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The past few years of Audrey Jensen’s life have been defined by loving Emma Duval.
Not that she’d reduce herself to her romantic interests or anything like that. She’s an independent woman who can function on her own, with or without a significant other. But her love for Emma has caused a lot of important events to happen in her life, which is why she says these years have been defined by it. And also, finding out that Emma is her soulmate is pretty life-changing.
Emma and Audrey met when they were four years old. The first words out of Audrey’s mouth had been, “You have really pretty hair.” (Stupid, she knows.) And Emma had replied, “You have pretty eyes.” Those words have been lazily scrawled across her wrist since her twelfth summer, when they’d first appeared and Audrey had initially discovered that her best friend was also her soulmate. Which was convenient, because Audrey’s always been kind of in love with her.
The thing is, Emma’s special, in more ways than one, but one of her most unique traits is the utter absence of a soulmate tattoo. She’s been waiting sixteen years, checks herself every morning to see if black cursive script has appeared somewhere, but Emma’s body is still a blank page. She has no idea who her soulmate is.
And for four years, Audrey’s been praying that someday, You have really pretty hair will show up on her best friend’s skin.
Except they’re not best friends anymore. Not really. Emma left her for Nina Patterson and her cronies last year, and she’s only just re-entered Audrey’s life, and honestly everything has been so crazy lately. Emma’s crazy half-sister, the actual daughter of Brandon James, had murdered not just Nina, but also Tyler O’Neill, Riley Marra, Sheriff Hudson, Will Belmont, and, most devastatingly of all, Rachel Murray.
Rachel. Rachel was the girl that Audrey turned to after Emma left; they’d met through an online forum for film geeks, though Audrey can’t even look at a camera after Piper’s rampage, and clicked instantly. She hadn’t been Emma, not by any means, but she had been sweet and funny and good to Audrey. They weren’t soulmates. Rachel never told her she had pretty hair, and the first thing that Audrey’d said to her wasn’t anywhere close to the It’s so nice to meet you on Rachel’s leg. But she’d been there, and she’d been enough.
She’d been killed in a staged suicide by Piper, and it’s all Audrey’s fault. Even now, three weeks after Piper’s reveal and a month and a half after Rachel’s death, Audrey still can’t sleep at night. She wrote the letters to Piper begging her to come to Lakewood, so they could film a “revenge documentary exposing the true nature of the pretty people”. Yeah, that never happened. Instead, Rachel ended up in a morgue with a rope around her neck, and Piper’s body still hasn’t been found. And Emma, her soulmate — Emma’s fucking devastated.
But Emma doesn’t even know they’re soulmates. She’s dating Kieran Wilcox, Sheriff Hudson’s son who’d only just moved to Lakewood back in October. Audrey doesn’t trust him, not really, but she guesses she could call him her friend. Her, Kieran, Emma, Brooke, Jake, Noah — they’ve all gotta stick together. They’ve been dubbed the Lakewood Six, the survivors of Piper Shaw’s murder spree, and as such, they’d fall apart without each other. It’s just the way things are now. And Audrey’s never told Emma that they’re soulmates, partially because she doesn’t want to ruin their friendship, and also because when she gets her tattoo, she wants it to be special for Emma. She feels like she’d be spoiling the whole thing by telling Emma, Oh, yeah, we’ve been friends for twelve years, and you’re my soulmate by the way. Although when freshman year happened, she had been left wishing she’d told the other girl.
So. It’s three weeks after the reveal. Emma’s heading off to rehab tomorrow, her way of learning how to cope with the permanent scar that Piper’s left on her heart. They’re sitting on Emma’s bed, sharing a bottle of Cheerwine (Audrey’s favorite) and flipping through old scrapbooks. And Audrey’s debating whether or not to tell her.
But then Emma reaches over her to grab the Cheerwine, and the hem of her shirt lifts up and Audrey catches a glimpse of black. Black. “Whoa, Emma,” she says slowly, “did you get your soulmate tattoo?”
“Oh, yeah,” Emma grins. “I actually got it last year, on my fifteenth birthday. Wanna see it?”
And of course Audrey stutters out a yeah, because this is it, this is the moment she’s been waiting for since she was twelve. Fantasies are suddenly rushing through her brain, images of Emma’s hip reading You have really pretty hair and her pulling Audrey in for a kiss, soundbites of Emma going, “You’re my soulmate, Auds,” and all the delicious words that would come to follow after that.
She’s giddy, happier than she’s been in a long time, because she's got her soulmate, and she may have brought Piper to Lakewood but the black words that Emma is about to show her will prove that she is not irredeemable and she has a chance. This is the beginning of the rest of her life, the day she finds her soulmate, the kind of thing they show in the movies and write about in romance novels. Audrey’s smiling, probably wider than Emma’s ever seen her smile before, and watches as Emma pulls up her shirt and displays the words on her hip, the ones that read No, no, you’re okay —
Wait, what? Those aren’t the first words Audrey said to her.
Audrey re-reads the words again and the throbbing in her chest alerts her to the very real sensation of her heart cracking in two. Because she’s not Emma’s soulmate. She quickly glances at her right wrist, just to double-check that You have pretty eyes is still there, and yup, it is. And Audrey may sometimes be naïve when it comes to Emma Duval, but she’s the farthest thing from stupid, and it doesn’t take her brain long to figure out what’s going on.
She’s what they call an unrequited soulmate. The genetic flaw, the scientific abnormality they make specials about on CNN, the 1% of the world whose soulmate is not matched to them. Someone who is not the soulmate for their soulmate. Audrey Jensen is part of the 7 million people on this earth who will never be truly loved back.
Well, it makes sense. You’re a terrible person. You brought Piper to Lakewood, you weren’t with Rachel the night she died, you never told Emma that she had a half-sister. You don’t deserve a soulmate. Serves you right. Those are the thoughts that preoccupy her mind, and she’s vaguely aware of Emma droning on about how it’d shown up, and Audrey had been the first person she’d wanted to call but they hadn’t been friends then, but Audrey’s not listening. Her ears are ringing with words unspoken, words she’d wanted to say and words she’d never wanted to hear.
“Audrey? Are you okay?” Emma’s hand is on her shoulder, gentle but still enough to make Audrey finally shatter, and she’s up in a flash, grabbing her bag off the floor and storming towards the door.
“What’s going on? Did I say something wrong? Audrey?” Emma calls after her, following her downstairs and all the way out onto the Duvals’ front yard, but all Audrey can think is I’m not enough for anyone, and then she’s driving away, leaving Emma a distant blur in the background.
As she should be. Because that’s all you’ll ever be to her.