Meant for Me | ✔️

21) without doubt

"Yeah, I bet."

"But yep. I made it through. A miracle."

She sounded exhausted, fatigue laced and slurred her words, purple shadows contrasted on her pale skin. But somehow, she was still strikingly beautiful. She almost suited the purple. It accentuated her pale blue eyes.

"So how long have you and Tyler been together?"

Her expression lifted in an instant. "About eleven months."

Well that explained it. Honeymoon phase. I smiled.

"But we've been friends since we were seven."

"Aw." Friends to lovers was a special sort of relationship, I gave them that.

"Yeah. We're getting out of here after high school. I'm going to do medicine in college. He's going to open a workshop— he builds," she said with an excited little shuffle where she sat. "Once I've graduated college, we're going to get hitched, he's going to build our dream home and babies before we're thirty."

All I could do was stare. I'd never heard someone sum up their life plan in such a short breath and announce it with that much confidence. She did not hesitate. Not even Margo had spoken with that much conviction. I couldn't help but dwell on it for some time before I finally said something.

"Can I ask you something?"

May nodded. "Yeah."

"How are you so sure? Like with Tyler. Doesn't it scare you? You're both so young and it's sort of impossible to know what the future holds. Especially when you hear about how many young couples don't make it."

May stared into the distance for a moment, thinking about it. "Can you guarantee, without a doubt that it won't rain next week?"

I smiled. "No."

"Does that stop you from enjoying the sun while it's out?"

"No but I wouldn't make plans to go to the beach if I didn't know what the weather was going to be like."

"But if you don't make the plans, and it is a good day for the beach, then you've missed out on what could have been because you were more focused on the possible negative outcome."

I nodded. "Plan for the best, be prepared for the worst."

She shook her head. "Plan for the best and deal with the worst when and if it happens."

I couldn't say that I shared her outlook but I admired it. From the way those two looked at each other, it was obvious they were in love.

"My sister would have liked you," I said.

She gave me a cunning grin. "Was she optimistic too?"

I laughed and gave her a nudge in the side, watching Zac as he looked up from the engine and smiled at me. He seemed to love it when I laughed.

"I'm not a pessimistic if that's what you're hinting at."

"Okay, sure. We'll call it a realist then," May teased.

I liked to think I was a realist until she said it like that. And then I thought perhaps I was on the pessimistic side. It almost confused me. I had no idea where I stood on all of this and it was so sudden that I felt winded. I'd always been sure.

True love was rare, apart from the exception.

Career over men.

Plans and a future that secured yourself over whimsical sweep her off her feet romance. That was for the books and the books alone.