not everyone needs love

🥀

    jessie had never been head over heels before. for everyone else, love came easily. "i love you" was thrown around with no meaning, tossed out onto the curb like a candy wrapper. it was pointless without the candy inside of it, without the value of the words inside of them. sure, some people may have actually loved their past partners, but the relationships never lasted long. a month or two, at the most. no one found their soulmate until they were eighteen. an adult.
    one day of the year, february 14th, every eighteen year-old in the town was fitted with a bracelet. the bracelet was an electromagnet that would only attract to one other person's band. no one knew why the date 2/14 was so special, other than a rumor of a so called "valentine's day" back in the 2000's. sometimes it took a while, maybe a month, for the bracelets to kick in and attract to each other, magnets pulling, forcing the two lovers to-be together.
    jessie never really liked the idea of being in a relationship, much less being forced into one. the thought gave a shudder down her spine, a lump in her stomach. and not in the good way. she always knew she was weird; different from the others. with such futuristic technology, she thought, why should love be the norm? but this was, of course, coming from a society that had plenty of money but would only use it for themselves instead of improving residential living.
her best friend, izzy, though, was different.
    "oh my god, jessie, i'm so excited to get a girlfriend! the girlfriend! my girlfriend! i mean, i hope it's a girlfriend. not a boyfriend. oh my god, what if it's rory? or erin? they're so cute!"
    the two best friends were hanging out at izzy's place, an old collapsed skyscraper with only four remaining floors. most houses were decaying houses, so izzy's was considered a palace.
izzy had never had a relationship before either, but unlike jessie, she'd been all too excited to finally meet her one, her soulmate.
    maybe, jessie thought, maybe i'll care when it actually happens, right? i'm not a weirdo. i can't be. everyone loves someone.
    "yeah... haha... i'm, uh, so excited to meet mine too! my- my soulmate i mean. so excited. can't wait."
    jessie cursed in her head. she had never been a good liar, per say, but this time she knew she had royally messed up. izzy was sure to notice that jessie clearly was not excited. other than a few terms, "asexual" and "aromantic," she had never heard of anyone not being excited to meet their soulmate. those words were just old folk tales anyway. she stared out into the cloudy gray sky, anxious thoughts in her head. what if izzy thought she was weird?
    "hey... jessie. you know that even when we get soulmates, we'll still be friends, right? i won't abandon you for a romantic interest. i would never. you're my best friend."
    jessie sighed a sigh of relief. izzy had just thought that jessie was scared of losing their friendship. which she was, of course! but at least she wasn't a weirdo in her best friend's mind.
the two girls- one excited and one terrified- chatted for a few hours about the ceremony the next day and then parted ways.
    jessie's heart always skipped a beat when she jumped out of the fourth-story window, but, as always, the floating platform that worked as an elevator broke her fall when she was only a few inches below the windowsill.

    jessie yawned and stretched as she woke up in her sleeping pod. today was the day that her fate would be decided. when she remembered this, she shivered. all the eighteen year olds in zrine, her country, were waking up and cheering, meanwhile, briskly after regaining consciousness, she was already having a small anxiety attack.
    her breath quickened, her heart pounded, and her head ached. she didn't want this. she didn't want a relationship. but she had to have one. she was a weirdo. a misfit. no one could find out she didn't want love, romantically speaking. if they did... well, jessie had seen what the government did to punish people in her town.

    by the time jessie had found her train of thought again, she was in an orderly line with all the recently turned adults in her city at the town square. she stood behind a dark toned male with black hair and a textured green shirt. it was a t-shirt, something from the past that only the very poor and unfortunate wore. the average and rich would wear thin bullet proof uniforms, usually a suit and bow tie, which was jessie's attire on this important day.
    since the lines were ordered by names (alphabetically), although izzy and jessie had adjacent letters in first name -last names were a thing of the past- there were still others in the town with "j" names that blocked jessie from her best friend. from what jessie recalled, the man standing in front of her was jaime, someone who had been in at least ten relationships with girls this year alone.
    jessie, although not understanding romance in general, thought that people who had been in relationships before their soulmate were even stranger. she would never dare say this aloud, and she did not mean it offensively, only curiously, as her nature typically was, but why would anyone have a relationship that they knew would end in heartbreak?
    jessie's eyes, which before were drifting off to space, focused, as she realized she had unconsciously taken more than a dozen steps forward and was now the second nearest the visitor center, a building in the town square that the february 14th "love ceremony" was held in.     each person would go in on their own and have a bracelet be fitted to their arm. the bracelet contained an electromagnet, a lock, and a key. the key was removable from the frame of the bracelet. no one could take off their magnet until they found their soulmate, who would unlock it with the key inside.
    she had gotten caught up in her thoughts again, and was now first in line.
    god, how she wished she had a name like zadie or zanet. that way, she would be free for as long as possible.