Waking up by the sound of your alarm is horrible. But waking up to the sound of your roommates fighting is even worse.
I slowly adjusted everything around me. The bright light coming from the big windows in my bedroom, the yelling out of the living room and finally stretching my arms and legs. I slowly started to get out of my bed, walking towards the door that lead into the living room and stood in the door frame, waiting for them to realize I was there.
About 5minutes have passed until they realized, they've done shit.
“Sorry Jay” Alice said looking down. I sighed annoyed.
“What's the matter this time?” I asked looking at both, Alice and Claire.
“Claire just doesn't get the function of our wristbands!” Alice exclaimed annoyed.
“You have again a boyfriend?” I asked annoyed. Claire nodded.
“Come on, you can't tell me you haven't looked at a boy and checked him out! It's natural, and those things aren't!” She said, pointing to our countdowns.
I guess I have to explain? We live in a time, where from birth on, we have countdowns on our wrists. They tell us when exactly we are going to meet our soul mates. Once we've found them, we won't have eyes for anybody else, and we will feel a love that we never thought we'd experience. The bad side about it is, that it might take about 25years until you find your soul mate, and so many of us have boyfriends and / or one night stands before, though they know that it will end sooner or later. And well, Claire was one of them. She would go out every night and come back with a random guy every now and then.
I never really cared, as long as they went away by the time I woke up, but Alice was really pissed off about that.
“Okay Claire. Look at your Countdown and tell me, how long is it, until you find your Mister perfect” I asked, looking at her. She looked pissed and looked at her wrist. Suddenly a smile crept onto her face.
“I'm going to meet him in a week” She replied whispering. I could see that by now, she forgot about this being 'Unnatural' or whatever.
“See, in one week you will finally meet the love of your life!” I said smiling.
“You know what will be the best thing? I will finally loose this shit!” She said, pointing to the clock. I laughed at her and looked down at mine.
'2days, 4hours, 48minutes, 24seconds' I sighed. I would be glad if I'd finally meet my mate. Sadly, somehow I always managed to extend the time.
One time, there were only 2minutes and some seconds left, and my heart was pounding like crazy. And then, I only turned to the left, and it went back onto a couple of months.
This happened a few times to me, and to be honest I was quite pissed. But this time I would try to make everything normally, and wouldn't pay attention to it.
Just as I was about to over think everything again, I was interrupted by Alice.
“Jay? Do you wanna come with me when I visit Alex in a few days?” Alice asked, smiling at me.
“Sure... would be lovely meeting him finally!” I said smiling.
You see, Alex is Alice's best friend or even brother or something like that. She's always talking about how much fun they have at parties and shit, but never introduced us.
“Thanks for inviting me as well!” I could hear Claire yell from the bathroom.
“It's not like you would come anyway” Alice yelled back, making us chuckle.
“Well... You've got a point there” She replied.
“Okay so, when are we going again?” I asked, hoping she'd know the exact day.
“Wait a second. I will ask him!” She replied smiling and typing something into her phone. “He said in two days actually, we should come over for dinner” she smiled at me.
I smiled back. Nervously.
Was that Alex actually meant to be my mate? Or would somebody come as well and we would meet there? What if I go my time will be extended again? I started to ask myself too many things once again and decided to drink a coffee to calm down. I prepared 3cups of coffee, knowing the others would join me and sat at the table, pouring milk and sugar in it.
I drank it, and let myself fall. I didn't want to think about the clock again, so I just thought about what I was going to do again. Once again I was ripped out of my thoughts by Alice.
“We need to go shopping tomorrow” She stated, eating a cookie.
“What? Why?” I asked confused.
“If you haven't noticed, we both meet our mates at the same time and I want to have new clothes for that. So?” She asked, looking at me. I mean she already knew my answer, because even if I said no, she would drag me along.
“Sure, why not?” I asked, taking another sip of my coffee.
“Okay great! Tomorrow it will be” She smiled and with that she was off. I chuckled while shaking my head, knowing she'd come back to get her coffee. Seconds later she came back, her head hung down. She didn't even look up when she took the coffee, muttered a thanks and with that she left the kitchen. I smiled and put my knees up to my chest, hugging them.
I'm not sure why I wasn't in a hurry, I mean I had to go to work. But some why, I just wanted to drink my coffee in peace.
After I was done, I placed it in the sink and started to get dressed and brushed my hair. I decided to go with a pair of white skinnies and my black vans, and of course my working shirt. I worked at an apple store, and it was messed up shit.
I put my brown blondish hair into a pony tail and took my bag with my belongings, before yelling a good bye to everybody.
I walked down the familiar streets and started to listen to music. 10Minutes later I arrived at my work place and put my bag into my locker, before starting work.
I went up to a shelf and started to refill it with whatever belonged in there.
As it was only about 9am on a Thursday, there weren't many customers. I could only see 2 or three people walking around, and they were just looking for head phones or something. Suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder.
“Yes?” I asked, trying to sound polite. I guess I failed, but it was still so early.
“Erm, yeah, I was just wondering if you could tell me where the adapters are?” the boy asked. I now looked up at him and saw that it was just him and another guy. The one talking to me had brownish hair and brown eyes, and was well … Pretty pale. He looked cute though and was dressed normally. He wore a beanie that was covering his hair and made it swap over his forehead. The other guy just stood there awkwardly. He also had brown hair, but I couldn't see his eye color. He was wearing shorts and a sleeveless shirt.
“Sure! The second row, on the right shelf. They should be there” I answered smiling. He nodded a thanks and with that they were away.
I continued to restock the shelves and just heard the guys leaving.
“Hey Jay!” My co-worker, Nancy greeted me with a warm smile.
“Hey!” I smiled back, stopping my work.
“How are you?” She asked, still smiling.
“Quite good, just really tired” I laughed. “What about you?”
“Same...” she replied, kind of in thoughts. That was when I realized both of her wrists were 'empty'.
“Oh my god, you have met him, haven't you?” I asked, looking up at her with the probably biggest smile ever.
“I've met her at a cafe yesterday” She replied, looking to the ground.
“Her? What's her name? And how did you know she was the one and oh my god, has it just fallen down?” I asked out of curiousity.
“Yeah, her. Her name is Anna. I didn't know it was her, it's just, the second I looked at her it was like all my emotions were mixed together and exploded inside of me. I can't even describe that feeling! I still can't believe I finally don't have to worry about this anymore! And yeah, after you meet your sole mate it just falls off!” she explained in a rush, still being really happy.
We talked for another 15minutes, before we realized we had to continue our work. We both smiled and she went back to the checkout to wait for customers to pay.
At 5pm my shift ended, I said good bye to everybody and left the store. I was stressed and tired and just happy to finally get home. I wasn't sure if Alice and Claire stopped fighting. I hoped they did, because I didn't need anymore drama at home.
As I arrived at home, they were both in the living room watching some movie. Taking a closer look, I saw it was Home alone. I chuckled to myself, before getting a coke.
“Guys? I will prepare dinner after I took a shower okay?” I yelled, walking upstairs.
“Okay!” They both replied in unison, making us all laugh.
I grabbed a towel and some trainers with a black shirt, before walking towards the bath room. I turned on the shower and stepped in, enjoying the hot water. I relaxed and let all my thoughts wander.
About 30minutes later I went out, dried myself and put on my fresh clothes before running down into the kitchen. After debating what to cook, I went for noodles with sauce and salad. I finished about half an hour later and called everybody to eat.
Alice and Claire entered the kitchen with massive grins and I just raised my eyebrow, before putting coke, water and glasses on the table. By the time I sat down, the girls were already sitting and just grinning at me.
“What?” I asked confused, looking at both of them. In the second I asked, they tried to hide their smiles.
“Nothing really... Just happy you're back” Alice replied, trying not to laugh.
I shook it off, before continuing to eat. After a while they managed to calm down and we talked about our days.
Before I forget to tell you:
Alice is working at a restaurant as a waitress and well, she hates her job. Not because of what she has to do, but because of the people working there. And Claire... Well, what the fuck is she doing? I know that she is working with cars but I never really asked her and I've never been interested in that... Oops. But well, she wasn't mad at me, she knew that work was my least favorite subject and so she never pressured me into talking about it. We ate for about 20minutes and Claire said she would clean everything up. We thanked her and walked into the living room.
“Hey, Alex, about Saturday...” Alice started, looking at me.
“What is about Saturday?” I asked confused. Were we going somewhere?
“Are you joking me? We are going to Alex'” She replied.
“OOOH RIGHT! Yeah, what about that?” I answered, facepalming myself.
“He said we should come over at around 2pm” She explained.
“Okay! Perfect... What will we do?” I asked.
“Nothing much I guess... Just hanging out with him and his friends, maybe watching some movies... I'm not sure yet” she replied laughing.
I smiled at her, before taking her left wrist and looking at the watch, counting the seconds down.
“It's amazing, how those numbers actually influence our lives” She muttered, more to herself than to me.
“Yes, it is indeed” I replied.
1Day, 19hours, 26minutes, 24seconds.
I didn't had to check mine, because my was just about 10minutes later than Alice's. I found it pretty funny how both of our countdowns had nearly the same time, because we grew up like sisters, and now that we would both meet our mates at the same time was just amazing.
After about another 20minutes, Claire entered the room and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean together.
I fell asleep half way through the movie, and drifted off into a deep sleep.