They had become trapped in an endless cycle of meet cutes.
Whenever one of them dropped their notepad and reached for it, the other’s hand would be there. Whenever one of them opened a small business, the other would already be an established competitor in that industry. Whenever one of them was elected to office, the other would be appointed to them as a clumsy yet charming member of staff.
They tried everything to escape. They tried to avoid any romantic scenarios. They moved to different cities, then different countries. They made sure their schedules were chaotic and unpredictable. None of this helped.
Because no matter what they did, they kept bumping into one another. They would find themselves seated next to each other at sports games, their faces projected onto giant screens as people yelled at them to kiss. They would be sent to write lengthy profiles of one another for prestigious media outlets. They would think they had met other people via online dating websites, only to discover that they had actually been speaking to each other the whole time.
It was enraging, because they had nothing in common. They had different values, different attitudes, different desires for what they wanted to do with their lives.
They knew this because they had ample opportunity to tell each other. When they discovered that they were dating one another’s siblings, they bickered about their favourite foods. When their orders got mixed up at a bar, they argued about the state of international politics. When they were assigned secret missions to assassinate important targets and discovered they were one another’s top marks, they debated whether people should live to work or work to live.
Despite these differences, over time they began to realise that they actually had one thing very much in common: their hatred of this cursed series of inescapable meet cutes.
And with this connection established, they fell deeply in love.
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A Quick Recommendation
With a dryly funny tone, this story uses a simple concept to build relationships between a small set of characters. The narrator seems to have insight, or what passes for it, into everything but himself, and you can almost feel his knowledge (and self-knowledge) glance off the subjects he’s trying to consider.
Roommates were going through a rebrand. No longer were they just companions for the lonely, the infirm, the elderly. Now, a Roommate was perfect for anyone needing that spark in their life, or who wanted to change something about themselves or their relationship. For couples, they were an attractive escape from the drudgery of being stuck with one person for the rest of your life, a way to reconnect with each other, a child for the childless. And of course they always did the dishes.
‘All I’ve Ever Wanted’, by Cameron Shenassa, is in Joyland Magazine.
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