{{Dedicated to @republicans because her comment on the last chapter made me smile, and because Tainted Guilt is an awesome book}}

Rhea woke up around nine o' clock with a start. Throughout the entire night, her dreams were plagued by the silhouette of a boy, whose face was a complete blur.

It was Tuesday, and it was not only six days until the dreaded back to school day, but also six days until she would meet her soulmate. If that wasn't too much pressure, she didn't know what was.

She thought back to the events of the previous day as she lounged in bed, soaking up the sun that seeped through the curtains. She'd had not one but two snippets in the course of a single day, and so far the only thing she knew about her soulmate was that he liked cocoa puffs and sparkly ornaments. This reminded her that she hadn't told Willa about last night's snippet yet. She considered calling her, but realized that what she needed in that moment was the tightest hug possible which she knew only Willa was capable of providing.

So she picked up her phone and quickly dialed Willa's number. She picked it up on the fourth ring and for a while all Rhea heard was shuffling of sheets, which let her know that she'd woken up her best friend.

"Why would you call me so early in the morning?" Willa whined a moment later. No pleasantries then, Rhea thought. Not that she'd expected any; she knew what kind of mood Willa would be in when she'd just woken up in the morning.

"It's quarter past nine," Rhea stated matter-of-factly.

"I don't see how that undermines my argument," Willa said, still moody with the haze of sleep hanging over her head.

"I am coming over to your house," Rhea said, ignoring her best friend's complaints, "You better get your ass out of the bed. Or not. I am coming over either way."

"Fine," Willa muttered and hung up the phone.

Rhea brushed her hair and teeth and she could bet on her firstborn child that Willa was snuggling further into the covers with no intention of getting out of the bed right in that moment. She threw on a sundress and a pair of sandals anyway and grabbed an apple from the kitchen counter to nibble on as she walked the ten minute distance between her house and Willa's.

When she got to Willa's house ten minutes later, she didn't bother knocking because she knew for sure Willa was home alone and she was fast asleep. Instead she let herself in using the spare key she knew the Rosewoods kept under the doormat. She swiftly made her way up the stairs to Willa's room and opened the door with a loud bang, but Willa didn't so much as stir at the sound.

"Wake up, you little panda," Rhea shouted in her ear, which emitted a groan from her friend as she turned to lie on her stomach and buried her face in her pillow.

Rhea grabbed the pillow from its corner and pulled it from under Willa's head, making her head fall against the mattress with a soft thud.

"Do you realize you are giving me the perfect incentive for murder?" Willa said, not lifting her face up from where it landed a second ago, thus making her voice sound muffled.

"I need to talk to you," Rhea said, "Please?"

"Don't use your puppy voice on me," Willa said between gritted teeth, but a moment later she sat up, wrapped the comforter around herself and looked expectantly at her friend.

"I had another snippet last night," Rhea declared.

"Okay," Willa said slowly, cautiously sizing her friend up, "What did you see?"

Rhea drew in a deep breath before she started talking. "I'd just went to bed last night and suddenly the whole room went black, except it didn't because I realized later that I was getting another snippet and all I saw was the ceiling of his room, because of course he would be in bed it was one am at night and he had glow in the dark stars on his ceiling and I am panicking like there is no tomorrow and I really need you to give me one of your hugs."

Rhea was out of breath by the time she stopped talking.

"Okay, just breathe now," Willa said, and then she lifted one corner of the comforter and wrapped it around both of them after Rhea snuggled to her side. She enclosed both of her arms around her friend, giving her the tightest hug she could manage. "Everything is going to be fine. It'll all work out."

"Thank you for being such an amazing friend," Rhea murmured.

"I am only doing this so I can get to tease you once you find this soulmate of yours," Willa joked. Then she dropped the comforter from around her shoulders and said, "C'mon let's have breakfast, I am starving."

Rhea offered to just eat cereals for breakfast, but Willa said no, insisting her situation called for her legendary pancakes. Rhea wasn't about to decline such an offer, because Willa's pancakes were indeed legendary, as she liked to refer to them.

As Willa prepared the pancake mix in a large bowl, there was a knock on the door. Rhea declared that she'd get it, knowing perfectly well who was at the door.

She made her way through the corridor with quick steps and swung the door open to see the familiar figure of a tall, blonde guy, whose face broke into a smile upon seeing her.

"Hey Rhea," he said, giving her a one-armed hug, "I didn't know you'd be here."

"Hey Wade," she greeted her best friend's boyfriend, "And when am I not here?"

"Fair point," he chuckled. Then he raised his chin up and smelled the air in a way that reminded Rhea of a Jack Russell Terrier. "Ooh, do I smell pancakes?"

"Yeah," Rhea laughed at his eager tone, "Willa's making them as we speak."

Upon hearing this, Wade broke into a sprint towards the kitchen. Rhea let out a laugh and shook her head with amusement and followed after him. When she entered the kitchen, she saw that Wade had gone to wrap his arms around his girlfriend from behind, giving her a peck on the cheek.

"Hey babe," Willa looked up from the pan, beaming at him.

Even though they had toned down the PDA considerably in the two years they'd been dating, there were times when it could still get awkward for Rhea to be the third wheel, and this moment was one of them.

"Please don't ruin my appetite right before breakfast," she drawled at her friends, and Wade disentangled himself from Willa with a chuckle, coming to sit across Rhea at the kitchen counter to make small talk.

A couple minutes later, Willa set a plate full of pancakes in front of them and all conversation ceased as they all dug in heartily.

***

After breakfast, they went upstairs to Willa's room, where the three of them had always hung out throughout the summer. Rhea sat on the floor, resting her back against Willa's bed while Willa snuggled against her boyfriend's chest who was sitting on the floor in front of the couch across from Willa's bed.

Wade was talking animatedly about his summer holiday in Florence with his family when Rhea felt herself black out for the third time in two days. The last thing she heard was Willa shushing her boyfriend.

A scene came into view and Rhea immediately recognized the place as the park on the other side of the town that she'd visited countless times when she was a kid. The colors were so vibrant in front of her eyes that Rhea could almost trick herself that it was actually her who was there; except she couldn't feel the wind she could see was rattling the leaves on her skin. She took notice of a little girl with light brown locks of hair in her vision. She couldn't be more than five years old. A second later, a strong pair of hands, the same pair of hands from the first snippet she'd got, grabbed the little girl by the waist and lifted her up in the air, spinning her around. Rhea could see that the girl was laughing uncontrollably. Then she blinked and it all vanished, making her return to the considerably dimmer environment of Willa's room. That's when she realized two pairs of eyes were trained on her with different expressions; Wade's with curiosity, and Willa's with horror.

"Did you know your eyes turn all black when you get them?" Willa said, looking pretty shaken up.

"What," Rhea shrieked, "Are you serious?"

Willa's expression slowly evolved from horrified to amused.

"No," she said, smirking at her friend, "But it was too good an opportunity to pass up."

"Ugh," Rhea groaned, "Why am I friends with you again?"

"Because you're secretly in love with me and the only way you can be near me is by being my friend," Willa drawled, her lips curled up in a grin.

Rhea looked over to Wade who was watching their exchange with an amused interest in his eyes –even though it had thrown him off at first, he had gotten used to this sort of banter between the girls. Rhea grinned at him as she said, "Please, not in front of Wade."

The three of them erupted into laughter, and when it died down, Willa snuggled further into her boyfriend's embrace with a soft sigh. Rhea thought about how she might get to have the kind of thing Willa and Wade had soon, seeing she was going to meet her soulmate in less than a week. An unfamiliar feeling shot through her stomach at the thought.

"I'd hate to poke my nose into someone else's business," Wade interjected a moment later, "But what just happened?"

"It's–," Rhea started, but she was at a loss for words. Even though she was pretty good friends with Wade since Willa and him were kind of a package deal, she didn't want to go around telling people about the snippets, seeing it wasn't a very believable story.

"She has a neurological condition," Willa supplied, looking up to her boyfriend from within his embrace, "It runs in her family."

She gave her best friend a grateful look before facing Wade again, who was now looking at her with worry in his eyes.

"Yeah, I sometimes black out for a couple seconds," upon hearing this, his expression went from mild concern to horrification, so she quickly reassured him. "It's nothing serious, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone."

"Of course," he nodded seriously.

She was certain she could trust Wade to keep her made-up secret; he wasn't the kind of guy who would go around spewing out other people's secrets.

Rhea had first met Wade when Willa had started going out with him two years ago. The first couple of weeks were quite painful for her for several reasons, being 1) They were in the lovey-dovey stage of their relationship, which meant a lot of PDA that Rhea still couldn't completely erase from her memory, 2) She was either reduced to the awkward third wheel or she avoided them altogether which amounted to eating her lunch in the library, and 3) She didn't know Wade at all and she wasn't very good at making new friends.

As time passed, Wade became a good friend to her, someone she could now easily trust with her secrets. Why hadn't she told him the actual story about her blackouts, then? Well, simply because saying "I am getting glimpses of my soulmate's life because I'll be meeting him on Monday." was pretty much the equivalent of saying "I am Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, khaleesi to Drogo's riders, and queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros."

Besides, the more people she told, the realer it'd get and she was trying to prevent that from happening. What exactly she was going to do when Monday finally came, she didn't know. She thought she just had to take it one day at a time.

***

It was almost five in the evening when Rhea left Willa's house to go back home and after entire day's activities and the ten minute walk in the humid evening air, she was in dire need of a shower.

Upon making her way through the front door, she quickly scanned the house to see if her parent's had come home, but there was no sign of them just yet.

She took off her sandals and made her way to the bathroom, stripping off her sundress as she did so. Once she closed the bathroom door behind herself, she made quick work of taking her underwear off and stepped into the shower.

She spent a minute trying to get the water to just the right temperature, and when she succeeded she settled under the water with a deep sigh, running her hands through her hair.

She poured some shampoo on her head and started washing her hair, massaging her scalp as she did so. After she rinsed the shampoo off her hair completely, she started reaching for the conditioner, but her vision darkened once again. Oh not again, she thought to herself.

When she blinked, she saw white tiled walls of what had to be a bathroom. Droplets of water were running down the tiles. Then, she saw the same pair of hands she'd familiarized herself with lift up and disappear from her line of sight, probably to be run through his soulmate's hair. That's all she got.

When she returned to staring at the pinkish tiles of her own bathroom, the implications of the snippet she'd just got came rushing to her.

Her soulmate was taking a shower right now, just as she did the same. Seriously, what was up with their time-coordinated behavior?

Just then, another thought crossed her mind.

Had he chosen to look down right in that instant, she'd have seen his penis before she even saw his face.

Not that she planned on seeing his penis any time soon, she corrected herself immediately. Still, she felt her face starting to grow hot at the thought, and when she adjusted the water to be just that bit colder; no one was there to judge her.

***