The Theory of Affinity

Chapter 2 ; Searching

"You know, Teagan... You can't act like you're widowed for the rest of your life."

I glared up at him from my spot on the couch and took an angry bite out of the hoagie I was currently devouring. "Says you," I snapped with a mouthful of food.

Brenton shook his head and sat down next to me. "It's not the end of the world. So what if your soulmate--"

"Put me in the friend zone?" I asked, earning a small snicker out of him. "Don't laugh! It's true."

"All he did was leave--"

"He ran away from me!"

I could see Brenton trying to come up with some excuse. "Maybe he was late to work!"

I snorted, crossing my arms over my chest, making some of my pathetic used tissues fall to my side. "Or maybe I just happened to Match with someone who would probably rather hang out with hazardous waste than me."

"You don't know his side of the story so stop being a negative Nancy," my best friend snapped at me. "He's your Match. He has to come back."

Just like he's supposed to actually look for me too, I thought to myself.

The moment I realized Jonah had ditched me, only seconds after our meeting, my worst fears were confirmed. I wasn't Matched with someone who I hadn't found yet, I was Matched with someone who didn't want to even be around me. He hadn't been searching all those years to find me like I was or imagining how we would meet. He didn't care about any of that and if he did, he wouldn't have ran off.

"Maybe you just smelled that day," Brenton shrugged like it was nothing.

I glared at him, causing a boyish grin to creep up on his features. I tried to think of something to counteract it but it was just so dumb that I couldn't. Instead, I fell back into my bed, causing several of my tissues to fly up and drift back down on me.

"Am I just so ugly that he didn't want to be embarrassed by me?" I groaned, grabbing a pillow and pushing it into my face. "I mean, who does that?"

"T, I can't hear you over your shame," A muffled Brenton told me as he pulled away my fluffy protection. "Now what were you saying?

"I just can't believe that he had the audacity to just leave me after a moment like that!" I huffed. "When we touched..." I shook my head, hiding the shivers that ran down my spine from the memory. "It was like nothing else mattered besides him. He had to feel that too, right?

"Unless you were Compromised--Hey!" He grunted when I threw the pillow at him.

"Now who is being the negative one?!"

He chuckled and put his hand on my knee as a means of comfort. "I don't know what else to say. This has got to be the first time this has ever happened to a Matched couple."

I highly doubted that but it still sucked. I had been envisioning perfection for my whole life only for it to be thrown in my face by my so-called 'Match.' It was humiliating. I finally had my moment and it was taken away from me.

"What do I even do about this," I groaned. "He's the only thing that's been on my mind for the past few days--"

"Because he's your Match," Brenton pointed out.

"And he's a jerk," I concluded.

"But still your Match. I know that you know what that means, T."