The sky was a grey-blue haze hanging above the city, like a cotton blanket at the point of tearing, and she just knew it was going to rain. The young woman bit her lower lip, contemplating what she would do about her current predicament as the sky got darker and the street lamps came on.

Normally, she could just walk home, as her small flat was only a ten minute jog from the office building, and take out her umbrella at the first sign of rain. However, the alarm hadn't gone off this morning and after scrambling about in haste before dashing off to work, she had forgotten her yellow umbrella and was now marooned inside the lobby, staring at the clouds. She just couldn't stand walking home and getting rained on. It ruined her work clothes and she couldn't shake the fear that, even though it had never happened before, THIS time, it would be acid rain. She cursed herself for having thought before that the walk would allow her to get fresh air and exercise.

She counted to three, then to five and dashed out into the street. She hadn't gone hardly a block before she felt the rain on her forehead and hair. Sighing, she turned around, looking for some awning she could stand under until the shower had passed. She found something even better: a small coffee shop that looked warm and inviting, the perfect little sanctuary on an evening too cold for a walk but too warm for snow. She threw her hands over her head to sheild herself from the acid rain and dashed across the street into the shop.

It was the same inside as it had seemed from across the street. She unraveled her baby blue scarf and looked over the menu, written in chalk, up on the wall. Someone had deftly drawn a reindeer beside the words 'Holiday Special' and it made her grin. She loved Christmas, but for the last few years it had been causing her to remember a time in her life that, it seemed, was harder than it should have been to forget.

She asked for something with the words 'chocolate-covered strawberry mocha' in the title and slipped into a chair in the corner, her back to the door. She glanced out the window and an expression of alarm crossed her face. Apparently, she had escaped inside just in time, for it seemed that the sky had just made it's decision to unleash possible acid rain hell on the street outside. She leaned her head against the cool glass and felt as if she was sitting inside a waterfall. It made her extremely complacent and she didn't notice when her coffee arrived.

She spent a little over fifteen minutes just staring out the window, ribbons of water blurring her vision, and sipping the mocha. A few times, her mind wandered to how excited she was that she would finally be seeing Bob again for the first time in months when they exchanged their Christmas presents. She had bought him margarita glasses (as Bob's night-gig was amature bartending) and a Green Day CD. Sighing, she stirred the coffee and came to the conclusion that if any one could cheer her up and make her feel like she used to during the holidays, it was Bob. Well... There may have been ONE other person... But he-- Well, she hadn't seen him in years...

She faught the immediate insticnt that made her think of him but it clouded her mind and she was forced to remember. What seemed like only day ago was really a few years and the memory performed a dance in her mind. She remembered being a young girl, not even out of school, when she'd met him. She watched him write his name on the chalkboard on the first day of school, smiling at the class.

"My name is Mr. Lenk. My name is also Jadon, but until you REALLY get to know me... let's stick with the former, ok?"

He seemed different than any other teacher she'd ever had. And, much to her discomfort in the classroom, she began thinking of him more and more. It was hard to look up at him or speak to him or... well, do anything at all for forty-five minutes. As soon as the bell rang, she dashed out of class, though she really wished she could have stayed just a second longer.

It wasn't that he was a particularly beef-cake, muscle-man stud or that any of the other girls in the class were drooling over his loveliness. That's what made him special to her. That's what made her notice him and then go insane over the fact that she couldn't STOP noticing... He was younger than the other teachers for a start, about twenty-three but looking eighteen. He was short but a few inches taller than her, which made it easier to look into his lovely green eyes but harder to avoid them if the sight was making her feel faint. His hair was a sort of blondish-brown and he had a sort of beard-thing going on... She thought it was cute from the first day he began to teach about rhythmic poetry and she began to fantasize about what he would look like without it. He was always making strange and humorous jokes and she began to believe that he was a bit self-concious because he was always asking if everyone enjoyed the lessons and liked his teaching methods. Whenever he would ask her these questions, she would always get quiet and look at her desk, saying that they were good and then trailing off.

She resented that he needed to be so intellegent and funny and handsome and... her English professor. Sometimes she'd just kick herself under her desk out of frustration. She didn't tell any of her friends, except for a penpal she had in America, whom she was still connected with. Kali had said that she didn't need to freak out so much about it, that things would all be ok.

"And," she remembered her friend adding at the end of a particularly lengthy email, "if you really feel like he's your soulmate, then I doubt it'll have such an anti-climax as you leaving school and never seeing him again..."

Yes, Kali had used the word 'soulmate'. As our heroine sighed and again sipped her coffee, she mused on how she felt so strongly that Jadon must have been her soulmate and how the universe had been out to get her by ploping the person she was destined for on the other side of the teacher's desk. That was restricted. She sighed and thought about what Kali had said and once again came to the conclusion that Jadon couldn't have been her soulmate because there had been an anti-climax. A particularly sour one.

Graduation day. She had spied the punch on the back table and was dying for something to drink because all the screaming had made her throat hurt. As she filled a delicate glass with some kind of pinkish fruit drink, she heard a voice behind her that she knew all too well... A voice that had always sounded to her as if the mouth that it came from was on the verge of breaking into a wonderful smile...

"Hey, Nora... So, today's the big day, huh?"

Her throat seemed to hurt worse when she tried to answer him. So, self-conciously, she bit her bottom lip and smiled at him with a little shrug. A small smile crossing his lips, Mr. Lenk, Jadon, reached over and took Nora's hand. She realized that she couldn't exactly feel her toes as he gave her fingers a little squeeze and said,

"Well, take care. You were always--"

That's when Michael Johnston fell into the punch table after successfully running backwards and jumping up to catch the frisbee that was being thrown at him. Teachers and students swarmed the area as Michael held up the frisbee in triumph and Nora realized that she had lost the hand of her favorite teacher in the crowd.

"There's an anti-climax for you, Kali..." Nora had written in haste, her fingers wildly tapping against the keyboard. "So it's official: he wasn't my soulmate, as you figure. But I swear, if I find out on my death bed that he was, I'm going to grab the universe by the neck and throttle it."

It was on days like this, so close to Christmas, rain outside, coffee in hand, that she began to believe that the universe would have a whole lot of explaining to do one day.

Nora's eyes glued to the foggy window and she sighed, wondering where he was right now. I'll bet he's with his family... she sighed. Wasn't he supposed to get married a few years back? She put her head down on the table and laughed. Well, there it is, I guess. Mr. Wonderful is off having Christmas dinner with the family, and I'm sitting in a coffee shop THINKING about him and waiting for the acid rain to stop. Joy to the world.

She collected up her things and remembered that she had a Bob to see and a Kali to write to. Nora merely figured that the best she could do was throw her coat over her head and run outside to brave the storm, even though it was still getting worse. "Oh well... Just a few more blocks..."

So, she placed her money on the table, nodded to the man at the counter, threw her light trench coat over her head and made a run for the door. How could she have seen that someone was coming through at that very moment?

Trying to pick herself up off the ground, she helped up the man that she'd collided into.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't see you there and--"

Immediately, she was rendered speechless by the memory of chalk dust and anti-climaxes as she stared into his eyes for the first time since she'd decided it was better for her sanity that she didn't look at him much.

"Nora!" Jadon, Mr. Lenk, said breathlessly, helping her to her feet as she wondered if they would even hold her up. "What a pleasant surprise!"

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