BreeTico – Haha, Xavier's a funny guy. He's also slightly jealous, a little indecisive, definitely a bit nerdy and totally, completely charming. If it weren't for a guy like Derek overshadowing him, Xavier would totally be on my list of fictional characters that I want to befriend in real life. And I'm excited to write about Derek's family! They're a little more eccentric and off-base than the Jacobsons are, so it will definitely be interesting! (:

AwesomeSauce220 – Thanks for the suggestion. Some of these chapters are going to be primarily dialogue, while some are going to be more thought-based. Chapter three was basically focusing on whether or not Emily could trust and believe in Derek. However, I will try my best to add more dialogue into the upcoming chapters. Thanks for the review! (:

The Significance Series belongs to Shelly Crane.

4: DTR (Define the Relationship)

I stared down at the slip of paper that was my fortune. I had never really taken anything like fortune cookies, or even psychics, seriously. But the cookie had made my hands feel a little clammy and my stomach tighten. The future waits for me to come to it, huh? Well, wasn't that tastefully ironic. I flipped it over and looked at the numbers for a second time. Listed together with a small line of Chinese characters underneath were about five numbers. Eight, thirty, nineteen, nine, and twenty-six. Seemingly random numbers, but could they really be lucky numbers for me?

Xavier waved a hand in front of my face, as if I had zoned out. I guess I sort of had. I was gripping the fortune slip so tightly that my fingers were turning white. Finally, I dropped it, throwing it towards the computer monitor haphazardly, hoping that it would just disappear. I was just feeling a little out of it, that was all. The fact that Derek had stepped in here, given me emotions that I never would have thought I would feel, and then flitted out after leaving his phone number had really messed with my head. Not to mention the information overload he had given me. I shook my head and settled back into my chair, trying to forget about that little slip of paper hidden behind the speakers. Trying to forget about the boy who had stepped into my life and, within minutes, had turned it upside down. Trying to forget about the fact that another boy stood in front of me, concerned that there was something wrong with me. I could see it in his face. I could see it in his eyes. I could see it in the set of his shoulders.

"I'm fine," I spouted out, despite the fact that he hadn't asked me anything. I knew it was just a matter of time until he did, though. "I just don't feel well," I told him. The moment I said it, I realized that it was true. There was a gentle pounding in my forehead. Not enough to cause me significant amount of pain or to make me act like someone else completely, but it was there. There was also a slight ache in my lower back, and my neck creaked like I had slept on it funny.

Those were all simple things, I reminded myself, things that could be explained away by something other than the fact that my supernatural soul mate – significant, or whatever he had called it – had left my side and, consequently, left me open to the simple muscle pains that plagued the entire nation. That was out of the question. Even debating the truth behind it made me insane.

Xavier cracked open his cookie as I shoved a piece of mine into my mouth, hoping that it would calm me down just a little bit. He read it to himself and smirked, folding it back up. While I had always ignored my fortunes, Xavier believed in them wholeheartedly. He kept every single one of them, determined to prove to me that one day they would really come true. Lifting his hands, he started signing to me. "Are you going to tell me about this guy, or are you just going to pretend that I didn't see anything?" The set of his mouth told me that he wasn't really pleased about the whole thing, but the little crinkle around his eyes assured me that he was going for teasing right now. He probably hadn't really decided what it was that I saw in Derek yet, and he figured that I was just taken by his appearance or something else. I tried not to smile as I thought about the truth behind it.

Choosing to answer out loud instead of signing, I said, "His name is Derek Stanton. He's a… friend of mine." I struggled to find the right word to describe Derek. He was, apparently, my soul mate. My significant. But I couldn't tell that to Xavier. And I couldn't let him know that I'd just met the guy literally minutes before, when our fingers touched over a five dollar bill. Friend seemed like the safest word, though deep down inside, I wondered if I'd just unconsciously friend-zoned him. And then I wondered if that really was a bad thing.

"A friend?" Xavier echoed, his mouth moving with his hands. He usually tried to just sign to me. He said it made it seem more like we had our own language, and that it was more fun that way. Only when he was really shocked or just didn't really care did he speak and sign at the same time. "How long have you known him?"

I chewed on the other half of my fortune cookie, trying to formulate an answer. Thirty minutes probably wasn't going to fly with him, so I chose something vague, hoping that he would just accept it and move on. Clearing my throat, I answered, "A while."

Xavier shook his head. I should have known that he wouldn't let me off the hook that easily. Instead, he was going to dig for answers, and that meant that I was in trouble. "How long is a while?"

"Long enough," I answered, doing my best to evade him. Instead, I just made it worse by blurting out the first thing that came to mind, as was custom with me. "I'm meeting his family, so it's been long enough." I told Xavier, tossing my fortune cookie wrapper and the bowl my orange chicken had come in into the trashcan just under the desk. I wasn't mad at Xavier, per say, I was just annoyed that he wouldn't let it go. But maybe it was best to act like I was annoyed with him, because then he would take a step back and let me "cool down." But he was probably a little mad at me. We'd been friends – best friends, even – for well over a year and I'd never met his parents or his brother.

I avoided meeting his gaze, instead focusing on my computer screen. I wished that he would just back up and leave me alone. It was usually what he did. But this time, of course, it seemed like he'd decided that he needed to fix whatever he had done wrong right that minute. Determined to ignore him, I double clicked on the internet icon on the computer desktop, waiting for the homepage to load. I drummed my fingers on the countertop as Xavier leaned over, the loose, silky fabric of his short tie hanging from his neck obstructing my view.

I glanced up at him and watched his hand movements. "There's something more to him, I know. What is it? What about us?" I paused and took in his face. Xavier was darker skinned than I was – his mother was a Hispanic and his dad was English. Xavier had been gifted with wavy dark hair and large brown eyes framed by long, dark lashes. He had high cheekbones and a sharply pointed chin. He was tall and thin, more lanky and agile than broad and strong, though there was a hint of muscle underneath his retro T-shirt and loose, miniature tie combination. I couldn't see the rest of his ensemble, but I knew it consisted of jeans that were technically too skinny for a boy and black high-tops with the laces nearly undone. Xavier was handsome, witty, funny and sarcastic. But he wasn't Derek. And that realization sort of hurt a little bit. In minutes, a man I hardly knew had managed to become first on my list of priorities, above my best friend, even.

I shook my head and deftly typed in the URL address for the popular social networking site around. My mom usually hated it when I logged on at work, though there wasn't much to look at. I had a little under one hundred friends, including Xavier, the majority of my deaf people support group and even some of their parents. A few of my friends from middle school, including Bailey, had added me on their friends list, but I never really wrote directly to her and she never really wrote to me. I scrolled down the front page that allowed me to read what everyone else was doing as Xavier tried to work an answer out of me. I didn't want him to see what I had gotten on the website to do, so I tried my best to stall and give him the answers that he wanted.

Glancing up at him, I gave a small shrug. "What about us?" I asked. I knew my voice was a whisper with that innate sense that just lets you know those things, but I couldn't truly be for sure about my volume. I had had my mother tell me to quiet down on multiple occasions when I'd accidentally spoken too loud, and there had been times when she'd asked me to speak louder.

Xavier leaned back a little, like he'd just been slapped. Immediately, I felt bad. But it was the truth. What about us? He had kissed me about five times in the back storage closet with closed lips, kisses that had only lasted for seconds. Kisses that had honestly felt like they were just… experimental. Like they didn't really add up to anything. Xavier was my brother, my best friend, and that was something that I had never really been willing to mess up. That was why I hadn't asked him to define our relationship. I had just pretended, like he did, that there was nothing really going on between us. Because there wasn't. "What do you mean?" He signed to me.

I glanced away, at the picture of me that was my profile picture. It was one of me and Xavier, scrunched together into one of the big armchairs at my house. I was curvier than Xavier was (in what I had been assured by my mother was in a very womanly, shapely fashion.) Honestly, it wasn't that hard for a stick to be curvier than my best friend because he was sort of like a slightly muscled beanpole. The two of us had managed, though, to fit ourselves into the leather armchair, his bony hip digging into my side as I curled my legs up to my chest. I remembered my mom coming in, wondering if her camera was working. She had decided to use us to see if it was, and had snapped a quick succession of pictures. In the first ones, Xavier was making a funny face next to me. In one of the last ones, he'd draped an arm over my shoulder and we'd beamed up at my mom with cheesy fake smiles. It seemed fitting, and slightly sadistic, that I was looking at a picture of the two of us right when Xavier was asking me questions that could make or break our friendship.

I leaned back in my chair, pulling my knees up to my chest just like I had in the photograph. I glanced at him for a moment and said, "I don't know, Xavier. It's never really been… anything more than just friends, I guess." I did my best not to meet his gaze because honestly, I was sort of scared of what I would see there. I had been thinking all this time that whatever Xavier and I had shared in the back storage room was nothing more than a few pecks. Xavier, apparently, thought of it differently.

After a moment I did look up to see him staring down at his shoes. I didn't say anything to him, and I doubted that he was saying anything to me. He would know that I would have no idea that he was speaking unless he was signing or looking directly at me, anyway. So I just sat there until he lifted his gaze to meet mine. Whereas Derek was open with his thoughts and emotions through his eyes, Xavier was guarded so heavily that it would take an army tank to break down his walls. It was rare for me to see any sort of "girly" emotions from my best friend. He liked to think that he was the strong, stoic type who wasn't plagued by feelings of guilt, shame, or depression. And this time around, Xavier was like steel.

He shook his head, glaring away from me to his left, a sure sign that he was about to tell me a lie. Either that, or he was just really very angry and didn't want to meet my gaze. He didn't have the body language of someone that was nervous. He didn't even have the body language of someone that had been hurt. It was just… anger. Despair, maybe, if you stretched it a little bit. He quickly signed, "No, you're right. There's nothing there."

With that, he turned and left, heading for the back door that led into the alleyway behind the store. My mom was pretty lenient on the hours, but I wasn't sure how she would take Xavier's leaving today. First he had gone to get food (understandable and delicious) and now he was exiling himself to the back room or the alley, leaving me to deal with the floor.

I was usually at the shop from opening to at least six if not closing. I didn't have anywhere to go except for the support group that I had been purposely missing out on the last few times around. I didn't go out with friends (Xavier was really my only friend, and I'd gone and made him mad at me) and I had never really been to Xavier's house. It was always the two of us at the shop, out in public, or sitting at my house and watching a movie with the subtitles scrolling across the bottom. I watched him walk away from me and wondered if I had, in the end, messed up our friendship anyway.

With a heavy sigh, I was aware of the fact that there were slight tears coming to my eyes. I was somewhat of a crier. Embarrassingly so, actually. I never wanted to cry in front of other people, but it was close to impossible for me to keep my eyes from prickling with tears when I was frustrated, scared, or genuinely upset. I didn't actually cry most of the time, but my sight blurred because of the tears gathering under my lashes. And I was doing that now, tearing up. It was partly because I was mad at myself for not handling the situation better, partly because Xavier had suddenly sprung this on me (he had never, not once, spoken about us being anything more than friends.) And now he'd left because he didn't even want to be in the same room as me.

Interestingly enough, at a time when I would have usually rushed to my mom's side, I found myself longing for someone very different from my mother. I found myself wishing that Derek would just sweep into the store and take a hold of my hand. It was like the calmness that he gave me was a drug that I relied on too heavily. I needed it. And it was a ridiculous notion because I'd only really met him this morning.

As I stared at the computer screen, at the homepage of the social website, at my picture of me and Xavier, I decided to follow through with my plan. Derek's sudden entrance into my life had certainly caused a few problems already. And by the sound of it, even though I was supposed to be blissed out by it all, it was going to get harder. How could I live a normal life – well, as normal as my life could be – when I was hiding the fact that I had imprinted with my soul mate because he was a supernatural being? Surely they would think that I had gone insane and would drag me off to some institution. And even Derek had told me himself that I was going to need him, that he was the only one that could help me with the withdrawals or whatever they were called.

It was just more reference to the fact that he was a drug. My drug, but a drug all the same.

And knowing that I should have just taken a step back from whatever life I was facing with a man that claimed our shared bond would give him supernatural abilities, I clicked on the search bar at the top of the page and carefully typed in his name. Derek Stanton. And what do you know, his picture was the first that showed up on my computer screen.

# # #

I had entered a whole new level of crazy stalker could-be girlfriends. I wasn't sure what our relationship was exactly, but the words soul mates and significant hinted that there would be more of a romance type of thing going on between the two of us. Though it seemed pretty impossible – I would not, under any circumstances, be forced into a relationship I didn't want – I was starting to believe that it was inevitable. How does one miss someone that she had just met? How does she crave his attention, his touch, when they spoke for thirty minutes or less?

Still, it probably didn't excuse my actions. After I found Derek's page on the website, I scanned over his front page, reading all of the comments his five bajillion (okay, more like five hundred) friends had written to him. A lot of them were along the lines of great show, man and what have you been up to these days, dude? but some of them were more personal. Most of those were from girls, asking him what he was up to and where his next so was playing. Innocent questions for a guy that was in a band. But from the girls that had their lips puckered out in what had been deemed "duck faces" with orange-tanned skin and too much makeup, it was some serious flirting. And I couldn't help but feel a little pang of jealousy at that. Those girls should not have been talking to him.

The only reason why? Because I felt that way.

After thoroughly disappointing myself with the comments from girls who thought they had a chance with him, I settled for clicking through his pictures. For a guy that was supposedly on his road to fame, he didn't really have that many pictures. Most of the ones he had posted himself were of himself with various animals – dogs and cats and even some with a large snake that reminded me of a boa. There were a few pictures of what could only be his family, a large family, at that. But the majority of pictures listed under his name were ones that other people had uploaded of him. Most of the time he was standing on a small ramshackle platform of a stage, wearing close to the same thing that he'd been wearing when he was at the store, strumming away on a guitar.

I wasn't sure if everyone else could see him the way I did. That his eyes were not focused on the crowd or the chords that his fingers played, but instead they were either closed or focused on a wall, as if he wasn't concerned with the fact that he was standing in front of a bunch of people that were, probably, calling his name. Despite all of the people and the lights and the blurriness of the photos, he looked like he was genuinely at peace.

From some of his photos, I deduced that he was in a band called Triple Threat Touchdowns. I pondered over whether or not they were a bunch of guys with a penchant for basketball and football before I found their page. It seemed like the band had created a page that their fans could log onto and write comments and questions about. Videos from various clubs and bars played across the front of the screen, as well as audio files and paragraphs that were bits of their original songs. There were photos, too, hundreds of photos. Derek wasn't the only guy that was handsome enough to turn heads in his band. The bassist was handsome in his own way with his funky dyed hair and multiple piercings. The lead singer looked like he was better fit for a position on the football team (a reason behind their band name?) and the drummer was a slightly chubby guy with a goatee and a spike of hair on top of his head. They weren't a bad bunch altogether, but only one of the guys really had my attention.

After a while, I decided that my obsessive snooping was enough to make me crazy by definition. I returned to his personal page, where my mouse hovered over the Become Friends button. I always had a little anxiety about it. I wasn't really sure why. I guess it was just another form of rejection, albeit virtually. But Derek couldn't reject me, could he? He said that he needed me as much as I needed him. But I wasn't really sure if it was the right step. Xavier would certainly get on the computer and look him over tonight, if he got the chance. Xavier was great with computers, enough that he was generally sort of nerdy in the "I can hack onto any of your files" type of way. I had no doubt that he would do some snooping of his own on Derek Stanton.

But honestly, I had to sit there and wonder what Derek really was to me. Was he someone that I had an acquaintanceship with? Was he considered my friend? I was well aware of the fact that there wasn't a "soul mate" option on the website, but is that what we really were? Boiled down to basic words, was that all there was that could describe us?

Before I could linger over it any longer, I hit the Become Friends button and quickly closed out of the page. There, it was done. And even though there was a way for me to withdraw the friend request, I told myself that there wasn't one.

# # #

By the time dinner came around and my mom emerged from her office to get ready for a big date with Cal, Xavier had come around. I still wasn't sure as to where we stood on our relationship, but I figured that it couldn't have been too bad because he was smiling at me.

My mom had a dinner date with Cal, who was going to go by the house to pick her up. She left the shop early and Xavier volunteered to stay and help me close up at the end of the day. She flitted by and leaned in for a hug. I did my best not to let her touch my skin because I was sure that I was burning up. Instead, I sent her on her way and escaped from Xavier into the back office where my mom kept a small TV that was usually tuned to the news. I closed the door behind me, effectively letting Xavier know that I just needed some alone time, and sunk down on the old leather loveseat that my mom had bought at an antique shop.

I hadn't believed Derek when he said that I would suffer through withdrawals. How could I? He sounded so insane in the first place that I couldn't just focus on one aspect of his explanation. As far as the information went, the withdrawal pain that I was supposed to feel had been initially ranked near the bottom. At the time, it was so much more important for me to figure out whether or not he was insane or lying to me, and whether or not I could believe him.

Now, though, was a different story.

My mom had called in and ordered a pizza for all of us. By the time it arrived at the shop at 5:30 on the dot, I felt like someone had shot me a few times with some sort of exploding shotgun shell that only left me with remnants of pain and no actual physical damage. It had all started with a tiny headache and a pain in my lower back, escalading to a full-on migraine that had me wincing at the bright fluorescent lights of the showroom floor. The pain had spread up my spine, settling into my shoulders and the base of my neck. It had also traveled down my legs to where my feet were killing me as well as a stinging in my thighs and a splitting pain on my shins. Around that time I started to feel hot, like I was coming down with a fever.

It had been a little over eight hours since I'd seen Derek, and I was already feeling like I was melting inside my shoes. How was I supposed to deal with this? How could I tell my mom that I needed a guy to come see me because he would make all of the sick feelings disappear? How could I tell Xavier that the very guy he obviously did not like was the only one who could really take care of me?

Fighting back a groan, I turned on the TV and switched it to some movie station. I had no idea what was going on, and I was too tired to read the subtitles and figure it out. Instead, I curled up into a ball on the couch, arms crossing over my stomach and closed my eyes. I was hoping that maybe sleep would be an outlet out of this pain that I felt.

But instead of sleeping, all I wondered was: how could this much pain come from something that was supposed to be perfect?

DTR. Oh, dear. Always a slightly awkward conversation to have. Anyway, I want to thank you all for reading this and giving me your continued support. As always, I ask that you leave me a quick note in the box below with your thoughts on the chapter above. Thanks! Peace (: