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It would be easy if everyone got their soul marks at the same time. If everyone got them at the same age, or if soulmates got them at the same time even.
Nothing in life is easy.
~
Eliza loves her words. She’s fourteen when they burn their way across her hip. She wakes up crying and scratching at her skin – her words hurt when they etch their way into her, and she doesn’t think they’re supposed to hurt, no one had warned her about the pain. She pulls off her pants and underwear, and her skin is red and tender just below her hipbone. In the nicest cursive she’s ever seen is written: Well, aren’t you the prettiest girl in the office?
She spends two hours crying and ghosting her fingers over the mark, carefully pressing her fingertips against it like she’s worried she’ll smudge it if she’s not careful. But she’s not worried. Everyone knows soul marks never fade or smudge or anything like that. They’re permanent, the most permanent thing about her.
Her soulmate thinks she’s pretty.
~
Henry was born with his soul mark, not that it does him any good. It’s written over his heart, of all places, and he can’t help but think that a place so romantic was wasted on his banal mark: Thanks.
The letters are smushed together and too boxy at the same time. It looks like a mess.
He develops a habit of resting a hand on his chest and rubbing his thumb against the place where he knows the marks is. His college girlfriend points it out to him, and he makes a conscious effort to never do it again. Against his best efforts, he still sleeps with a hand curled up next to his chest.
A soul mark so plain is just as bad as having no mark at all, but he hopes against hope that his soulmate will find him anyway.
Every year that passes after his thirtieth it becomes harder and harder to have hope.
~
Eliza works really really hard after high school to make herself into the kind of girl that would be labeled the prettiest girl in the office. She becomes internet famous along the way, which is pretty cool, although she’s always careful to make sure that her mark doesn’t show, even in her underwear selfies. The last thing she needs is some crazy follower trying to convince her that their marks match.
She gets a job in the mailroom at KinderKare, and as far as she’s concerned her work is done – she’s super pretty and works in an office. But working in the mailroom is super boring, and no one looks at her – people should always be looking at her. Besides, she thinks she wants to be more than just the pretty girl in the office, though. When she wasn’t pretty she thought that would be enough, but there are only so many makeup selfies and tutorials someone can post before their followers stop caring. So she walks into the sales office one day and instead of handing over the mail she says, “This doesn’t look too hard. I bet I could do it.” And she smiles and anyone else would probably have been fired, but she’s the prettiest girl in the office. The leading sales rep is a slimy old man with hands like the newspapers left outside of abandoned homes, and he chuckles and gives her his route for the day, clearly thinking her a silly little girl.
She is a silly little girl, and she’s okay with that. She’s also charming and beautiful and smart when she wants to be. She’s the top sales rep within six months and the slimy old man is let go. Most of her colleagues are pharmacists and took rigorous six year programs. But she actually reads the totes boring two hundred page packets the lab sends her on the products, and she used to sell perfume at Macy’s, so. They never really stood a chance.
~
Eliza Dooley drives Henry crazy. He tried bringing up how inappropriate her – everything was once, and Sapperstein has given a booming laugh, smacked him hard enough that he’d stumbled, and then handed over her sales numbers. Which, well, if she makes that much money for the company he’s not surprised that no one is making a fuss over her incredibly short skirts. But it grates at him, that someone who so casually disregards every rule he’s held himself to is just right there, constantly – there, he doesn’t know, but it’s irritating.
He does his best to avoid her, and succeeds until one day when she’s bent over using the microwave’s reflection to reapply her lip gloss, making her behind stick out in way that’s just short of obscene. He hasn’t eaten since dinner last night and has a thousand things to get done, and all he wants is to heat up his burrito, but he can’t because Miss Eliza Dooley is putting on her lip gloss, of all things. “Well, aren’t you the prettiest girl in the office?” falls out of his mouth before he can stop himself, and he instantly regrets it. She probably would have moved if he’d asked.
She freezes and slowly turns her head to face him. He opens his mouth to apologize, but she flashes him one of her famous fake smiles and says, “Thanks,” before pointedly twisting the cap of her lip gloss back on and marching away.
He rubs the back of his neck and considers tracking her down to say he’s sorry, but well – if nothing else, she’ll probably start avoiding him now too.
Except two weeks later she’s in his office demanding he rebrand her. “If you don’t like who I am, then change me,” she throws out, and he doesn’t know why he agrees to her idiotic plan, but he does.
~
Eliza had never thought much about who her soulmate would be – she wasn’t even totally sure it was going to be a guy, because they’re certainly her preference, but she’s ended up in the beds of some super hot women and totally loved it. To be honest, she’d spent more time thinking about who she was going to be when she met her soulmate than who her soulmate would be, but she thought she had two things down solid: they were going to have super nice handwriting, and they were going to think she was pretty.
Well. One out of two ain’t bad. She kind of really wishes it had been the other one, though. But she’s Eliza Dooley, she can do this. She built herself into the prettiest girl in the office for her soulmate, she can make herself into – whatever kind of boring girl a guy like Henry would want. Whatever, it won’t be that hard.
~
It ends up being super hard, and also she discovers that Henry is kind of a dick. But she’s kind of a bitch, so she supposes that’s okay. She doesn’t stop sleeping with Freddy, which seems kind of weird considering she’d trying to seduce her soulmate by becoming a boring Mary Jane robot. But Freddy doesn’t have a soul mark yet, so she doesn’t actually feel that bad about it. Besides, she doesn’t even know if she likes Henry. Maybe she should just keep doing whatever with Freddy?
Whatever, she’ll figure it out later. She has to go sell a new blood pressure drug that does the same thing as the old one but is twice as expensive. Uhg, she’s going to need her Louboutins for this.
~
Henry’s not sure exactly when Eliza becomes his best friend. He’d try asking Larry, but Larry would only get wounded and offended that he didn’t consider him his best friend.
He may talk a good talk, but honestly he doesn’t have that many friends, and he thinks – he thinks Eliza may just be the best friend he’s ever had.
“Charlie,” he says, and this is probably a very inappropriate question, “when – did you notice, by any chance, when Eliza and I became – friends?”
He’s about to take it back and hide in his office, but Charlie nods and opens his calendar. “Seven weeks ago,” he says, “You smiled twice and only yelled at me five times.”
Henry’s not certain how to address that, so he just says, “Ah, thank you,” before retreating back to his office.
~
Okay, so there’s good news and bad news.
The bad news is she’s totally in love with Henry.
The other bad news is he’s dating a tiny pee doctor who is basically just like him and the opposite of everything Eliza will ever be, so the type of girl Henry likes will never be her.
The good news is she’s still the hottest girl in the office, so there’s that at least.
It kind of sucks a lot that her soulmate isn’t in love with her, but she’s pretty sure he at least likes her now. And besides, soulmates should want each other to be happy. Henry wouldn’t be happy dating her, and he’s definitely the type of guy that would try to make it work because they’re destined to be together, or whatever. Which it total bullshit. And maybe most soulmates become happy by being together, but that’s just not going to happen for her and Henry, and that’s okay. She’ll just do everything she can to make sure he is happy, and he’ll keep trying to make her into a better person, and everything will be fine.
“Hey,” Freddy says, sounding almost concerned, “Are you crying? Is something wrong?”
Eliza flings herself out of the bed and yells “Mascara malfunction!” before locking herself in the bathroom and gripping the edges of the sink until she can make her eyes stop watering.
She’s not wearing mascara. Luckily, she’s pretty certain that Freddy doesn’t know that.
~
Henry knows that Julia isn’t his soulmate, but he’s thirty five and she’s comfortable and easy and just like him. Her soul mark is almost as useless as his – Excuse me curled up her ankle.
Besides, and this is a truly terrible reason to date someone, if he did find his soulmate, he wouldn’t have a problem – I mean, it’s not like it’d be nothing, breaking up with Julia. But he could do it. If he was dating someone more – someone who – he desperately tries not to think of Eliza and fails miserably.
He’s been waiting his whole life for his soulmate. But Eliza – if he had Eliza, if they could be together without killing each other, he doesn’t know if he could give that up. For anything, or anyone.
Maybe he should just give up on the whole soulmate thing. It’s becoming almost too painful to bear at this point.
~
The thing is, her whole plan is going perfectly up until Freddy tries to introduce her to his parents. She likes Freddy, she has fun with him and is happy with him, but looking at his parents who she knows for a fact are soulmates and blissfully happy together she suddenly can’t do this anymore and ends up running away. But then Henry is in her elevator, and she loves him and he’s her soulmate and – and she’s the prettiest girl in the office. So she tugs off his stupid coat, because she wants Henry, and she won’t tell him that they’re soulmates, that would be fighting dirty. But she could seduce him the old fashioned way, just once. She’d even settle for just a kiss, just one kiss with her soulmate, she doesn’t think that’s asking a lot. She’d thought she was going to get a whole wonderful life with her soulmate, so she really doesn’t think one kiss is asking too much.
He walks away from her talking about a cat, of all things. God, what a repressed nerd.
So the next day she’s ranting at him in his office, because she can’t believe he’s avoiding her, that’s so messed up, she’s really pretty, and she got half naked in front of him, and this is all his fault in the first place, she wasn’t planning on falling in love with him, he’s a terrible soulmate, she wants a refund, he doesn’t love her and won’t kiss her, and she’s really very pretty, she has to repeat that, so there’s no reason at all for him to have looked so terrified when she got naked –
“Soulmate?” he says, and Eliza’s hands fly to cover mouth, “Eliza, what are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” she says quickly, clasping her hands behind her so he can’t see them shaking, “Nothing at all, you know what I’m going to go.”
She nearly trips out of there she’s running so fast, but Henry sounds so for reals upset when he calls out “Eliza!” that she hesitates and looks back over her shoulder. He’s pale, and she already knew that he didn’t want her for a soulmate, but he almost looks like he’s going to be sick and she honestly didn’t know that he hated her that much.
You’re supposed to make your soulmate happy. She’s going to fix this for Henry, and then she’s going to go home early and drink and cry until she doesn’t feel like throwing herself off the roof. But first she has to make this okay for Henry.
“Don’t stress about it, or whatever,” she forces a smile, walking back over to his desk. He’s not moving at all, just tracking her with his eyes, doesn’t even twitch when she grabs his notepad and pen and scrawls out a quick Thanks on the page before twisting the notepad around so it’s facing him. “It matches, right? It’s not a big deal, you don’t need to go like all noble white knight on me.”
He hasn’t moved and he keeps staring at her. He still looks like he’s going to be sick. Is she really that bad? Well, she must be.
“Look, I asked you to change me because I wanted you to like me,” she explains, “but you don’t like me, because I’m all, you know, social media and wifi and whatever. Which is cool,” she wonders if this is what slitting your own wrists feels like, “because you know, I kinda like who I am, most of the time. I mean, you’ve helped a lot, but I’m not ever gonna be the type of girl that can, I don’t know, watch paint dry with you and get excited about it like you and Julia do. But you don’t have to worry, I’m not going to pressure you into anything!” she concludes brightly. “I won’t tell anyone, and if anyone finds out, like don’t even worry. They totally won’t judge you for not wanting me, no one –” wants me, she thinks but doesn’t say because she needs to fix this for Henry but she still has to be able to walk out of this office without breaking down completely. So what if her family doesn’t approve of her and she doesn’t have any friends and her soulmate doesn’t love her. She’s the top sales rep and – and the prettiest girl in the office. “So you can totally forget about it!” she beams, “In fact, just forget this entire conversation. That would be like totally perfect!”
Then she gives a jaunty little wave and bolts out of there. It’s not until she’s frantically unlocking her car that she realizes she left her phone in Henry’s office. Whatever, that’s totally a tomorrow problem, there’s no way she can force herself to go back and get it. She is wearing mascara today, and she used setting spray anyway, but she’s already crying before she’s out of the garage, so.
~
Henry can’t look away from his notepad. The Thanks she’s written matches the one his chest perfectly, he knows that without even having to check. Eliza is his soulmate.
He stands and is actually surprised that his legs can support him. Eliza’s phone is at the edge of his desk and he picks it up gingerly, as if it might electrocute him. He walks out of his office, and everything feels kind of numb. “Charlie,” he says, “Eliza is my soulmate.”
“I heard,” his assistant says, not looking at him. “Uh, sir, so – I know Eliza is, you know, Eliza. But if you don’t go after her you’re the most butt ever.”
“You make an excellent point,” Henry says, turning Eliza’s phone over in his hands. “Cancel my meetings for the rest of the day,” he orders before striding away.
“You don’t have any meetings!” Charlie calls out, and either that kid is always literal or he just has no sense of drama. Henry’s not sure which one is worse.
She’s not at her desk and according to Joan she said she wasn’t feeling well and went home. He drives more recklessly than he ever has and sends a silent apology to his mother for enforcing stereotypes when he runs a red light. The twenty second elevator ride is the worst of his life, and he runs to her door and bangs on it with his fist, “ELIZA! Eliza, it’s me, open the door!”
Silence.
He slams his fist against the door, and he can’t even pretend that it’s a knock. “Eliza please, please come out and talk to me.” He leans his forehead against her door, “Please.”
“Henry?”
He whirls around and there is Eliza stepping out of the elevator. Her eyes are red and she’s frantically rubbing at her cheeks as if that makes it any less obvious she’s been crying. By his count this is at least the fourth time he’s made her cry. He needs to stop doing this. “I thought you were inside,” he says lamely.
“I got lost,” she admits, “I didn’t have my phone, so I couldn’t use Waze to get back. I thought I was taking a shortcut, but I basically ended up in Balboa.”
That’s – ridiculous, but he’ll address that later. “I’m sorry,” he says, and she’s still all the away across the hall and he wants her closer. “I was just so surprised, I should have – I’m sorry.” He had a whole speech prepared, but now he can’t remember any of it.
She tosses her hair over her shoulder and gives him that famous fake smile. “Henry, totally don’t worry about it. Like you don’t have to pretend to like me or anything, I really won’t tell anyone.” He’s an idiot and he’s going to have to spend the rest of his life making this up to her. If only she’ll let him. But he doesn’t do words and feelings, he’s not good at them. So he strides over to her and grabs her around the waist the same way he had when she’d come over to his house and tried to teach him how to flirt. Her eyes go wide and he presses their foreheads together, because Eliza is everything he isn’t – she’s all his missing pieces, and he needs her, he loves her.
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it,” she repeats, voice higher than normal, “it’s okay, not all soulmates get together! I googled it months ago, so.”
Months. Eliza has been walking around for months thinking her soulmate didn’t want her.
He’s a terrible person.
Henry shifts just enough to press their lips together. Eliza basically melts against him, her hands gripping his waist. “I’m getting a lot of mixed signals here,” she breathes when they part.
“I’m sorry I made you think I wouldn’t want you,” he thinks he’s crying, “Eliza I – you make me feel – I’ve been thinking a lot, recently, about you.” He needs to get this out, he owes her that, but it’s hard and she’s becoming kind of blurry because he’s definitely crying.
The biggest grin breaks out over her face, like he’s a half off sale at Nordstrom. “You think I’m the prettiest girl in the office and want to have red haired Korean babies with me!”
That’s not what – well, actually that’s exactly what he was going to say, more or less. He laughs and nods, because he can’t talk. He’s spent so long never knowing if he’d ever find his soulmate, and he has, and it’s Eliza. The girl he’s fallen in love with is his soulmate.
She unlocks her door, “Come on,” she tugs him inside by his tie, “I want to show you my soul mark. I think you’ll like where it is.”
He’s actually very interested to see his words on her skin, but then she starts stripping off her clothes, and oh.
Okay then.
~
That night he falls asleep with Eliza’s head on his chest where his soul mark is, and he keeps a steady hand on her hip, rubbing a thumb against her own mark.
There’s paperwork to fill out, and the thought of colliding their décor styles when they move in together is horrifying. He still has to tell his mother, and Larry and Saperstein are never going to let him hear the end of this.
But that’s okay. Eliza is his soulmate, and this is the beginning of the happily ever after he’s always wanted.