Stalling wouldn’t be any use, not with the way Mel was staring at me, an impatient gleam in her eyes. Reluctantly, I reached for my coat, wishing I hadn’t shared so much with her on our walk home. I searched from pocket to pocket, though I knew exactly where my phone was located.
“I told you,” I said over my shoulder, hedging, “I think I might have deleted his playlist already.”
By the eager smile Mel was wearing, I knew she wasn’t buying it.
As I pulled out my phone, she hopped from her stool and was at my side in a flash, her palm level before me.
“Fine,” I said. “You can see it.”
She grinned with excitement, grabbed my phone, and ran a thumb across the face. A second later, the lights illuminated.
“Huh,” she said, her finger working the menu. “His playlist appears to be the last set of tracks you were listening to. Crazy, no?” She lifted her twinkling eyes. “Unless you have another playlist entitled Spring’s Education of the Male Voice.”
“Oh, right.” I rubbed my ear. “I was listening to it a while ago…while I was…waiting to see a professor and…and it distracts my thoughts, which, you know, I need sometimes.”
Mel ran a finger down the list of ten songs, just as a sizzling sound across the kitchen caught my attention. I left her and went to the stove to turn down the burner. Water was bubbling and splashing from the pan of boiling noodles. I stirred the contents then checked under the lid of the smaller pot of red sauce. Mel continued to examine the playlist, while I chewed impatiently on the inside of my cheek.
“Interesting array of artists,” she finally offered. “But I don’t recognize any of these titles.”
I stabbed a fork into the middle of the noodles, twisting it around until a hardy serving broke away. “I think he made them up,” I said, folding the noodles in with the sauce, although suddenly I had no appetite. “I mean, track one is the guy from Fleetwood Mac but it’s obviously not called Meet Me in the Tall Grass. And track two—”
I shut my mouth when Mel Cheshire-Cat-grinned. A second later, she spun around to exit the kitchen, jamming in an ear bud.
…
I sat alone at the bar for as long as I could stand it, my dinner untouched on the counter.
“Oh, my holy mother of crap.”
At least Mel was talking now, if only rhetorically. It was the ten minutes of preceding silence that was really getting to me.
“Are you joking?”
Her outbursts from the living room were similarly irritating. Finally, after her third eruption, I took my bowl of vegetarian spaghetti and walked into the living room. All the lights were out. Mel was curled at one end of the couch, knees pulled in. She didn’t notice me, too busy concentrating on whatever song was playing, a confused expression wrinkling her face. I could tell by the way she moved her finger across the face of the phone that she’d started that particular track over. A smile pulled at a corner of her mouth.
I lowered myself into the arm chair across from her, taking a bite of noodles, chewing slowly, watching her advance to the next song. It played for about five seconds before her jaw dropped. Tearing one ear bud from her head, she called toward the kitchen. “Springer! Get your butt in here, pronto!”
“I’m sitting right here.”
Mel shrieked and jumped.
She stared at me as I calmly took another bite of noodles, chewed, swallowed, then dabbed the corners of my mouth on a napkin.
“So you…you do realize what this is,” she said at last.
I thought for a moment then shrugged, slurping in a single noodle.
“Have you asked Henry about these songs?”
“I thanked him when he gave me back my phone the next morning, but he hasn’t brought up the subject since.”
“Spring.” She rolled her eyes. “For someone with all your brains, you can be exceptionally dense.”
She’d lost me.
“Babe.” She held up the phone. “These are make-out songs.”
Now was my turn to wear the stunned expression. “No, they’re not.”
“Babe.” Her voice was unbelieving as she pointed down at the thin, silver rectangle in her hand, as if its mere existence were evidence.
“Henry Knightly did not make me a playlist of make-out songs,” I maintained.
“Yes, he did.”
I snagged the cell out of her hand. “No.” I stared down at it. “There’s no Marvin Gaye or Prince or…or Barry White.”
“Is that your idea of kissing music?” she asked. “Not very original. Not like Henry’s list. Shhh, new song.” She pressed a hand over the one remaining ear bud. “Daaamn.”
She had it all wrong. I knew this, because I knew Henry. At least I thought—
“He’s a genius,” Mel blurted. “These are way more subtle than Marvin Gaye. Trust me.” She skipped to the next track. “Ohh, double damn. Come here.” She grabbed my arm and yanked me down beside her. “Put this on.” She jammed an ear bud into my head then started a song. “Listen to this while picturing Henry, then I dare you to look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t feel like straddling him.”
I did as she asked, if only to ease my own mind. When I felt the first uncomfortable sputter of my heart, I glanced at her. Her eyes were closed, head back, fanning her face. “Minty freshness,” she murmured.
More like cranberry sweetness, I almost corrected.
“I’m deleting these,” I snapped, pulling out my ear bud. I went to grab my phone, but Mel held it over her head, out of reach. “Melanie Gibson,” I said through gritted teeth. “Give it to me.”
She stood up and shook her head, her brown ringlets bouncing as she took a step back. “I’m probably totally wrong about it,” she insisted. “I’m sure your nice, respectable, Republican neighbor didn’t mean anything by it.” She smiled like an idiot.
Choosing not to continue the debate, I walked my half-eaten dinner into the kitchen and dumped it down the sink.
Later, after Mel left for home, I sat in the dark living room, tucked in two ear buds, and played track one, with Mel’s theory on my mind. Before the end of the first chorus, my throat had gone dry and I stared down at my phone, amazed at how completely dense I’d been all this time. I skipped to track two, then three. By the time I’d listened to the entire playlist, my palms were sweaty and a funny, impatient feeling spun inside my stomach and chest. It might have been lust, it might have been panic.
Either way, I did not feel in control of my emotions. And I needed to be in control—that was the whole point of my making all the big changes last year. I was taking control, steering my life. And if Henry’s choice of a simple Rob Thomas song from ten years ago made me feel so severely out of control that I really did want to straddle him instead of study, then it needed to go.
Right before I left for campus, I plugged my phone into my computer and deleted all ten tracks.
