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Collie Parker is the school’s number one heart throb.
He’s the quarterback of the football team, which gives him a raging dose of the popularity drug. Some argue he’s even the most attractive guy to roam the halls as well, his long, perfectly manicured hair and sharp, dark eyes making him practically irresistable. Unlike most jocks, who attempt to make the lives of anyone with a lower social status a living hell, Collie is nice, real nice, real sweet to everyone. One look, one conversation, one anything from Collie Parker makes anyone swoon.
All the girls want him.
All the girls, and Emmanuel Zuck.
Zuck isn’t a stranger to Collie Parker, not at all. If anything, he considers himself to be well versed when it comes to him. Not that the two are friends— far from it, total opposites— but Collie just happens to be a part of Zuck’s guilty pleasure: the high school football team.
Since Zuck can remember— that being, around the age of twelve— Zuck has gone out of his way to linger around after school, eyeing the football team like he’s a crow and they’re carrion. When asked, he nervously brushes it off as casual school spirit, wanting to get involved with the community, or, his favourite excuse, chat up the girls who loiter by the concessions cart, just waiting for a guy to buy them a soda. No matter how he spins it, though, everything that leaves Zuck’s mouth is a lie.
Zuck watches the football for the boys. The game is an excuse that’s fallen right in his lap, so now he can stare at and oogle the boys for an hour and a half and rarely be questioned. Everyone else is watching, so what’s the big deal? But they aren’t watching the way the boys’ muscles flex as they throw the ball, they aren’t watching the way the uniform clings to their bodies with sweat, especially around the legs. They aren’t drooling over the way the boys crash into each other, tackling and pinning each other’s bodies to the fake grass field. Football is Zuck’s twisted fantasy disguised as America’s favourite game, and Collie Parker happens to play the leading role. He’s the team captain, shows impeccable team comradery, and often points out into the crowd before making a big play. Nobody has ever been able to figure out who he points to, but Zuck secretly wishes that it’s him. A pipe dream, a delusion, a fantasy, he knows. But he likes to let the thought linger, especially when his soulmark begins to itch.
The blessing about football is that it never occurs just once a week. Mondays are game days, however, where people from all across town come out to watch another high school get crushed. The team also hits the field on Tuesdays and Thursdays for practice, which means, twice a week, instead of watching from crowded bleachers, Zuck takes the long way to his guitar lessons in the music block, and keeps his eyes glued on the team as they huff and puff while running laps, tackle dummies, hop through tires. No matter what the warm up exercise is, Zuck has watched it all. He knows which players specialize in which activities, and he’s pretty sure he could rattle off each and every name if asked. But he hopes, silently, that he never is, because he knows that he wouldn’t be able to help his adoration for Collie Parker to come spilling out, like a dam that’s just broken. The floodgates will open, and his reputation— what little he has of one— will be ruined. So he just keeps his mouth shut and allows himself to be a simple voyer.
Sometimes, Zuck feels as though he’s more consistent than the groups of smitten girls who loiter by the fence and shout for attention from the players, always descending into a chorus of high-pitched giggles when they get the looks of distaste they mistake for affection. The girls circulate, and there tends to be a new group every few weeks. Zuck is a familiar face, though, and he knows it. Zuck knows exactly where Collie thrives on the field, and what he’d rather die than have to do.
Zuck’s never actually talked to the kid, but he knows that body language says a lot, and he’s stared at Collie Parker often enough to pick up on the signs. As the quarterback’s biggest fan— mostly in private, of course— Zuck knows that he should be able to have a decent conversation about the stats of his favouruite player, just like he overhears from his father and his friends. Just like they do in real sports, real football, the big leagues, where Collie will most certainly be headed fresh out of high school. That’s two years from now, but scouts are preying on him already, vultures trying to pluck him from the school system and have him play for private ones.
Alright, maybe Zuck knows a little too much about Collie Parker. But he’s not a stalker, not at all. He doesn’t know where Collie lives, doesn’t know anything about his family life, hardly even knows what his voice sounds like. But there’s something about Collie that just draws him in, and perhaps makes the soulmark on his palm itch a litte bit more than usual. But that’s just the nerves getting to him, Zuck thinks. So there’s nothing to be worried about.
Shifting the strap of the guitar that’s slung so carefully on his back, Zuck continues his trek along the gravel path, eyes locked on the field beside him. He peers through the chainlink fence, trying to catch the details of the drills. The players are moving fast, passing back and forth, throwing each other to the floor. Number 23, Pete McVries, tackles Number 47, Raymond Garraty, to the ground, and Zuck watches them giggle. They’re the ‘it’ couple of the school, the biggest thing since sliced bread. It’s only because they found out that their soulmarks matched in seventh grade, and they haven’t been able to let go of each other since. Zuck finds it disgustingly adorable. Their words had matched— the first thing your soulmate ever says to you, etched somewhere on your skin in said soulmate’s handwriting— and they glowed so brightly whenever the two were in proximity to each other, which is, of course, all the damn time, that you might as well get blinded. But nobody really puts it past them. A lot of people don’t find their soulmate that early in life. Zuck knows that he won’t be one of those lucky few, but he’s come to terms with that, he thinks. He hopes, at least, but he knows he stays up late at night thinking about, yearning for that high school soulmate-sweetheart romance he’s always watched movies about, the ones his mama and sister are obsessed with. He has pages upon pages of love songs written for some soulmate whose name he doesn’t even know yet, whose soulmark hasn’t even appeared on his skin yet. That means, of course, that they havn’t spoken even a word to each other yet. So Zuck knows that his high school love is nothing short of a smitten fantasy.
This drill the team is doing is a new one, Zuck thinks, almost as if the players are having some sort of free for all. Narrowing his eyes, Zuck tries to make out where Collie fits into all of this chaos, what role he’s playing, but he just can’t seem to find him. He’s Number 48, wears the number loud and proud on his jersey, and stands out as being tall and broad and handsome. Everything the major leagues will need, perfect television eyecandy.
“Is that a Fender?”
Zuck whips around at the sudden intrusion in his thoughts, his feet kicking a small pile of gravel. Standing behind him— in front of him now, with the way he had almost snapped his own neck turning around— is the eyecandy in question. Collie Parker. Zuck stands silent, shell-shocked, trying to process if this is really happening, if Collie is actually speaking to him, and not just someone behind him that also coincidentally has an electric Fender. Fuck, Zuck thinks, how does he even know what a Fender is? Does he play? Or, the worst option, the one that sends shivers rolling down Zuck’s spine, has Collie seen him walking by the field enough times to learn the brand? Has he been perceived by Collie in the past? Does he know who outcast, music nerd, quiet boy Emmanuel Zuck is? The questions keep ricocheting back and forth in his head, snapping like bolts of lightning, until Zuck stutters out:
“Yeah, a— a green one.”
Zuck almost throws up; as if Collie doesn’t have eyes to see the damn colour. Either way, the response seems to please him, his face lighting up with a bright smile.
“It’s a cool colourway,” he says, “but I prefer the Gibsons, personally. Something about the shape of the body fits better against mine, it’s a little less round.”
Collie taps his football helmet against his thigh in a careful 4/4 rhythm. Zuck has to keep his jaw from falling to the ground. He swallows nervously, hoping that his eyes aren’t popping out of his skull. He’s going to lose it, he thinks. Collie Parker is utterly, sickeningly gorgeous, plays football, and plays guitar? If Zuck wasn’t already obsessively in love, he is now.
“I’ve tried the Gibsons,” Zuck says, trying to fix his posture. “The fret board is more comfortable, but I don’t really have the— the budget? To pick one up right now. This one is my dad’s.”
Zuck attempts to keep his tone civil and nonchalant, as though this is nothing but a regular conversation. But he’s pretty sure he’s about to throw up, die, or both. Wouldn’t that be embarrasing, he thinks, and the looming threat of embarrasment is enough to keep him conscious and upright.
Collie nods along, his hand tensing on where he’s gripping onto the cage of his helmet.
“I’ll let you know if I ever see one cheap, yeah?”
Zuck almost falls over.
“I try to hit the shop every other weekend or so. Stebbins—” he pauses, twisting an eyebrow and gesturing to the field. “You know Stebbins, right? Tall, brooding, blond. Number 38.”
Zuck nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I know the guy.”
“Right, cool,” Collie continues. “Well, he works at Rockin’ Robins, down on King street, and he typically keeps me in the know.”
Zuck’s eyes light up. “Seriously? Thanks, I appreciate that.” Then, fumbling over the nervous thought that it doesn’t seem sincere enough: “A lot, seriously.”
“Don’t mention it,” Collie throws out cooly, moving past Zuck to head towards the entrance of the football field. “I should hit practice, though. Already late making up for some stupid science test, and I think Coach will kill me if he sees me chatting.”
Zuck hums, still reeling with the fact that Collie is talking to him, let alone that he’s just offered to keep an eye out for guitars.
“Talk to you later, though?” Collie asks. His request seems utterly sincere, and it almost sends Zuck’s heart rocketing out of the confines of his chest.
“Yeah, yeah, that sounds good,” Zuck stumbles, watching as Collie shoots him a curt nod and flashes him a smile before pushing the gate open and jogging onto the faux grass.
Zuck exhales deeply, giving himself a moment to recoup. He stands motionless, utterly starstruck, as if he’s just spoken to a Hollywood celebrity and not some teenage boy who walks the same halls as him every day, whose locker is just a few hallways down from his own, who shares the same math teacher two periods apart. Zuck can hardly believe that Collie has taken any single drop of interest in him. Zuck isn’t a pretty blonde, someone of any sort of high social status, much less someone of low social status who is useful for good grades. He’s quite average, at least he thinks so. He knows he’s had girls fawning over him every so often, but he’s never been interested, and they always seem to slink away when a part of Zuck’s skin doesn’t start glowing with whatever mushy pickup line they’ve just used.
Zuck shakes his head and adjusts the bandana that’s begun to slide down to almost obscure his eyes, and decides that he’ll just accept that this has happened. Allow his mind, for at least a little while, to run rampant with the possibility of maybe talking to Collie Parker again, this time for longer than a few minutes. And hopefully with more structured sentences and less tripping over his own words.
Continuing on his path and trying to obscure the smile on his face, Zuck kicks at an abnormally large pebble along the pathway that encircles the football field. He hears the whistle go off, hears the coach shout something and then someone, who’s voice he’s pretty sure is Pete’s— he only knows because they have the same fourth period English class— shouts something back and hollers.
Zuck claws at his hand as he turns the corner towards the music block, absentmindedly sinking his nails into the skin between his thumb and pointer finger. His fantasies, as unrealistic as he knows they are, help him cling on to the delusion that this won’t be just a one-and-done thing, that maybe they’ll have more friendly conversations after this. For once, Zuck doesn’t feel bad about indulging in it. His mind is running on a high of Collie, Collie, Collie, the newest drug, and he doesn’t ever want it to stop.
There’s a note tangled in his guitar’s fretboard Monday afternoon, and it works harder to convince Zuck that their conversation had not been a one time thing.
It’s Valentine's Day today, which always gets Zuck’s mood down, and after five days of complete radio silence, avoidance in the halls, skipping Thursday’s practice— which Zuck had checked— it was clear that Collie was physically ghosting. It feels worse than just being left on read, Zuck thinks, but he can’t say he’s surprised, really. This was a quarterback’s nature; offer kindness and never follow up on it. He’s heard such rumours, witnessed lunch time confrontations from both girls and boys alike. He remembers one specific time where a girl had walked up to Collie’s lunch table, which is always him and the rest of the football team, along with Stebbins’s boyfriend–soulmate Richard Harkness and Patrick Smith and his soulmate–boyfriend James Ewing. The girl had slammed her hands down on the table, shooting everyone’s attention over to the soap-opera show they knew they were about to get. She had railed into him, why hadn’t he been responding to her texts, why had he left the morning after they hooked up? Zuck had tried to keep his head down and mind his own business, but he watched as Collie whispered something to her and escorted her out, muttering into her ear as they pushed through the double doors at the back of the cafeteria.
Zuck had thought that maybe this time would’ve been different, though. He’d thought that Collie would at least say hello again, ask for Zuck’s phone number, maybe even see if they could hang out over the weekend to jam on their respective guitars. But there’s nothing, and it’s as though their initial conversation never even happened.
The next sign of life Zuck gets is a slip of tattered, lined notebook paper slipped in between the frets of his guitar, like a pick that’s not in use. Zuck had left the instrument in the music room over lunch, because no one has ever seemed to really care enough to touch it. Pulling the paper out carefully and unfolding the creases, Zuck finds himself met with a note written in shaking handwriting:
Zuck
Meet me @ the bleachers after school
3pm dont be late
– C.
If this were any other day, in any other circumstance, Zuck would think that this is some sort of stupid, sick joke. He’d believe someone slipped the paper into his guitar to lure him out towards the field to jump him. It’s happened before, back in ninth grade, just hadn’t used Collie as bait. But, the more Zuck studies the note, flipping it over, running the pad of his finger over the edges, almost hoping to get a papercut, he concludes that this doesn’t look malicious at all. The handwriting is rather sloppy, clearly having been written in secrecy and urgency. The placement of the note is very fitting, considering the subject of their previous conversation. This green Fender, Zuck’s pride and joy, is the only connection the two of them have. It’s a blatant sign, Zuck thinks, Collie’s way of letting him know that it’s actually him, that this situation is safe. Even if Zuck’s nerves are screaming at him not to go— and his palm is rather itchy— he grumbles under his breath and packs up his guitar in a hurry as the overhead bell rings for his next class. He hopes, lamely, that he’ll catch a glympse of Collie in the hall.
But Zuck doesn’t see Collie in the hallway. Not even when the final bell rings and the halls erupt into their usual stampede of backpacks and chatter and Zuck practically getting shoulder-checked as he turns the corner.
By the time the clock clicks over to 2:57, Zuck is already halfway across the parking lot.
His palm itches. It’s been doing that all day, and all of last night. It’s been a persistent, crawling sensation, like there’s a spider dancing right in the soft webbing between his thumb and pointer finger. Zuck has scratched it raw without thinking, dragging his nails across skin that refuses to break, or even redden. Every time he looks down, it’s perfectly normal. No mark, no glow. Just itching, and Zuck thinks he’s about to lose his damn mind.
“Great,” he mutters to himself, shifting his guitar strap. “Psychsomatic soulmate bullshit.”
The bleachers loom uphead, their metal ribs catching the late afternoon light. The field is empty, which makes sense, considering it's Friday. The football team doesn’t practice on Fridays; it’s their day off. The silence is strange, though. Zuck’s footsteps crunch on the gravel as he circles around. His heart is pounding hard enough to rattle his ribs and he has to stop for a moment to catch his breath.
Zuck pulls out his phone and eyes the time. It’s 3:00, and the itch on his hand spikes. He hisses under his breath and digs his thumb into the spot, leaning against the underside of the bleachers. The air smells like dust and old gum, and Zuck is about to convince himself that this in fact had been a joke.
“Zuck.”
Zuck startles so violently that his guitar bumps the metal frame with a hollow clang, muffled only slightly by the soft case it’s in.
Collie steps out from between the bleacher supports, and Zuck notices immediately that he looks wrong. Not injured, and Zuck’s pretty sure that he would’ve heard at least a whisper of team captain and quarterback Collie Parker getting injured in a game or a practice. Zuck has heard none of the sort. Collie just looks wound tight. His helmet isn’t with him, his jersey is gone. It’s been replaced with a plain black hoodie which looks so delicate, like it hasn’t seen the inside of a locker room in days. Fridays must be the days where Collie dresses his best, knowing that he’s not going to have to change for practice later. Best, being a black hoodie, but seeing Collie in anything other than a jersey has Zuck’s mind running laps, counting one, two, three, as it races around.
“Hi,” Zuck says. He immediately regrets how small it sounds. “Hey.”
Collie exhales. “Thanks for coming.”
“Yeah,” Zuck says, raising a brow. “You said we’d talk again and then ghosted me for five days. Left a cryptic note in my guitar. Of course I was curious.”
Collie almost winces. Zuck’s never seen Collie Parker wince.
“I know,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry about that. I just needed time to figure out how to say what I need to say. Without—” he grumbles. “Without it sounding absolutely insane.”
Zuck’s stomach flips and he tugs at the skin on his hand again. Collie steps closer to him, and it’s just close enough that Zuck can see the dark circles under his eyes. Five days. When was the last time Collie slept? Zuck wonders, nervously and like a flash of lightning, if it’s come from something that he had said. Had he accidentally said something terribly wrong when they had first met, and just blacked it out of his memory? The wave of embarrassment from the other day comes cascading down again, and the cloud is floating above his head, looming.
“Do you— uhh— do you remember what you said to me?” Collie asks. “When we first talked.”
Zuck blinks. “What part?”
“The first thing,” Collie insists. “And I mean the very first thing.”
Zuck frowns, his eyebrows contorting. He replays the moment in his head, and even though it had been something completely monumental, he just can’t seem to remember the specifics. But his hand tingles again.
“Yeah,” Zuck says slowly. “I think I told you the colour of my guitar? Even though—” he chuckles, “you totally would’ve been able to see it, I mean you were right there.”
Collie swallows, and Zuck forces himself to shut up. Collie does a little spin, raising his head to the sky and holding his face in his hands. His hair is cascading like a waterfall down his back.
“Let me see your hand,” Collie says, outstretching his own. He makes a small grabbing motion with his fingers.
Zuck steps away, clutching his guitar strap close to his chest.
“What?” He asks, genuinely confused. “Why do you need to—”
He absentmindedly scratches at his hand again, and Collie takes that as his opportunity to snatch his wrist in his own iron-strong grip. Zuck yips as he’s pulled over to Collie, and they’re almost chest-to-chest now. Zuck’s pretty sure his heart, lungs, and stomach are all going to bloom from his torso. He feels Collie’s fingers on him, but he can’t help but stare up at his face, with his eyebrows contorting and his eyes widening and his tongue flicking in and out of his pretty lips like a snake tasting the air.
Collie’s fingers ghost over the skin of Zuck’s palm, tickling the spot that’s been itching. Zuck almost shreiks from the sensation and pulls away, clutching his hand to his side.
“What do you think you’re—?”
But Collie is just standing there, static, his brown eyes wide.
“Look at your hand,” he says, almost robotic.
Zuck is pretty sure he’s about to throw up, his nerves running wild, half from the previous sensation of Collie dragging his fingers down his palm— which elicited a much wilder feeling than Zuck knew was possible, like one thousand tiny pin pricks, yet it felt good— and half from the fact that Collie Parker, Collie Parker, is standing here in front of him, and acting so unlike himself. A prank, surely. Zuck glances around from side to side, wondering when the rest of the team is going to leap out and laugh at him for falling for something so stupid. Look at this kid, in love with Collie Parker, so much so that he’ll follow a note so obviously not written by him, just because he’s so smitten. Look at this kid, walking around for the past few years hoping Collie Parker is his soulmate, what an idiot.
But Zuck finally complies, and lifts his hand upwards.
The glow is almost blinding, a slight flicker interrupting the golden shine, like one million tiny stars in the galaxy of skin on his body. Zuck squints, scratches at it again, and he finally— finally!— feels it. The small raised indents on his skin, which Zuck can make out as words, small ones, in scratchy handwriting, with loops and curves for the Ts and Fs and Hs. Zuck jerks his hand back like something’s bitten him. The itch becomes heat, alive, sizzling through his nerves and down into his bones. The glow pulses again, and Zuck’s heart slams against his ribs. He stumbles backwards, catching himself before he can topple to the ground.
“Are you serious?” is all he can muster.
Collie nods, pulling his sleeve back and holding up his opposite hand. On the exact same spot, Collie’s skin glows a delicate golden, and Zuck can just make out the words that are etched onto his skin, the same words he had spoken to him just a mere five days before.
Zuck lets out a breath, and suddenly everything comes reeling home. Collie Parker is his soulmate. His universally-chosen, universally-bonded, honest-to-God, soulmate. Zuck pinches the skin on his arm; he must be dreaming. This isn’t real, it can’t be. But no, it’s all real, because Collie is here, and he’s breathing deep breaths, and Zuck can reach out and touch him. He proves it when he holds Collie’s wrist in his own grasp and uncurls the boy’s fingers to get a closer look at the soulmark. It flickers slightly, and he runs the pads of his fingers over top of it. Collie keens.
“Sorry,” Zuck whispers. He pulls away, and pinches the bridge of his nose after a moment of contemplation. “What a terrible soulmark to have, I’m so sorry.”
Collie laughs, but it comes out thin.
“It’s not— it’s not a big deal,” he says, running a hand through his long hair. “Definately not the first thing my brain leapt to when I found out.”
“When did you find out?” Zuck asks, even though he’s pretty sure he knows what the answer is going to be. Five days ago.
“Five days ago.” Bingo. “When I got home from practice.”
“None of your teammates noticed?” Zuck almost laughs. “Not even Pete McVries, Mr. Obsessed-with-the-idea-of-soulmates?”
Collie laughs for real this time. “No, he didn’t. We were all just too focused on the game, I think, but I saw it when I got home.”
Zuck pauses for a moment, recalculating everything. He bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and shakes his wrist to rid his skin of the itch this time. He doesn’t dare touch the soulmark.
“You disappeared because of this?”
Collie’s jaw tightens.
“I panicked,” he admits. “I mean— Zuck, I’ve had scouts breathing down my damn neck since freshman year. My life is practically scheduled six months out. My parents are already sure that I’m going to make it to the league. And then—” he pauses, his dark eyes raking down Zuck’s body, who shivers. “— I meet this guy and the universe surprises me with the fact that he’s my soulmate.”
Zuck can’t help but flinch at the word, because it feels ten times heavier than it should. All those ideas he had had, those had just been fantasies, fake-realities crafted in his head that he knew would never come true.
“I didn’t want to screw anything up,” Collie continues. “Or you. I didn’t want to scare you, so I avoided you.”
Zuck tries, frantically, to come up with a string of words akin to what he feels. On one hand, he’s relieved to know that he’s not going to be someone who never finds their soulmate. For a lot of people, it’s not always easy. On the other hand, though, he’s absolutely petrified. Sick to his stomach, scared. Not because it’s a boy, no, Zuck has made peace with that long ago. But because it’s Collie Parker. High school heart throb Collie Parker, who has a whole life ahead of him, who can’t be taken away from the success he’s going to have because of some stupid soulmate. Zuck looks down at his hand, still glowing. The words pulse gently, a heartbeat on the outside of his body. His second heart, he thinks. So what if it belongs to Collie Parker?
“I didn’t tell anyone yet,” Collie says. “Not Stebbins, not Pete, not Ray. Nobody. I— I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Why?” Zuck asks. It’s a stupid question, and he curses himself for asking it as soon as the words leave his mouth.
“It’s your life, too,” Collie says simply, shrugging. “I didn’t want to drag you into anything without asking.”
Zuck studies him. Studies his frame, his figure, the muscles he can see even under his hoodie. Zuck has always known that Collie’s not the cocky quarterback everyone swoons over, not the one who’s mean and a bully like in all those high school movies. He’s nervous, honest, and trying, and somehow, that’s worse. But he’s still a football player with a high reputation.
“Do you like football?” Zuck asks.
It takes a moment for Collie to nod, but he does. He’s fiddling with one of his hoodie strings.
“I want this to happen, Zuck,” he says. He gestures vaguely between them. “I want us to happen. The universe clearly does.”
Zuck nods slowly, once, twice, three times, hoping that the more times he does it, the faster he’ll come up with a slew of words to say.
“I want it to happen, too,” he says. “I’ve liked you for a long time, but—” he pauses. “— but I know you like football, and I assume you want to keep that up?”
Collie nods. “Yeah. But I want to keep you, as well.”
Zuck chews on his lip, shifts on his feet. His guitar suddenly feels a thousand times heavier. He glances around and catches sight of Ray and Pete bounding across the parking lot together, hands intertwined. They’re giggling and laughing all the while, and they share a kiss before entering Pete’s sadan. Pete and Ray are special. They’re well known, they’re well accepted, in most cases. But Zuck knows that’s something not everyone can get. He turns back to Collie.
“I don’t want the fact that I’m your soulmate to ruin your reputation, Collie.”
Collie coughs violently. “Wh— you think it would ruin my reputation?”
“Yeah, I mean, Ray and Pete are only accepted because they’ve been bonded so long, and—”
“Zuck.”
“— and, I don’t know, they’re Ray and Pete, like they’re perfect for each other, anyone who looks at them wrong is like, immediately jumped, so I don’t—”
“Zuck.”
“— It’s just that— oh.” Zuck pulls his ramblings to a halt. “Yes, what, sorry?”
There’s a grin on Collie’s face, and it grows bigger as Zuck meets his eyes. He flashes sharp white teeth.
“Everyone’s known I’m into guys since sixth grade.”
“Oh.”
“So it’s really not a big deal, I promise.”
Zuck’s mind whirls around. He feels like he’s just been dropped into a drying machine and sent on a tumble setting.
“But what about that girl you—”
Collie guffaws. “That was my sister. She was angry I wasn’t responding to her texts, which were all just her ranting about how some guy had left our place immediately after hooking up, oh my God.”
Zuck’s mouth drops open and he has it in himself to laugh as well. “I guess I just didn’t know.”
“I didn’t expect you to,” Collie says. “You’re all good.”
Zuck looks over at him. Collie’s weight is leaning on one side, a hand pressed lazily against his hip. His head is tilted at an angle and he’s looking at Zuck as though he’s some sort of prized art piece he’s studying. Zuck can’t quite place the expression on his face. It’s blank, almost, like a plethora of thoughts are running through his brain all at once. Zuck’s spirits fall; perhaps he doesn’t think he’s pretty enough to be his soulmate. Maybe he doesn’t like him at all, and everything he’s saying is all talk. Maybe Collie knows Zuck is his soulmate, but maybe he doesn’t want him. Doesn’t want to kiss him and make it all permanent.
But the last look, the one that matters the most, is one of sweetness, Collie’s face softening and his lips curling into a soft smile. It’s almost like he’s offering Zuck a sense of security, safety, right here under the high school bleachers. He’s not doing this for any malicious intent, to up his own reputation, to drag Zuck into the mud.
Zuck isn’t sure what he expects when he steps closer and rears up to kiss Collie Parker, but he’s quite satisfied with what he gets. With the small noise that Collie makes, and the way he tenses for a moment but then melts into it all, with the way he snakes an arm around Zuck’s waist and pushes him forward, their chests molding together, hearts beating in tandem. Zuck’s body is burning alive, especially the spot on his hand, which comes to tangle in Collie’s tidalwave of hair, the strands falling through his fingers, fantastical.
The thoughts of a first kiss always came easy to Zuck, but the person he had been kissing was never named, instead just a chimera assembled from the bodies of movie stars, classmates, strangers alike. Some amalgamation of everything Zuck ever thought he was supposed to love, every idea of what his universally-bonded soulmate could be. The figure had grown to be something reminiscent of Collie in the passing months, soft lips and strong hands and soft hair, but nothing was as good as the real thing. Nothing was as good as the boy with dark eyes and a tether to his soul.
They’re kissing because this is what the universe has made for them.
Zuck finally pulls away when he finds that he can no longer breathe. But, if given the chance, he’d lose all breath for Collie Parker. The glow from Zuck’s hand reflects faintly in Collie’s eyes. Zuck stares at him hard, trying to frame the picture in his memory. His pupils are dilated, lips red and glossy, spit coating them like lipgloss. The neckline of his hoodie has been stretched down his shoulder to reveal more of the tawny skin there. It’s so beautiful, Zuck thinks. They should hang it in the Louvre.
“I’m really glad it’s you,” Collie says.
Zuck feels his heart stutter. That’s all he’s ever needed to hear.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I’m glad it’s us.”