If you can’t even remember the last time you believed in love then Meet Cute, a collection of short stories edited by Jennifer L. Armentrout, is just the kind of book you need. In a smart, sensitive way Meet Cute not only proves that young people can and do understand what love is, but also gives the reader new hope that the one you need is going to walk into your life at any moment.
That is the essence of the meet-cute. Two people, destined to be together but needing a little nudge from the universe, are thrown together under some interesting circumstances. You don’t have to be a film buff to recognise the concept: if there are books falling out of people’s arms in a busy corridor or cases of mistaken identity to clear up, chances are there is a meet-cute. You and your soulmate have been thrown into each other’s orbit. What will you do now?
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In Kass Morgan’s “259 Million Miles”, the answer is: you try. Morgan’s story is about a young boy, filled with anxiety about the future, who applies to be sent to outer space to build a new society. He meets a girl with cool confidence who he immediately believes is out of his league. After they help each other through a series of gruelling tasks designed to test their readiness for outer space he is convinced that he wants this girl to be in his life forever. When he least expected it, he found someone who truly saw him and was not afraid to let him know that he was worth loving. She tells him: “There is nothing wrong with you.Nothing.”
In Meredith Russo’s “Somewhere That’s Green” two girls – one whose dad and best friend have stood by her as she carved out her identity as a transgender person, and one who has not yet found the strength to process her sexuality outside of the religious norms set out by her parents – come together because they’re both involved in the school play. Lexie, the questioning teen, resists even getting close to Nia, not only because there are some at her school who still judge Nia, but because Lexie can’t fully understand why she is drawn to the other girl. In a plot detail that places the story firmly in 2018, one of the core conflicts in Russo’s story is whether or not the school will allow Nia to use the girls’ bathroom. Lexie had been the strongest opponent in this regard but, after Nia shows herself to be a caring, intuitive, non-judgemental person, Lexie has the courage not only to fight for Nia but to accept herself as a girl who likes girls. What makes the story sweeter is fact that it is written by a trans woman. Who better to talk about trans girls falling in love?
Dhonielle Clayton’s “The Way We Love Here” is one of the collection’s outstanding stories. In a narrative that feels heavily inspired by Caribbean lore and storytelling traditions, Clayton’s characters grapple with the impact of timing on falling in love. On the Meridien, everyone is born with a special mark on their ring finger. Pairs of people whose marks match are destined to be together, which takes the guesswork out of finding a soulmate. But the young couple at the centre of Clayton’s story soon discover that it is the mystery of who you will love, how deeply and for how long – if at all – that makes love worth fighting for. It would be easy to be distracted by the pure magic of Clayton’s writing, but “The Way We Love Here” is really about one important lesson: it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Clayton’s female protagonist Vio says: “I’ve seen three versions of my future tonight. I know, deep down, that all will end in sadness. But for the first time, it doesn’t scare me that my life could also include love.”
But what is the opposite of destiny? If Jocelyn Davies’ “The Unlikely Likelihood of Falling in Love” is any indication, the answer is statistics. A mathematics student wakes up one day and has the perfect morning: breakfast is great, the train runs on time and she feels prepared for school. Then she sees a boy in the train zooming past her on the opposite track. She immediately starts calculating the probability of love at first sight: If she repeats the day exactly as it was will she see him again? If she does, does that mean he is her soulmate? Through her experiment, she learns that love will find you despite your best efforts to control or predict it.
Meet Cute respects young people enough to give them the space to find and accept the kind of love they need and deserve, and never once dismisses the connections they make as childlike or temporary. The collection bolstered my own hope in love. Looking into the hearts and minds of young people letting love in all its forms into their lives gave me the courage to believe that I could one day do the same. But most of all Meet Cute taught me this: love finds you right where you are and just when you need it.
Nkhensani Manabe 