Percy was anxious. He wanted nothing more than to spend the night out with Rachel, but he couldn't help glancing at the markings on his wrist.
10/11
16/05
18/08
He knew of course, that his birthday was the eighteenth of August. He just didn't know what the others meant, and with it already October, he had started wondering if he would meet his soulmate this year. He followed Rachel down the street, grinning, but internally he was struggling.
A soulmate was something he had wanted ever since he was a small child. His mother and father were soulmates, and he couldn't help but wish for something that extraordinary. Soulmates that found each other could light up a room just by looking at each other.
When he was young, he had been certain his soulmate would be Rachel, but when the truth had come out, he had set his mind on searching.
When his father had died in a horrible incident on one of his fishing boats, Percy had cried himself to sleep at night for months. But his mother was worse. She had sat and stared into space, her eyes glassy. She didn't eat or drink, and Percy had desperately tried to decipher her own tattoos. But he couldn't. No one could, and Percy feared she would expire right there in their kitchen. But she learned to get on with her life, and Percy thought everything might be okay, that maybe they'd recover from the loss of her soulmate. Until she brought Gabe home.
Then Percy began counting the days of the year he couldn't die. The days of the year the beatings wouldn't be the end of him, hiding on the days they might.
A soulmate became secondary.
But now he was twenty-three, and he was wondering about his soulmate again. Soulmates were tricky. They could be anyone. They were normally someone you had known a long time. Frequently, old friends got their tattoos only to find that they were meant for each other. Occasionally, they were someone you disliked but learned to love. Rarely were they a stranger. When this happened, the two usually didn't find each other until later on in life. It had been a game when Percy was little. He had heard the girls on the playground pointing out who might be soulmates. Everyone thought it would be Rachel and Percy. Everyone was wrong.
He walked into the bar.