulsations, a soft buzzing.
Annabel crossed the room and came to sit beside her on the oversized ottoman. She took Lenore’s hand softly. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like this. You know I’m a big romantic,” she joked.
Lenore chuckled. “Yeah ya are, you softie.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not a softie inside too, I know you too well, miss,” countered Annabel with a raise of her eyebrows that suddenly made Lenore think she would be a great mom someday. “And I just wanted to say... I trust you.” She grabbed Lenore’s hand a little more forcefully and looked her straight in the eyes as she repeated: “I trust you. If you say Guy is the one, then he must be. Don’t go looking for other tips from fate, we have enough on our plates with the marks!” she laughed.
Lenore couldn’t help but laugh too, even though her voice felt shaky and wet. She wanted to hug Annabel really tight and tell her how amazing a friend she was but also maybe to cry and feel sorry for herself for a little while.
She had the opportunity to do neither of those things, as the shopkeeper came back once again with horrible timing – oh and a white dress this time, thank the stars. Her eyes were casted downward already, as if she felt defeated before Lenore had even had a chance to see the dress.
“The only one I have left in your size is this one. It was returned by a customer, but she assured me it has never been worn,” she explained as she slowly unfolded it. “She had bought it in advance but the day of the wedding she chose to wear a tuxedo and leave the dress wearing to her wife who was the wrong size, so the dress found its way back here unworn. But I would understand if you’d rather-“
“Wait,” cut in Lenore as the woman held up the dress. Her heart was beating furiously against her rib cage. Underneath her bra strap, she could feel the buzzing had intensified, and a weird warmth was spreading from her mark. Narrowing her eyes, she looked closely at the dress before announcing: “This is it.”
Annabel and the shopkeeper wore matching expressions of surprise and disbelief but Lenore had never been more certain of anything in her life.
“This is the dress. I am taking it.”
“Don’t you want to try it on first?”
“Nope. It’s mine and I’ll be taking it right now please,” she stated firmly, rising from the seat and walking confidently in the direction of the register.
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Once they were back on the street, Annabel finally dared to ask:
“What happened?”
Juggling her purse, the coat she had forgotten to put back on in her excitement, and the large white box with an even larger bow on top that she came out of the shop with, Lenore smiled.
“I felt it!” she announced.
Annabel’s eyes popped open as big as a doll’s. “You mean...?”
Lenore’s smile was bordering on the hysterical. “Yes. Well,“ she tempered, “not the light and explosions, but I felt something. There was this burning sensation on my mark. I heard a buzzing sound too and I just... I don’t know, it’s like I recognized it. Like this dress was calling me. It was super weird.”
“Wow,” said Annabel in a breathy voice.
They walked in silence for a few seconds, before Annabel stopped. Lenore turned to find her shaking with silent laughter.
“What’s up?”
It took a few more seconds for Annabel to compose herself enough to answer, even though her voice was still intersected with suppressed giggles.
“I always- always knew your soulmate w-would be a dress!” she finally said.
Lenore rolled her eyes. Had her hands been free, she would have put one on her hips and pursed her lips in mock reprimand. As it was, she cocked her head to one side, and ended up laughing along with her best friend. It was genuinely funny, she had to admit it.
On the ride back, Lenore glanced at the gigantic bow in the back seat, before saying quietly: “It’s not just the dress you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think I finally figured it out. What my symbols mean.”
“Oh?”
Lenore nodded, biting her lip as she concentrated on the road for a while.
“It’s the wedding, I think,” she said at last. “You’ve seen my mark, right? A white triangle and two bronze rings. Well, the triangle has to be this dress. It’s the right color, the right shape, with the veil it makes a perfect triangle and what could be more soulmatey than a wedding dress?”
Annabel nodded. On the dashboard, a cream-colored business card rested, with the contact of the shopkeeper’s sister who worked as a wedding planner for something called “Soulmates Seremony” – Lenore had made a gagging motion behind the shopkeeper’s back when she had been handed the card, but it seemed to confirm her reasoning.
“If I’m right, and I absolutely am, the circles have to be rings. The color must be because Guy is getting us antique rings or something unique like that. So that means I was right about this whole thing, I really am destined to marry Guy!”
She looked so happy than Annabel kept to herself the real question she wanted to ask – are you trying to convince me or yourself? Instead, she smiled and offered to help write the invitations.
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The day before the wedding, Lenore was nursing the mother of all hangovers from her bachelorette party yesterday. Despite the headache and queasiness, she smiled stupidly at the ceiling just thinking of it.
Annabel had truly outdone herself. Only she knew that the Disney princess had a wilder side, it seemed, as the girls took turns ooh-ing and aaah-ing at the party plans. Louisa in particular. It must have been a serious change from her life on the farm.
Even Mary, who started the evening being her usual gloomy self, only needed a couple of drinks to loosen up. By the fourth glass, her eyes had turned all dark and sparkly again, and she rambled on about her kinky escapades in the cemetery with her boyfriend. They had found one another while Percy was seeing another girl, who didn’t share his mark, but loved him too much to let go. The drama had kept their girl group entertained for ages. Eventually, the girl moved away, and Mary was vindicated. She paraded their relationship a little too hard sometimes, but Lenore guessed it was normal after what she endured. She sure was happy to never have gone through something like that. She couldn’t wait to marry the love of her life in two days.
Speak of the devil, his evening must have been quite the downer compared to their raging fiesta. For some reason she had yet to be explained, her own brother was the one in charge of organizing Guy’s bachelor party. She could hear him snoring down the hall, so they had at least made it back safely – with Edgar, things could really go either way. He’d planned some of the most mind-staggeringly boring nights she had ever had to sit through, but on the other hand, he was also responsible for That Night in Senior Year, the one that ended up with stuff hastily hidden under the floorboards of their dorm room and half a bottle of bleach tossed in the dumpster outside from the third-floor window, so...
She wanted to call Guy. Her head pounded hard at the thought of speaking, or worse, of hearing a voice. She figured texting was better for now.
Hey you <3, she sent.
Barely a second later, her phone pinged, sending another shockwave of pain through her skull. Cursing through gritted teeth, she put in on silent before reading Guy’s message.
hey love how was your night? do u need aspirin
She smiled again. He really was too good to be true.
Breakfast should do the trick, she typed. What about you?
She waited a few minutes for a reply before remembering her phone was on silent; she checked it once, twice, before the screen finally lit up in her hand with Guy’s reply.
it was a little weird but fine.
For Guy to put actual punctuation into a message, it must have been terrible. She winced. She would have to drop some salt into Eddie’s coffee again.
What did he do this time?
Again, the reply took ages to come. Guy was a quick texter usually, so that means he was carefully choosing his words. Salted coffee it was, she decided, before closing her eyes. She almost fell back asleep when the light woke her up with a start.
he didnt do anything the whole night was weird. he did give me a speech about hurting you that was kinda sweet but then he got drunk and talked about soulmates with his friend with glasses
HG was at the party?
Lenore could feel her eyebrows come up to her hairline. Parties were not the kind of places she expected her brother to bring him to. While Ernest, his other best friend, was always eager for a drink, HG was notoriously sober – during That Night, he had been drilling holes in a closet, passing wires through walls in the hopes of intercepting waves of something EKG something other-acronym. He still got suspended with the rest of them, though.
Her phone lit up again.
and oscar grabbed my butt after calling me eddie
Guy’s brother Eduardo knew everybody both amicably and carnally and frequently said as much, but he vehemently denied ever having what Oscar insisted was “a passionate but short-lived affair” after graduation.
I’m sorry, she sent. We’ll have a better party at the wedding :D
ofc we will :) nothing but the best for my favorite girl
I’m gonna go get some food now, talk to you later? she replied.
ok. i love u
Love you too.
Lenore put her phone face down on the comforter and stared at the ceiling. She loved Guy. She did.
Her head was killing her.
She closed her eyes, but the headache still pounded behind her temples and her head swam.
She sat up. Some food and water, maybe a couple of pills, and she would be all better. Her schedule for the day was light but she still had a lot to do. Looking this good all the time took some serious work and she had to look her absolute best tomorrow. So up she went and–
Oh.
Oh, this wasn’t good.
Her vision suddenly blurred, while she felt herself bending dangerously forward. As she caught herself on her dresser, her stomach heaved as if it had been sucker punched and bile rose in her throat.
She had never had a hangover this bad before. Raising a hand to her forehead, she found it burning with fever. Her whole body felt weak and hot and strangely dull, as if she was a play doll stuffed with warm cotton.
In her ears, that weird buzzing sound was back. Her eyes stinged. She blinked away tears and wiped her nose that dripped like she had been crying. She looked down.
On her white sleeve, a wide streak of dark blood appeared. Another drop fell from her nose as she stared, horrified. The floor rushed to meet her when she fell forward.
In a second, all was black.
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