Words Have Two Meanings

VII

Highway to Hell is halfway through when Lydia walks into the grocery store. It makes her heart jump in her chest as she struggles to stay afoot.

She's aware of the old wives tale saying whenever your soulmate's song plays, they're in the near vicinity, but that's only a myth. If Lydia's soulmate was near every time Highway to Hell played then Lydia should've met them a long, long time ago. She knows that the song playing is nothing more than a coincidence, but it still knocks Lydia on her arse whenever she hears it.

She can't help but let the word 'fate' come to mind. It's Pash's week to go grocery shopping, but she's working late, and Lydia had nothing better to do, so she volunteered to pick a few things up. The fact that Pash should be the one here while Highway to Hell is blasting over the speakers only serves to make Lydia believe this could be kismet.

But that might be wishful thinking.

The song is well over and Lydia's done with her shopping, getting ready to approach the register when she runs into the only person that's been on her mind these past few weeks.

Mila's dressed head-to-toe in sweats and she has a bottle of wine balanced nicely in her arms. Lydia wants to do despicable things to her.

"Lydia, hey." Mila's face is open and earnest, and Lydia lives for the genuine happiness she seems to emit when she's with Lydia. "Fancy running into you here."

"Fancy it is. Especially when you've got wine, and I've - " Lydia stops talking when she glances down to her shopping basket and sees just how embarrassing her dinner is.

Mila follows her gaze and laughs upon seeing the contents. "And you've a basket full of personal pizzas."

"I can explain."

"No need." There's always an aura about Mila that makes her smile seem completely unflappable, like a world of inconsistency could be reshaping her life as she knows it, but she'll still be standing with a permanent grin etched gracefully across her face. "I like your style. It's the kind of cooking I do for myself."

"You mean you don't have all your grandchildren cooking for you?" Lydia basks in the joy Mila expresses at the joke.

"Another old age joke?" Mila's smirking, a cocky grin of a thing, and Lydia's thrown back into the indigo pool of emotions that remind her just how much she likes Mila. How easy it would be for Lydia to love her. "Is that going to be your thing? You make fun of my age while your other jokes get less and less funny?"

"You'll still laugh at them, won't you?"

"Of course."

Lydia's resulting grin is bashful. She can't stop the blush from climbing up her neck and into her cheeks, not when Mila says such sweet things without even a trace of irony.

Lydia about jumps out of her skin when right past her shoulder, a body comes running up to them. "Em, I can't find the camembert."

"It's on aisle four," Lydia answers automatically.

"Thank you." The man turns and Lydia instantly recognizes him as Mila's friend - the one that stole Mila away from her at the bar that first night. "Oh, hello. You look familiar."

"Lydia, you remember Danny?" Mila gestures between the two of them, the wine bottle hanging delicately between her fingers, swinging with the movements. "Danny, this is Lydia. From the bar."

"New friend Lydia?" Danny asks.

"Good friend Lydia."

"Stairway to Heaven Lydia?"

Danny remembers her from her song. This is the best news Lydia's heard all day. If Lydia's identifier is Stairway to Heaven, then that must mean that's how Mila describes her. The song is important to Mila, important enough that she feels to need to bring it up to Danny, her apparently close friend that she goes to bars and grocery stores with.

Lydia feels like she's on the edge of the moon, watching everyone live their mundane lives as she flies high in the aftermath of more proof that Mila could be her soulmate.

"Exactly," Mila confirms, his grin an eclipse of any other expression that she's ever held. "This is the bird that sang a ten minute karaoke song in public with no regard for anyone else."

Lydia's heart sinks. Danny didn't know the song because Mila talks about it often; he know the song because Lydia's selfish arse sang it for eight goddamn minutes.

"Hey," she protests weakly. She wants to keep herself moving so as to not alert Mila or Danny just how upset she is that her golden beacon of light flickered out. "It's a good song."

Mila nods in agreement. "A great song."

"My favorite song."

"Hm..."

Lydia does her best to smile along, but she knows it comes off as bitter as she is. All she wants from Mila is a reaction, a straightforward answer, something other than the vague humming she gets whenever her favorite song is brought up.

The part that infuriates Lydia the most is that Mila won't even mention her own favorite song. If she would take five minutes to enthuse about Johnny Cash or Celine Dion, Lydia would be able to know for sure and move on, but this constant disregard and lack of a reaction is going to drive Lydia to the edge of the Earth and never push her over.

Danny jumps suddenly, startling Lydia out of her own head. "Hey you should invite her to the party," he says excitedly.

"There's a party?" Lydia asks.

"There is." Mila's standing adjacent to Lydia, a teasing grin on her face as she goes back and forth with the banter.

"I love parties."

Danny laughs brightly from Lydia's other side, not sensing the playful tension between them. "You'll love ours then. It's a costume party."

"I love costume parties."

Mila nudges his shoulder, stealing Lydia's attention from where she was looking at Danny. "Then you should come."

Hearing the invite from Mila is what makes Lydia excited to go. Danny's lovely and all, but having Mila dole out an invitation suddenly inspires Lydia in a thousand different ways.

"I should," Lydia accepts, unable to keep her delight from showing. "When is it?"

"When else, love?" Mila asks, the sharpness of her grin adding a bit of a haunted feel to his words. "Halloween."

Mila and Danny take off to buy their camembert and Lydia makes her way up to the register to pay for dinner. Lydia spends her walk home contemplating why the universe keeps giving her glimpses of proof that Mila's her soulmate, but never following through with an actual revelation. There's all this lead up, but she'll never hit that epiphany where Lydia suddenly just knows.

Running into Mila at the grocery store, seeing the girl of her dreams holding a bottle of wine dressed in comfortable, cozy, cuddling, apparel, all after hearing Highway to Hell... Lydia wants to call it fate, but she knows better.

It's serendipity.