Many years later, as they faced the amber, hazy blaze of an Arizona fireplace,

  together,

  always together,

  and together forevermore,

  Opal would recall having been fortunate to have looked up from her phone at just the right second, catching a glimpse of who she'd later remember to be Dante himself, as he narrowly dodged the warpath of her car. She cherished it as the first time she ever laid eyes on him.

  It wasn’t the first time she had told this story to just him, always only him, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last, but it was the first time she had told it and Dante had to correct her on what was the actual first occurrence. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, that they were just getting old, that she was just being forgetful, and then came all the doctor visits and the crying and the tissues.

  And now, even after they found the cure in that ancient Amazonian rain forest spider temple, and had restored Opal to perfect health, there was this little snippet of her memory that never seemed to have restored itself. But, Opal was healthy and Dante was happy, and he folded his arm to make use as a pillow, and watched, mesmerized at how the light of the flames would reflect and twinkle upon her skin, and he’d paint little constellations with them as he listened to her spin a yarn that could scratch vinyl.

  He was happy to discover he liked her version better anyway. Much better.

  With the version I possess which, although is indeed capable of revealing a shade closer to the truth, it is lacking in Opal’s talent for exaggeration but can at least confirm that she was attracted to him with that very first glance. The move he made to dodge the right of her front bumper left him in a pose she saw in her side view mirror as something she always tried to paint as Michael Jackson-esque, which Dante never believed, but whatever ‘pose’ Dante made that day, was decent enough to set them on a blazing, sound barrier breaking, race track trail that would last them the rest of their days.

  That being said, no matter how long either of these two fucks spend trying to accurately describe this moment to ya’ (especially after they’ve been enjoying that wine tasting for too long) the truth is whatever one-soon-to-be-two-sided passions were birthed in that shared moment of anguish were incredibly short.

  You must forgive Opal, she’d been having a rather rough morning, which is also why she was on her phone at the time so feel free to tack that on too. Between having to silence the calls from her mother, because the conversations were more so just her mother crying, and having to remember all the shit her father, her family's Most Dutiful, had told her to do in the event of this happening, she couldn’t even remember the name of the butcher shop that was supposed to be housing the bodies of her brothers and her father and the rest of their massacred employees while the rest of The Family scrabbled together something of a plan moving forward.

  Opal had been up for the past 37 hours, returning texts, and burning her tongue on her sixth cup of coffee when she almost killed the love of her life.

  Yes, I know that means both her hands were full at the time. It’s a crazy world these days. It wouldn’t be the last time either, and just so we're clear, Dante has a talent for causing trouble too.

  In fact, there was this odd stretch of years where they tossed ever increasing scenarios of mortal danger back and forth like a hackeysack, but I digress. So, after she saw his cutesy little pose, I believe the exact words she’d use were, “stupid motherfucker,” and tossed her phone aside. The girl may have been angry, but she sure wasn’t stupid, and took it as an omen. She shot a series of texts once she’d parked the car outside the exam hall, before taking exactly six deep breaths to get whatever she could call this makeshift, jerry-rigged, frankenstein’s monstric amalgamation of Her Shit together and stepped out of her All Black Escapade.

  She ran through series after series of recollected study sessions, trying whatever she could to push away the only thoughts she really wanted to be thinking at the time. She had strongly considered not taking the exam at all, but in memory of her father, she decided that to take the F would be “bad for business” in the long run, and if The Family were to survive this, having not gotten her degree would not be helping things along.

  So, despite all the obstacles: dead family, the impending fall of an empire, and the apparent epidemic lack of pedestrian situational awareness she bolstered herself. She’d save her sorrows for the bottle later, and in the meantime focus on just getting through this exam. A single raindrop hit the screen of her phone as she rattled off a text to a recently made group chat comprised of the surviving members of Opal’s actual blood family, and some of their top enforcers, that she was just about to take her exam. She wiped her phone off on her jeans as she looked up at the sky. Dark clouds were rolling towards them, the clouds of the lightest shades hanging out just overhead. Her phone dry, she silenced it and placed it in her purse, before entering the dilapidated Vance University Psychology Department exam hall. The white paint of the exam hall's walls was cracked, and the air had this dull musk that wouldn't leave your nose be.

  This quite dismal place's apparent age only beaten by her professor, Dr. Lichter (a sixth generation and unaware-of-that-fact banshee mind you) who, though sweet, had one year come back from a trip to the sun-bleached Bahamas and was said to have returned more wrinkle than man. He kept a butterscotch sweet in his coat pocket in case he came across someone in dire need of one.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Opal tried to avoid direct eye contact with him as she took a seat towards the back. Despite having fooled nearly everyone into believing that her life was truly simple in its bliss, she had already received three butterscotch sweets from Dr. Lichter this semester, and this was the absolute worst time to hold out her hand and accept a fourth. Unbeknownst to literally everyone, save for myself of course, Dr. Lichter had done a real good job of preserving his very life (for now) that Friday morning when he failed to notice Opal’s faltering mask apart from the rest of the crowd’s.

  Opal, if she could sweat, would’ve been long before the TA’s had finished handing out all of the exams. Just from flipping through the first two pages when Dr. Lichter and his TA’s weren’t looking, Opal could tell that this was not going to go very well at all. The only thing that could keep the tears from flowing now was the teeming anger that seemed to be edging its way past sorrow in the race as she continued to reach out for answers that should have been there.

  And that’s no bullshit either, Opal actually fucking studied for this one. She felt like she came back from a weekend getaway to her house having been robbed as she kept trying to retrace her steps and rediscover whatever the hell she had learned in this class.

  Once the exam had actually begun, and she made it to the end of what would be her first round with the test papers, her fears actualized before her very eyes. Unwilling to call a spade a spade, she went to work on gathering something of an acceptable grade out of the rubble. The frustration of such a task was getting to her though, and at one point she threw her arms out in exasperation, and the fluttering mess that was her academic career fell from the crux of her desk and splattered against the tough, dug-in carpet of the exam hall.

  Opal could only stare down at her desk as the tear drops thumped against the wood. She only allowed herself two, and she even chuckled silently to herself when she thought how having a complete meltdown right there in front of everyone would absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt be “bad for business”.

  So, she took in 6 deep breaths, careful not to make them too obvious or anything, and bent over to pick her test papers up.

  Only, when she looked down onto that miserable carpet she didn’t find the crumpled mess that was her hopes and dreams, she found a pair of boots. Looked to be about a size 13 and Opal's eyes rose to see Dante carefully placing her packet back onto her desk.

  It was the first in what they later purported to be a prolonged, reproducible, tactically viable, and 100% scientifically provable no bullshit psychic connection that existed between the two. It would be one lone, cozy Christmas morning that Julius and Varin, the first two of their twelve boys who endured the initial onslaught of these incredulous claims, would return home, wizened from their first semester at college, and officially called bullshit on ‘em.

  Dante and Opal, feral in their defense, united their verbal arsenals under one banner and rode into battle with heads held high before laying siege with story after story, coincidence after coincidence, the very lies leaving their lips locked in illustrious matrimony. The boys that were now men that Opal and Dante still called Their Boys had no choice but to bow their heads in honored defeat and accept their just punishment, which they were very thankful was no longer “la chancla”, and instead a classic retelling of that very first instance of unspoken sweet nothings.

  And to lighten the mood, Dante would warm them up with his favorite joke as he bent his back over like he was old and rubbed the 2 faded scars of Opal’s bite marks as the lady herself cleared her throat in preparation. And then he’d fall onto the floor before looking up from his squalor with a whimper in his voice and proclaim, “It was the first of many times your wonderful mother thought it was okay to make my Black ass a slave.”

  So, at that very moment Opal later called this first meeting which was what she initially experienced as this sort of heartwarming creeped-out feeling, was, to this day, the sweetest thing she ever saw a man do when Dante took the scruff of his sleeve and wiped the two tears off her desk before gently placing her exam before her. Then Dante returned to his seat, which happened to be at the table right next to hers.

  She hadn’t even noticed he had been there, and it wasn’t until she took notice of the two finger shaped sweat stains at the top of her paper, and looked back at him, that she realized that he was most definitely the man she had almost killed with her car earlier that morning, and it was in the very next moment she realized she felt really shitty. And she almost let that be her excuse to just give in and crash out on it all. Dr. Lichter’s butterscotches be damned.

  But, after her six deep breaths, she decided to at least take one more flip through the exam before beginning her rampage, and that’s when she started seeing bubbled in answers that definitely weren’t hers. In fact, every answer was bubbled in. She flipped back to the front to see if her name was written at the top, as already having done so by this point was part of her exam-taking ritual, and she was surprised to see the blank space where her name should have been.

  She glanced over to Dante, who’s head was down, an unmoving stone, as he began filling out his now nearly blank answer sheet.

  He refused to meet her eyes, and he was all she wanted to see. A quick wave, a smile, a note with her phone number and very serious promise to call him after a looong family vacation.

  Anything that could show she felt gratitude, so she didn’t have to do what she already really wanted to do and ask him out for a coffee after the test. She shook that idea from her head quicker than that damn hedgehog on coke. It was just bad timing. Horrific timing, actually. But Dante’s head stayed lowered, and she, in that moment feeling the coldest embraces with which he’d ever regard her again, fought better judgment and conspired to ambush him after the exam with a quick showering of thanks before getting back on the road to Jaxon City.

  It was the very least that she could do, and maybe a quick coffee too.

  She thought a thankfully un-run over man this sweet deserved a nice coffee with his breakfast.

  She was halfway through deciding where they'd have lunch when she couldn't help but glance his way again just one last time.

  And, not wanting to freak him out, she snapped a mental photo of a man so handsome she had already forgotten what they'd be having for dinner.