“What’s wrong with this one?” I demand.
He heaves a long-suffering sigh. “He obviouslydoesn’tbelong with her. Let’s look at the facts: She’s clearlynothis type. He wants someone who wears short skirts and high heels, and she’s not comfortable in those clothes. If she keeps trying to convince him he belongs with her, they’re both going to end up miserable.”
I stare at his way-too-good-looking profile in the dimly lit car, agog. “Are youserious?”
“Would you argue with anything I’ve said?”
“It’s a friends-to-lovers song!” I cry. “They’re obviously going to end up together and be super happy. Because she sees him! And understands him. He’s happy when he’s with her, and that isn’t true with the short-skirts-and-high-heels girl.”
“I thought you were swearing off love and marriage.”
“Just because I’m personally swearing off love and marriage doesn’t mean I wish ill on other people who have found their perfect matches.”
“This,” he says. “This is why so many marriages end in divorce. Because we hear what we want to hear. And two people can hear the same song and find completely different meaning in it. Imagine if you were with a guy and this was your song, and every time you heard it you thought about how cool it was that he’d finally seen you for the awesome bleachers girl you are, and he thought about his ex-girlfriend and her short skirts and high heels and how he wished you’d get some personal style.”
“Grim!”
“Realistic,” he corrects.
One of his hands leaves the wheel. Settles briefly near his knee. Creeps into my Cool Ranch Doritos bag.
“What are youdoing?” I shriek.
“Stress eating,” he says. “Your playlist has driven me to it.”
I do everything in my power not to crack a smile. “You don’t eat junk food,” I point out.
“That was before I realized that despite being divorced by a sociopath and jilted by a personality potato, you still believe in true love.”
I can’t help it; I snort atpersonality potato. “I’mthe one who has the stress. I’m the one who got jilted. And if I’d known I was going to have to share my precious Cool Ranch, I would have gotten a bigger bag.”
I sneak a peek at him. He’s definitely trying not to laugh. And unfortunately, it looks good on him. I let him have the Doritos.
“God, these are disgustingly tasty,” he says.
“Right?”
We’re both quiet for a moment, worshipping at the altar of fake food. He quietly licks Cool Ranch flavor off his fingers, and I absolutely, one hundred percent, donotwonder how his tongue feels licking up the inside of his finger and across the tip of his thumb. How it would feel rasping over my own fingertips, drawn into the heat of his mouth.
Oh, hell.
I’ve tumbled into a sexual fantasy about a man who disassembled me like a kid’s discarded playset.
We make our way through Maroon 5’s “Memories” (“Memories of how I cribbed this entire song from Pachelbel’s Canon,” Rhys says grumpily), past Lake Street Dive’s “Hypotheticals” (“Now this is actually a great song; you’re one for, what, a hundred?”) to “Try Everything.”
“That’s shitty advice,” he says. “‘Try everything.’ I mean,no. There are a lot of things that are straight-up bad ideas. Bull-riding. Free solo climbing. Base jumping. Heli-skiing. Recreational fentanyl.”
“She doesn’t mean literallyeverything,” I say.
“See?” he says. “And there we have it. Two people, same song, totally different interpretations.”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t see how that’s somehow a refutation of marriage. You’re so?—”
“Pessimistic? Cynical? Misanthropic?”
“All of the above. You ready to tell me what childhood wound made you this way?” I ask, half-teasing…half…not.
He shrugs.
