The One

by John Marrs

“You obey me,” added Deepak confidently. “Everyone knows I wear the trousers in our relationship.” “You do wear them, honey, but ask yourself who buys them for you.”

“Then we’ll be mindful that maybe we’ll need to put more effort into our relationship. Like John Lennon said, ‘All You Need Is Love.’” “Yes, but he also said, ‘I Am The Walrus,’ so let’s not hold too much credence to his pearls of wisdom.”

He’d assumed they were content and in agreement that their future was together, but her need for scientific confirmation tapped into his recurring worry that he wasn’t good enough for his wife-to-be, that their five-year age gap was too large and that he was, and always would be, too immature for her.

“May I say one thing first?” Nick asked, and perched on the island next to her. “I don’t care what these results say. I could be Matched with Jennifer Lawrence as far as I’m concerned, and it wouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference.

Something in Nick’s heart had deviated from the path it had been following, and it was making him nauseous.

“In my spare time I question how the Galactic Empire built the Death Star without the rest of the universe noticing. Meanwhile, you’re out there finding genes nobody knew existed.”

an overwhelming wave of euphoria began to charge its way through her veins like an electrical current.

“It’s that feeling you don’t get when you’re around anyone else, like nobody in the world matters when you’re in their company. Like you and them are this one, solitary...thing... And no matter what crap the world throws at you, you can get through it because you have them on your side.”

“Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another.”

She pulled up an armchair and sat down; the closer their proximity, the faster the rhythm of her heart became. And when—instinctively—she reached to hold his hand, it felt like an electric charge was running through her veins.

“It’s not Richard, per se, who is responding to your touch. It’s his body—his receptors, his pheromones, his nerves, his muscles—recognizing the feeling and the presence of its Match rather than his brain.”

But it was just their shared chemistry playing tricks on her.

What if he resented the child for coming between him and his Match? What if every time he looked into its eyes, they would reflect the emptiness of his own? Nick shuddered.

What had begun as an ordinary day with so much to look forward to had taken more twists and turns than a James Patterson novel.

He was a human being, and he was flawed, not a fantasy, and she could see that now.

Why not put your efforts into something that helps people?”