The idea for popped into my head one Saturday night, three years ago. I was dissociating on my couch, chomping Bagel Bites and watching Romeo + Juliet (the superior one, with Leo and Clare Danes). When it ended, I thought to myself, what if they hadn’t died at the end? What if those lust-crazed teens went their separate ways and then ran into each other as grown-ups? Do soulmates have an expiration date?
It was an idea I couldn’t wait to explore. Big love has always electrified me – the wild, insane, high-stakes kind in novels and movies. Lancelot and Guinevere in The Once and Future King. Jane and Rochester in Jane Eyre. Billy Ikehorn and…everyone…in Scruples. Hell, Lady and the Tramp in Lady and the Tramp.
Sadly, I didn’t see myself in any of these stories. As a Black teen growing up in extremely white schools, in an extremely white suburb, obsessed with romance novels (which were, in the 80s, extremely white) – I’d recast these stories with Black characters. Reading Wuthering Heights, a story about demented nineteenth-century lovers being unreasonably melodramatic on the English Moors, I cast Cathy as myself and Heathcliff as Ralph Tresvant from New Edition.
(It was quite a reach, and I decided I’d one day write my own love stories with characters who looked like me, so the next generation wouldn’t have to reimagine themselves as the Black version of anything.)
“A love that rearranges your cells; sets up camp in your spirit. It’s a rare, precious thing! And if you felt that way once, could you feel it again?”
Back then, I longed for a connection that was beyond Homecoming slow dances and holding hands in the cafeteria – though my dateless self would’ve been overjoyed with either one. No, I dreamt of a love that would turn me inside out. I wanted DRAMA, honey. Passion, the Miniseries!
“Love is my religion,” I proclaimed in my tenth-grade diary. “And right now, I’m without religion. A heathen!” The “eat” in “heathen” is smudged with dried tears from 1991.
I recently read through this diary with my 12-year-old daughter, a stridently self-possessed Gen Z who’s clear-eyed and realistic about matters of the heart (and finds boys, as a concept, to be problematic). With withering tween sarcasm, she responded, “Wow. You…like…really wanted a boyfriend, huh? Progressive.”
I’m forty-five now, but I’m still the same girl – just with life insurance and persistent perimenopausal perspiration. I’m still fascinated by the idea of soulmates. A love that rearranges your cells; sets up camp in your spirit. It’s a rare, precious thing! And if you felt that way once, could you feel it again?
The first time around, Eva and Shane’s love story ended too abruptly. They were victims of bad timing and wild circumstances. When it ended, their feelings had nowhere to go! I wrote their teen backstory first and was besieged with questions the whole time. Would they be ready for each other if they got another chance? Would memories of their seven-day romance differ? Would the same magnetism be there? What the hell would they wear? Much to think about.
Here’s what I discovered. Yes, Shane was the one who got away. But Eva’s ex-lover wasn’t the only person she was suddenly forced to reckon with. Shane’s appearance unearthed teenaged Eva – the traumatized girl she’d tried to bury. And to move forward, Eva needed to learn to forgive her, accept her, love her.
“Until you learn to accept the darkest parts of yourself, how can you embrace someone else with true honesty and authenticity?”
As cheesy as it sounds, the most significant love story is with yourself (a fact that my daughter already knows in sixth grade, bless her). Until you learn to accept the darkest parts of yourself, how can you embrace someone else with true honesty and authenticity
Eva Mercy is an overextended, overwhelmed woman, and it’s no accident. She stays that way, so she doesn’t have to go deep. When her soulmate shows up – the one person she can’t pretend in front of – and he asks her if she’s happy, all the balls she was juggling crash to the ground. Happiness? She’d never given herself a moment to consider it. The question sends her running out of a diner.
I couldn’t have written this story fifteen, ten (or even five) years ago because that’s what I was doing. Figuratively running out of diners to avoid my stuff. I moved to New York to become an author, fashion magazine editor, and Fearless Adventurer. Like everyone else who flees their suburb for the big city, reinventing yourself is the whole point. If I moved fast enough, I’d never have to deal with the dark, lonely chick who was pageant-glossy on the outside, but secretly losing a decades-long war with brutal, invisible chronic pain that bludgeoned every joyful moment to death.
You can run, but eventually the bill comes and then you must deal with yourself. Shane was Eva’s bill.
And he was her soulmate. And no, there wasn’t an expiration date. A love like that, the kind that sees and celebrates every facet of you – it lives on, whether you like it or not. Turns out, Eva and Shane liked it.
I hope you do, too! Thank you for reading, and for entertaining my latest tear-stained diary entry.
