{{Dedicated to @QueenMaleficent for writing the sweetest review ever about this story on her other account. Go check it out at @kissingunderwater!}}

Rhea was still shaken up about the day's events when she heard a jingle of keys followed by her parents' indistinct chatter. Their voice drew closer as they made their way through the corridor and finally entered the living room where they found Rhea sprawled on the couch watching the ceiling while the TV supplied her with much needed background noise.

"Hey sweetie," her mother greeted her softly.

"Hey Mom, Dad," she acknowledged her parents' presence in the house, but made no attempt to get up from her place on the couch. It wasn't like they weren't used to it by now, anyways. Rhea was and always had been a couch potato through and through.

From the corner of her eye Rhea noticed his father set down grocery bags on the counter of the adjoined kitchen. Their kitchen had black and white tiled walls, white overhead cabinets and a black and white patterned marble counter.

Her mind drifted to a completely different kitchen, one with a pure white countertop, which would have led to her starting to freak out again if she had ever stopped freaking out. Alas, she hadn't. She'd been internally kicking, screaming and having anxiety attacks ever since she'd had the first snippet three hours ago. She needed some answers, and she needed them now.

Seeing her best bet at getting answers concerning what exactly was happening to her was her parents, who had already gone through the same thing, Rhea decided to question them a little.

She got up from her place on the couch and went over to the kitchen with feline-like steps.

"So," she drew out the word as she leaned on her elbows that were propped on the kitchen counter, "How was work today?" Pleasantries first, awkward inquiries later, she thought.

"It was good," her mother responded. She waited for one, two, three beats before she dropped her actual question that would surely drive her mom into a frenzy.

"So Mom, I wanted to ask – uh, I was wondering what it was like when you got your first snippet?"

Her mother let out a short and soft laugh. "You always thought we'd made that up, why are you suddenly– oh."

Rhea quite impatiently watched realization dawn on her mother, as she'd expected it would. There was no way she could have gotten away with pretending she was just casually asking about it. As if her mother's horrified expression wasn't enough, her father, who was up until that point busy with packing out the groceries, also caught up to the situation and in quick strides came to stand behind his wife, setting his hands on her shoulders.

"You got your first snippet?" her father inquired, looking and sounding calmer and much more collected than his wife did in that instant.

"Yes," Rhea said, shrugging her shoulders and trying to sound nonchalant about it when in reality the prospect made her stomach churn.

"Wow, that's– you're really young," her mother said, running her hands erratically through her hair.

"I know, Mom," Rhea drawled, "Thanks for pointing that out."

"Look," her father said, "It's going to be okay. I'd have loved your mother equally as much if I'd met her in high school. Your age doesn't matter all that much when it comes to love." It was lost on Rhea who her father was trying to convince with his words; her or her mother.

"I don't know if I'm ready for this," Rhea admitted, her shoulders slumping in defeat.

"When it comes down to it, you'll see that you've been ready your whole life," her mother said, looking a lot calmer than she did a minute ago. Then her parents looked at each other with lovestruck expressions that shouldn't have been allowed for people over thirty to wear.

"Okay, you're making me sick in the stomach," Rhea protested, groaning.

The terrifying prospect of having generations after generations of happily ever afters in your family was that it was a lot to live up to. Her parents' love for each other was more frightening for Rhea than it was endearing, because she had always been afraid she wasn't going to get the likes of it in her life, so she always feigned disinterest and annoyance when they acted lovingly towards each other. It was, in a way, her defense mechanism.

"So..." her father cleared his throat a moment later, effectively breaking her out of her reverie, "do you need me to give you the talk again?"

"Dad!" Rhea exclaimed, completely horrified at the prospect of her father trying to talk to her about safe sex. Again. "I am not going to jump this guy the moment I meet him. Besides, the talk from two years ago is permanently etched into my brain. I don't need a repeat of that traumatic experience."

...

Feeling ever so slightly relieved upon her parents' reassurances, Rhea went about her day as she usually would, which consisted of Netflix, dinner, some more Netflix and FaceTime-ing with Willa.

She lay on her back as she held the phone up at a measuredly distance so that Willa could she her entire face and not just her nostrils. It was fine up until to point it was not, when her arms began to feel the force of gravity a bit too gravely than Rhea would have liked. So she rolled onto her side as her friend babbled about the upcoming back-to-school week.

"What if you meet a dozen guys?" Willa asked, "What are you going to do then?"

"That's not–"

"Oh, I know," Willa half-shouted excitedly, which pierced right into Rhea's brain through her headphones. "We'll interview them!"

"Yeah, right," Rhea drawled, "We'll put up flyers that say 'Are you Rhea's soulmate? Come find out at the library during lunch break!'"

"Okay, smartass, what do you suggest?" Willa asked, feigning irritation at her best friend's words.

"I don't know," Rhea admitted, rubbing her eyes in exasperation.

"Maybe you'll just meet one guy," Willa said, "It's not like guys fall at your feet every single day or anything."

"Thanks for that boost of confidence," Rhea made a face at her friend who was smirking at her from the other end of the line. "I would like you to know that if I could punch my way through this phone, I wouldn't hesitate one second," she declared.

"Aw, your inclination towards violence is cute," Willa said, still having not wiped the smirk off her face.

"You are secretly in love with me, aren't you?" Rhea countered, now wearing a smirk of her own.

"Yeah, don't tell Wade," Willa said with a serious expression and a second later they both burst into laughter. The laughter bubbled up in Rhea's stomach and spilled out of her mouth in strong waves until she felt her cheeks and abdominal muscles starting to ache and tears start to brim at the corner of her eyes. Willa was in a similar state herself, clutching her stomach as she laughed, though all Rhea could see through her phone screen was the ceiling of Willa's room as she'd thrown her phone down on her bed during her incessant laughter.

After what felt like ages, their laughter died down to the occasional snort and giggle, and Willa took to questioning Rhea with curiosity.

"So, this soulmate of yours, could he be someone you know but haven't actually met?"

"I have absolutely no clue," Rhea said after pondering over the question for a moment, "It's not like there is a manual on how this thing works or anything. Before today I thought it was just some family myth they told the kids."

"Yeah, well apparently it isn't."

"Yeah," Rhea nodded.

...

After having a two hour long conversation with her best friend that consisted of them theorizing about how they could identify the guy, what he would be like and whether he and Rhea would instantly fall in love, Rhea was feeling drained in several ways. Drained of her stifling anxiety, which was a good thing, and drained of energy, which probably meant she should go to bed sometime soon.

It was almost one am, which meant her parents were long asleep, so she tiptoed towards the bathroom as quietly as she could. Even though she felt a lot calmer about the whole ordeal of meeting her soulmate in a week's time, it was still all she could ever think about.

She wondered what her soulmate would look like. She wasn't so superficial that she'd think looks were all that mattered, but neither was she so pretentious that she'd say looks didn't matter at all. Did being soulmates guarantee that they'd instantly feel connected or at the very least attracted to each other? What if she wasn't attracted to this guy in a romantic sense? What if he wasn't attracted to her?

She looked up at her reflection in the mirror after she carefully put toothpaste on her toothbrush. She'd always thought she looked okay; minus the dark circles under her eyes of course, which were the courtesy of the messed up sleep schedule she'd taken up throughout the summer. She had hazel eyes and dirty blonde hair that reached her shoulder blades, tumbling in waves. In time, she'd even come to terms with the freckles that adorned her nose and her cheeks. Yeah, she was no supermodel, but after dealing with insecurities all through her early adolescence, she'd finally come to realize that she was actually quite pretty.

After brushing her teeth, she put her hair up in a messy bun, so that she could avoid it getting wet while she washed her face. Also so that she could avoid being suffocated by the heat it caused while she tried to sleep.

She returned to her room as quietly as she'd left it. Her room was messy with clothes thrown over a chair and several half empty glasses of water on her desk and her night stand. Since she'd bypassed the all-pink phase every other girl in the country had apparently went through at some point of her childhood, the walls of the room were painted a very light blue. The curtain, the carpet on the floor and the comforter were all different shades of blue; her mom had gone all out upon learning Rhea's favorite color was blue.

She plopped down on the bed with a heavy thud, not bothering to pull the comforter over her body. It was the first day of September, but the heat was still as stifling as it had been all summer. She clasped her hands behind her head as she looked up at the ceiling. The room was dimly lit with the light emanating from the street lamp just across the street, and in that little light she could stare at the ceiling all she liked, though she wasn't in for much of a view. Her ceiling was painted white, and that was that; no posters or ornaments of any kind were adorning it.

For a moment, the light from the street lamp disappeared from within the room, leaving Rhea in the darkness. But a second later, the light came back, though this time it wasn't in the yellowish hue of the street lamp outside. What was illuminating the room was the phosphorous glow of star-shaped glow in the dark stickers. But she didn't have– Suddenly it hit her.

The light didn't just disappear, she blacked out again.

This wasn't her room.

She was getting another snippet.

And soon after the realization hit, it was over.

She tried to recall what she'd seen in hopes of committing it to her memory to share with Willa in the morning.

The gist of it was the following:

Her soulmate was out there somewhere, lying in his own bed and staring at his own ceiling at the exact same time she did.

And he had star-shaped glow in the dark stickers on his ceiling.

How cute.