Serena hated it. The bloody long sentence that ran just under her clavicle.
"Engine been whining or growling?"
She couldn't believe her rotten luck. How the bloody hell was she going to meet someone whose first words to her were those.
Everyone, you see, on their 17th birthday was given a tattoo, of sorts, with the first words that their supposed 'soulmate' said to them. They were to spend their days waiting to meet someone who said those words and if their tattoos matched their first words, well, happieness happened, she assumed.
Serena had woken up as early as she could bear on her birthday and rushed to her mirror to find it, hoping it was something easy like "Hello". But no, as her rotten luck would have it, it was quite the opposite.
"Engine been whining or growling?"
She had spent the next few years trying to spend as much time around engines as she could, wishing every time that her car broke down that this would be the day. The day that she met them.
After her first year at Harvard she had all but given up. Many of her friends had already found their soul mates. Some had had near misses but she was yet to find anyone that even came close. So she stopped caring. She married Edward, although his first words to her were nothing about cars, more about how edible she looked in a certain dress at some stupid frat party or another.
Her and Edward had Eleanor. They were happy. Then they were unhappy. They were alot of that. The divorce wasn't much of a surprise. Neither was the brief rekindling of their relationship when he had "accidently" appeared at her work. The inevitable failure of that relationship was no surprise either.
Serena had resigned herself to the knowledge that she was never going to find her stupid car expert of a soul mate. She never even thought about it when her car broke down anymore.
Like right now, for example. Her car had broken down on it's way out of the car park at Holby city hospital and she was thinking nothing to do with soul mates or destiny or tattoos.
She was on the phone to a stupid call centre man trying to get it into his tiny brain that she needed a replacement car, preferebly before the world imploded.
She had about given up, this man was hopeless. That's when she saw her. Walking out of the car park exit, cigarette in hand.
Her hair was the first thing that Serena noticed, she counted all the different colours that were revealed within the waves as she walked. Her coat was the next, a light peach-pink colour that contrasted beautifully against the all black outfit that her body adorned. And what a body it was, Serena couldn't help but let her eyes wander.
It had only been a second since she had first seen her but it felt like she had been staring for an eternity. That, she was sure, wouldn't be too hard to do. Not managing to tear her eyes away, Serena stood. Her mind was swimming, trying to escape from the spell this woman had put her under. In the end it was the blonde herself that broke her out of her reverie. She saw her giggle to herself.
"Engine been whining or growling?"
Serena's heart stopped.
"Any intermittent smell of hot or burning rubber?"
"Define intermittemt" Serena managed to stutter, turning to face the woman again.
The woman froze. Serena watched her Adam's apple bob and she swallowed.
"I… um" The world seemed to stop for a moment as they just stared at each other.
Then all of a sudden the woman sprung into action, striding towards Serena and fiddling with her clothes as she went. What on earth is she doing? She undid the bottom two buttons of her blouse and began to untuck it from her trousers. Serena stood there frozen in utter confusion. What was this woman doing stripping off in the car park? What was her possible soul mate doing?
The woman moved closer to Serena, hands grasping at her blouse as she lifted her hip up in the air. All Serena could do was stare. What is she doing? and then she saw it. Written in the trademark soul mate font, just above the hem of her trousers.
"Define intermittent"