“I’m well aware,” she says wryly. “But it also means you get a judgment-free song,”
“I don’t like crap music, so I don’t need a bye.”
“Everyone needs a freebie sometimes. We should all get one shitty choice.”
“I never would have thought that you’d want a shitty choice.”
“I’m not perfect, Jared.”
Pretty close.
I don’t say it because her knowing how much I’m into her works against my end game. If she heard a warning shot like that, she’d run in the other direction. I need her off guard, taken aback. Unprepared. By the time she realizes I’m pursuing her, I want her begging to be caught.
It’s her turn, and she chooses one of my favorite songs of all time. I don’t give any indication that I love “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley.
“Oh, come on, Fos
ter.” She points at me, laughing and shaking her head. “I know you love this song.”
“It’s alright,” I deadpan. Shrug.
“Hmmm.” She folds her arms over her chest, pushing her breasts up and almost distracting me from the road, but . . . discipline. “This was the top song on your study playlist senior year.”
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. She remembers my details, too.
“Was it?” I feign ignorance like the great feign-er I am. “I don’t even remember that. How would you remember that?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs smooth bare shoulders and scrolls through the phone for her next choice. “Just popped in my head for whatever reason.”
“Ahhh. The way I remembered your dryer sheets?” I ask innocently. “Just popped in my head, too.”
Silence. She sits back to enjoy the Pacific bordering the road. I opted to take PCH, which is a little longer drive, but Banner in the car for more time is no hardship. Gives her something to look at while she regroups. We go back and forth on songs for the couple of hours in the car. I deliberately avoid shop talk, not wanting to remind her that I’m supposed to be the opposition.
“Okay, here’s my judgment-free pick,” she says after a while, giving me wide eyes and twitching lips. “Don’t hate on my jam.”
“You calling it ‘your jam’ already has my Hatorade out.”
“And you using the word Hatorade has mine out.”
We both laugh, and I wait to hear just how bad her song sucks.
It’s pretty bad.
“Seriously?” There’s a slow-down up ahead, so I can look at her fully while we idle. “One Direction?”
She turns up the volume so “What Makes You Beautiful” soaks the interior of my car. I’ll have to hose it down later, but watching her dance beside me, the most carefree I’ve seen her since our laundromat days, is worth enduring a British boy band that is not the Beatles.
“Okay.” She hands me the phone. “Now you choose your craptastic song so I don’t feel so bad.”
“I told you I don’t listen to shit music,” I remind her.
“Oh, come on. You’ve got one. Everybody does.”
I mentally flip through the songs I listen to, struggling to find something that isn’t great.
And then I have it.
One eye on the road, one eye on my phone, I search until I find it. Never have I looked so forward to a ball-busting as when the soft, melodic strains of Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me” fill the air.