I look out the window after feeling sad for myself for what seem like months and you pull over onto the side of the street and tell me you want to play a song for me because it’s perfect for September. I don’t want to listen to you so I open my ears to the song instead. It starts playing and you start driving and I think about how distressing it is that you don’t hold my hand because a boy I used to like did it and because I feel like that’s something a boy is supposed to do when he likes a girl. But then again, what do I know. I feel sad for me and for you and I have enough left to feel sad for most people in the world, and I know I don’t deserve the world’s sadness, but with someone like you I realize that the world isn’t fair and things don’t work out how you want them to and that I don’t give a s*** if I deserve the world’s sadness or not but that I want it for myself. And that’s enough for me to take it.

I look at your hands on the steering wheel and drive myself back to the night we first met. We played a game of beer pong and shamed your two other friends whose names I don’t even remember. We were buzzed from the alcohol halfway through the game and I made you drink my losses. That was the first night you kissed me and I still don’t know if it was the beer or if it was whatever you smoked but I guess that’s the beauty of alcohol, you don’t really know if whatever is happening is actually happening. On the other hand maybe that’s not so beautiful because I want to know. Then there was that time a couple days later when you said your friends were over and you needed a partner for a another game of beer pong. We played and I don’t remember if we won or not, and I doubt you do, but I remember thinking what a shame it was that two people who were so good at such a simple game had to be brought together by it. But at the same time I didn’t care how we were brought together, I just knew that I had to remind myself to breathe when I wasn’t with you, and it almost killed me but it was the only thing that kept me alive.

And then I remember when you didn’t love me anymore and my friend asked me to play beer pong and I wasn’t supposed to because I decided I didn’t want to drink anymore but I didn’t want to think about you. So I did drink and I lost the game and I thought that I should promise myself that I would never play with anyone else again but then again how could I, it’s the most seductive and beautiful game in the world after you get a chance to play it with someone like you.

I think about how many more songs there are that we want to show each other but some are too long and some too short and others just don’t sound right, and I think about how this is the only song in the world that you think is perfect for the night and I realize that I love the song and that I miss your voice and that I miss crying from happiness and holding your face between my hands that are now clenching onto the door handle of the car ready to throw myself out.

You stop the car and don’t kiss me goodbye and that drives me crazy and I walk out and I don’t turn around but I can hear you driving away and I can hear my brain reminding my heart to beat and I realize that I wish I could go back and tell you how much I love that song and how it’s still playing in my head right now and how you were right about it being the perfect song because although it breaks my heart I can’t stop listening. And it’s feels a lot like getting used to how it feels to be in love with you.