what’s in a name
Short Story - Soulmate Name AU ~1600 words Queer Romance, PG
Her parents are not rude to you.
But it is clear that you are not what they were expecting. Topics of conversation start and stop abruptly. They're confused. At a loss for words. The uneasiness in the room makes it hard to settle on a subject deemed “safe.” Her taller mother seems to be fishing for your future plans, an expiration date to this “doomed experiment” perhaps, your doubt-filled mind interjects- until your girlfriend steers the conversation back to your current research project.
The awkwardness is all the much more apparent when contrasted to her first meeting your own mother last week.
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Her foreign name had rolled off your mother's tongue like the promise it was always meant to be, after all, she's known this name nearly as long as she's known yours. What mother doesn't scan their baby’s wrists for a name as soon as their tiny fingers and toes are accounted for? Some even wait to name their child until reading up on their soulmate’s so as to pair the names together thematically or with matching initials. Your name is a family name though, and as good as decided soon after you were conceived, but still, your mother has been waiting to meet her since you were born, and greets her like an old friend, or maybe more aptly, like a new daughter.
Your friends hear of the hidden name, the one that is Not Yours, branded on her wrist.
“There's other girls with her name,” they remind you, as if you don't know this. “Sure, we’ve never heard of it before, but it's popular in other places... surely.”
But it's more than the name on your wrist that drew you to her.
You knew before you were introduced. Her smile was like home, her voice was mana- who cared if she was a head taller than you, it only seemed fitting that your neck ached as much as the rest of you did upon looking up at her loveliness, knowing that she would be special to you.
That first conversation you had with her, she introduced herself politely. You nearly wept when the name you expected slipped from her lips.
She had heard of your research, she continued, ever calm and collected.
She knows who you are, you told yourself. And yet you worked your name into the conversation almost as many times as you repeated hers back to her, waiting for some sign she approved of who she had found attached to it.
You hit it off, it would seem, conversation progressing easily from one topic to another. You never doubted the finality of your meeting, of the mystery being solved now, the future starting now. Here. True, you hadn't been expecting it to happen tonight, in fact you rarely attend such occasions, preferring the isolation of your lab (or perhaps your mind), but it did, and so you were ready to move things along.
You asked if she'd like to grab a drink, nonalcoholic even, if that was an issue (you'd done your research in this, too, after all).
Her soft brown eyes narrowed, just a little, and glanced down.
At your wrist.
Exposed.
Prone on the counter.
At her own name on your arm.
You saw the surprise register, it should have prepared you, but you were already in love with her at that point.
She adjusted the sleeve of her jacket; you expected her to flash her own wrist at you. You longed to press a kiss a there, to the pulse that beat against that which bound you together.
“Just one,” she replied, distracting you with a smile. And though she held to that number, you talk another 3 hours that night. And when you awoke the next day, there was a text from her on your phone: “the name on my wrist is not your’s, but I'd like to see you again”
You’ve been dating since.
Honestly, you just didn't believe her at first. The odd joke was nothing compared to how she made you feel, and if her smiles and laughs and eager messages were to be believed, then she felt the same about you.
It was the first time you made love, and you pressed a kiss to a wrist bare of its usual adornments that you realized the truth. When she pulled her wrist away, you could just make out in the low light, a script you couldn't place… the name that wasn't yours.
Later you asked if she could read it. “I taught myself how, yes.”
“What does it say?” you asked. Weeks had built up to this: sleepless nights, nerves and doubts weighing on you, and then-
“I'm not going to tell you.”
It hurt. It hurt so much: that she could but wouldn't.
“Why?” you spat. You wanted to be angry. You wanted to fight. It wasn't fair. Everything was supposed to be perfect, that was the promise in the names.
Instead she kissed you. So gentle. So sure.
“You don't need me to.”
You took it to mean it would just hurt more that way. And thought she was probably right. And she wrapped her arms around you and you knew again what you knew that first day.
She loves you, you know this, you feel it. But the weight of the secret name looms over you.
On the nights you don't spend together, itching to peek under her arm band, that you might be able to decipher the name there, place it's linguistic origin… doubts plague your mind. Doubts new, and old.
Doubts even her smile can’t chase from your mind.
You love her, but you feel you're preventing her from being truly happy. Who wouldn't think so? Couples like you are the lifeblood of trashy daytime talk shows. When the wrong-named lover walks out on stage the audience boos and jeers. How selfish of you to ruin three other people’s lives? Your lover’s, their soulmate's, and your’s’? It's drama and an intervention- a way to put their own names out there, the hopes their own soulmates might then come calling.
And if you cannot even give her all of yourself, what hope is there in this?
But when you work up the nerve to break things off… the tears in her eyes as she leans down and kisses your forehead with such gentleness it breaks your resolve, and you open your mouth to take it all back: damn the names, damn the doubts.
But she a presses a finger to your lips, and nods. “I look forward to meeting you again some day,” she states with a confidence you've never known. She packs her bags and leaves the key you had made for her on the dining room table.
Even then she never says your name. Has she ever said your name?
In the dark weeks that follow, you try not to, but you keep tabs on her.
She takes the promotion you knew was in the works, and you wonder- had she declined it before? Is that why it was so easy for her to leave?
Contrarily, it's too easy to keep eyes on her after that.
She's everywhere now, you see her in news videos and interviews all the time. You imagine her job will take her to where the script on her wrist is commonplace, but you never hear of an attachment.
You talk to your friends.
You talk to a therapist.
You talk to your mother.
You talk to a specialist.
Your research continues. For years it continues, until you're widely renowned within your field, if not outside of it.
The doubts you have are different now, the old fears traded in for common ones amongst those who are getting on in age but haven't been able to connect with their soulmates.
But you're no longer ducking out of photo ops and avoiding the awkward sorts of gatherings where you had met her, to the point that seven years later you agree to give the keynote at an international conference.
Yes, you tell your mother, While I'm there I promise to look for others with her name.
It's fate, she reasons, that the conference is being held where it is this time around.
You're ready now, you know this, or believe it at least, if only you could get the memory of a certain voice, a certain smile, out of your heart.
There are no bars here, but the little cafe a few blocks from the conference center does just as well, and you're perusing a menu in a language you've been teaching yourself when you hear your new name, the one you chose for yourself, spoken like a promise, with such surety, from a mouth, curved now in smile, far above you. It strains your neck to look up at such an angle.
Shocked and speechless, your hand reaches out out of politeness alone, and her unadorned wrist moves to grasp it.
She can't recognize you, you tell yourself. Your own mother barely can, and she was there throughout the process.
But she says your name again, like it's erupting from her. And despite the fact you've not introduced yourself, she says it again. It falls so easily from her lips and you realize.
You realize it's because she's known the name longer than you have.
She introduces herself to you with a smile you never forgot, “it's nice to meet you,” she says, and then to make sure you know she knows it's you, “again.”