Page 54 of The Music of Us
I let Jake’s story sit with me for a minute.I found myself thinking of you, he’d said.Homesick.
So. Jake Moody hadn’t forgotten about me entirely.
“I never expected you to pick up my habits,” I told him honestly. Jake becoming a professional singer didn’t surprise me as much as that.
Jake squinted up at the canopy of stars, looking thoughtful for a moment.
“I feel like I’m an echo of everyone I’ve ever met,” he admitted. “That people’s quirks and actions, and their good and bad habits, all become a part of me, and I take on the echoes as my own—like the way you made your coffee and slow blinked at cats to befriend them, or how my eighth-grade English teacher underlined book passages if they helped him through a bad time, or how my mother still clips coupons and has to watchThe Wizard of Ozevery spring.”
I held back a smile, trying to control it for a minute, before giving up and letting it bloom across my face.
Jake watched me curiously. “What?”
“Nothing. You just sound like a lyricist.”
He rolled his eyes, as if I were teasing. “Stop.”
“No, I mean it,” I said. He always had a way of seeing the ordinary and turning it into something beautiful. “I’ve never met anyone else who phrased it that way. Or even put it into words at all.”
“It’s true, though,” Jake said after a moment. “We’re made up of everyone who’s ever meant something to us. And then, one day, we’ll mean something to someone, and they’ll take that trait from us that we borrowed from someone else, who learned it from yet another person. Like a string of never-ending echoes.”
“That’s why the band’s tried maple syrup in their coffee.”
“Yeah, but you’re missing the important question,” Jake said, voice taking on a crooning, teasing tone.
“Oh, theimportantquestion. Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?”
“What trait did you save from me?”
Across the way, the light changed. We were rose-tinted now.
I fell in love with all the different music genres you introduced me to, and still play them on loop. And every single US song too, I thought about telling him.Including “Lovely, Aren’t Ya” just because the melody’s so pretty it never truly stops spinning around my head. Sometimes, when I feel everything crashing down, I turn the volume way up, dance around my room, and simply let go. I forget about the problems suffocating me, just for a while, all because of a tune you dreamed up. Even though we never speak and you could be halfway around the world, somehow you’re still touching me.
And, apparently, I’m still touching you.
But I didn’t say that. It felt too vulnerable. I didn’t know what scared me about it more—how raw and real it felt, or thefact that, if I told Jake, I’d have to face the truth. And the fact that I might notstoptelling the truth.
And while those things were true, I still knew better than to let him break my heart again.
So, instead, I only told him part of it. “I still listen to ‘Iris’ because of you.”
Genuine surprise took over Jake’s face. “My favorite song to play on my guitar? Really?”
“After you left, I missed hearing it, I guess,” I admitted with a shrug. “It’s catchy. I have it in a lot of my playlists.”
Whenever it played, I felt like I was eleven years old again, hearing it for the first time. It’s fascinating, how music can transport and transform you, taking you to a different time and place. I didn’t think of where Jake was at the moment, or even who I was. I simply remembered snapshots of the first day I heard it. The Creamsicle–colored cat that purred at our feet. The dark-pink corduroy jumper I wore. The rain falling against the café’s windows and Jake’s voice floating over the rhythm of it as he strummed his guitar with stumbling fingers, promising the song sounded better when played by someone other than him.
He lied, though. I’ve never heard it sound better than it had right then.
“That’s awesome,” Jake said now, sounding happy—happier than I thought he’d be. “Can’t believe you picked that up from me.”
“Well, I can’t believe you picked up my sweet-tooth coffee habit. Not just as an occasional thing, either, but anevery morningthing,” I teased, grinning over at him in the dark. The idea he’d copied a little piece of me every day still made my mind spin. “So, what I’m hearing is, you’re stuck with me.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, and it was just one word, but his voice radiated so much warmth, it made me feel like we sat beneath the sun and not the moon. “You’re with me. Forever.”
I stared, caught off guard by Jake’s words, by how easily they’d slipped off his tongue. Sitting in that halo of light made it hard to remember I was over him, that I still hid so many of my feelings.
Maybe even from myself.
