Author note: I am using a pretty famous Soulmate Au, in which the first sentence your soulmate will say to you shows up on your hand when you turn 18. In case you already met them before you are 18, It will be the next thing they will say to you after your tattoo shows up.

I decided to set my OTP into this Au, I Hope you enjoy!

Rated M for swearing.

I took a small break from my work as a cure lil' barista.

I was surfing the web on my phone, but then the bandage around my left arm suddenly felt itchy.

I cursed and rubbed it.

I didn't want to think about what was lying underneath.

But of course, my resistance to these shitty thoughts just made them stronger.

What my bandage covered wasn't an injury.

It was my fucked up soulmate sentence.

I covered it because, you know, that's the first thing I had been taught to do when I learned about the soulmate sentences: You should cover your words so people can't use them to trick you.

I don't know how it goes where you live, but in my place if your sentence is exposed it signals that you are either taken or an idiot.

And since I am single as fuck and (hopefully) not an idiot, I don't show my sentence.

I know most people cover their sentence with a jewel, family heirloom or at least designated garment, but I don't think my sentence deserve such a treatment.

I know it could be worth.

It's not like I got "I wanna rape you" or anything, it's just that my sentence is so boring.

And yet so full of destiny.

A very specific destiny.

I sighed.

I remembered how before my 18th birthday I fantasized about a cool sentence, like "You are an asshole" or "Hot damn".

But when I woke up in my birthday what was written on my hand was a coffee order.

A fucking coffee order.

It might as well be written You are going to have a normal, average life and you are going to meet your normal, average soulmate while working as a normal, average barista.

So I said: "well that's a shitty sentence" and ran away. Flew to Guatemala, where I dealt with backpacking and with coatimundis up in my shit but not with fucked up sentences.

I planned to stay there forever, but my sister Jane brought me back to Hatchetfield.

I was the bad girl and she was the good one.

She even got a romantic sentence- You are the most beautiful woman I ever met. I swear to god, that was her sentence.

I used to laugh at her a lot for that.

She had a Lisa Frank binder when she was a kid, where she mapped out her entire life and she actually stuck to it, bullet point by bullet point: Job, husband, house, kids.

She used to call me and invite me home for the big events like weddings and baby showers and I always said I would come to the next one.

But then I got the invitation to her funeral and I realized that there won't be a next one.

I grew up in her shadow and then, when she was gone, the light shone on my own life for the first time and it didn't look good.

So that's how I went back to hatchetfield in the age 30, started study botany in community college and hell, even started to work as a barista so I could find my soulmate and finally settle down.

But the fact I decided to do it didn't make me feel ready for that.

The mere thought of meeting my soulmate made me feel sickeningly nervous.

"Pull yourself together, Emma," I told myself, "People make too big of a deal out of soulmates. You just need to relax. If you meet your soulmate, don't give any shit. If you like 'em, flirt with 'em. If you don't, then don't. Now get back to work."

I went back to behind the counter.

An asshole came in and ordered a grande caramel frappe in a venti cup of ten pumps of hazelnut, three shots of espresso, no caramel drizzle, with whip on top.

Ugh, thank god this is not the order I have written on my hand.

As soon as I gave the asshole his order, I wore again my customer service smile and asked the next man in line: "Hi, can I help you?"

He hesitated for a second before delivering his order: "Yeah, I got an easy one for you: just a cup of black coffee."

My heart failed a beat.

The entire world seemed to stop for a moment.

I felt heat spreading in my body like fire.

I just told myself not to make big deal of soulmates, and yet my hand was shaking as I slowly, speechlessly unwrapped the bandage and showed the stranger his exact words tattooed on my left hand, black against my latte skin.

As an answer, he rolled up the left sleeve of his suit and revealed my dear, old, boring automatic service phrase: Hi, can I help you?

"well that's a shitty sentence," I said.

Some people in the coffee shop clapped and cheered.