Soul's Choice (Intro)

A hand in your own

Sees you to your greatest heights

Keeps the lows at bay

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-Dante-

“-and how does that make you feel?” The doctor asked, face pinched behind a set of thick lensed glasses and thin lips scrunched into a thoughtful frown.

Dante fought against rolling his eyes, and instead let his gaze drift over the blinking screens and flashing lights that were just beyond the good doctor. It was a stupid question, but what should he have expected? This whole scenario was stupid.

“How do I feel about what?” he used the same patient tone that he used on shareholders when they asked stupid questions that they too should have known the answers to.

“Knowing that you’ll not be able to sense your soulmate-” The doctor clarified, pushing her glasses up her nose and leaning in with an examining eye, “how does that make you feel?”

“Like shit? Like a screw up? Like damaged goods? I don’t know doc, pick one.” Is what he wanted to say, but the vitriol in his thoughts was nothing more than a mask for disappointment.

“Well,” he started with a sigh, “I suppose it makes me feel like an outsider.” he admitted pushing past the bitterness and finding an honest answer. The screens lit up at that, and the doctor scribbled fiercely as she watched.

“I see.” she didn't ask more questions, just kept looking between her notes and the screens before calling in a nurse to take his vitals.

Dante didn’t want to be here, but he was desperate. Unlike ninety-five percent of the world’s population, Dante was one of the not-so-lucky rare people that couldn’t sense their Soulmate.

It was common knowledge that there was someone out there for everyone; a Soulmate. It is expected that there is someone that in the moment you meet them, your world is meant to shift and it’s meant to feel like finding the last piece of a puzzle that you needed to finish the picture on the box.

A Souldmate could be a mentor, a best friend, a lover, someone who rises with you in your lowest moments and stands by your side in the heights of your success. That was a soulmate and it was expected for everyone to find their person and simply know, but Dante never would.

As teenegers, while his friends began to see the faces of their Soulmates in their dreams, he waited excitedly for his turn. In his twenties , when his friends began finding their people, he thought he was a late bloomer. In his thirties, Dante had all but withdrawn from social life, tired of friends who hadn’t seen him in a while asking if he ever found his person and flusteredly exclaiming that he didn’t need one when they learned the answer. By forty years old, Dante worked his way up to head developer in a tech company, had a penthouse apartment, and the realization that he did want to know why he never found her person. It was human nature to want things that we couldn’t have was it not?

It was fate that he found this study ran by doctor Maria Alverez, fate that he found out that the reason he never found his soulmate was because the part of his brain that was meant to help sense his Soulmate had been underdeveloped, and fate that he know felt both more and less alone than ever before.

“That will be all for today Ms. Dante.” Dr. Alvarez smiled, face unpinching as she put her clipboard to the side. The nurse that had been taking his vitals began to remove the annoying electrodes that were attached to his head and the other bevy of equipment meant to monitor his physical and emotional responses to the questions. Dante breathed out the tight anxiousness in his chest that always seemed to gather every time he did this.

Obviously he hoped for answers when he came to the clinic. Dante hoped for a solution for himself and for others like him, but so far all he’d gotten was a parking ticket for the horrible parking in the city and a headache from the prodding paired with the overly sterile smell of the examination rooms. Pulling on his jacket, and offering the doctor an obligatory smile and handshake, Dante left feeling as deflated as he always did leaving this place, that is until he stepped out into the waiting room.

“I suppose I’m up next.” In the corner of the room, next to the coat rack sat a woman who looked all about ready to run out of the nearby emergency exit if he took too long to get out of her way. The set of her jaw suggested she wasn’t a particularly shy person, but her eyes shifted nervously around the room, her mouth tried to fix on a smile that she couldn’t quite seem to hold onto and her hands wrung nervously in her lap.

“Don’t worry, she doesn’t bite.” Dante laughed tiredly, holding the door open for her as she looked longingly at the exit one last time before squaring her shoulders and rising, meeting his eyes with a challenge. It seemed like the lighthearted laugh was taken the wrong way.

“I’m not scared.” She huffed, stepping towards where he still held open the door. Now he noticed the dark smudged dirt on her face, caked under her nails and smudged over the nametag of the navy blue jumpsuit she wore, “I’m just tired, been a long day and getting answers for why I-” She paused, cringed, collected herself, “For why I’m Soulmate-less at thirty seven might be nice. I assume you can understand that much.” She eyed him, head to toe, from coiffed hair to oxford loafers looking equal parts unimpressed and annoyed.

“Yes actually.” He nodded empathetically, realizing that he must look like some stuck up rich guy from where she stood and not someone as equally fed up and presumably aimless as she was, “Is this your first session? The diagnosis?”

“Yeah.” She looked as if she was struggling not to frown.

“I see. I’d suggest doing something to take your mind off of it afterwards, meeting up with friends or something.” The night he’d found out he’d been kicked out of two bars and woke up on the bar’s alley with his watch and the cash from his wallet missing.

“I’ll do that.” She mumbled, pushing past him and closing the door behind her with a dismissive wave.

Dante let out a snort of disbelief as the door pulled shut and started to leave himself, but something stopped him. He thought of this stranger walking out of the office, their whole world different and not in the way that she probably hoped for when she signed up for this and his hand froze on the doorknob. If he’d had someone there with him who understood how painful this process was, maybe things would have been different for him that night and the nights that followed for weeks on end.

“You’re staying, sir?” The man at the desk was asking as Dante settled into one of the waiting chairs.

“It would seem so.” He grumbled, picking up some brainless pop culture magazine and settling in.

--

“It would seem so.” He grumbled, picking up some mindless pop culture magazine and settling into the peeling faux leather chair of the waiting room.

--

An hour passed before it occurred to Dante that what might have been a nice gesture in intention could come off as creepy, but before he could leave the doorknob to the exam room turned. He stopped mid-dash for the door and turned to see slumped shoulders, puffy red eyes and the look of hopelessness that he knew the root of.

“Want to get an ice cream or coffee or something? Walk it off?” He offered. Wordlessly, she nodded a reply.

They went to a nearby cafe and got two coffees, they ended up walking in a semi-awkward silence for awhile in a nearby park before she told him her diagnosis; the same as his. That diagnosis was the catalyst for conversation. At some point they found a bench to sit on, at some point they were laughing, at some point the conversation got deep, at some point he learned the name under the oil stained nametag was Grace and that she was a mechanic. At some point the sun came up.

“Let’s keep in touch.” He offered, not really wanting the night to end despite the fact that it quite literally had. He wrote his number on the empty paper cup that held coffee in it at one point and gave it to her.

An entire week passed and at this point he begrudgingly had come to the conclusion that it was a one time thing, two ships passing in the night and all that. It wasn’t like her not calling was the end of the world, it happened, but it was a different breed of disappointment than he’d felt in the past, a curious feeling. So when she called him at the end of the week apologizing because her roommate tossed the cup and she’d had to dig for it and decipher it, he was flattered. They talked for a bit while he was between meetings, and when he hung up his assistant commented on the goofy grin on his face

---

“Maybe we’re soulmates and just can’t sense it.” Grace mused, sitting on the hood of his car, a dirty rag in hand and a light grin set on her mouth. A year had passed from their meeting, the study's funding had been cut rendering it abandoned. Despite all of that, Grace and Dante walked away better off than they’d started.

“Wouldn’t that be something.” He smiled warmly, handing her a lemonade as an offering of thanks for fixing his car and a brief reprieve from the unforgiving summer sun.

“I mean, it would make sense, wouldn’t it?” She hopped excitedly down from the hood of the car and rushed over, nearly spilling her drink as she slammed to a stop right before him, “I mean, I might not have the dreams like we’re meant to, I might not have that sense of knowing like they describe it, but being with you, it just-” Her brows knit as she searches for the words, “just feels right.”

“Really?” He asked, hopeful. Where as Dante had been struck a major blow when he found out that he’d never find his true soulmate, Grace had teetered between apathetic and devastated on the matter. Had the study continued, Grace might have had the support that she’d craved to face this new reality head on, but when it abruptly ended, they were both left drifting in a sea of unanswered questions with only one another to turn to. Dante had been fine because he was happy with her, he’d been patient because he knew this was difficult for her, but he often wondered if she found him unable to measure up to an actual soulmate.

“I can’t imagine my life without you.” She smiled and it felt like seeing the sun after being locked away in the dark. It felt like how they all described knowing. The ring in his pocket didn’t feel as heavy as it had for the last month. He suggested they went out for a nice dinner that night, somewhere expensive and fancy.

Dante proposed that evening outside of their favourite restaurant shortly after the narrow faced valet took the keys to their car and she said yes.

That was when the dreams started.

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