'90s Playlist (Romance Rewind #1)

by Anthology

  The mix of emotions that swelled up inside her like a balloon diverted Rory from the knowing smiles his family exchanged. While a small part of her wanted to bolt, the rest of her was overcome with how much she liked being called that, how much she’d wanted to be his girlfriend, wanted this to last. James glanced over at her with a sheepish grin and Rory squeezed his hand, her chest seized with a feeling so intense it could only be described as love.

  God damn it, she loved him.

  “Well then,” his mother said. “Will you be going to California too?”

  Rory blinked. Her heartbeat stuttered. “California?”

  “Of course.” She glanced between James and Rory, as if it was the silliest question in the world. “James is leaving for LA on Monday.”

  All the air got sucked out of Rory’s lungs.

  “No, I’m...” She tugged her hand from James’s grip and pushed her chair back from the table. “I’m sorry. I have to...please excuse me.”

  She was out on the sidewalk seconds later. The door had barely swung closed when James came charging after her. “Rory, stop.”

  She whirled around to face him.

  “Two days?” she shouted. “You’re going to the other side of the country in two days?”

  “I wanted to tell you but you wouldn’t let me. Every time I brought it up, you changed the subject.”

  “And what if I hadn’t come to dinner tonight? When would you have told me then? A drive-by on your way out of town?”

  “You know I wouldn’t have done that.” He reached for her hands, but she snapped them away, crossing her arms over her stomach.

  “How long have you been planning this?”

  “Well, always. You know how serious I am about my music. I wanted to see if I could make it big, and LA is the place to do that. I have a rental that I set up over winter break, and I’ve been really nervous about driving out there alone. Then I met you.”

  Rory couldn’t breathe. The wall she’d been trying to rebuild was suddenly crashing into her lungs, the bricks collapsing, trapping her in a dusty pile of rubble beneath it.

  James stepped in close. “I was going to tell about this you tonight whether you came to dinner or not, because I want you to come with me.”

  “What?”

  “Come to LA with me,” he repeated. “I know we’ve only known each other a few weeks, but I don’t want this to end, and I was hoping neither did you.”

  The implication was sweet, but the arrow of his words missed its target, because even if he wanted her to come with him now, what would stop him from changing his mind? And then she’d have to live this whole nightmare out all over again, with a different coast for scenery.

  “I thought you’d be excited about this,” he said. “I don’t understand why you’re upset.”

  “Because you’re leaving me.”

  “I’m not leaving you. I’m trying to leave with you.” James let out an exasperated breath. “I think this could be a lot of fun for us, and there’s opportunity for you in LA, too—poetry slams in bars and coffeehouses. Maybe you could even start writing again.”

  “And how am I supposed to afford living in LA?” she barked. “I can barely get by here.”

  “I know money will be tight, but I figured we’d get part-time jobs to hold us over. I’m sure it’ll suck at times, but at least we’ll be together.”

  It didn’t soften her to hear that he’d found room for her in his plans. How was she supposed to put her faith in him, trust him, when his exit plan had been sketched out and in the works for longer than she’d known him?

  What would stop him from doing it again?

  Rory took a step backward. “I can’t.”

  Several beats of silence passed, and not the good kind, not the kind she’d employed in reading poetry or that held the listener captivated, desperate for the next word.

  She didn’t want the next word. All Rory wanted to do was run.

  “Look, I know I’m not giving you much time to make a decision, but I was hoping it wouldn’t be a hard one for you to make.”

  “Why is that?” she snapped.

  James’s pained flinch was as harsh as if she’d slapped him in the face.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” he asked quietly. “I’m in love with you. I thought you were in love with me too.”

  She didn’t answer, because wasn’t loving him the whole goddamn problem? If she and James were just fucking, she probably would’ve said yes. But she couldn’t follow him to the other side of the country with nothing more than love for insurance.

  “I can’t,” she insisted. “I have a life here.”

  “Serving coffee, listening to other people perform and being alone all the time isn’t much of a life, Rory.”

  As if she didn’t know that. The truth coming from his mouth had her turning on her heel.

  “Goodbye, James. Enjoy California.”

  “Wait! Jesus, Rory. Will you stop?” He reached out, fingers encircling her wrist. “Don’t do this.”

  She didn’t budge, didn’t look back at him.

  “I understand if this isn’t what you want,” he said softly, and the underlying current of pain in his words forced her to look up. “But I want to make it clear that I’m not bailing on you. I’m not abandoning you like your parents did. Yes, I’m leaving, but I want you to come with me. And not only because I want you there, but because I want it for you, too.”

  He paused, waiting for her to respond perhaps, but she had nothing to say.

  “I thought there was something special in you when we first met, and I was right. You’re driven, Rory. I could see it in the way you read that poem in the music room. It’s in everything you’ve said and everything you are. You’ve inspired me, and I hoped—”

  His voice broke, a nerve caught. He cleared his throat.

  “I hoped I’d inspired you, too. But I’m not going to beg you to come with me. I guess if you loved me, too, I wouldn’t have to.”

  He let go of her wrist, the last vestige of their crumbling love affair.

  It had been D.O.A., anyway.

  “Love has nothing to do with it,” she said.

  “It does for me.”

  Rory choked on a laugh, the reminder of what she’d thought the first night she met him coming full circle.

  “I guess that’s the difference between us. You’ve never been shot down by life, so you think love is this wonderful, impenetrable thing. Something that can never be shaken. Something that can stand up against all odds. And of course you think that, because you’ve never been hurt as badly as I have.”

  James’s face hardened. His eyes went flat. “I have now.”

  His reply punched straight through her. He took a few steps away from her and jammed his hands in his pockets.

  “Take care of yourself, Rory,” he said.

  “You too.”

  She walked quickly down the street, refusing to look back.

  * * * * *

  Rory didn’t go to James’s graduation.

  She knew she should have—it would’ve been the nice thing to do—even though she never said she would. She couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him and knowing he wasn’t hers anymore. Or worse, seeing how his smile had become a diluted version of what it had been, the light in his eyes dimmed out.

  She hid in her apartment all day and cried, then cleaned herself up for her closing shift at Josephine’s. Kaleb and Noah were playing a board game at one of the front tables when she got there. Mr. Ryan was in the back room, and gave her a sharp once-over when she went to retrieve her apron.

  “Well, that explains it.”

  “Explains what?”

  He handed her a wrapped package. “Why this was dropped off for you today by a young man who looked like his guts had been ripped out.”

  “James was here?”

  She looked around, as if she could still see the ghost of him in the room.

  “I don’t know if that was his name. He didn’t i
ntroduce himself. Just stopped by and asked me to make sure you got this.”

  She took the package and slowly unwrapped it with shaking hands. On top was a paperback copy of Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich. Beneath it was a brand new spiral-bound notebook.

  Rory’s stomach churned with regret. Was it a gift he’d gotten for her sometime over the last few weeks, something he hoped to present her with before they began the drive west? Maybe he’d imagined her reading it to him as they traversed the country’s highways, getting him worked up until they could let off steam in cheap hotels off the side of the road. Or maybe it was something he’d purchased in the last twenty-four hours, a final parting gift.

  Either way, it showed how well he knew her. How much he really did love her. She’d hurt him, but he wanted her to have this anyway. Even if they couldn’t be together.

  Even if she wouldn’t let them be together.

  Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I need a minute.”

  She rushed outside and sat on the curb, her head bowed as she tried to calm her breathing. A chasm was opening in her, and she wished she could dive into it. A black hole where she could stop thinking about how her own stupid hangups had destroyed everything.

  It was ridiculous to have been so upset at his news when she’d been gearing herself up for it, but she thought he’d at least remain in New York. Not go three thousand miles away. And all through their fight, a tiny, crazed voice inside Rory’s head had been screaming that she could stop this. That a few small words were all it would take to make everything all right again.

  Yes. I want to go with you. I love you, too.

  But she couldn’t say them, because regardless of the fact that he was asking her to come with him, all she could hear was that he’d hatched a plan and put it into action without her knowing, just like her parents had.

  Why hadn’t she realized how stupid she was being, or wonderful his offer was? She should’ve let herself trust him, or at least told him how scared the idea of moving with him made her. But instead she went and screwed up the best thing that had ever happened to her.

  The door to the café opened and closed. A small pair of sneakers appeared in her field of vision.

  “Rory, why are you crying?”

  Her closest friend, a nine-year-old boy. She sniffled and balanced her chin on her knee as Noah sat down by her side.

  “I messed up,” she said. “Someone did something really nice for me and I messed it all up.”

  “Can you...un-mess it up?”

  She laughed through her tears.

  “I don’t know. Maybe?” Raking the back of her hand over her cheek, she wiped the dribbling lines of cheap mascara away and dried her hand on her jeans. “I wouldn’t know what to say to fix it, though.”

  “Sometimes when I don’t know how to say something, I write down what I’m feeling. It helps me.” Noah jutted his chin in the direction of her new notebook. “Maybe that’s where you should start.”

  Chapter 8

  Rory stayed up the entire night writing, random words about hearts in freedom from cages and bodies unwound. She hated half of them. Maybe more than half. Maybe even all of them.

  She had no idea if she’d be able to get anything down on paper, let alone write something that truly expressed to James how she felt. She’d ignored her talent for so long, she worried the words wouldn’t come at all.

  She had to try, though.

  So she kept at it, scratching some words out and writing new ones over them, until the misshapen clay of a barely-there poem had formed into something decent. That didn’t happen until Sunday morning, when she’d given up the solitude of her apartment and come down to Josephine’s. It hit her when the quiet up there became defeating: she needed music in order to write. There were plenty of CDs piled up in the backroom at the café, and Rory asked Gretchen to keep a steady stream of grunge going as she holed herself up at the back table, her head bent over the journal.

  It worked. The sludgy grind of guitar riffs and heavy metal licks brought the muse out of hiding, the words helping her form her own. By the time her evening shift came around, she’d managed to put something together. The finished poem was a drab, unpolished version of the warped and painful feelings she had cooped up inside, but they were better than nothing.

  Her hands shaking and her heart pounding so hard she could barely breathe, Rory called James from the phone in the back. His machine picked up, so she’d left a message saying she knew he was leaving, but she had something to tell him, and if he had time to stop by open mic night tonight, she’d appreciate it. Nervous energy had her glancing at the café door every time it opened, and she wrote her name at the very bottom of the clipboard, giving James until the end of the evening to show.

  He still hadn’t by the time she trudged out from behind the register. It sucked, but it was okay. She was only partially doing this for him.

  Her knees went wobbly as she stepped onto the stage.

  “Hey everyone. I’m Aurora Skye Stone.”

  It was odd, but she didn’t cringe when she said it. Acknowledging who she was shattered the last brick in her wall, collapsing the barrier between her old self and her new one.

  If she was going to speak from the heart, she might as well do it with her real name.

  “I know people usually come up here to sing,” she said. “But tonight I’m going to do something different.”

  She unfolded a piece of paper from her pocket, frayed at the edges from being ripped from her notebook. It would’ve been so much better if James had been here to see her do this, but she’d been waiting too long for other people’s approval. Like a wind-up toy knocking into a wall, she’d been waiting for someone else to pick her up, turn her around, and set her in the right direction. She’d become a walking case of arrested development, in search of a sense of security no one could provide.

  She had to provide it for herself.

  Rory took a deep breath and began to read.

  “I was a thorn. A wilted flower. A withered rose bush left untended, eaten away. Dried up, brittle, with limbs dying one-by one. Blooms no longer opening, I was closed up in protection, to not be picked over again.

  And then, it rained. Rain that came in song and soft touches. In words and drunken kisses. I drank from you, drank like I’d never tasted before. You nursed me, watered these dead limbs, and grounded me with roots holding, pushing into my core.

  I took you into me. So deep, so perfectly into me, and I was home.

  And then I ran away. Fled. Too scarred to bloom again, I used my thorns to scratch you. Left our love bleeding. Never told you I love you.

  I love you.

  So now I’ll rip away my thorns for good. Let my skin breathe once again. I am a bud, a tender new rose, splayed open for you, hoping you’ll once again make me scream. Make me soar. I will pray for it, plead for it, beg for it, because with you I am home. Always, with you, I am home.”

  Her eyes were heavy with tears when she finished. A smattering of applause followed, and when Rory finally looked away from the paper and into the crowd, James was there. Standing at by the door of the café, he’d arrived without her noticing—all brawny crossed arms in his requisite flannel, curly hair, blushing and smiling.

  It was all she could do to stop herself from jumping off the stage and running to him.

  Her legs nearly gave out as she made her way to the front of the room, flying past the tables and the counter, drawn to him like a tethered buoy being reeled into shore. He took the last few steps to meet her, pulling her quickly into his arms. His embrace was ferocious as he lifted her from the ground, nearly squeezing the oxygen straight from her.

  Not that it mattered. She was so happy to see him, she didn’t need air anymore.

  “That was amazing,” he said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “I love you.” She held on tight, her face against his, soaking the scruff of his beard with her tears. “I was so stupid. I’m so sorry.”
>
  “No, I’m the one who should be sorry. I should never have sprung California on you like that.” He let her down and cupped her face in his hands, thumbs skimming over her tear-stained cheeks. “I don’t want to go without you, so I’ll wait if you’re not ready. Or we won’t go there at all, I don’t care. I’ll lose the money on the rental. It’s not important. I just thought you didn’t have anything here and it would be perfect.”

  It was perfect. He was perfect.

  “I want to go. It’s just scary for me to trust someone that much again.” Rory wrapped her hands around both his wrists, holding him there. “I trust you, though.”

  His smile was like sunlight breaking through the clouds. “Even though I’m not the nice young man you thought I was?”

  Rory couldn’t help but smile. “Especially because of that.”

  He kissed her, a light press of his lips to hers. She didn’t want to let go of him, but she had a shift to finish. When they finally got to her place and shut the door, she clung to him.

  “Please,” she whispered as he walked her to the bed, not caring that she was begging. She’d already told her stupid pride it could go straight to hell with her poem. She needed his closeness, his touch.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” James promised, then quieted her pleas by settling her on the mattress and threading his arms beneath hers. His thick forearms were as sturdy as he was, a foundation she could hold onto.

  And hold onto him she did when their clothes were in a pile on the floor. She dug her fingers between his shoulder blades and he grabbed the headboard, using it as leverage to get even deeper inside her. Fucking her, taking her so hard, until the bed shook from the impact, but it was exactly what she wanted. Talking without words, James showed her with his body, with every thrust, that he was the man who could handle her. Comfort her.

  Love her.

  Rory held on tight, her knees caging his hips as her release dragged him over the edge with her.

  She gave notice at Josephine’s the next day. It wasn’t going to take two weeks for her to pack up her life, but she owed Mr. Ryan that much time to rework the schedule and fill in the gaps she’d be leaving behind. There wasn’t much to worry about, though. Gretchen had definitely learned the ropes.