Page 85 of Sounds Like Love
“I think I know how to get us on the same page,” I said, and then turned in my seat to look at him honestly. “I want to show you why my favorite song is my favorite song.”
Up close, he looked like he hadn’t slept very well last night. There were deep circles under his eyes, and his half-up man bun had fallen a bit, dark curls framing his face. His Hawaiian shirt looked more alive than he did, a colorful teal peacock print. Finally he said, “I would like that.”
I smiled. “Amazing. I’m a pretty good driver, too, so just buckle up and—”
“But before we go,” he interrupted, fiddling with a silver ring on his first finger, “about last night … I want to apologize.”
Having put the car in drive, I returned it to park.
“It’s okay.” “It’s not. I …” He licked his chapped lips, and took a deep breath.“I don’t know who I am without my anger at my dad. At myself. I don’t know how else music is supposed to feel.”
I tilted my head, considering the man in my passenger seat. The first time I met him, I saw a glimmer of something more. He didn’t see it—but I felt it, that comfort in the back of my head where his thoughts met mine, warm and soft and golden. “I think I might.”
Then I put the car into drive again and pulled away from the rental property.The sun was bright on the pavement in the late afternoon. I fished out Mom’s aviators from the sunglasses compartment and put them on.
“Could you look in the glove box for a mixtape?” I asked him, motioning to the compartment at his knees.
“A burned CD?” he corrected me as he opened it.
“No, a mixtape.”
He found it—one of Mom’s old cassettes she kept in here for “emergencies”—and closed the glove box. There were songs listed on the side of it, but the ink had smeared with time, and he couldn’t read any of them, so he handed the tape over to me. “What’re you going to subject me to?”
I rolled up to a stop sign that let out onto the highway, popped open the clamshell, and inserted the cassette into the old stereo system.
“Magic,” I replied, and pressed play.
The speakers crackled, and I turned up the volume as loud as it could go, and as the piano began, I turned onto the only highway in and out of Vienna Shores. The wind whipped through the old Subaru, catching in our hair like tiny fingers, and the guitar wailed through the stereo, and the car shivered at the thrum of the bass, and the beach rolled past—
And this was it.
What magic felt like. How it moved. How it persisted. How it thrived. It lived in midnight joyrides with best friends, singing to stave off sleep after a night at a concert two hours away. It lived in afternoon drives with parents, howling the guitar riffs at the top of their lungs. It lived in weeklong road trips just at the corner of your memory, to places you can’t even remember. It was in the commutes to work,the stuck-in-traffic nightmares, the trips to the grocery store, and the long plane rides home.
See?I whispered to Sasha, as one song folded into another.This is it.
He couldn’t take his eyes off me.“It is.”
Chapter31(Darlin’) Only the Good Die Young
WE GOT LUNCHat a small roadside diner, and I took him out to see a lighthouse, and toured him around all the bits of my childhood on the Outer Banks. I couldn’t remember the last time I just … went for a joyride. Got lost on the road. Stopped at everything that piqued our curiosity—all the little antique shops and souvenir stores.
When we got back it was dinnertime. The sun was low on the horizon, throwing pinks and oranges and reds into the sky. We pulled up to my house and parked the Subaru, because Sasha said he wanted to walk home. It was only three blocks, after all. I shut off the engine, but we both stayed in the car for a little while longer, listening as the last of Billy Joel faded from the speakers. The cassette player whined to a stop, and then with a clatter began to rewind itself. All the way back to the beginning.
“I never thought you’d have Green Day on a mixtape,” he finally said, and as if in agreement, the cassette popped out of the player.
I took it, tenderly holding it up. “Yeah, Mom makes these. She’s really good at it.She always says that you can tell a lot by a person’s record collection.”
“I’d have to agree,” he replied. “I feel like I finally know the real Joni Lark. And not just the one in my head.”
“She’s messy,” I said, putting the tape back into its case, “and anxious, and self-centered.”
“And kind, and patient, and thoughtful,” he added.“I think I like her better.”
I turned to hide the blush on my cheeks. He liked the real Joni better, huh? What an idea. I tugged on my braid, but it was already coming undone from today’s joyride, curling out like fraying rope. “I think I do, too,” I told him. “The real Sasha, I mean.”
His eyes widened at the nickname, and then he quickly glanced away. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was blushing, too. I liked the way the color looked on the apples of his cheeks. I liked that the tips of his ears matched, and I liked how I wanted to write down all the things the color reminded me of, and put them in a song—
Oh. Was that it?
