It was getting a little dull around here. A little more than usual. The dingy, gaudy lamps around the corner looked a bit shaggy, a bit less reachable than usual. The crowds were gone now, leaving just him slouching on that 2007-styled velvet bar stool after he dismissed the bartender vivaciously. The wooden table in front of him appeared to be silentious, muted by the rancorous crowed and smashed by the burdens of the world, with all its stress buried in a single vodka bottle. The stained glass on the window were compiled intricately, lied beside one another without any interruptions. Wholesome but incomplete. Existent but insufficient.

He clasped the bottle by the neck all of a sudden and threw it across the room, disintegrating the previous seemingly harmonious structure of the stained glass with a shattered “bang.” Accompanied by the proliferation of those glass splinters, he dropped the visibly prickled bottle neck on the floor.

He must’ve felt something. He must’ve felt the guilt. He must’ve been guilty enough to replay his filth in his head over and over before he goes to bed every day and swore would never do it again the next. But he refused to be guilt tripped. In fact, he was so forgiving that he justified his guilt and more or less embraced it. Now that was the attitude that all the heartbreakers out there should be striving for.

He stumbled over the stool as he clumsily proceeded to stand up with the aid of the table in front of him. He winced slightly while shards of stained glass creaked. Minute splinters were piercing through his fingertips as blood dripped on the bumpy table surface. Some type of carved teen-angst filled word was imprinted there as his blood smudged the indents, but he endeavored to wipe it against the side.

Soul bond

He gazed at those two words blankly.

He soul bonded. Once. When he was young and foolish. She was perfect. Perfection to the extent where she met her soulmate when she was three and a half. He had her for a while but his pursuit of that extra flair of beauty poisoned his mind and his soul. It was not until this moment that he had the realization of he soul bonded with her but his ignorance wrecked the best thing that had ever occurred to him.

Now he was the one who wassailed vodka at a lonely bar on the Upper East Side after attending her wedding. In his early-30s, he got married before her while he cheated on his pretty (according to his standard) but without-any-depth wife repeatedly. The one where scandalous drama followed wherever she went so she was friendless and two-faced enough that people around her scanted sincerity. He didn’t soul bond with his wife as much as he desired. Or at all, honestly. That didn’t matter, of course. He still cheated on the one he soul bonded with without any regrets with his wife, so in one way, they truly do deserve each other.

It was satiric enough that he heard the news of her getting married at the age of thirty-two like she always planned with the guy she always wanted. But what was even more iconic was that she sent him an invitation. His wife went ballistic while he involuntarily surrendered to her will but she could see the disappointment in his eyes so she superficially changed her mind, just for the sake of dodging a rampage that might potentially accompanied by the loss of her 40K Chanel purse that she’d brag to her so-called friends.

The bride congratulated him when she encountered the couple at the wedding, even when she abided the law of forgive but never forget after he cheated on her with his current wife twenty years ago. Part of her justifications was she taught him so well that at least he made the first move afterwards, so she gradually let go even when she was both hurt by him and that trophy wife of his since they were friends to some extent. They do deserve each other, so she’d call herself proud.  

The groom was well aware of the bride’s periodic high school romance with him. He was disgusted by how traumatic this experience was to her after she confidently ensured the groom that he was filled with sincerity. The groom resented the way his name was pronounced on her lips and was even more enraged when that action was often accompanied by her being on the verge of tears. But he would sing her a song to comfort her, and she would be so enchanted by her beloved groom that she completely forgot about his existence at the end of the day.

She went to visit the groom some time after. Soon enough, he promised her he would marry her in fifteen years when they had both acquired some sort of stability in life in front of all his friends and family after they sang that little duet of theirs. He even bought her a ring that she wore around her neck at the age of eighteen as an emblem due to her extreme infatuation with Gossip Girl and a confirmation of his promise. He fulfilled that promise fifteen years later.

In her heart, her husband had always been the one. Even at the age of eight, she proudly informed her current mother-in-law that he is the one she will end up marrying. Her mother-in-law doted her so much that she replied with a simple yes to demonstrate her approval. Her husband didn’t limit her emotional availability at all during those fifteen years, but he warned her to only be involved with those that could compete with him since he resented those who made her cry. She later found out that hardly anyone could match up to her husband so when she recalled her little high school romance shortly after, he was so far below the line that even her heels were higher than his standards.

Yet if she was so in love with her husband for almost two decades, why would she ever get involved with him? She wonders, too. She could not come up with a valid answer. But he could. It was to punish him for wrecking the pleasing taste of soul bond by swirling him in a horrible marriage and even a more horrifying life. His wrongdoings after the soul bond resulted her soul to dance on his grave.

God was fair after all. She could not be happier.