Red Converse, Piano Keys, and Love Stories

One

"What do you mean we don't match?!" said a man of about thirty, who sat across from me. We were sitting in my mom's office at our local business, "Amour Slater." The couple in front of me was an obvious mismatch. Their aura's weren't even the same color, let alone their hearts being similar at all. She was wearing something low-cut, and he was wearing dorky glasses. He was clearly a loser, but I had no intention of sugar-coating the bad news to him.

"You just don't," I shrugged.

"You have to be wrong! Look again!"

"It's really obvious that you two are not a match."

"But how? Explain It to me!"

"Basically your heart is kind of, well fat, and her's is ugly," I said with a pretentious smile, "I know this is surprising, but fat hearts and ugly hearts aren't the same. They don't match, and neither do you."

"I knew it! No way a loser like you would be my soulmate." The woman sitting next to him stood abruptly and stormed out of the office. He ran after her like a sad little boy, sniveling something about "true love." My mom, Jeanine, walked in just as the couple was leaving.

"Kinsley! Why are you never nice to consumers?" she let out a huge sigh, "did you at least offer to put them into the database?" The database we had was nothing compared to one of the major conglomerates in any metropolis in the world. We had maybe two hundred heart shapes in it. Theoretically we were supposed to match pairs of soulmates that were in our database, without them having to do any work. Still, we barely ever got the chance to do so.

I shrugged. "Whatever mom. It's not like it matters. They'll find their soulmates eventually."

"As seers we are meant to help others find love," she paused, "don't you think that's important?"

"Are you serious? That woman is clearly a gold digger! Her soulmate is totally screwed."

"That's not how it works. There is someone who is perfect for her."

"Yeah... sure..." At this point mom was already ignoring me, and I didn't feel like fighting her about this again. We probably fought about the soulmate system daily. At least we finished the fight for today early.

"Are you off to school then?"

"Yep. I'm going to stop by Mattie's to get breakfast with Nadia first."

"Well, try not to be late on your first day back."

"It's my senior year; wouldn't it make sense for me to be late?" I said as I was walking out the door.

"Sure Kinsley," She smiled. "I am going to try to salvage the mess you've just made."

"It's not that bad," I rolled my eyes.

"Uh-huh, just go."

"Kay. Bye mom. Love you."

"Bye sweetie."

I grabbed my signature red converse, and I was out the door.

...

My best friend Nadia lived one town over from my home in Brookings; a town called Harbor. Some people might think it's weird that my best friend and I didn't live in the same town, but Harbor and Brookings are so close together that it takes maybe ten minutes to cross one into the other. We often spent our time at Mattie's, the local diner, because it was so close to Nadia's house. It wasn't unusual for Nadia to get a call about watching her little sisters Anastasia and Rosali, because her parents both worked very inconsistent hours.

Nadia's parents worked at the only clinic in the Brookings-harbor area. Sandra was a nurse and Nicolas was a doctor. After working a 36 hour shift, if there was an emergency both of them would head back to urgent care without a second thought. But that meant Nadia would have to abandon whatever she was doing to go care for her sisters. No one worked harder than the Miliani family.