Jamie opened her bakery-slash-coffee shop like a perfectly rational adult the following morning. Yes, there were birds singing. Yes, the sky was stunning and the clouds fluffy. Yes, she complimented countless people on the color of the patterns on their clothes or their jaw-dropping lipstick (she had a list of products she needed now), but for the most part, she acted like Jamie Lovely as she’d always been. A little bit odd but mostly harmless.

Until her best friend rolled in on four-inch heels, cat-eye sunglasses, and otherwise impeccably styled. Dark hair, dark eyes, petite clothes hanger proportions. Nix Willems had been blessed by the aesthetic gods. She was art in fashion and soul. How could she be anything else but dearly beloved?

Nix whipped off her shades to look Jamie over from head to toe. For once Jamie knew herself not to be a total disaster. Years of practicing matching slightly varying shades of grey weren’t enough to make up for a lack of comprehension. All shades of black were not created equal, nor were all patterns and textiles. She knew better now.

“You’re making a face,” Nix noted, worry coloring her tone of voice.

“I’m not. This is my face.”

“Don’t be weird. You’re being weird. What’s the matter with you, you nutter?”

Nix was also beautifully English.

“I got my colors!”

Nix blinked at her, her dark brown eyes bulging out of their sockets.

“Don’t make that face at me, say something. I. Got. My. Colors. Are you listening?”

“What color is my skin?”

“It’s brown?” Which Jamie had already known because Nix had known, as her parents had made their children aware of the ways in which they differed from others from an early age. This wasn’t a revelation; that didn’t mean Jamie wasn’t tickled to be able to see her friend in all her splendour. Nix Willems was even more striking out of black and white.

“Right, bad example.” Nix turned, flicking her gaze back and forth over the shop. She had met her soulmate at thirteen, two days before they’d died in a swimming incident at the public pool. Her ability to see all the colors of the rainbow was a mixed blessing. “That guy’s shoes. What color?”

Jamie followed Nix’s finger to a pair of dusty combat boots being worn by one of The Bookstop’s new regulars. Doc Martens if she had her guess, and the signature thick black soles confirmed it. She compared the shade of grey she remembered to the color wheel app on her phone. This was a learning curve.

“Turquoise, right?”

“That’s it. Babe, you’re a marvel. You’ve really done it. I want all the deets. But let me get Doc Martens number and hit the bathroom first, then we’ll talk about it.”

“I need to find her.” The ‘her’ wasn’t an issue; the where on the other hand...

“And we will.” At Jamie’s sober glare, Nix started to squirm. “But first boys and then bathroom. Also, food. Food right after that.”

“Seriously?”

“Jamie, lovely (no pun intended), darling, sweetheart. Some of us have bodily functions to see to, not all of them boy-related. Let me live.”

“We’re looking for my soulmate, Nica. Now is not the time!” Jamie was going to kill her best friend--later, after she was done pumping her brilliant brain for ideas on how to get Kieran Dillahunt (Kieran Dillahunt!) to care that she existed.

“There’s always time for food; let’s keep our heads on. I need to pee. Drag your crazy eyes to the counter and hold a seat for me.”

“You realize I own all of the seats.” Her forty-seat bakery and coffee shop had been a nightclub until she renovated it using the money she’d inherited from her late mother’s estate. The only thing left over from its previous identity were the strobe lights that only came out for special occasions and the stained-glass disco ball glittering over their heads.

“Good for you, I expect the best seat in the house. Shoo.”

Said seat thus acquired, Jamie took off her flour-caked apron to await her friend’s return from parts known and not.

Number in hand and makeup refreshed to warrior strength, Nix reappear to plop on the nearest bar stool.

“Do not delay. Tell me everything. Talk, now.”

“I’ll talk when certain parties who shall remain nameless hush.”

“Boo.”

Tracy, The Bookstop’s general manager and head baker extraordinaire, buzzed their place of honor with blueberry-lemon muffins and hot lavender tea made to their exacting specifications. Her apron was covered in little hand-drawn lemons with grass-green leaves. Her hair was rose gold coils gathered in a high ponytail. She had the bluest-greenest eyes Jamie had ever seen and zero fashion sense to speak of. Not a day went by that her clothes didn’t clash in technicolor or in gray, yet there was nobody happier in the world to be found.

“Be good to your sister, Nica,” she admonished, setting down a sweet treat for each of them to eat and drink.

Nix stuck out her tongue. “Yes, mum.”

Tracy had adopted them both as surrogate daughters she’d never had as soon as Jamie hired her and Jamie couldn’t even pretend to be bothered by it. There was something about being taken under an older woman’s wing that felt safe to her. Tracy was loving and fiercely protective. Jamie believed to the marrow of her bones that her mother would have loved Tracy Richard as Jamie and Nix did.

“She bakes like a champ and gives amazing advice. It’s like having two moms.”

“If one of them was very hot and not in any way related to you.” Nix watching after Tracy with far too much interest.

“Are you ever not in thrall with anybody?”

“I think we both know the answer to that.” Nix could be sanguine when she wanted to be. She always wanted to be. Emotionalism tended to make her prickly and distant. Nix blamed her parents, but Jamie thought it was just the way her best friend was.

Jamie proceeded to explain in perhaps more than necessary detail what had occurred last night. The video. The comment. The reply. There may have been a bit exclaiming over the philosophical meaning of a thumbs-up versus a thumbs-down, not mention certain wondrous shades of blue. Who could say? Nix could. Nix did. Had Jamie a sensitive bone in her body it would have been badly broken under the lash of Nix’s unsentimental tongue.

“Hello, who. Is. That?” Nix cocked her chin toward the door of the Bookstop where a spindly streak of a man was greeting Tracy--vigorously. Their banter was louder than necessary, but not enough to bother anyone. Whoever he was, he had a rough kind of brogue in keeping with his thin, hawkish features. Not that Tracy looked at him as if he were anything less than a prince. His look towards her was no less adoring.

Nix hummed, a smile threatening. “Isn’t he just very Scottish?”

“How can you tell?”

“It’s the eyebrows, trust me. I’m English, I know these things.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Nix shook Jamie’s arm and pointed. “Ooh la la. He’s kissing Tracy!”

Jamie and Nix leaned over the counter to see better. Between the grizzled older man’s unruly hair and Tracy’s, there wasn’t much to see from the neck up, but oh it was all going on downstairs.

“He is really going for it!” They were flush together in a not-so-secluded corner of the shop, saying hello with their tongues in a decidedly unconventional way.

“Is that him doing it or her?” Tracy was not holding back; she gave as good as got. They were both disheveled and growing more so by the moment.

“Can’t tell. That’s his hand on her arse though. He’s got nice hands,” Nix added.

“She’s into it. She’s giggling. They’re so cute.” Jamie frowned. “It’s sort of disgusting.” Not disgusting as in embarrassing, just...personal. The intimate made public. Jamie didn’t have to have lived through it to understand that for Tracy and her soulmate (they seemed like soulmates to her), nobody else existed in the world when they were together.

Nix elbowed her with a laugh, nodding toward the couple in their clinch. “That’ll be you soon.”

“Doubtful. She doesn’t know I exist.” Unrequited soul bonds weren’t rare precisely; they were just rarely spoken of as though it was courting bad luck even to mention them. She’d never considered what it might feel like to be a statistic. It was lonely.

“Come off it, love. She must do, or you wouldn’t have anything to tell me.” Nix took her hand. “Whatever you felt, I promise she felt it, too. Soul bonds are funny that way.”

Jamie buried her face in Nix’s terribly expensive jacket to sigh, smearing her coral lip stain on said jacket in the process. Her days were truly numbered.

"Nice. You’re so lucky you’re pretty. Go to New York, see what happens. If nothing else, you’ll get an autograph out of it.”

“There’s an incentive,” Jamie quipped, all sarcasm. “I fell in love with my crush and all I got was this stupid autograph.”

“If you think it’s worthwhile, do it anyway. If you don’t, you will regret never trying. Trust me."

Nix was the funniest, weirdest, most honest person Nix had ever known. What she typically wasn’t was emotional or given to exposing her regrets for the world to see. Not even to her best friend.

“How expensive do you think it would be to get a flight to JFK in the next five minutes?”

“You’re going to be paying your student loans off a little bit longer, but I think you’ll survive. Be brave, my fair idiot.”

Jamie didn’t take it personally.

“Love you, too!”

Jamie drew her best friend into a dress-wrinkling hug that she would be getting angry texts about for hours and then left full-run of The Bookstop to Tracy. Between her and Nix, things would go swimmingly or they’d go to hell. Jamie would handle it when she got back, one way or another.