Soulmate AU || Para 01
It had been a while since Dixie Rutherford had gotten her first writing gig. There were dozens of magazine articles penned by her in numerous respectable magazines, she didn’t have to worry about too much white space on her resume, and she was pretty sure she had more magazines offering her a spot on staff than she had ever applied to work at. She was a seasoned, published writer and a competent professional. She was also nervous as hell.
Freelance had always been a term that scared the woman, and now it was her reality. She had stepped away from her cozy little world of assigned articles and a corner office in favor of a sabbatical to write out her passion project that she hoped someone would pick up. TIME would be nice, she thought, or National Geographic if they cared to pick up this sort of thing. It was jarring to her that she was chasing down a story about something much deeper than fair trade coffee or humanely harvested leather. The topic of the article had been like an itch she couldn’t scratch since she had noticed her comfortable domestic situation with Mark was too comfortable—no aches, no bad knees, no grey hairs, no again.
The two of them had let denial be a comfort to them for too long. They had created a routine and the silent agreement that came annually to wait one more year in hopes of a grey hair or crows feet came more than once or twice. Finally, it was time to face the fact that their arrangement, albeit comfortable, was not a true sign of compatibility. That, and Mark’s infidelity made it unbearable to stretch the denial out a few decades of partnership. Dixie had loved Mark, but it wasn’t enough. Parts of the relationship was real, but more of it was fabricated and convenient.
Dixie had decided to live more genuinely, and that was a lot of what had lead her to quit her job and pursue the topic of the new work she was compiling interviews for. It was going to be a piece on exploring the lives of those whose waits to meet their soul mates, or even longer if she was able to find them. It was her passion project, but the idea also terrified her. She was secure with the lack of income and she had the drive to execute it, but she was afraid of who she might meet, what she might feel, that she didn’t have the necessary sociology or anthropology backing to pull it off, and that even if she did, despite all the barriers, no one would care about the writing anyway.
But here she was anyway parking her car in front of a rustic looking café. She had chosen the café specifically due to its location in the clean outskirts of the city and the relaxed atmosphere it provided. Her hands fumbled her purse and she huffed out a small sigh as she recollected the belongings that had spilled across her passenger seat before stepping out. She was meeting somewhere here for only the third interview she had set up for the project. A Dallas Landry. From what research she had gathered he was far into the elder side of the spectrum. When she had spoken to him on the phone his soft spoken, young sounding voice had caught her off guard. As she tentatively stepped into the café she found herself looking for an older man at first before she remembered that despite his age he wouldn’t look a day older than herself.
It was that disconnect she was so fascinated by. She wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, she wasn’t able to access the records. It was one of the first questions she intended to ask him, but it was also the heart of her writing. What was it like to move through the some of the most perennial moments of the world with the same body and consciousness and have decades of wisdom already? To watch those around you grow old and leave you behind, not once, but generation by generation? And the apparently limitless time, how would one fill it? And what would happen when one ran out of ways to fill it? She had had pictures shown to her that broke her heart, heard stories that warmed it again, and her reflection reminded her of her own empty heart that pushed her to work on the piece. She was barely 50 years old, which more widely was pushing the older side of things waiting to meet a soul mate, but she wanted to tell the stories of the outliers, the ones who had been waiting much longer than herself.
The crowd in the café was spotted with a few older couples, but most were young. Dixie wondered how many of them knew and which of the couples were waiting for that telltale sign of aging. There was only one person seated alone, their back turned to Dixie toward the middle of the seating area, a few plush arm chairs and a couch set up around a fire that was always lit, summer or winter, rain or shine. She held her work bag close against her side as she approached them, a nervousness bubbling up inside her. Interviews made her work powerful, but interviews often made her feel powerless.
There was a shyness to the woman as her eyes locked with a pair of bright blue eyes and she knew looking at them that they didn’t match the man’s young face. “Are you Mr. Landry?” she asked anyway, sticking out a hand for him to shake. She hoped she wouldn’t notice she was nearly shaking herself. “I’m Ms. Rutherford, we spoke on the phone… Can I get you anything to drink before we begin?” She glanced over her shoulder at the barista behind the counter, still standing awkwardly in front of the chair where her subject had chosen to sit.