Page 20 of Fall Into You
My plan works. He chuckles a little and runs his fingers through his hair, kneeling up straight. I lean down and kiss him on the cheek, his beard tickling my lips, as if it were nothing, as if we do it every day, and walk back over to my box of books while leaving him stunned on the floor. I feel his eyes on me as I quietly stack my Psych textbooks into a neat pile, waiting to be shelved, but he doesn’t say much.
Eventually, he breaks the silence. “Can I turn on some music?”
“Sure,” I say, disappointed. Music means he doesn’t want to talk anymore, means he wants to fill the silence with someone else’s melodies and voice, and all I want to do is hear his.
I walk over to my laptop currently resting on the nightstand we built a few hours ago, and he walks over to join me.
“Here. Go nuts,” I deadpan as I open Spotify and slide my laptop to face him.
“You’re gonna let me peruse your Spotify without supervision? Let me look at your playlists?” he asks in wonder. I raise a questioning eyebrow at him. What’s the big deal?
“Going through someone’s music without supervision is akin to looking through the window of someone’s soul without permission, did you know that?” he tells me, completely serious.
I laugh once and suddenly feel a little nervous. “Well, you have my permission to look into my soul.”
I guess he’s a little right. What will he say? I mean, I have a really weird combination of music in my library. If he were to make an assessment on my soul based on my playlists, he’d think I have a split personality disorder. I have everything in my collection from Britney Spears (because she’s eternal) to Luis Fonsi, to Frank Sinatra, to Credence Clearwater Revival, you know? I even have a ton of Red Hot Chili Peppers and Green Day (a byproduct of having an older brother from that generation). I love them all.
I have a playlist for every mood, every theme, every situation. I have a playlist for when it rains, for when I’m sad, for when I’m studying. I have decades playlists. I have a #GirlBoss playlist. Everything.
Luckily, I number them, so I don’t make it easy for him to know why I picked different songs to go into a specific grouping, and that alleviates some of my nerves.
“Ooh, cool. This is one of my favorite songs,” he says and hits play.
The Rolling Stones’s “Wild Horses” starts filling my new apartment with a melancholic guitar intro and Mick Jagger’s distinctive voice. My stomach plummets to the ground.
“Hey, this is a really good playlist,” he says, scrolling through it, brows furrowed in concentration.
It’s my wedding playlist.
He turns to look at me with a smile. “You want to dance?” he asks, and I can feel the blood drain from my face.
It takes a while for me to process his question, but I eventually take his outstretched hand, and he pulls me to him. I lean my head against his chest and inhale a deep, unsteady breath. He smells like cedar, like nights by the fire drinking wine. He puts a hand around my waist and one in my hair, holding me so close I can barely breathe—but it’s not from how tight he’s holding me. No. It’s because this is the song I’ve always wanted to dance to as my first dance with my husband.
Jeremy hated it. He wanted something more conventional, like Sinatra. I tried to explain to him that, though unconventional for a first song, The Stones are my favorite band, that I listened to them all the time with Dad, that this is my favorite song ever. But he never got it, and the one time I convinced him to try it out, to dance with me, it was all wrong. We didn’t even make it past the first verse before he pushed me away.
But Matt.
Matt picked it out for us without having a clue what the song means to me.
…You know I can't let you
Slide through my hands…
“To be honest, I just wanted an excuse to hold you, and I think this is the perfect song,” he whispers, his voice low and gravelly, tickling my ear.
…Wild horses
Couldn't drag me away…
He wanted to dance with me, and he pickedthis song. He couldn’t have possibly known what this song means to me, could he? Is this seriously just coincidence? I feel a knot in my throat and try to stifle a sob.
Why couldn’t we have had this earlier? Why couldn’t my dad have methiminstead of Jeremy before he passed away? Would he have been opposed to me dating him like Vinny so clearly is? Or would he have understood that he’s not the same guy he was in med school?
I’m so overcome with emotion, both loving and hating that I’m in his arms, swaying to the song I always saw myself dancing to with the right man at our wedding, that a sob breaks through me—I can’t help it. He gently pushes me back to look me in the eye. When I meet his gaze, his eyes widen with concern at the tears in my eyes. His hands graze up my arms to cup my face.
“Hey, what’s wrong? What did I do?” he asks as his eyes bounce between mine.
“Nothing, nothing,” I say, sniffling. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I just need a moment.” I feel like I’m on the verge of having a full breakdown and want to kick him out so he doesn’t have to see me like this, but I don’t want to hurt his feelings.
