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Frank noticed it the first time when he was in the shower.
It was around 7 am, he’d just come back from his morning run and the rising sun was streaming in through the blinds of the bathroom window, creating a striped pattern on the tiles and his body.
There it was, on the inner side of his lower left arm, in hasty handwriting that was definitely not his own.
“pick up milk!!!”
Frank almost dropped the bar of soap he was holding and stumbled back. His forearm had been bare for almost 2 and a half years now, the last message he ever received from Maria still burnt into his memories. “Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. I miss you so much!” spelled out in her perfectly neat handwriting that he’d watched develop since he’d been a kid, and which had actually made him grin from ear to ear like a fool when he’d recognized it on the piece of paper on which Maria had written down her number when they met that very first time in the park. The ability to talk to her through writing had been invaluable during his deployments and had kept him sane many times.
He brought his arm closer to his face to inspect the writing. It was definitely not Maria’s; it consisted of scrawling, printed letters, whereas Maria’s handwriting had almost been cursive.
Frank carefully ran a thumb over the writing. Just like with Maria’s writing at the time, it didn’t smudge. He scrunched his eyes closed and opened them again, but the writing was still there. Frank wiped his right hand across his face, placed the soap in his left hand back in its tray, and quickly rinsed himself off. Then he turned the water off and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his middle.
The mirror above the small sink had fogged up and so he wiped it with the palm of his hand, staring at his own reflection for a few seconds before looking back at his arm.
He had no idea what was going on.
Karen cursed for the umpteenth time this morning. It had not been a good start. First, she had difficulty getting out of bed, then, the water in her shower wouldn’t heat up properly but currently worked perfectly for Frank, she discovered a hole in her favorite blouse, and finally, she realized that she’d forgotten to pick up milk for her morning coffee for the third day in a row.
To make sure that’d she’d think about picking up some milk on the way home this time, she grabbed a pen and wrote herself a note on the inner side of her left arm. It was an unusual habit to have. Most people used their inner arm to communicate with their soulmate, starting around the age of 12 or 13.
Back then, Karen, too, had excitedly started scribbling countless messages to her soulmate, from “Hello! How are you? I’m your soulmate.” to “Just so you know, I really like the movie ‘Bring it On.’” However, she’d never, not once, gotten a reply. When she researched why that could be, she found a lot of potential reasons, but nothing definite. Some experts said it was because her soulmate wasn’t born yet (which Karen found really gross, she didn’t want to feel like she could be her soulmate’s mother!), some said it was because her soulmate wasn’t ready for a relationship yet (stupid reasoning, in Karen’s opinion; a lot of soulmates that had found each other at a young age didn’t start a relationship right away and still could communicate with each other), and again others said it was because her soulmate had died or because she simply didn’t have one (Karen didn’t know which of those two was worse).
Her dad had comforted her, telling her that she should give it time, that he was sure someone was out there that God had chosen for her, and that there was nothing wrong with her whatsoever. After his death, her new stepfather Jeb had of course said the exact opposite; that it was a sign that she was a sinner, that something was wrong with her, and that it was God’s way of saying that she did not deserve a loving husband, lest she try her best to become a good, God-honoring woman. Her mom just told her not to worry and to trust in God, but Kevin, the hopeless romantic, had always said that it must mean that she was special and that with or without the writing, he knew she would find someone who’d love her truly and forever.
That had been two weeks before his deadly car accident. While he had been writing with his soulmate, the two of them hadn’t met until that point, and to this day, Karen’s heart broke for her brother’s mate who had no idea what happened, except for a completely empty arm since that day.
To avoid getting bullied by the other girls at school for not writing with her soulmate yet (they could be merciless about that), and in hopes that she might still get a reply at some point, Karen had taken to writing random thoughts on her arm – quotes, new cool words she’d learned, things she wanted to look up, and simple reminders. The other girls saw that there was writing on her arm, but didn’t look to closely as it would have been considered rude, and left her alone; and so with time, Karen’s inner arm had been a reflection of whatever was going on in her head.
She hadn’t really used her arm that way since she’d gotten to New York, and she hadn’t received any (literal) word from her soulmate either, so Karen had gradually resigned herself to staying alone.
Until Frank, that was. Before him, there had only been Matt, and for the briefest of moments, Karen had let herself entertain the thought that he might be her mate – the one who hadn’t written to her because he simply couldn’t see what she’d written to him over all those years. But then with time, she’d decided that he couldn’t be her soulmate, given how much he hurt her again and again – and how close he and Elektra were.
But with Frank, she had a different hope. She knew Maria had been his soulmate, and with her gone, Karen thought that maybe, this was somehow also meant to be – her and Frank, both broken, without their soulmates, building a life together that was not the perfect dream soulmates supposedly had, but good. Happy enough.
As a result, Karen didn’t think about it much when she wrote herself a little reminder on her inner arm and yelled a quick goodbye to Frank in the shower, until Ellison spotted it with his usual keen eye when Karen passed him a piece of paper.
“’Pick up milk, huh?’ Sometimes I wish we’d record all those things soulmates really write each other. It’s always about those great romantic poems and exchanges, but let me tell you, at the end of the day, most of it is just ‘Don’t forget to pick up the dry cleaning, dear!’” he said with a chuckle. “Although that might actually be most romantic stuff of all.”
Karen quickly withdrew her hand.
“Uh, this is not … ah,” she stuttered, not really knowing what to say without telling her boss the whole no-soulmate-sob-story.
“No need to be embarrassed.” Ellison winked at her. “You wouldn’t believe the kind of stuff I’ve seen on some people’s arms – accidentally of course – that made me blush from just reading it.”
Karen just gave him a weak laugh.
“Tell Pete that I said hello, and that I still cannot wait to meet him in person,” Ellison said as he finally left.
Frank. She’d completely forgotten what it would look like to him when she had something scribbled on her arm. She decided that she’d wipe the reminder off as soon as she’d left the supermarket tonight.
The writing was gone by the evening.
Throughout the day as he was fixing up the bathroom in the house he helped renovate, Frank had glanced at the note on his arm, still without a clue as what to make of it.
Now, on his way to Karen, the note was suddenly gone. He wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or sad about that, but he was definitely glad that he wouldn’t have to explain to her what that writing meant when he had no idea himself.
A few days later, another note appeared. This time, he saw it the second he woke up in his own apartment.
“ask IT abt word update”
Frank rubbed his sleepy eyes. It was the same handwriting as earlier that week.
The words stayed etched on his skin all through the morning until about 11 am when they were suddenly gone again. During his lunch break, Frank found a spot to himself and did a bit of googling regarding soulmates as he wolfed down his sandwich, but he didn’t find anything relevant. Soulmate experts insisted there was only one match per person, and while there were reports of people having two or more mates, none of them seemed reliable or trustworthy enough to him. But then soulmate science had not been fully explored in the least, and there were still a million questions that even the best experts couldn’t answer.
For a second, Frank contemplated telling Karen about the writings on his arm, but he immediately got scared. He had no idea what was going on, and he didn’t want to cause any issues in their relationship before he even knew what the problem was (if there even was one). Besides, he couldn’t really imagine being with anyone else but Karen at this point, and had no interest whatsoever in tracking down a potential second soulmate.
Karen. What about her? They’d never talked about her soulmate before. He’d mentioned once that Maria had been his, and had even told her a funny story about a time when they’d tried to write the worst cuss-words they knew to each other as teens while she was at her grandparents’ place in a short-sleeved dress. But Karen had never once mentioned her soulmate to him, or any stories of writing with them.
Truth be told, the thought of her soulmate had popped into his head every now and then, but he’d always buried it just as quickly, not really wanting to confront that question. Besides, he’d reasoned that if Karen never brought the topic up herself, and since she clearly wasn’t writing with anyone, she might have lost her soulmate, too. One’s soulmate was once of the most personal topics one could talk about next to sex, but now, he felt like he’d have to ask her.
(Personal or not, he grudgingly had to admit to himself that he’d definitely been avoiding the issue far more than was healthy or reasonable given the seriousness of their relationship, anyway.)
“Can I ask you somethin’? ’s personal,” Frank therefore said as he forked up some spaghetti that evening. He and Karen were having dinner together in her apartment.
Karen threw him a bemused look.
“Of course,” she said with a smile as she took a sip of her water.
“You got a soulmate? We’ve been talking a lot ‘bout Maria but never about yours,” Frank asked, fixing her with a direct stare to hide his nervousness.
Karen’s face fell a little and she lowered her eyes towards her plate as she played with her food.
“You don’t gotta say, but I’s just wonderin’, you know?” Frank added, still bracing himself internally.
Karen shook her head and looked back at him.
“No, no it’s ok,” she said with a smile that felt forced. “I, uh, I don’t have a soulmate.”
Frank set down his fork.
“What?” he asked, confused. “You mean they died or …?”
Karen shook her head once more.
“No, never had one from the beginning. I started to write when I was around 13, but never got an answer. No-one could tell me why. For a minute I thought it might’ve been Matt – because, you know, he wouldn’t have been able to read what I wrote – but by now I’m pretty sure his was Elektra.”
Frank narrowed his eyes. “You mean, you never got a single word?”
“Nope,” Karen said, popping the p, before taking another sip of water. “Don’t worry about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about why me, how, and so on, but by now I’ve come to accept it.”
Frank made a noncommittal noise and picked up his fork again. “‘m sorry. You’d ‘ve deserved it.”
This time, Karen’s smile was genuine.
“Maybe,” she repeated. “But what would that have meant for us?” she asked.
Frank didn’t quite know what to think of what Karen told him. He didn’t think she was lying – she never lied to him – but he also hadn’t heard of a case like hers before. But then, he’d also never heard of a case like his before, either. He asked her a bunch of follow-up questions that Karen patiently answered until she finally asked “Are you trying to get rid of me or something?” with humor in her voice.
“No, ma’am, just curious,” Frank replied before cornering her against the kitchen counter where she was cleaning up the cutting board from dinner. “Not going to get rid of me, either,” he said, half-jokingly, half earnestly before capturing her lips, burying his hand in her hair and pressing his body against hers for a heated kiss.
The next day, he hung back after Curtis’ meet-up. He needed to tell someone about the mysterious writings. Today in the late morning he had noticed another set of words on his arm saying “goodbye party at 2!” which had then disappeared again at around 3 pm.
Curtis listened to Frank’s story impassively as always and had no idea of what was happening either.
“Why don’t you write back?” he asked Frank. “Ask who it is who’s writing to you.”
Frank shook his head.
“No. I’d be betraying Karen,” he said flatly.
“But you don’t even know who it is writing to you. Maybe there was a mix-up or something and you suddenly got paired with someone else’s soulmate and he or she is wondering why their soulmate is no longer replying,” Curtis offered.
Frank huffed and shifted his weight on to one leg.
“Mix-up?” he asked mockingly.
Curtis raised his shoulders. “Don’t know man, it’s not like anyone actually knows how this stuff works,” he replied as he picked up two chairs to put away.
Frank shook his head once more. “’sides, you know you can’t write names until you’ve met,” he countered.
“Normally, yes,” Curtis agreed. “But, this is clearly not a normal situation. Maybe the usual rules don’t apply.”
Later that night, Frank was sitting in his apartment, staring at his lower left arm on the table in front of him. A pen was lying next to it, and Frank was contemplating Curtis’ words. Finally, he angrily slammed the arm on the table. He felt more and more like he was betraying Karen and he hated it. Things were going extremely well for them at the moment, they were growing closer every day, and he had even been thinking about suggesting that they move in together. Even if he didn’t actually have an active part in receiving those words on his arm, he felt like he was doing Karen wrong. She deserved so much better already, especially if she never had a soulmate herself, and now here he was, receiving the world’s most intimate form of communication from someone else. Someone he didn’t even know. Even if the content of the messages was as un-romantic and un-sexy as possible, communicating via messages on your inner arm as an adult was generally seen as the most personal and intimate you could be, a bit like kissing someone. Frank was no exception to that rule, and so he felt increasingly uncomfortable with the situation.
His bad mood remained for the rest of the week, and got even worse on Saturday evening. He was in his own apartment once again as Karen had to urgently meet a source and planned to write up the entire story afterwards. He was supposed to pick her up the next morning to drive them both to lunch at the Liebermans.
While he was lounging on his sofa in a t-shirt and reading a book, he saw the words appear out of the corner of his eye, letter by letter.
“What did the card say to the stamp?”
Frank cursed. Was this some kind of joke? Fuming, he got up and angrily pulled a hoodie over his body. He really didn’t want to see those letters, and he only hoped that they’d be gone by morning at the latest. He’d already been incredibly lucky that Karen hadn’t seen them so far.
Naturally, the words were still there the next morning, and he had to hide them underneath a long-sleeved shirt when they went for lunch at the Lieberman’s. The thought of the letters on his skin made him edgy; he had the urge to scratch them off, or to cut them off, as long as they’d be gone.
As soon as they entered the house, Leo dragged Karen off to show her the science project she’d been working on. Karen had helped Leo by downloading some scientific journal articles for her using the Bulletin’s account, and now that the project was finished, Karen was of course the first one who had to see it.
Frank tried his best to not let anyone notice his inner turmoil all throughout lunch, and happily agreed to play catch with Zach afterwards to take his mind off things. As they were playing on the front lawn, Leo came out to watch them.
Frank threw a particularly long ball that left Zach scrambling after it.
“Hey, Pete,” Leo called out to him as they were both watching Zach run. “What did the card say to the stamp?” She giggled.
Frank’s head whipped around.
“What’d you say?”
Leo giggled again. “What did the card say to the stamp? It’s a riddle!”
“How do you know that?” Frank asked her agitatedly. At the same time, Zach yelled his name from the distance.
“Gimme a second,” Frank yelled back and turned back to Leo.
“Sweetheart, this is really important, ok? Where do you know this riddle from?” he asked again, trying to keep his voice level.
“From Karen. She had it on her arm when I showed her my project earlier,” Leo replied, clearly confused at his behavior. “It was a code for a meeting she had last night.”
Zach called Frank’s name again, but he didn’t hear him. His eyes darted about wildly as his thoughts raced.
“Wha-?” he was about ask when the football hit him right on the side of his face and everything turned black.
When he came to, he was lying on his back on the front lawn, his head pounding slightly. Karen and the Liebermans were bent over him and looked down at him concernedly.
Karen reached out to cradle his face with her left hand.
“F- Pete, are you alright?” she asked with worry in her voice.
Frank cleared his throat.
“Yeah, all good,” he said gruffly. As he tried to sit up, his eyes snuck to her lower arm next to his face, but it was bare.
“I’m really sorry Frank, I didn’t mean to hit your head.” Zach’s contrite face appeared in his line of vision.
“Don’t worry ‘bout it, kiddo,” Frank mumbled.
“Let’s get you inside and an ice-pack for your head,” Sarah said. David and Karen helped hoist Frank up and he leant on Karen as they made their way inside.
While Leo and Zach ran for an ice pack and some water as instructed by their mother, Karen and David helped Frank lower himself on the sofa. He really didn’t need their help, but he knew that neither of the two would take no for an answer.
He tried to find an opportunity to pull up his left sleeve to check if the writing was still there, but it was difficult while the others were still fussing around him. In the end, he just decided to risk it, and pulled up both of his sleeves to make it look less conspicuous.
His arm was empty again.
He was trying to process this information and what Leo had said earlier as Karen carefully pressed an ice-pack to his head that Zach had brought in.
His head was actually much better already, but he gladly took the respite to close his eyes and to bring his thoughts into some form of coherence.
If it was true what Leo said, then it was Karen who’d written to him, probably unknowingly. The scribbles read like small reminders for herself that she’d wiped off as soon as she’d completed them. Except for last night’s which she likely had forgotten about once she got home and got started on her story. She’d told him that she’d stayed up very late to finish it, and barely woke up in time for him to pick her up this morning. If she hadn’t had a chance to shower, Leo would have seen it. Speaking of which, Karen, too, was wearing a long-sleeved shirt today, and he remembered it covering her arms when she got into his van in the morning. Now, however, her sleeves were rolled up. Maybe she had done so in Leo’s room and washed off the riddle right after Leo had noticed it and probably asked her the answer?
He needed more information. First of all, handwriting. It occurred to him that he’d never actually seen Karen’s handwriting. The two of them communicated primarily via WhatsApp and the like. He might have seen her handwriting in the documents she shared with him before his trial, but back then, he hadn’t actually paid any attention to it. For work, she only had one notebook that he knew of, but he’d never had any reason to look at it. The few files that they both had looked at together in the entire time they knew each other, her few notes on the margins had been in block letters. The majority of her thoughts on the files she’d scribbled into her notebook.
Secondly – could he write back? She’d said that she’d never had a single message from her soulmate. Was that because he was it, and they only recently became matched, for whatever reason?
He suddenly had the incredible urge to leave to be able to check on those two questions. Luckily, it was quite late already, and so it didn’t appear strange when Frank announced that he was fine, really, and that it was time to go. Karen insisted she drive back, though, and when they were in the van, she pressed a loving kiss to the spot on his face where the football had hit him. The flutter in his chest at the contact just made him more eager to find out.
Back at Karen’s place, Frank noticed Karen’s notebook that was still lying on the kitchen island from the night before. When Karen went into the bedroom to change into something more comfortable, he carefully lifted the cover to peek into it.
The same scrawl like the one on his arm in the last few days.
Frank smirked and his stomach did a little flip. He had no idea what he’d done to deserve such a second chance, but he certainly wasn’t stupid enough not to grasp it with two hands.
A few minutes later, the two of them were settled on opposite ends of the couch, each of them with their own book, their legs intertwined in the middle. As was her usual habit, Karen held her book up with her left hand, while she turned the pages with her right.
Frank continued to pretend to read while he quietly picked up the pen he’d stolen from her desk and started to write on his forearm.
“So, ma’am, what did the card say to the stamp?”
He watched as her eyes suddenly jumped to the letters appearing on her lower arm just below the book she was holding and an incredulous expression spread across her face. Her gaze moved up, registering the pen he was still holding, and meeting his in shock. She dropped her book and brought her right hand in front of her mouth, still holding her left in front of her. Frank sat up, put the book and the pen in his lap and reached for her left hand with his right.
“Thought I was going insane when your scribbles suddenly appeared on my arm last week,” he said with chuckle.
Karen swallowed hard, her face caught between disbelief and happiness.
“But, how’s that even possible?” she asked, staring at her lower arm once more before taking hold of his left and examining it carefully.
“Beats me, but I sure ain’t protesting,” Frank replied, stroking her hand with his thumb as he watched her.
Karen reached over to take the pen from where it lay in his lap, put it down underneath his words on her arm and drew a little heart.
She let out a short huff when it appeared on Frank’s arm barely a second later.
“This is … Frank – this is impossible,” she breathed as she gently traced the heart on his arm with her index finger.
“Yeah, I know,” Frank said with a small smile. “But this is definitely us.”
Karen’s eyes became moist and she pulled his head in for a fervent kiss. When they broke apart, she rested her head on his collar bone and inspected her arm once more.
Frank pressed a lingering kiss to the top of her head.
“’m sorry you had to wait so long,” he said as he rested his cheek against her hair.
“It’s okay. Better now than never,” Karen replied with a wet laugh. She picked up the pen again and wrote next to the heart on her arm.
“I love you.”
Frank grinned like the sappy idiot in love that he was and found that he didn’t mind it one bit. He took the pen from her and wrote on his arm.
“And I love you, ma’am.”
The next day, Karen was just doing some research on her computer when she saw Frank’s writing appear on her arm.
“You still haven’t told me, what did the card say to the stamp?”
Karen smiled and grabbed a pen.
“Stick with me, we’re going places.”
Frank’s reply took only a few seconds.
“Damn right.”