Dedicated to MelanieS73 for being the first commenter on the Author's Note (which makes her the first person to have checked this out). Thank youuu :)

Chapter 1

Looking back, I think it's safe to blame Serendipity for everything that happened that Saturday night.

I'm not saying I had whirlwind of romance revolving around a series of accidental almost-encounters that led me to finding love, no, I wasn't talking about personal experience involving serendipity at all. What I really meant was that it all began the moment Tori showed up at my doorstep with a DVD of the movie Serendipity.

I almost slammed the door on her face.

I wouldn't have hesitated to do just that if she didn't happen to be my best friend.

"I don't understand," she said when we were in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboards to look for something to eat while watching. "How can you hate that movie?"

"I never said I hate it." I shut the microwave close and set the correct time and temperature for the pack of microwavable cheese popcorn I placed inside.

"Like your scowl isn't enough to tell me that you obviously don't like it." She was pouring some cereal on a bowl. This had always been one of the quirky things about her. She loved eating cereal without milk while watching a particularly sappy Rom-Com.

I took a deep breath and tried to come up with a simple answer for her question.

I've learned from experience (after telling her my opinion on Titanic) that it was best not to say too much; otherwise we'd end up having a debate about it all afternoon. It would have been fine if her arguments were actually valid, but I could only hear her say "but it's true love!" one too many times before I could feel a headache threatening to set in.

"I just don't see the point of their actions." I grabbed the largest bowl we had and set it on the counter, examining it for any signs of moisture. I didn't want to ruin perfectly good popcorn because I was too busy explaining the pointlessness of a movie I didn't even like. "If you really like some guy, why on earth would you not give him your phone number?"

"But Reed, that's the point! You leave it to chance and fate to bring you back together to see if you really are meant to be. It's true love."

Ah, there it was. If my life was a comical cartoon, this was the moment my right eye would have started to twitch. Every word she said literally made me want to question how, exactly, I ended up being best friends with her. I would have argued more, but I knew it was impossible to deal with Tori when it came to her "true love" argument, so I decided to shut up.

I didn't even know why she liked forcing me to watch these movies with her. It wasn't like I offered good company. Watching with me meant that she always had to shoot me sharp looks and withering stares whenever I snorted during "the best parts." I simply couldn't help it. I'd never been big fan of grand romantic gestures and passionate displays of affection—not in real life and definitely not in fiction. They just seemed funny to me.

When I asked her why she was willing to put us both through this kind of torture, she told me it was because "One day, you're going to change your mind about love."

I didn't tell her that she was asking for the impossible, because I knew, yet again, that it would only lead to another debate filled with her invalid arguments. So every once in a while, she'd come over at my house to force me to watch another (horrible) romantic movie with her while having another round of our snort-glare routine.

Needless to say, my view on love never changed. My doubts about it were rooted too far back in the past. The image of my dad walking out of that front door burned crystal clear at the back of my mind. It was like I could still feel all those mosquito bites I'd gotten whenever I refused to leave the front porch, every day two weeks after he left, telling mom that I wanted to wait for Dad to come home.

He never did.

I was basically a walking cliché, nothing but a cynical girl from a broken family whose parents decided they were done with each other. I watched their marriage fall apart and I was caught in the storm they'd created.

While I'd gotten over the whole broken family thing after ten long years, I'd never really seen romantic love the same way again.

This was exactly why, as the credits of Serendipity rolled in, I still couldn't find it in me to tell Tori that I've had a change of heart; that watching a pointless movie had somehow led me to the realization that everything I've ever believed in was wrong. If anything, the whole movie had amplified the ridiculousness of romance.

"I can't believe you," Tori said, falling back on the couch like she was exhausted after all the glares she'd given me throughout the movie. "How can you not like it?"

If I didn't know that that was a rhetorical question, I would have given her a full answer in bullet form, provided with explanations. "Can we watch Insidious now?" I asked her instead.

She straightened in her seat, looking at me with fierce determination, unfazed by my attempt to change the topic. "Reed. Really. Just tell me why you don't see this as romantic."

Wasn't that the exact problem, though? I see it as romantic; and to me, romance was absurd. I sighed. "Look, Tor. It's just that... things like this don't really happen in real life."

"You don't know that," she said back, a little stubbornly. She huffed. "I mean, really, I've heard about real life stories similar to Serendipity."

"Heard, Tori." I lifted a shoulder. "They might be just that—just stories."

Pursing her lips together, she narrowed her eyes at me. I ignored the pinched look she had on her face and decided to clean our mess up instead. I reached over to her other side to grab the bowl she used for her dry cereal, stacking it on top of the one I used for the popcorn.

"I've decided," she suddenly said with an air of authority. I knew, right then, that I wasn't going to like this decision of hers, whatever it was. She leveled her gaze with mine. "Tonight, I'm going to prove you wrong. Go get dressed."

"Tori," I said warningly. "Where are we going?"

"On a quest," she replied, the word quest rolling off her tongue like it was perfectly normal to say it in the twenty-first century conversation. "Get ready, Reed. We're going to find our soulmates today."

---

If I really believed in the concept of "soulmates", I would have told Tori that the whole "quest" was a contradiction in itself. You're not supposed to go on a search to find your soulmate. Fate would have made sure you would meet him or her.

Not that I believed in any of that.  

But I knew Tori Matsunaga like the back of my hand, and if there was anything that could stop this half-Japanese girl from doing something incredibly stupid, it was yet to be discovered. Though I liked to think that I, at the very least, managed to minimize the casualties caused by her "sense of adventure," which was what she liked to call her impulsiveness.

This wasn't the first time she decided to do something on a whim. She always dragged me along, if only to stop her from deciding to kill herself from hypothermia when she once suggested we should go skinny dipping when it was fucking freezing outside; or to stop her from eating blueberry cheese cake with gravy.

Sometimes, I hated her because she knew I could never turn her down. Not after what happened a year ago, when she said she wanted to try bungee jumping with this friend she met online, and I refused to go. I always thought she'd never go through with it; that there was no way she'd go anywhere without me.

I was wrong.

The one time I decided not to tag along was the night that became a turning point of our friendship.

That was the night of the incident. She didn't let my rejection stop her from going, even though I tried to convince her not to, and she ended up almost getting r@ped. While the bastard who tried to do it was locked away in prison now, I always blamed myself for the fact that I could have been there to prevent I from happening, but I wasn't.

Since then, I never turned any of her whims down, if only to humor her.

I learned how to deal with her impulsiveness over the years. Telling her not to do it straight off had never worked.  She was relentless. The only way to get her out of whatever random thing she wanted to do was to agree to it. I would go along with her plan for a while, but when she'd finally have to do the challenge she'd given herself—drink twenty jell-o shots in one sitting, play strip poker with a bunch of strangers, lie down on a busy road for a full minute—I could always talk her out of it.

This was what I had originally planned to do when I agreed to go with her on this quest of hers. I'd let her run around for a few minutes in an attempt to look for her "soulmate." When she gets tired, I'd talk her into calling the night off and we could both go back home with the promise of ice cream and a sleepover at my house.

 As soon as we were done cleaning up and I finished getting ready, I scribbled a note for Mom to tell her I was going out with Tori. She probably understood that what I really meant to say was that I was tagging along to keep Tori from doing something crazy. She knew how Tori was and that the Matsunagas always trusted me to look out for her, especially after the almost-getting-r@ped incident.

"Let's grab some dinner first," Tori suggested as soon as we got into the car. She was on the passenger seat, already rummaging through the glove compartment. "Maybe at Parker's?"

I turned the engine on and took note of the time. It was only a few minutes past six, and already, I was exhausted just by thinking of how this night could possibly turn out. It was one thing to watch a movie about chances and fate and being "meant to be," but another thing altogether to get roped into a quest to find "true love."

"I think I know what your problem is," she said as I started to pull out of the driveway. "You're a pessimist."

"I prefer the term realist," I said without missing a beat.

"Stop being a cynic." Even without turning to look, I knew she was probably giving me one of her pleading looks. "Didn't you like Romeo and Juliet?"

"Only because it was written to purposely ridicule the idea of romance," I told her. While a lot of complained about the ridiculousness of Romeo and Juliet, I always viewed it as something satirical; something that wasn't only a social commentary on politics, but also something that magnified how "love" makes a person act stupidly.

Tori slumped against her seat, shutting the glove compartment close with a soft click. "I know your parents didn't hit it off well, but that doesn't mean you should close your heart to the possibility of finding love."

"Tor, please," I said, "I'm here with you on this quest, aren't I?"

She didn't call me on the deflection, but I heard her sighing as she took her phone out of her purse. I didn't know which was harder—trying to convince your friend to become less cynical or trying to tolerate the fact that your friend was trying to change you. I didn't have anything against her, really, because despite all the crazy and random shit I always get myself into because of her, she was the only friend I actually had.

As much as I didn't want to admit it, without her "sense of adventure," life wouldn't have been as fun as it was. Her optimism balanced out my pessimism. Despite our differences and the fact that we were basically the opposite of each other, I couldn't imagine a life without a best friend as crazy as her.

---

Because of Tori's Asian descent, everyone had always been surprised when they hear her speak in straight English without an accent, so the new waiter at Parker's Diner was probably surprised when she was the one who ordered for us.

I, however, knew that she was born and raised here; and while her Nihongo was perfect, English was more of her first language. She probably wouldn't even try to learn Nihongo if her parents hadn't insisted on it. At first, it seemed normal for them to do that, but it was only in the last few months before graduation did we find out that they were planning to send her to Tokyo for college.

I could see why she'd been spending more and more time with me ever since the summer began. While that meant that I was subject to more Rom-Coms and spontaneous quests, I was grateful. Her quirks, I could deal with. Her absence? I wasn't quite sure.

"I've got a jar of Nutella and spoons with our names on back home, Tor. Are you sure you don't want to go home yet?"

"Tempting," she said after pretending to seriously consider the offer, "but our soulmates await."

I scowled. "Yes, and my soulmate is that jar of Nutella. And yes, it is waiting for me to come home."

She gave me a what are you going to do without me look, which wasn't really anything new. She'd always given me that same particular look whenever I suggested doing something "boring." Honestly, though, I've only ever really considered the question now that she was about to leave me.

"As much as I love Nutella," she said, "I don't think so."

"You know, eating chocolate stimulates the release of endorphins, not unlike when people have sex," I pointed out. "Seeing as looking for a lover is basically just looking for someone to have sex with, I think I'll stick with Nutella instead."

"Looking for a lover isn't just about looking for someone to have sex with." Her voice rose, making a few people turn to look at us at the mention of sex. I felt my cheeks redden a bit and I tried to sink lower to my chair, but Tori didn't seem to notice the stares. "It's about caring for someone and waking up to thoughts of that one particular person and—"

"I get it," I interjected, knowing she was on the verge of going into True Love Mode all over again. When I looked around, I noticed a pair of guys watching us, looking amused. I dragged my eyes back to Tori to keep myself from glaring at the guys. "Two hours, Tor. If you don't find your soulmate in two hours, we're going back to my Nutella."

"Our soulmates."

I scowled, but didn't say anything.

Honestly, I'd always been a bit jealous of her. It was like nothing could stop her from doing what she wanted to do. I wasn't saying that it was a particularly good trait, but sometimes I wondered if I needed more of her reckless courage. Even her ability to bounce back was remarkable.

A few months after the incident, she'd gone through a few therapy sessions, and while it hadn't happened instantly, she managed to revert back to her usual, happy self like it never happened. Sometimes, though, like tonight, I wished she'd learned her lesson and became more careful.

Thankfully, when our food arrived, she decided to talk about something else other than the quest. She brought up her thirteen-year-old brother, Kaito, and the fact that he seemed to have a girlfriend. It was amusing how she ranted on and on about Kaito keeping secrets from her. "He never used to!"

"Blame puberty," I told her simply.

Just as we were about to finish eating, I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I stood up and stepped out of the booth, however, that was when the first disaster of the night happened.

There was a clatter, a surprised yelp from me, and that momentary pause as everyone turned to look to see what happened. I felt the cold liquid seeping through my Arctic Monkeys shirt as I raised my gaze.

"Holy shit," the guy said, taking a step back. He was holding a now-empty glass, eyes wide as he looked at me. "You—you appeared out of nowhere!"

"You should have been fucking looking where you're going," I snapped at him, holding my shirt away from my skin and wondering if an ice cube managed to land on my cleavage or something.

"I'm sorry," he said, but he didn't sound the slightest bit sorry, "but actually, you were the one who—"

"Hey, man." Some guy had grabbed Coke Guy, tugging him back a bit before looking at me with an apologetic look. "We're really sorry."

I glared at Coke Guy, who was glaring back, before looking at the other guy with a slightly less sharp glare. "Your friend ruined my favorite shirt."

"You cost me a drink," Coke Guy interjected.

I opened my mouth, ready to retaliate, but then I felt Tori holding me back, not unlike the way the other guy was holding Coke Guy.

"It's okay," she said, a small smile on her face. She shot me a wide-eyed warning look before looking back at the two guys. "Really. It is."

No, it was most definitely not fucking okay until Coke Guy apologized properly, I thought, but then I noticed that everyone in the diner was practically looking at us. I didn't like causing big scenes, but I just couldn't help reacting rashly when my boobs were freezing and sticky because some guy wasn't paying attention when he was walking.

Realizing that they were the guys who were looking at us the moment they heard Tori say the word sex earlier pissed me off even more for some reason.

The other guy apologized again, looking like he actually meant it, before dragging Coke Guy away. I heard the bell clanging as they left through the door, leaving the scene of the crime as quickly as they could.

Tori turned to me as soon as they were gone, crossing her arms over her chest. "Well, that's a shame."

"I know. My favorite shirt is ruined and it's all because some dick—"

"I didn't mean your shirt." She sighed like she'd just lost a million dollars. I suppressed the urge to give her a look of mock betrayal. "I meant them. They were cute."

I blinked at her, trying to comprehend what she had just said. "They were not."

She considered this. "Actually, yeah, they weren't cute. They were pretty fucking hot."

Groaning, I shook my head at her and headed for the bathroom. This was going to be a long night and it hadn't even started yet.

I knew watching Serendipity was a bad idea. 

---

A/N: 

**Serendipity is basically this movie that where a man and woman met, had the "best night of their lives." At the end of the night, the smitten Jonathan suggests an exchange of phone numbers. Sara writes hers down, but it flies away with the wind. Wanting fate to work things out, Sara asks Jonathan to write his name and phone number on a $5 bill, while she writes her name and number on the inside cover of a copy of Love in the Time of Cholera. If they are meant to be together, he will find the book and she will find the $5 bill, and they will find their way back to each other.

Yay it's up! This is still kind of pretty short, but I'm glad I'm ahead my word count for now. Haha I'm really excited about writing this story (like, I actually pre-planned the first few chapters, which I've never never done before) sooo I hope you guys like it too. :)