Soulmates by Mimmi Riikonen

Soulmates BY MIMMI RIIKONEN

I’ve learned there’s two types of silence.

One is comforting: it’s best friends laying on a bed, browsing phones without talking for hours. It’s feeling secure, knowing you don’t have to pretend with this person. It’s feeling like you’re home. One, on the other hand, is cold and distressing. It’s the first dates with a person you want to impress, it’s the acquaintances from work you meet somewhere and have to think about something to say. It’s painful and awkward and definitely not natural. And when we sat there with Mandy on what was supposed to be a very normal Monday afternoon, barely saying a word, I couldn’t help but think: why does the silence feel so strange?

Mind you, I had tried to start a conversation many times. I had hugged her in front of the café, I had complimented her shirt and she replied with a simplethank you instead of gushing about the store she bought the clothing from. I thought she must be a bit tired, but nothing more. Then, at the coffee table, I started to tell about how the customer who once tried to spit on me visited our store again this morning and tried to steal our newspapers. Mandy’s reaction was as shocked as I’d just told I drank water this morning. Okay, an unusually disinterested answer, but again, she must be tired - so then I told about the fight me and Ben had yesterday. Mandy is usually an admirably calm person, but anytime I tell about my relationship problems she starts raging and defending me to no end. “Ben said I cry too much,” I said and prepared for Mandy to get so angry at him that she’d throw her coffee mug to a nearby wall. Instead, she gave an absent, small frown and said: “Oh. That’s harsh.” “Very harsh,” I stressed. I yearned for approval from my best friend! I yearned for her to confirm that I’m not crazy and that I have every right to be angry about that comment,and I yearned for her to say that if he ever dares to say something like that again she will be very quickly at his house with a baseball bat to see if he’ll be the one who’s crying too much then. I didn’t get any of that. I got an “oh”. And that’s when I knew something was up.

That’s when the silence started to crawl in. I didn’t talk, and she didn’t say anything if I didn’t. Countless times we had sat in silence at that exact same coffee table, but right now the silence felt pressuring, like a dark cloud brewing above us. I felt my hands sweat, my shirt feeling uncomfortable on me. “Um, okay, so,” Mandy finally said, after what had felt like forever, “I’ve been thinking. I have something to tell - to talk about.” At that point, I felt incredibly happy. Of course, she has been quiet, I thought, she has something on her mind! Something is wrong and she wants my counseling! We can create a therapy session that lasts for hours, during which we go grab some wine and then when we’re tipsy Mandy can cry it all out and I’ll buy a Dominos pepperoni pizza to cheer her up because that’s her favorite. “Do tell!” I let out. “I don’t know how to say this, but, uh, I think we should break up.”

For a second everything froze. But Mandy’s not in a relationship.

“Do you mean… from your work?” I asked. “No.” Mandy let out a deep, unhappy sigh. “I mean us.” “Us?” “Yeah.” “As in you and me?” “Yeah.” “What do you mean?” I asked with a tense chuckle. “How could we break up?” “I guess breaking up is a weird word,” Mandy said. “But, you know. Not being friends anymore. Departing. Going separate ways, et cetera.”

The room had started to spin around me and my brain couldn’t produce any thoughts apart from all the times me and Mandy had had during the last fifteen years. I think I only started nodding while Mandy started to tell about how she had been thinking about this for a while now, and how she still wishes that we’d stay in touch. In the back of my mind I was sure this was some kind of joke. Best friends don’t break up? They just don’t!

But five minutes later we stood in front of the café and Mandy gave me a cautious hug, saying: “I wish nothing but good to you” and looking at me in the eyes for the very last time. Then my bestest of friends turned around, started walking without looking back, and all I could think was: I can’t even hope we stay friends after the break up in this situation.

Ben is tired of my shit. A week ago, when I came home with a running nose and puffy eyes, he made sure to hold me in his arms until not a single tear would fall on my cheek anymore. Now he comes to our bedroom to bring tissues, but instead of coming to comfort me he sits on the corner of the bed and gently, awkwardly, pets my back. I love him with all my heart but can’t help but think that if me and Ben would’ve broken up, Mandy would’ve known exactly what to do: we’d go get wasted, she’d arrange the world’s hottest dudes to go on a blind date with me and I wouldn’t remember Ben’s face after a week. But now that Mandy is the one to break up with me I’m still buried in my bed after a week, crying my eyes out with no comfort but chocolate and Ben’s lukewarm patting. “There, there,” says Ben, his eyes locked on his phone. “Any new matches?” “No,” I mutter. Right after the breakup I wanted something else to think about, so I had asked Ben if it’d be okay for me to download Tinder to search some platonic plasters. Ben had been a bit weirded out, but probably had no heart to say no when I was barely able to speak between my sobbing. “It’s been a week and I still have none.” “I did warn that people aren’t on Tinder to find friends,” Ben says. He’s annoying. So annoying that I have to open my Tinder once again and start swiping ferociously to prove him wrong. Although my bio says: “not looking for love or a fwb or anything, just here to get a platonic one-night stand to forget my best friend of 15 years just ditched me lol”, I still would’ve thought there would be even a singular person who would be ready to -

it’s a match!

My eyes widen. It’s time to meet my New Best Friend.

“So, what exactly is a ‘platonic one-night stand’?” Her name is Pamela and she went straight to business. “Like, you know,” I try to speak while munching on sushi, “we’ll only be friends for this one day. Then we’ll never meet again. Simple.” “What’s the point of that?” “What’s the point of a normal one-night stand?” “Sex,” says Pamela, in a tone that suggests I’m an idiot. “Yes. But that’s not, like, all you need in life,” I say. Pamela scoffs and takes a sip of her drink. The conversation ends there, and for a moment I wonder why she even agreed to see me, but then I remember I promised to pay for the sushi. Pamela seems my age, and her freckles remind me of Mandy’s -but whereas Mandy is larger than life, with her presence lighting up every room she walks in and her jokes curing all of the worst days I’ve had, Pamela reminds me of a lemon. However: the sushi’s good, Pamela distracts my thoughts so I’ve spent a full day without crying and the weather’s nice. There’s nothing to lose, and so after I pay for our meal (she had taken the most expensive selection, of course) I ask Pamela to walk with me. She agrees, but not with glee.

“So, do you study something?” I ask as we start our walk towards the nearby café. I always need an iced latte with caramel syrup after eating sushi, and my heart twitched with pain when I told this to Pamela and, as she answered with a confused look, I remembered Mandy and how she was the one I started this tradition with. “I’m on my third gap year,” Pamela says. “Nothing really interests me at the moment.” “Really?” I might’ve sounded a bit too excited, but this was the first thing me and Pamela had something in common. “I feel the same way! Do you feel lost too?” “Not really,” Pamela answers. “But it can be a bit overwhelming.” “Yeah, for me too! It’s so shitty,” I say eagerly. Our first deep conversation! We can discuss things like am I forever going to be a retail worker with a shitty salary and no real sense ofwho I am or what I want to do in life, or the feeling of being stuck in this town while everyone else moves away to study, or the fear of me and Ben breaking up because I don’t have the money to pay a rent alone “Right?!” Pamela says, and for the first time there’s excitement in her voice as well. “Like, mom is pressuring me so much to decide if I want a penthouse or a garden apartment but how the fuck would I know yet? Why can’t she just buy both?” Oh. “Yeahh,” I say slowly, “that is…rough.” There might not be hope for me and Pamela to connect.

The last five minutes we walk in silence, but then we arrive to my second-favorite café (the most favorite one was ruined by a certain break up) and my mood lightens up the second I sense the smell of fresh coffee beans. We walk to the line, Pamela starts to order a latte with soy milk - and then I see her.

She looks great. Glowing, even. She has darkened her curls a bit and she wears the earrings I gave to her as a housewarming gift a couple of years back. She is laughing with someone - someone I don’t know - and holds an iced latte in her hand, which I know is filled with caramel syrup. I want to throw up. “I need to go,” I say weakly to Pamela, who’s impatiently clicking her nails on the cashier desk. She scrunches her eyebrows at me. “Where?”

“Uh, just, gotta leave,” I say, looking for the exit. “I feel sick.” “Ew, are you going to throw up?” “No, I just - let’s meet outside, yeah?” And before Pamela gets to answer, I rush out of the line. She isalmost next to me but doesn’t notice me, that’s good, that means she’s too busy having so much fun with this new friend, that’s whatever, that’s fine, I just have to get out and then our eyes meet.

My entire body is flooded with ice. I start to tremble the second our eyes meet, and I completely freeze to that spot. The smile she had when talking to her friend still lingers on her face, and I absolutely hate the fact that she’s not going to smile at my stories ever again. “Hi,” she says. Her friend stares at me. “Hi,” I say. “What are you doing here?” “Buying coffee.” “Oh, yeah, same.” “Nice,” I say and give a quick glance at her friend, who’s still staring at me. I hate her. Then I look at Mandy, the person who knows everything about me, the person who just last month deeply analyzed the unusual color of my period blood with me, and I feel like looking at a stranger. Before I get the chance to do anything cringeworthy (like fall on my knees and beg her to come back to my life while my tears flood the floor), Pamela arrivers next to us, looking worried. “You good?” she asks. “Did you throw up already?” “No, I - I didn’t throw up,” I say, glancing more at Mandy than at Pamela. “All good.” “Are you sure? You do look really sick...” “No, I’m fine,” I say, stressing every word a bit too harshly. “Uh, yeah, so… we should, um, we should get going. Have fun,” I add, looking at Mandy. I tried to pull off a cool, careless look, but my trembling voice betrayed me. “You too,” says she, and I might be imagining this, but I think I heard a slight tint of sadness in her voice.

We step out to sunlight and I can feel Pamela’s eyes boring holes into me. “So what was all of that?” she snaps without a drop of empathy. “You’re acting so weird.” “I’m sorry, okay?” I say sharply. “I just… that was the person I told you about. The friend who broke up with me.” “Girl, I say this with all my heart,” Pamela says, “but get a grip. You’ll get new friends.” “She was my best friend though.” “So? I’ve had like thousands of best friends, it’s not that deep.”

I’m a peace-loving person, okay? I think I’ve never even felt actual anger, and I would never, ever want to hurt somebody. But when Pamela says those words to me, looking at me with a dismissive smile and even dares to giggle after that, for a second I want nothing more than to slap some sense into her. “Not that deep?” I say instead, but I feel the fury bubbling inside of me. “Why is it not that deep?” “It’s not like you’ve actually broken up,” Pamela says. “Like, friends come and go. That’s life.” “But I did actually break up though?” “Yeah, but like, not with a boyfriend.” I can see Pamela getting real sick of me. “It’s different.”

“It is different,” I say. “This hurts so much more.” “Look, I don’t understand,” Pamela whines. “I get it if you two like had a fling or something, you know, but I feel like you’re being dramatic -” “We did not have ‘a fling!” It’s the first time I’m starting to raise my voice. “But what can’t you understand? Mandy’s my soulmate, she’s the most important person to me, okay? I can very fucking easily live without a boyfriend but I don’t want to live without my best friend, what can’t you understand? How am I being fucking dramatic here??”

I noticed too late that Pamela didn’t really look me anymore and instead stared at behind me. I noticed too late that it was because Mandy and her friend were standing there. So after I stop my yelling and the only answer I get is deep silence, I slowly turn around, I see her, and I can feel my face getting instantly red. “Okay, I’m out of here,” Pamela breaks the silence. “I can’t stand being yelled at. PayPal me the money from the latte before midnight.” I forget to answer to her as she flees. My eyes are locked at Mandy’s, and I’m trying to figure her facial expression out. “You’re my soulmate too,” Mandy says quietly. I can feel my eyes get wet again. “So why did you break up with me?” Mandy lets out a sad sigh. “I didn’t feel important to you anymore.” “Huh?” “Like, ever since you got with Ben, you’ve changed. First it was that we couldn’t have sleepovers anymore because you wanted to spend the nights with him, and that’s totally valid and all. But, you know, slowly you started to ditch our meetings for him, and then you stopped the facetime sessions with me, and then you stopped listening to anything I had to say so you could talk about him.” I feel a lump in my throat. It’s hard to think straight. “Why didn’t you say anything?” “Because that’s the way it is, you know?” Mandy says. “That’s so typical. So many forget their friends when they fall in love. I thought it wouldn’t happen to you, but it did, and I felt bad but I couldn’t just ask you to leave him or anything, so.” “I could never forget you,” I whimper, tears falling on my cheeks. “I’m so sorry. I’ve been blind.” Mandy’s eyes are getting wet too. “You really think I’m your soulmate?” “No one else but you,” I say, and then I rush to hug her. “I’m so so so sorry. Can we fix this?” “We sure can. If you buy me an iced latte for forgetting me.” “Oh bitch, you need to buy me free iced lattes for the rest of my life for breaking up with me!” Mandy giggles, which makes me remember how much I’ve missed her laughter.

After that Mandy goes to buy me an iced latte with double caramel syrup, and we start to walk back home together while planning a sleepover for the next weekend. “Wait, did we ditch your friend?” I notice after fifteen minutes of walking. “Oh, you’ll laugh at this,” Mandy says, “but she wasn’t my friend. She was a Tinder match when I was searching for, uh, a platonic one-night stand. I think she hated me.” “Oh. You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you,” I say. And then, after the longest week I’ve had, I burst into laughter for the first time.