Chasing Romeo

by Sarah Ready

  If you want to know if he loves you so…it’s in his kiss.

  “Was that him? Summer camp?” asks Veronica.

  I nod. I was nine years old, and I kissed him behind the art shed on the last day of camp. Apparently, he was my soul mate, I just didn’t know it yet.

  I look back at Nick. He’s still watching me, a scowl on his face. His eyes are hooded and unreadable. Fine.

  I turn away from him and address the room.

  “Matt Smith,” I say in a clear, carrying voice. “Matt Smith is my soul mate.” It’s strange, because for a small moment, I’m disappointed. Then, I shove it aside.

  Everyone cheers. Well, everyone except Nick.

  So, I smile. A big, beatific, birthday girl smile. Holy crap, I think, but my smile says, yaaaay.

  “Wow,” says Veronica. “You haven’t seen him since he was nine. What if he’s…” She stops.

  “He’ll be perfect,” I say. “I’ll love him, and he’ll love me.” This is something I know to be true, it’s the immutable law of soul matehood. In the past, no man has loved me for me, they’ve always left, but a soul mate, no matter your quirks, they stay. They love you. They don’t hurt you and they don’t leave.

  Erma clears her throat and the room goes silent again. Suddenly, there’s an itch at the base of my spine. What now?

  “The second part of my gift,” says Aunt Erma “is that Nick O’Shea, Romeo’s very first private investigator, is going to help Chloe find her soul mate.”

  I whip my head around to look at Nick. His arms are folded across his chest and he has a smirk on his face.

  Aunt Erma continues, “Because, as it happens, our Chloe has only one week to find her soul mate. If she doesn’t find him by then…he’ll be gone forever.”

  4

  Chloe

  * * *

  The autumn afternoon turns blustery, and crimson and yellow leaves blow off the trees. They swirl in mini whirls across the sky. At my desk, I sketch the turmoil of the falling leaves and the dark gray storm clouds.

  I’m in my downtown art studio/one-bedroom apartment over the bakery. Everyone at the party congratulated me and was gung ho about me finding my Matt Smith. Well, except Nick. He told me to meet him in Amos, the next town over, for dinner at eight. I looked for Matt Smith online, but couldn’t find anything promising. I guess that’s why Aunt Erma hired a private investigator.

  The real question, the one that has me going through sheet after sheet of paper is…do I do this? I said I would. I believed, since I was little, that I would. I always thought that given the chance, I would pursue my fated one to the ends of the earth.

  And now, here I am, with the opportunity of a lifetime and I’m hesitating. Why does Nick have to be a part of this? I asked Aunt Erma if I could find my soul mate without him, and she said no. So, I have two options. I can forget about the whole thing, lose my soul mate and keep making awful choices when it comes to love. Or I can lock away whatever it was that I once felt for Nick, and pursue my soul mate with unwavering singlemindedness.

  I sigh and set down my pen.

  The rain beats against the window, and the thrumming of the downpour takes me back to eight months ago—the last time I saw Nick.

  I crouch in my wedding dress on the stone steps of the church. The rain falls, pouring down my face. Thunder booms and I wrap my arms around myself. I stare out over downtown Romeo.

  “Chloe. You’re soaking wet. Come inside,” Veronica says. I tilt my face up to the downpour.

  “I love the rain,” I say. I smile up at her and blink through the downpour. “No one can see your tears in the rain, Vee.”

  “Come on, hon,” she says. “He was a toad. I never told you this, but I always hated him. Hated him since third grade.”

  I shake my head. “I thought I found him. My soul mate, Vee. But I didn’t. And now he’s gone.” I ask the question I’m scared of. “Is it me?”

  I run my hand over the dirty gray of my soaking wet wedding dress.

  “No,” says Veronica. “Never. It’s Ron. And your crappy excuse for a second cousin, Candy. Ugh, if I ever see her again, it’s on…”

  I smile and take Vee’s hand. I appreciate her angry vehemence, because right now, all I feel is pain.

  I hear Mrs. Wilkes in the entry of the church, “Chloe’s always been terrible at choosing men. She’s a sweetie, but her taste in men is bottom barrel terrible. She couldn’t pick a good one if her life depended on it.”

  “Tell me about it. The groom running out with a bridesmaid. The poor hopeless dear,” says another voice.

  “She always wants each man to be the one so badly that she can’t see how wrong for her they are.”

  “Remember that porn addict Travis? How long did she date him?” asks someone else.

  “And Ryan. He fleeced her for two thousand dollars and stole her microwave.”

  “And don’t get me started on that O’Shea boy,” says Mrs. Wilkes. “The flagpole fiasco.”

  “Wasn’t he the best man?”

  I block them out and tilt my face back up to the rain. As long as it keeps pouring, no one will see how much this hurts.

  Veronica squeezes my hand and sits down next to me. “Don’t listen,” she says.

  I thought I’d found the one. I believed I could count on him to love me for life. We didn’t even make it past dearly beloved.

  I look up at the sky. “They’re right,” I say.

  I watch a flash of lightning strike. I’m not melodramatic, really I’m not, but that crack of lightning felt like my breaking heart.

  “I wish this would all go away. That I could disappear.”

  “No, hon,” she says.

  “God as my witness, Vee, I’m never going to trust myself with love ever again. I won’t be with a man again. Not until I’m certain he’s my soul mate. Only then.”

  Another boom of thunder hits.

  The windowpane rattles in front of me and I’m pulled back to the present.

  I look down at the sheet of paper on my desk. It’d been a landscape. I hadn’t realized I was crying again, but my tears had splashed onto the ink and now the illustration was a mess of black.

  In movies and books, the characters always get over heartbreak so easily. Like their fiancé or spouse having an affair wasn’t the most awful, painful, devastating thing that ever happened to them. Let me tell you. It was. In real life, it was. The worst part was that for months after I hated myself. My trust of people, my positivity, my career, everything that made me me, I hated. Because none of me was good enough. Do you see?

  In the movies, the heroines move on and find a new guy in a matter of pages. In three paragraphs they’ve chucked the pain and moved on. Life isn’t really that way. Eight months later, I still don’t trust myself enough to know whether a man truly loves me or not. I’ve been wrong so many times before. Here’s my dirty, awful, buried deep down secret—I’ll never trust myself again. Being wrong hurts too much.

  So.

  There’s my answer.

  I’m going to pursue my soul mate with everything I have and I’m not going to stop until I find him. Even if it means being up close and personal with Nick O’Shea for the next week. Because when it’s over, Nick will be out of my life, and I’ll have the man who will love me, and I’ll love him.

  5

  Nick

  * * *

  “There are how many thousands?” asks Chloe.

  I think she’s in shock. “Nine thousand, six hundred and thirteen in the US, but that’s for all ages, we narrowed it down to 364 for his age group.” She winces. “You see, Matthew was the most common name for boys the year he was born. Smith is the most common surname in the U.S. Put it together and you’re looking for a needle in a haystack. Assuming he’s still in the country. Or alive.”

  Chloe looks up at the ceiling of the restaurant and shakes her head. “We’re talking about my soul mate. I have one week. Call your contacts, do…”—she waves her hands in the
air—“something investigatey.”

  I try hard not to smile. “Investigatey?”

  “Why are we here?” she asks.

  I glance around the dimly lit medieval dinner theatre. We’re at a wooden table overlooking the arena, where two knights are currently jousting. The green knight lands a solid hit on the red knight. A group sitting a few tables away cheers. The “serving wench” just dropped off trenchers, which are dry flat breads that serve as the plate, green mush, roast quail, and two goblets of honey mead. There are colorful banners on the walls, candles, and roaming minstrels.

  “Well?” she asks.

  “I like the food,” I say. I tear a bit of dry bread off and dip it in the green glop. A minstrel ventures close and I wave him away.

  She gives me a skeptical look. “You know, the concept of romantic love was born in medieval times. Before the period of chivalry, marriage was for practical reasons. The knights were fighting for an ideal. I never figured you’d buy into that,” she says. She takes a swallow of her mead. I watch as she licks the honey liquid from her lips.

  She glares when she notices where my focus lies. I look away, shamed like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  My attention is caught by my target and his affair partner. Yes, I’m here on a job. They’re sitting at a nearby table. I pull out my cell phone and pretend to check messages while I take a dozen photos. I snap a picture of the guy with his hand on the lady’s back. Him touching her hair. Her leaning down to kiss him, lots of tongue. Yeah. Case closed.

  “Did you hear me?” asks Chloe.

  “What?”

  I put down my phone. My final infidelity case is now wrapped up. Affairs are, truth be told, a private investigator’s bread and butter. But after I email these photos to my client and write up my report, I’m free to leave town with Chloe.

  “Can we find him?” she asks.

  I push down a flash of irritation. Yes, I accepted this job, but… “Why do you want to?” I ask.

  I wonder, what would she have done if Erma had said my name? I guess we’ll never find out.

  She sits up straighter in her chair and her cheeks flush with pink. “Because,” she says. I get the feeling I’m in for an impassioned argument. Then she wrinkles her forehead and shrugs. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  I feel cheated. “Try me,” I say.

  She shakes her head. Then she goes back to picking at the gross mush on her bread plate.

  “Alright,” I say. “See the couple at your four o’clock? The man in the Members Only jacket and the woman in the blue velvet dress?”

  She looks, then her gaze softens. “They’re in love,” she says.

  I scoff. “Yeeeah, love. You’re naïve, Sparky. That man’s wife is at home with their four children. That woman’s husband is at home with their two-year-old daughter. There’s no love there, only selfishness, delusion and a future of pain.”

  She flinches and her face drains of color. I feel bad, until she lifts her jaw in a stubborn slant. There’s the fighter I remember. “You can’t know that,” she says.

  “Can’t I? I bet you anything those two are telling each other that they’re ‘soul mates.’ That only they can understand each other. That they never really had love until now, that they are star-crossed lovers, and that they don’t want to do this, but how can they deny their all-encompassing love, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, they’ll tell each other anything to justify in their minds the sheer garbage of what they’re doing to people who trust them. Betrayal, Sparky, it’s love’s ugly twin. Disappointment is their big brother.”

  The minstrel moves over again and starts to sing a medieval love ballad.

  “Wow, Nick. Thanks for that, I almost forgot that you were a big fat jerk.”

  The minstrel misses a note and then discreetly moves away from the table. Chloe rips at her bread and chews more forcefully than necessary.

  The couple has started to make out. I could get more photos, but I decide to leave it alone. I turn back to Chloe. I forgot how soft she is. Everything about her is soft. She’s like an impressionist painting. Curly hair, heart-shaped face, wide cupid’s bow mouth, and her breasts…lush. When you get too close she’s all out of focus and dreamy. It makes a man want to grab her and kiss her back into focus. I shake my head and clear the vision. Not for me.

  “I’m just asking,” I say, “are you sure you want to bet your future on a myth?” Because, to be honest, something inside me wishes she’d get up and say, screw you, fate, I’m taking my future in my own hands.

  “Would I bet my future?” she asks.

  I nod and lean forward to hear her answer.

  Slowly, she says, “I’d bet everything.”

  Her words ring in my ears. She’s serious. She’ll do anything to get with this random guy she hasn’t seen in nearly twenty years. It’s like a cosmic joke, except I’m not laughing. I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything less.

  “It’s a myth,” I say. “It’s not real.”

  “It is,” she says. She points her finger at me and jabs me in the chest. “And I’m going to prove it to you.” Her hand rests over my heart. We both look down at her touching me. She yanks it back and wipes her hand on her napkin.

  No man likes to see a woman wipe herself off after touching him. I scowl and then take her unspoken challenge. “More likely, by the end of this week, I’ll prove that soul mates don’t exist.”

  “Good luck, you have hundreds of Aunt Erma’s successes against you.”

  No worries, I stand by my belief that the whole town of Romeo is suffering from romantic delusions. Hey, the tourism dollars depend on it.

  Also, I’d like to push a little bit of reality into this situation and throw out the idea that this guy might not be decent.

  “He could be a rapist,” I say. That gets her attention. Her head snaps up and she glares at me.

  “Or a Lothario,” she says. Take that, her eyes say. She bares her teeth at me in a semblance of a grin and I smile back. Game on.

  The minstrel who had wandered close again hightails it to the other side of the restaurant.

  “He could be a drug dealer,” I say.

  “Or a pharmacist,” she says.

  “He could be an alcoholic.”

  “A vintner.”

  “He’s unemployed,” I say.

  “Independently wealthy.”

  “He looks like a frog.”

  “He’s a prince,” she says.

  “He’s boring.”

  “Strong and silent.”

  I glare at her and she glares back, a smile curving on her lips.

  “Bad in bed,” I say.

  “A sex god.” She bites at her lower lip and I have the urge to take it in my mouth and show her a decade of pent-up wanting. I yank my thoughts from her lips and drop my ace in the hole.

  “He could be an ax murderer,” I say. Take that and chew on it.

  She laughs, throaty and low, and her eyes light up. The candlelight sparks off her glowing skin.

  “Or,” she says, “he’s a lumberjack. Mmmm. Sexy ax. I’ll hold the handle. Rawr.” She claws her hand and scratches at the air.

  I shake my head. “You got it.” I hold up my goblet of mead for a toast. “To Matt Smith. Chloe’s lumberjack soul mate.”

  She lifts her goblet and clinks it against mine. Some of the mead sloshes over the side and drizzles over my hand. I tilt up the cup and take a long drink to cool the fire roaring in my gut. She’s watching me over the rim of her glass.

  Finally, I set my goblet down and wipe off my hand.

  “Were you always like this?” she asks. She’s looking at me like I’ve offered up a puzzle for her to solve. There’s nothing puzzling about me. I’m as straightforward as they come.

  “I’ve narrowed the field down to six,” I say.

  She shakes her head like the topic change gave her whiplash.

  “Six Matt Smiths?”

  “Yeah. I have a friend, Reed, he
was in intelligence. He did some heavy lifting, pulled some favors. Since we have no school records, no address, no social security number, no parents, no—”

  “I met him at summer camp. I was nine,” she says. She’s in a huff.

  “Exactly. Since we only had a name, an approximate age, probably ethnicity and general location, we were able to narrow the search to six potential Matt Smiths.”

  She leans forward and grasps the edge of the table. “Well? Where are they? Can I call them? Email them? Meet them?” Her eyes glow. She’s practically jumping up and down she’s so excited.

  There’s a sword fight happening in the arena, and the raucous table cheers again.

  “Settle down, Sparkplug,” I say.

  She blows out a breath and sits back in her seat.

  “We had twenty-seven potentials originally. I already contacted and crossed off the ones I could. For the rest, we only have their addresses. They’re the below-the-radar type. No web presence. No social media. No phone. No traceable records...” I pause.

  “So….?” she asks.

  “So, they could be a little…off,” I say.

  She narrows her eyes. “Didn’t we just do this? He’s a sexy lumberjack, remember? So, what else is the problem?”

  This is the bit I was worried about bringing up. “So”—I spread my arms and smile—“we’re going on a road trip.”

  “Ack,” she says.

  “Exactly,” I say. “A car, the road, you and me.”

  She’s speechless.

  I pull a printout of the US from my coat pocket. I hold it up in front of her. I’ve highlighted our route and put X’s on all the stops. It spans from New York to Nevada and covers more than twenty-five hundred miles.

  “Wait. You realize we only have a week? Why don’t we fly?” she asks.

  “No,” I say.

  “But we don’t have time to drive.”

  “We’ll make it.”

  “But—”

  I fold the map and put it on the table.

  “I don’t fly.”

  “But—”

  “Ever.”

  She sighs. “Ever, ever?”