Kayla is 20 years old, and she has no idea what she is doing with her life.
Of course, that isn’t the most pressing issue at the moment. Right now, she’s at a lesbian bar in Boystown, Chicago trying to convince the bouncer to accept her fake ID.
“C’mon, you let all my friends in,” Kayla argues, motioning to her friends already walking into the bar. If she wasn’t one of the only handful of juniors who hasn’t hit the sweet age of 21 yet, she’d easily be joining them.
The bouncer hands Kayla her fake back. “Yeah, because their IDs are all legit. This is a fake.”
Sighing, Kayla caves. “Okay, but I’m basically 21. My birthday is literally in two weeks. Please, dude, just let me in.”
The bouncer gestures for Kayla to step aside. “No can do. Please get out of the line so I can let other people in.”
Just as Kayla is about to accept defeat, she suddenly feels a hand on her shoulder and hears someone behind her say, “She’s with me, Mel.”
Mel stares at the person for a few seconds before they step aside, granting access to the entrance. Thank god, because Kayla wasn’t ready to take the train alone back to her apartment.
She doesn’t turn around to look at the person who miraculously saved her until they’re inside the bar, surrounded by loud people and flashing lights. Her breath hitches in her throat when she realizes that the person who saved her is maybe one of the most gorgeous people she has ever seen.
The flashing neon lights illuminate their brown skin and make every curl in their hair more visible than they had been in the dim street light outside the bar. Their amber eyes mischievously glint as they move forward through the crowd with a purpose.
“Get a better fake. Mel never questioned mine,” the person says with a grin. They stick their hand out. “Jasmine.”
“Kayla.”
When Kayla places her hand in Jasmine’s, she anticipates a handshake. Instead, Jasmine takes Kayla’s hand and leads her to the bar. They lean against the counter, and the butch bartender walks over with a friendly smile. “Jas!”
“Viv! Great to see you. Can I get a usual and…” Jasmine pointedly glances at Kayla.
“Strawberry lemonade vodka for me, please,” Kayla adds, doing her best not to yell in Jasmine’s ear, even though she’s not sure Viv can hear her over the Kesha song blaring from the speakers.
“A fruity drink enjoyer,” Viv teases as he throws Kayla a playful wink. “Coming right up.”
Kayla takes a step closer to Jasmine, reducing the distance so much so that their arms are pressed together. She realizes that Jasmine’s taller than her even though she’s wearing platform shoes (it’s not her fault that she has a thing for tall women!) and tries not to sound too enamored as she asks, “Come here often?”
Jasmine shrugs, tapping their finger against the wooden counter to the beat of the music. “Guess you could say that. Been coming here since my first year of college. You?”
“Sometimes. It’s my first time at this bar, but I come to Boystown with my friends a lot,” Kayla answers. She scans her field of vision for her aforementioned friends but can’t even find one out of the five people she arrived with. Whatever. They’re really more of acquaintances anyway. Doesn’t really matter.
At least, that’s what she tells herself, until Viv hands her the glass of vodka and she tilts her head back, downing half of her drink in one gulp before Jasmine even pays for the drinks. Okay, maybe it bothers her more than she wants to admit.
Jasmine watches with their mouth half-open in amusement. “Whoa there, slow down. It’s only 10 p.m.”
“Sorry,” Kayla replies, wincing at the bitter aftertaste of vodka that the strawberry lemonade couldn’t completely mask. “I’ve had a rough day.”
“I hear you.” Taking a sip of their mojito, Jasmine holds out their hand to Kayla again. “You a dancer?”
Because Kayla doesn’t really give a shit anymore about what others think of her (it doesn’t get more embarrassing than having to beg a bouncer to accept your fake), she thinks, “Fuck it,” and follows Jasmine to the dance floor.
Dancing becomes a lot more fun when the alcohol starts settling in. Kayla always told her friends it’s cost-efficient to be lightweight, and she’s never been so glad to get tipsy enough to avoid overthinking what she’s doing. Sure, Kayla’s extroverted, but there’s something about liquid courage that makes it so much easier to be as outgoing as she used to be.
Plus, Jasmine’s fun. They join in when Kayla sings along to a dance remix of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” unafraid to belt the lyrics at the top of their lungs. They don’t seem to care that their hair is getting messy in the process of dancing to the music—in fact, they embrace it, sending Kayla a wink as they run their hands through their curls.
After the Lady Gaga song playing ends, Kayla leans over to Jasmine and cups her hand to Jasmine’s ear. “Hey, want to get a breath of fresh air?”
Jasmine nods, and they escape the crowd of sweaty gays to exit into the back alley. As Jasmine opens their mouth to make some sort of joking remark to ease the palpable tension in the air, Kayla decides to avoid the sweet talk and directly leans forward to kiss Jasmine with a ferocity that can’t mask her desperation for a distraction.
“Wow, you’re very forward,” Jasmine remarks when they finally break apart.
“Hey, you’re the one who bought me a drink,” Kayla teases, looping her arms around Jasmine’s shoulder as she presses them against the wall.
“Fair point.” With that, Jasmine pulls Kayla closer by the collar of her button-down shirt and kisses her like their life depends on it. The overwhelming wave of want that washes over Kayla terrifies her, for she hasn’t felt anything like it since… Whatever. Kayla squeezes her eyes shut even more as she kisses Jasmine until she doesn’t have to think anymore.
The next morning, Kayla wakes up, grabs a crumpled oversized t-shirt from next to her mattress, and pulls it over her body, making sure it covers her boxers before she rolls out of bed. A small smile fights its way onto her face as she glances at Jasmine’s sleeping figure, still in peaceful slumber.
She heads into her kitchen and prepares breakfast. Four pieces of bread make themselves at home inside the toaster, and the jar of peanut butter finds its way onto the dining table. Kayla realizes how weird it is that she’s making sandwiches with only peanut butter, but she figures that Jasmine wouldn’t care anyway. They’re easygoing, and they’re exactly what Kayla needs.
Kayla is smearing peanut butter across the crisp toast when Jasmine wanders into the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, and yawns, “Good morning.”
“Morning.” Kayla hands Jasmine a plate with a peanut butter sandwich. A few crumbs tilt off the plate and topple onto the tiled floor, but Jasmine doesn’t notice the pieces. Kayla, however, has the urge to pick them up and hide them, embarrassed to have something that she made fall apart so easily.
“Thanks.” Jasmine’s eyes trail down to the blue star tattoo above Kayla’s knee. There’s no mistaking it for anything other than a soulmark.
Though Kayla can feel herself visibly tense up, she tries to play it down by turning her back to Jasmine as she prepares her own peanut butter sandwich. “What, are you a believer?”
“Nope. Never really bought the soulmates thing.” Jasmine pauses to take a bite of their peanut butter sandwich. “My mom and dad were soulmates, and my mom ended up getting remarried to someone she’s a lot happier with. The soulmate system is fucked up.”
“Sounds like my parents,” Kayla admits. She sits across from Jasmine, sticking her leg out so her ankle presses against theirs. “My mom and dad were soulmates too, and they were, like, so incompatible. But they didn’t really care and had me anyway because they figured I’d fix their marriage. They didn’t end up getting divorced, but now, my mom is somewhere in the world doing god knows what. Been skeptical of love and all that since then.”
“Shit. Guess soulmates aren’t for us, then.” Jasmine rubs their hands together, getting rid of the crumbs sticking to their fingers. Then, they lean across the table and carefully place their thumb on the corner of Kayla’s mouth. “Hold still.”
As Kayla freezes, feeling Jasmine’s thumb rubbing away the peanut butter smeared on the corner of her mouth, she spots Jasmine’s soulmark, a daffodil in green. She wonders if, at any point, Jasmine too had once thought that maybe soulmate love wasn’t bullshit.
Her breath catches in her throat, but Kayla manages a grateful grin, “Thanks.”
Jasmine lets their thumb softly linger on Kayla’s cheek for a moment. Kayla doesn’t complain.
Clearing their throat, Jasmine stands up and places the plate in the sink. “I should get going. It was nice meeting you, Kayla.”
“You too, Jas,” Kayla chuckles as she follows Jasmine to the front door and watches them slip into their shoes. “You have my number if you ever need anything.”
“Yeah. I’ll see you around.”
With one last sly smile, Jasmine walks out of the apartment. Something inside Kayla breaks the apathy that begs her to close the door and forget about Jasmine. Instead of listening, Kayla stares after Jasmine and allows herself to feel an emotion that resembles what she used to call hope for the first time in a while.
☆
There are 172 unread messages on Kayla’s phone. She wishes that she could say it’s the result of her forgetfulness, but the truth is that she’s become an expert in ignoring the countless texts from her high school classmates.
What little her classmates know about here includes three things:
- Kayla is studying art history. From the countless photos of paintings in famous museums she visited on class field trips, she figures that her ex-classmates have figured out that she is studying art in college. But her classmates have never been too observant, considering they couldn’t tell that she wasn’t the same person in senior year that she was in junior year. They all thought she’d stay the same. They all thought she’d stay.
- Kayla is single. She has never posted a photo of her kissing anyone. Every year, on national girlfriend day, she avoids all socials until about a week after everyone has stopped posting photos of their girlfriends. Her disappearance is mysterious and random to those who don’t note the date.
- Kayla wants nothing to do with high school. She has not texted anyone from high school since she got to college, not even her closest friends, who she used to go to every party with. Part of her wants to figure out why she’s terrified of talking to people who used to be so important to her, but she’s a lot happier believing that she’s naturally not as nostalgic as her high school classmates.
If the third point holds true, logically, Kayla should be more deeply involved with her college friend. Instead, at the end of her junior year, she turns down trip offers from her college friends in favor of holing up in her apartment during the summer. Well, holing up is an exaggeration—she’s working at her university’s art museum. It hardly counts as a job, and the minimum-wage pay illustrates it too.
So, truthfully a typical summer day would look like her spending the morning at the art museum, and, in the evenings, taking the train to Jasmine’s apartment while texting her dad a hasty “thank you” for paying the apartment rent or hitting “ignore” on text notifications from her high school classmates. Sure, it’s a soul-draining, boring routine, but going through the motions makes it all the more easier to let life pass her by.
Somewhere in between all that, Kayla internally wrestled with the idea that there should be a label for her relationship with Jasmine, if she could stop denying that there’s a relationship there. Kayla Danvers doesn’t do relationships or romance or anything that involves emotional vulnerability. Not anymore, at least.
On the last day of June, after thirty days of her monotonous summer routine, Kayla takes the train and arrives at Jasmine’s apartment at 8 p.m., expecting they’d have a normal night in. But before she knocks, Jasmine throws open the door, loops their arm into Kayla’s, and announces, “We’re going out tonight!”
“Boystown?” Kayla asks skeptically, raising an eyebrow as Jasmine drags her down the hallway.
“You’ll see.”
Jasmine’s mischievous smile that only comes out when they have a surprise planned appears. While Kayla Danvers also doesn’t do surprises, for some reason, she doesn’t try to fight Jasmine’s lead.
They take the train to an area of Chicago that Kayla has never been to, and once they exit the train station, Jasmine covers Kayla’s eyes with their hands and promises they’re taking her somewhere safe. A fleeting moment of panic seizes Kayla as she wonders if maybe Jasmine is going to drag her into a dark alleyway and stab her. Maybe Kayla should’ve never gone to the bar and met Jasmine in the first place. It might’ve been better if she had just never—
“Okay, open your eyes,” Jasmine instructs as they drop their hands.
As Kayla slowly peels her eyes open, the tension visibly disappears from her shoulders as she takes in her surroundings. Around her are bushes and trees adorned with fairy lights, and though the light is faint, Kayla can see individual blades of grass bunched up underneath her shoes. Where the grass ends, the water begins; a thin moat stretches out in front of the field.
The sight is breathtaking, and somehow, in the midst of the bustling city of Chicago, the peace in the garden seems unbreakable by the distant roar of trains and cars. It’s quiet, safe, and unfamiliar to Kayla.
“One of my friends works here at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. She let me borrow the keys for tonight,” Jasmine remarks as they drink in Kayla’s shocked expression. “I know you said that you don’t like dates, but consider this a… friendly hang-out.”
Kayla wraps her arms around Jasmine’s waist, pulls them closer, and chuckles, “You’re a really good friend.”
“You’re not too bad of a friend yourself.”
Jasmine tilts forward and kisses Kayla, and if this was a movie, this would be the moment Kayla asks Jasmine to be her partner. Or perhaps this would be the moment that Kayla finally admits to herself that she’s still capable of love. Instead, at that moment, Kayla feels an impending sense of doom, as if she knows there’s an oncoming car, but she’s frozen in place because she understands there’s nothing she can do to stop the crash.
Two weeks after visiting the botanical garden, Kayla receives a message from her father that her mother has passed away. That is the first day in the summer where Kayla’s routine is disrupted. Instead of working, she stays holed up in her apartment for a whole day. Instead of taking the train to see Jasmine, she sends a vague text that she won’t be in town for the next few weeks. Then, at the end of the day, she does what she has learned to do best, which is ignoring all the texts from the one person who cares about her.
In all fairness, Kayla has more important things to worry about than her not-situationship. Her mother, who she hasn’t seen in 10 years, is dead.
It wasn’t like you were ever going to see her again when she was alive. And if you did, it wasn’t like she would ever apologize for all the damage she’s done to you, a wicked voice inside her head whispers. Deep down, she knows it’s true. But just because her mother had decided to give up on being a parent, it doesn’t mean that Kayla ever stopped being her daughter, ever stopped hoping that one day, she’d be able to find safety in the arms of a woman who had given her everything but.
She flies back to her hometown for the wake. According to her dad, her mom was found dead in Nevada (which, in Kayla’s opinion, might be one of the worst states to die in), but she’d once requested to be buried where she’d settled down and she hadn’t updated her will since. It’s so typical of her mother to make a commitment and ultimately forget that words and actions hold substantial weight.
When Kayla shows up to the wake with her father, both dressed in all black, the numbness coating her skin remains impenetrable against the “Sorry about your loss”s and “She was a wonderful woman”s the strangers in her house casually dropped like dynamite. Somewhere in there, a person had thrown in, “She would be proud of you,” and Kayla wanted nothing more than to scream that her mother never thought her daughter was even worth her disappointment. If she did, she would’ve stayed and berated Kayla for failing to meet her expectations, and as insane as it sounds, Kayla would’ve rather had that than not have her in her life at all.
The first familiar faces she spots are her grandparents. Though Kayla has long forgotten all the Marathi her mother had attempted to teach her when she was in elementary school, she still remembers how to greet them. “Namaskar, Aaji and Ajoba.”
Her grandmother sits silently next to her grandfather, who addresses Kayla with a nod and a simple, “Nice to see you, Kayla.”
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Kamat,” Kayla’s father says with a solemn expression, contrasting the tight grin he always forced around Kayla’s grandparents.
Kayla’s grandmother glances over at Kayla while speaking to Kayla’s father. “So, Kayla hasn’t been practicing Marathi, I assume.”
“No. If Arushi had stayed, Kayla could’ve stayed connected to her culture. Maybe you should’ve told her that before she left,” Kayla’s father tensely retorts, tightening his grip on Kayla’s shoulders.
Narrowing his eyes with restrained dislike, Kayla’s grandfather says, “We all have our regrets.”
In Kayla’s case, she doesn’t have regret as much as she has resentment that grows every time someone tries to offer their sympathies.
“She’s always been so supportive,” says her mother’s old co-worker, unaware that Kayla’s mother hadn’t showed up to her high school graduation, leaving her as one of the few kids who didn’t have both parents, not to mention any relatives, to cheer supportively when she walked onto the stage.
“She was always so brave,” says the woman from the bowling league her mother used to be a part of, oblivious that her mother left in the same year Kayla told her parents she’d never bring home a boyfriend. If she knew that her mother had been the one to talk her father into withdrawing the deposit for that summer camp, terrified that she’d be caught with another girl, the woman definitely wouldn’t be talking with such fondness in her voice for a woman that she barely knew.
“She must’ve loved you so much,” says the woman who is ignorant to the fact that Kayla has spent years hating herself because she wonders if she could’ve been more worthy of her mother’s love, her mother could’ve stayed. Instead, she’s spent the past few nights wondering if she was the reason that her mother decided that dying in Nevada, out of all places, was better than being a parent to her.
All this resentment festers antithetically to the speech that Kayla’s father reveals that she has to give at the funeral in a week. What a cruel irony it is: a daughter writing a farewell address to a mother she had bid goodbye to years ago.
In writing the speech, she has somehow grown closer to her mother as she’s forced to recount the few memories that she has locked away to ease the pain of remembering. But she somehow pieces together a speech with carefully constructed euphemisms for abandonment and censored negative memories, knowing that speaking ill of the dead wouldn’t make the past any easier to bear.
“My mother used to take me on walks to the park. She used to help me carry home all the picture books I checked out from the library.” And she would leave me at the library for hours because she didn’t want to pick me up and go home to a man she wished wasn’t her husband.
“She was kind to everyone in her life. The ladies that she went to the bowling league with always brought her home-baked goods that she’d bring back home to share with me and Dad because they knew that she was always too busy to learn how to bake.” And sometimes, she’d throw them at my father when they argued, once, even furiously enough to leave a bruise on his forehead that didn’t fade before they had to go to a parent-teacher conference together.
“As some of you may know, I haven’t seen my mother in a while, but I don’t think I could ever forget her even if I tried. It’s…” Hard being her daughter. Complicated to explain why I still can’t forgive her even if I really want to. “It’s clear that she’s also had this sort of impact on everyone she’s ever met. I’m sure that if you ask anybody in this room about what their first impression of her was, they’d bring up a time that she had extended love to them. She always gave her everything when she loved.” And abandoned it when she stopped.
“Today is a sad day, but I know that even though she isn’t here with us, my mother’s legacy and impact will live beyond her for years to come.”
At least, with the last sentence, Kayla cruelly and genuinely believes it with all her heart.
☆
The week that Kayla returns to Chicago, at the end of July, she does her best to hide her sleep deprivation and sour mood, though she does it poorly because Jasmine, the only person she has to fake it for, shoots her worried glances when they don’t think she’s looking.
Being the fantastic friend they are, Jasmine does their best to cheer Kayla up. They bring Kayla’s favorite ice cream to her apartment when they’re hanging out together. They don’t pry to find out what’s up, instead opting to keep up the imitation of normalcy for Kayla’s benefit, which is all fine and great until it isn’t.
One night, when Kayla arrives at Jasmine’s apartment, Jasmine drags her over to the telescope that they set up next to their apartment window. “Look! My friend let me borrow this tonight. He told me that there’s supposed to be an awesome meteor shower tonight. We should be able to see it from here.”
Oblivious to Kayla’s darkening mood, they ramble on, “You mentioned that astronomy was your favorite class in high school, so I thought you would really enjoy this.”
“Okay,” Kayla says, staring blankly at the skyline. As frustrated as she is, she has to admit that the view of the city has always been fantastic from Jasmine’s apartment. The apartment is high up enough for the towers and apartment buildings to remain visible while still offering enough space to share with the night sky as if they have a mutual agreement about how to share the limited space in the world.
Jasmine crosses their arms, and though they don’t audibly sigh, Kayla can tell that they desperately want to. “Kayla, I hate to ask this, but what the fuck has been going on with you lately?”
“Nothing,” Kayla lies.
“I’m serious. I’m really trying to be accommodating, but I have my limits. I can’t keep doing this if you won’t open up to me,” Jasmine retorts. Their words come across more like a plea than an accusation, but Kayla can’t recognize the difference between concern and anger anymore.
“I don’t need your help.”
“Fine, but, like, can you just be honest with me about at least one thing?” Kayla shifts her gaze to finally meet Jasmine’s eyes for the first time since she’s walked in. “What do you believe in?”
Frowning, Kayla clarifies, “Like, my religion?”
“No, I mean in general. I can’t figure out what the fuck you believe in because you tell me that you don’t believe in love and you don’t believe in opening up, so what the fuck do you believe in? Do you just want to keep all this shit to yourself until you die alone?” Now, Jasmine’s tone is exasperated, and Kayla becomes more at ease with the recognition of one of the emotions she’s lived in for years.
“Yes, actually. What the fuck did you think this was? Did you think we were dating? Did you think we’d be soulmates?” Kayla spits out the last word mockingly. Both of them know that no matter how much or how little they try, a happy ending does not exist for them. Quite literally, their stories have already been written in the stars, and the stars said fuck any chance at love for Kayla because she’s already lost everything, so what’s one more?
Instead of getting even more riled up, Jasmine deflates, sighing tiredly as they point to the door. “Get out of my apartment.”
The urge to worsen the situation and hurt Jasmine even further threatens to control Kayla, but she doesn’t have any words to weaponize anymore. So, she walks away with her back turned to Jasmine.
On the train ride back to her apartment, Kayla absentmindedly traces her forearm. The summer before graduating high school, she proudly told her friends, “I want to get a moon tattoo.”
One of her friends gave her a curious look. “Why?”
“To prove that my soulmate tattoo doesn’t mean anything, duh,” Kayla responded easily, causing her friends’ curiosity to morph into concern. “Plus, the moon is brighter than the stars, so it’s more important and valuable.”
She didn’t end up getting that tattoo, of course. Because who would want the moon when there are infinite stars to chase? Who would want to live forever if there’s nothing to fight for?
☆
Relieved isn’t strong enough of a word to describe how Kayla feels after she graduates from college. She can sense her father’s disappointment about her lack of a guaranteed job during graduation, but when she asks, “Do you think you could cover my rent for a little more while? I’ll find something in no time?”, he begrudgingly agrees anyway.
She fulfills her promise, acquiring a job as an art archives assistant at an art museum in New York. But just because she has a job, it doesn’t mean that she finally gets her life together or stops bringing girls back to her apartment at night and never seeing them again after the break of dawn. But again, she’s just having fun; there’s no harm or foul involved.
Besides, she’s made tons of friends by going out to gay bars. And it doesn’t matter if she’s not particularly close with any of them beyond them texting her to ask if she wants to join them at a club on a Friday night. It’s a reliable system she’s crafted for herself that allows her to ostensibly maintain a healthy social life.
All that is shattered one fateful day in June on the subway. She’s heading to Brooklyn alone to meet up with her friends at a new lesbian bar that opened when she spots a familiar face and stares in shock.
That can’t be her. But, the longer Kayla looks, the more she grows certain that it is. Out of the thousands of people that Kayla has encountered since meeting her, nobody else has even come close to seeming just as stunning at first glance. Even though she has a strange blue flower tattoo on her cheek that makes Kayla do a double take, Kayla has never been more sure of anything in her life. That has to be her.
Yet, it seems impossible that after so many years, they’ve ended up in the same place at the same time. However, if that is so, then there’s no denying what Kayla had figured out years ago when they had both been so young and worried about the future. It’s destiny. It just has to be.
The train announces the name of the stop as it screeches to a stop, and Kayla stands up, finally overcoming her surprise, and shouts, “Lucy!”
Her voice is drowned out by the stream of the commotion of commuters filing in and out of the train. Kayla’s attempts to push through the crowd are futile, and by the time the doors have closed, and everyone has settled down, Kayla can’t see her anymore.
Desperately, Kayla twists around to see if she can spot her through the glass windows of the doors. But the train starts moving, blurring the outside world, and Kayla loses all hope when she realizes that she has run into yet another dead end.
☆
“You’re a deadbeat,” Kayla’s father tells his daughter in the same breath that he reveals that he’s going to stop paying for her apartment rent after the end of the month. He hangs up before she can either beg him or scream at him, though she doesn’t know whether she’d choose humility over catharsis.
She sends a text to Nife, a college friend she took art history classes with, asking, “Hey! Heard you’re in New York too. I was wondering if I could crash at your place? I’ll help cover the rent, but I’m in between apartments.”
The politely worded text she gets in return says, “Hey! I’m actually renting a one-bedroom apartment with my boyfriend, so we don’t have enough space in that apartment. But you should reach out to Alice! She told me that she just moved to D.C. and is looking for a roommate. Good luck!”
Never in her life did Kayla ever expect to move to Maryland out of all places, but at the age of 24, she packs up her life into cardboard boxes, quits her job in New York, and moves to D.C. without any solid plans about what she’s going to do next.
To her credit, Alice is incredibly understanding of Kayla’s situation and doesn’t make any remarks about how when she’s heading to White House press conferences to write news articles for the HuffPost, Kayla is at the apartment, desperately searching the job boards for any job that pays just a little above minimum wage so she can afford to cover her half of the rent.
One day, Kayla decides to go outside for a walk, exhausted from staring at her laptop screen all day and reading rejection emails. She passes by a bustling cafe full of people with suits scrambling to get their orders before they head to their next meeting, a clothing store displaying handbags that are expensive enough to pay off Kayla’s credit card debt, and… a bookstore with a pride flag? Interesting.
Pausing, she leans closer to the glass so she can read the message taped against the window: HIRING BOOKSTORE STAFF! COME IN AND ASK ABOUT APPLYING!
When Kayla walks into the store, she immediately spots a lady standing behind the cash register and figures that she’s probably the person to talk to.
“Hi, excuse me,” Kayla clears her throat, catching the lady’s attention. “I saw the sign on your window, and I’m interested in applying for the role.”
“Interesting. What makes you want to work at this bookstore?” The lady sounds more genuinely curious than judgmental as she leans closer to Kayla.
Maybe that’s why Kayla blurts out, “I just moved to D.C., I don’t have a job, and I really need to pay the rent because I already got kicked out of one apartment, and I can’t get kicked out of another. Plus, I saw the pride flag in the window.”
The lady gives Kayla a long stare, which is worrying until she smiles amusedly and asks, “What’s your name again, dear?”
Blushing with embarrassment, Kayla quickly sticks out her hand in hopes of maintaining a guise of unwavering friendliness and answers, “Sorry. Kayla. Kayla Danvers.”
“Nice to meet you, Kayla. I’m Venus Salah, but you can call me Vee,” Vee replies as she shakes Kayla’s hand. “Come in tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. sharp. We can discuss your salary to figure out a pay that can cover your rent and everything before we open up shop at 9. Sounds good?”
“Yes! Oh my god, thank you so much. This means so much to me,” Kayla gushes, in absolute disbelief at what just happened.
“I’m glad, sweetie. Now, would you mind moving? I’ve been watching that customer lurking over there waiting to come to check out,” Vee politely requests, and Kayla immediately rushes to exit the bookstore with a giant grin on her face.
Working at Vee’s bookstore is an absolute dream. If she’s not helping customers out, stocking shelves, or unpacking orders, Kayla gets to read or, even better, chat with Vee. During one of the first talks she and Vee have, the bookstore owner shows Kayla all the tattoos lining her arms, telling the story behind each and every one of them.
In the middle of Vee’s explanations, Kayla interrupts to ask, “Is there a reason you decided to start getting tattoos in the first place?”
“That’s a good question,” Vee muses thoughtfully. A wistful look crosses her face, one that resembles peace. “I’m sure you know that most people get tattoos so that people can’t tell which one is their soulmark, and I was one of those people. I never thought I’d make it to where I am today, let alone find my soulmate. When I came out as trans to my Egyptian immigrant parents, they told me they’d never speak to me again and cut me out. I really thought it was over for me. But then, I found fellow queer and trans people of color who had been through the same, and they brought me into their place with open arms.
“That’s when I started to believe in something more than what I thought my life would be limited to. At that point, I had already gotten all my tattoos, but I started to have hope that I’d meet my soulmate. Then, when I was about 40, I ran into someone at my friend’s laundromat, and, lo and behold, she turned out to be my soulmate. It’s funny the way things work out because I think sometimes, it just takes time. It’s never too late to start the healing process.”
At the time, Kayla made a face and pretended to act like Vee’s story was too cheesy (which earned her a teasing slap on the shoulder from Vee). But when she gets back to her apartment, she downloads a dating app, makes a profile, and crosses her fingers that she’ll get a date set up soon.
For the next two years, Kayla happily works at Vee’s bookstore, earning enough to finally move out of Alice’s place and rent her apartment down the street from the bookstore. Though she’s gone on countless dates but, no matter how beaten down she might feel after each failed situationship, she remembers Vee’s words and gets back up to try again.
During that time, she also gets her first tattoo: Venus. It’s not in spite of her soulmark but rather a reminder that she has still experienced love in some form, even if she’ll never find the true romantic love that destiny assigned to her. It’d be impossible to remember the dinners Vee and her partner invited her to at their apartment, the wise words Vee offered that she pretended not to work very hard to internalize, and the simple joy of finding someone she feels safe around.
If it were up to Kayla, she would have worked for Vee forever. Unfortunately, the rent prices started unreasonably increasing, forcing the bookstore to close down. Kayla doesn’t cry at this news until Vee tells her that she’s moving out of D.C. and to Los Angeles with her partner so they can be closer to their friends. Only then does Kayla burst into tears, terrified by the fact that she doesn’t know when she’ll see Vee again.
The last thing Vee says to Kayla after they’ve hugged each other tightly, reluctant to let go of one another, is, “Forgive me if I sound like Han Solo or whatever Star Wars character, but it’s not a bad thing to have hope. Keep your head up, kid.”
Kayla is trying too hard not to burst into tears again to make fun of Vee for her trademark yet endearing cheesiness. She’s also already trying not to forget what being in Vee’s presence is like. She’s lost too many people to know that she has to commit her last moments with them to memory.
Thankfully, finding a job is easier this time around. Kayla stumbles upon a job listing at a local planetarium and applies before she can think too much about why she had felt so drawn to it. The hiring manager seems to believe that her experience with museums makes her extremely qualified because she makes Kayla a job offer right at the end of her interview.
As much as Kayla would have loved to stay at her old job, she quickly falls in love with her new one. She never expected that her favorite part of working at the planetarium is giving tours to kids on school trips. Seeing how confused children are about the vastness of the universe always makes her day.
She’s used to kids asking questions like “How did our universe get made?” and “What is dark matter?”, so she’s caught off guard when, during her spiel about supernovas, a kid points to her soulmark, visible because she’s wearing shorts, and inquires, “Did you get that tattoo because you like supernovas?”
“Actually, it’s my soulmark, so I didn’t get to choose it. But I’m pretty happy with it. I think stars are pretty cool. Don’t you?” Kayla holds her hand out for a high five, and the kid happily completes the gesture with a toothy grin.
“I think your soulmate likes stars too.”
Something inside Kayla put itself back together, her heart growing bigger to make space for all the hope blooming inside.
Once Kayla gets back to her apartment, she visits a website that Vee mentioned to her months ago: FindYourSoulmate.com. She initially dismissed it as another project by the desperate soulmate searchers, but as she reads through all the posts of soulmates uniting, the site doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It’s worth a try.
Before she can fully think about what she’s doing, Kayla snaps a photo of her soulmark and posts it on the forum with the caption, “Looking for a female soulmate with a matching blue star.” Clicking “post” is easy; waiting is the difficult part, though she supposes that she’s been doing it for 26 years now.
All Kayla can do now is listen to Vee’s words and hold onto hope—maybe it’ll be enough to keep her going until her soulmate finds her or she finds her soulmate. Either way, she’ll visit the website every day because one day, there could be a reply from someone with a little matching blue star.
