Page 111 of The Matchmaker Club
21
Bittersweet
After dinner, Lucas and I went back up to my room and spent a couple more hours listening to my mom’s tapes and working on his playlist. He was pretty secretive about what he wrote down, and I didn’t try to peek. I opened the window wider, staring out at the twilight sky. The smell of fresh cut grass wafted in through a breeze. Bill and Javier must have come over to cut it.
“I think I’ve got it all.” He tore out the page and folded it before tucking it into his pocket.
I went to my memory chest and grabbed the last blank cassette. “Here. When you’re ready, you can borrow the dual cassette player.” I tossed it, and he caught it with one hand.
“Thanks.”
I hopped on the bed and laid down next to him.
“If you could only listen to one song before you die, which would it be?” I asked.
He didn’t hesitate. “‘Into the Mystic’ by Van Morrison.”
“Why?”
“My grandfather told me that when I cried, my mother would play that for me, and I’d stop every time. No other song worked like that one.”
“Do you have it in your phone?”
“Yeah.” He reached for his phone and thumbed through it while I stopped the cassette player.
“You can connect through the Bluetooth speaker.”
He played the song, and we sat in silence as the guitar strummed. I reached down and slipped my hand in his.
We didn’t say anything until it ended. Lucas went to shut his phone off, but I stopped him. “I’d like to hear more of your music if that’s okay.”
He put his phone down and let it go. The next song was one of my mother’s favorites: “Can’t Always Get What You Want” by The Rolling Stones.
“Great song.”
“It is.”
“If you didn’t have your money and responsibilities, what would you want to do?”
His head snuggled against mine on the bed. “I never really thought about it before.”
“Never?”
“I had my future mapped out before I was born.” He looked over at me. “What about you?”
“Well, I definitely didn’t inherit my mother’s or my father’s artistic skills, so that was definitely out.”
“You know your father?”
“No. All I know is that his first name is Jean-Michel and he and my mother had a tryst in Tuscany.”
“She was a romantic.”
“Yes. My mom lived for the moment.”
“What about you? What do you want?”
Weight fell on my chest. I had never told anyone these things… not my family or even Thelma. “Have you ever heard ‘Danny’s Song’? That’s what I want.”
