Where to Find You [calum hood soulmate au]

Scarlett

"What if you've already met him and had no idea?" my best friend, Brynn said, cackling as she threw a piece of popcorn in her mouth. My jaw instantly dropped in disbelief.
"You know that's my number one fear! Don't bring it up!" I shot back. My shoulders slumped as My hands played with the popcorn in the bowl on my lap. It was something I often thought about and hated when it was voiced out loud.
"It's not my fault you have the lamest soulmate identifier." Brynn shrugged. I subconsciously reached down to run my fingers down the stand of pitch black hair mixed in my dirty blond locks.
I was fifteen when I attended soulmate 101. It sounds incredibly stupid, but when everyone in the world has a soulmate and there are many different identifiers, classes are a necessity. I learned a lot that day. Soulmates don't always have the same identifier. On rare occasions soulmates have more than one identifier. Lucky for me, my identifier was the rarest, yet the least helpful. I had a lock of hair that was the color of my soulmates. If they ever dyed their hair, my strand would change to match. Ever since the day it appeared, it's been the same pitch black color leading me to believe that it was their natural color. Many nights that I lied in bed I thought about the millions of people walking around with their black locks. It often led me to hope that my soulmate wasn't also cursed with the least helpful way to find me. Maybe they had a timer or a tattoo or even eye color obscurity. It often worried me that I wouldn't know who my soulmate was even though I was told countless times that soulmates had an instant undeniable connection, and I would most definitely know. Brynn had the perfect soulmate story that I got to hear time and time again. She was one of the lucky ones.
It was a freshman college math course in 2017. Her timer only had five minutes left on it which freaked her out more than she liked to admit. She didn't need a soulmate adding to the stress of her first day of college. It hit five seconds. Four. Three. A boy walked behind her chair to the seat beside her. Two. He sat down. One. He turned towards her. Zero.
"Hi, my name's Carson."
Brynn explains it like electricity. She said as those words left his mouth and their eyes met, she felt whole. It was a feeling that she didn't know she could feel before that moment. Carson removed the bandage he had over his wrist after she introduced herself. He knew his time was getting close, but didn't want to do anything to mess it up and have his time extended so he covered it. He'd kept it covered for the last three days knowing that he would be meeting his soulmate soon. He was not surprised to see that the timer had reached zero because he felt everything that Brynn did. It was also at that moment when their timers hit zero that I became a permanent third wheel.
Brynn shook me out of my thought by throwing a handful of popcorn in my face which I was thankful for. as much as I loved the two of them, remembering their perfect soulmate story made me sad. I was basically convinced that I would never meet my soulmate which caused me to, basically, stop trying. I didn't attend social events, I didn't go to new places, and I rarely ever traveled outside of my small southern town.
My small southern hometown only made the soulmate thing worse. Everyone around here knew their soulmate almost instantly after their identifiers showed up. I'm from a place where no one ever leaves. Soulmates grew up together, but they didn't know until they were old enough to get their indicators. Timers were often less than an hour because they would be meeting a friend later only to find out that their friend was their soulmate all along. It was a confusing system sometimes. Having had my indicator now for five years, I was convinced that my soulmate had already met me, and we failed at making our connection or they were far away from me in a state that I only dreamed of traveling to. I hoped that neither of these were fact, but the waiting game of my life was becoming annoying. Why can't a girl just find her soulmate as soon as she gets her indicator? I would love to find my soulmate before I'm old and ugly.
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"Yo, Scar, we going to the mall or are you sleeping all day?" Brynn asked busting through my bedroom door. I glanced at the clock sitting on my nightstand at the illuminated numbers, 10:36, as I felt my bed dip with the weight of Brynn sitting by my feet. A groan passed my lips at being woken up, but I did promise Brynn that I'd accompany her to the mall to buy a dress for my upcoming college graduation. She insisted that she needed to find the dress a month in advance so she wouldn't forget about it and have to scramble to find one last minute. I, on the other hand, hadn't even given my graduation dress a thought.
"Yeah, we're still going. Give me a minute to get dressed." Brynn accepted my answer giving my legs a quick pat before she stood up to leave. At the door, she paused with her hand on the doorknob, "Maybe throw on a bit of makeup. You never know when you'll meet your soulmate!" Her comment had me rolling my eyes as I sat up in bed, stretching my arms with a yawn leaving my lips.
I threw on some denim shorts with a band t-shirt taking Brynn's advice and doing a simple makeup look. I left my hair alone letting it fall straight down my back then spent the next thirty minutes trying to find my converse before finding them right next to the front door knowing that Brynn had left them there the last time she borrowed them. Finally, an hour after Brynn had busted through my bedroom door, we were off to explore the mall.
"Did you see Becky met her soulmate at the farmer's market this weekend? He was selling jams and jellies with a tattoo that said 'I'll be the peanut butter to your jelly.' It was the cutest story!" Brynn squealed.
"Her family actually makes peanut butter right?" Brynn quickly nodded at my question. "That's got to be the best one I've heard in awhile. What was her indicator?"
"Color obscurity. She now sees blue." I laughed at the knowledge of her indicator before saying, "Would've sucked if he had brown eyes. She wouldn't have known the beauty of peanut butter her whole life." Brynn's laughter met my ears before she spotted the first dress store. She instantly stopped laughing and grabbed my arm, "Dress shopping time!"
After four hours of shopping, eight different stores, and a million different dresses, Brynn finally decided that a simple black strapless flare dress would pair great with her red heels she had at home. It was after 3 o'clock when we decided that our pretzels we had had at some point during the morning were definitely not enough to pass as brunch. The food court had never smelled as good as it did when we walked in.
"I have to get some Chinese food. I can never pass on some food court chow mein!" I said pulling Brynn's arm in the direction of the food line.
"How did I know that you would bring us over here?" Brynn said with the sarcasm dripping off of her words. I sent her a playful glare over my shoulder. "You are more than welcome to get pizza or chicken strips if you would rather," I said.
"Hell no. I'm getting Chinese!"
—————
Every. Damn. time.
I was wiping down a table, picking up the three dollar bills that they had left. There were crayons on the floor, food in the booth, a cup spilled on the table, and basically anything else that a family with two young kids could do to destroy a table was done. It wasn't the table straight out of a disaster that was irking me- well, not the only reason. The goosebumps that appeared on my skin were not anything new. The only thing I didn't understand was why they constantly appeared. It was after the first couple of times that I tried to identify the similarities of each incidence. It wasn't hard to figure out that it had something to do with the diner I worked at since that was the only place I noticed the goosebumps that sent shivers up my spine, but in a good way, if that's possible. I halted my movements of wiping the crumbs to the floor to be swept up and listened to the radio playing overhead. Debbie, the owner, always kept the radio on a top 40 station hoping to please the young teens that decided to hang out after school. The song wasn't familiar, other than having heard it here a few times when I was on shift. The title was probably held within the lyrics that I decided to focus on but the artist was still a mystery. The lyrics seemed repetitive, 'want you back' was being sung over and over. I didn't get to mull over the lyrics too much since an older lady sitting a few tables away with her husband called me over to ask for their check. I quickly obliged before pointing them to the cash register by the counter to pay and wishing them a good evening. I smiled to myself at the ten dollar bill sitting on the table after they went to pay. The couple was a lot more tolerable than the previous table I had dealt with. I looked over my shoulder at the forgotten mess of a table. Throwing my head back with a groan, I reluctantly dragged myself back to finish cleaning that table before moving on to the one the older couple sat at.
Finally able to hang my apron up at the end of the day allowed me to breathe out a sigh of relief. Cashing out at the register allowed me to bring home a whopping thirty-seven bucks. It was better than nothing, and luckily it was the last day I had to work for a few weeks since spring break was now over and classes were keeping me swamped until graduation. Bidding a farewell to Debbie, I walked out the back to where my car was parked in the back lot. The drive home only took about fifteen minutes, and I was warmly welcomed to the smell of pizza as I pulled the front door open.
"Honey, I'm home!" I shouted jokingly. I heard a laugh from the kitchen letting me know that at least one of my housemates was in there. I stood in the doorway watching Brynn and Carson dance around the kitchen, each with a glass of wine in hand, before walking to the bar to grab a piece of pizza from the box. Carson poured me a glass of wine before asking, "What are the deets from work today, girly? Any soulmates come in to find you?" he wiggled his eyebrows at me as he handed the glass over to me. I rolled my eyes.
"You two are relentless with this soulmate business! I think you'd know if I'd found 'the one,'" I said using air quotes to emphasize my annoyance with the current topic. Changing the subject before either one of them could butt in, "Did you guys want to go to the fair this weekend?"
Brynn's figure perked up at the mention of something fun happening in y'all's small town. "I hear it's half price on thursday! We can go after I get off work!" I smiled happily thinking about how long it had been since I had actually been to the fair. It came around every year, but it was never during a time that worked out in my favor. When I was a kid it was too expensive for my family, but now, I could waste my own money on it. I took a sip of wine with the biggest grin on my face thinking about the current status of my life. I had two great friends who were in love, a job that only made me want to pull my hair out, like, once a week, graduation coming up, and, for the first time in five years, it didn't bother me that my soulmate hadn't made their way into my life.