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She was on the way out of the volleyball meet when she saw it. Yellow petals poked out from under her watch, where before there had been only line art. As April watched, the color bloomed and spread, green seeping down the stem of the daffodil. She unclasped her watch and let the metal slide off to reveal the tattoo underneath. The color was definitely fresh, still swirling around, becoming more saturated by the second as it settled into the lines which had appeared on her skin years before.
On her soulmate’s twelfth birthday (a month before her own), April’s tattoo had appeared in line form. Today, at the moment she met her soulmate, it had started to color itself in. If April hadn’t been running late to that first meet, after getting lost in the unfamiliar campus of Samwell University, she might be able to think her soulmate was just any random student she had passed that morning. She had checked the time as she walked into the practice facility, however, and so she knew she had met her soulmate in that room.
She turned just as one of the other freshmen reached the door. April stepped aside without acknowledging her, and rose onto her tiptoes to try and see who else was there. Nobody on the team had a name like Daffodil, or Narcissus or Daphne that could be shortened to Daff or Fleur or any of the names April and her best friend at middle school had compiled as potential names to result in the flower tattoo.
“Are you okay?”
April fell back onto her heels in surprise and looked at the freshman. She was six foot tall and had big green eyes, framed with false lashes. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a fishtail braid, but a couple of curls had come loose and fell over her forehead. April swallowed. She had noticed in the meet how pretty this particular woman was, but the last thing she needed was to fall for one of her teammates when another was her soulmate. Unless…
She forced herself to speak. “Uh. I’m okay.”
“Cute ink.”
April looked at her wrist again. “Thanks. It’s my soulmate, though.”
She got a nod in return. “You’ve met them, then?”
“Apparently.”
“I’m jealous. I know who mine is. She’s called Daisy. But I haven’t met her yet. I’m March, by the way.”
April’s heart sank. For a second she had allowed herself to hope, but by the sounds of it, March was one of the lucky ones who had no doubt — her soulmate’s name must be written out in letters. “April,” she said dully.
“Oh, cool! We’re like, the calendar girls or something.”
“The… women who took naked pictures?”
March grabbed onto April’s arm. “Hey! One of the upperclassmen was telling me about this cute coffee place down that way?”
“Dunkins?” April asked with a raised eyebrow. There was a Dunkins the way March was pointing. (Two, actually, and another three within a ten minute walk.)
“What? No! It’s called Annie’s.” March dragged her along.
“Or we could just go to Dunkins,” April said, but she let herself be led to Annie’s.
April rarely befriended anyone as quickly as she did March. Within an hour they were comparing photos of their trips to pride that year and March explained everything that had happened since to lead to her and the girlfriend with whom she had gone to pride breaking up. After two hours, they had exchanged their worries and hopes for college, and on the third hour, as they walked back to their dorms, March googled how to make April her emergency contact.
“My parents are in California, so I need an emergency contact actually in Massachusetts. Why not you?” she reasoned. April shrugged. Her own family were all close enough that she didn’t have to worry about such things.
“I can’t believe you still haven’t asked around in the team to work out who it is,” March said, tracing the tattoo on April’s wrist. It was Friday afternoon, and they were sat on March’s bed preparing for their first game of the season that evening.
“I almost feel now as if it would be inorganic to do it that way. Either we’ve got to come together naturally, or I don’t want to know.”
March stuck her bottom lip out. “How can you not want to know?”
April imagined sucking on that pink bottom lip. She turned her eyes away, embarrassed. What had started as her thinking March was pretty had grown into a full-on crush in just four days. She didn’t want to know who her soulmate was, because she didn’t want to lose their friendship, but she also didn’t want her lingering hopes to be crushed so soon. She would rather live in ignorant bliss, having her fingernails painted with red and white flowers, and March’s hand soft against hers. “I just don’t.”
“I need your help.”
April looked up from her physics textbook. March closed the door behind her and held up two dresses.
“The red one,” April told her, without waiting to be asked.
“I know, but I think it hangs funny. Except I can’t tell because my fucking dorm room doesn’t have a full length mirror.” She turned to April’s mirror and held the two dresses up against herself.
“Feel free to use mine,” April said, even though March was already pulling her sweater off.
April dropped her eyes to her textbook again. The last thing her crush needed was to see March topless. Not now that she knew that they got on and had amazing best-friend chemistry and could talk to each other easily. She didn’t need more reasons to find March attractive.
“Can you zip me up?”
April bit back an expletive. “What’s this for, anyway?” she asked as she put her textbook to the side.
“You know that guy on the hockey team? The one who added me on Facebook?”
April tried to ignore the jealousy eating at her, but she couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice when she responded, “I told you, he added everyone on Facebook.”
“He asked me out to dinner!”
April looked at March through the mirror. “Oh.”
March’s face fell. “I… Thought you’d be excited for me.”
“No! I mean, yes. I am. Of course I am.”
“But…?”
April faltered. “But… I thought that other hockey bro was his soulmate.”
March shrugged. “Platonic soulmates exist? And even if that’s not the case I’m not against polyamory.”
April’s heart swelled, but she pushed away the feeling. Don’t get hopeful, again, she scolded herself.
“Zip me up, April?”
The zipper started low enough that April could see the top of March’s panties, and she had to be careful not to brush her ass as she took hold of the fabric. She pulled it slightly away from March’s body, and caught sight of a flash of color, just off-center of the small of her back.
“Hey, um. Your soulmate tattoo,” she said, staring at the daisy.
“Oh, yeah, it’s cute,” March agreed. “I forgot you hadn’t seen it yet.”
“I thought because you were so convinced she was called Daisy that you had it written out.”
“It’s a daisy, April, what else could she be called?”
April nodded numbly. “You didn’t say you’d met her.”
March shifted, and her dress pulled out of April’s hands. “I haven’t?”
“You don’t have a full length mirror in your dorm, and there’s no mirrors in the shower rooms, either. When did you last see it?”
March glanced over her shoulder at April, a frown appearing between her eyes. “But I haven’t met a Daisy. I went through all my class lists. No Daisys.”
With a sigh, April put her hands on March’s shoulders and turned her so that her back was to the mirror, then she pulled the dress aside so that the tattoo was visible in the glass, with its white petals, yellow center, and green stem. “Look.”
“How could I meet her without knowing?” March choked on tears, and stepped away from April’s reach. “I’m not going to wear this dress anyway,” she said, slipping it off her shoulders and giving April a full view of her breasts covered in red lace as she reached for the other dress which had no fastenings to mess about with. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be late.”
April was still sat on the floor of her room, the rejected dress in her hands, when March knocked on the door two hours later. She didn’t usually knock because she knew April left her door unlocked and she was welcome any time, but she looked nervous when April called that it was open and she let herself in.
“Hi.”
April dropped the dress. “Hi. Uh. How was the date?”
“Okay. We talked about soulmates.”
“Yeah?”
“You were right. Hockey bro is his soulmate, but it’s not like that for them.”
April stared at the wall above March’s head.
“I told him that I like having fun but now I know I’ve met my soulmate I want to check with her before I do anything with anyone else. Because I think it probably is like that for us. For me and my soulmate, I mean.”
April wanted to ask how she would know, when March didn’t know who her soulmate was, but she understood. There was a certain feeling that your soulmate was going to be romantic. She had it as well.
“So he helped me do a bit of research. He made excel spreadsheets and everything. It was… intense, actually. But sweet.”
“Research?”
March hummed and sat down next to her. “So I think I've worked it out, now. But you're right. It's probably better to let things play out organically.”
April stared at her phone, lying by her feet. “Did you know that the daisy is the birth flower of the month of April?”
She could feel March's eyes on her as she nodded.
“And guess what it is for March?” April continued, gripping onto her phone and holding it up as if that might help March know she had Googled it an hour ago.
“A daffodil,” March whispered. Her fingers brushed against April's wrist. “April. I thought—”
“You said you’d want to know,” April told her. She forced herself to be brave and reach out to graze her fingers across the back of March’s dress, along the spot where she now knew her soulmate tattoo was. “When did this appear?”
“April… April twenty-eighth 2007.”
“March eighteenth. Same year.”
Finally, April let herself look at March. Her eyeliner was smudged around the edges but it was joy which made her eyes shine and her lips were pulled into a smile. It was almost overwhelming to be looked at with such fondness and wonder.
“April,” March breathed, softly enough that April leaned in closer, and her eyes flickered down to her soft, pink lips so as to catch every word. “Am I right? Is it like that for us?”
Their shoulders brushed against each other, and April could smell March’s soap underneath her perfume, as well as what she was pretty sure was apple pie, but she was too distracted to wonder where March and hockey guy had gone to dinner. “It’s like that for me,” she said, and the final millimeters between them faded away.