what you could

about this time last year, i started seeing a guy. he was the first guy i took interest in after the end of my nearly three year long relationship a few months before. he was older, quite smart, and funny. i felt comfortable around him immediately, like i had known him much longer and like we didn’t meet online.

our first date lasted hours longer than the others i’d been on. we drank whiskey and made jokes at my favorite bar. it was obvious that the night had to end when we both started holding in our yawns. he said he didn’t want to go, and i didn’t either.

outside, he insisted on walking me to my apartment. i insisted he not. i was a little embarrassed that i lived on campus, but i was more embarrassed that a group of eighteen year olds from my floor were smoking outside of the building. i didn’t want the doorman to see. i didn’t want my roommates to walk by on their way to the laundry room. a few kids in my classes lived in my building, and i didn’t want them to see. i didn’t want anyone to see me on a date. it felt invasive to the perfect little bubble we'd cultivated for the two of us in those few hours.

we fought back and forth about him walking me to the door, and we finally settled that he wouldn’t. i’d won.

i told him i wanted him to kiss me. i’d won that, too.

i saw him a few days later at a bar with some of my friends. i ordered pbr, and he did the same. i put my hand on his knee, and he put his hand on mine. he gave me butterflies.

on our second date, we went for dinner. he made me a drink and played music beforehand at his apartment, which i investigated thoroughly with apprehension. he didn’t have a table, but he had a plant and candles. i felt like i’d been staying the night there for months.

while i feel that all of this background information is necessary, it isn’t the focus of the story. the focus of the story is the music. the music he played when i came over that night and all of the nights after that.

he had a playlist of music he played when i came over. as a joke, and then a serious, we called it the “maggie’s coming over” playlist.

“play my playlist,” i’d say while i brushed my teeth or my hair in his bathroom. “play my favorite song,” i’d say, giving him two guesses to choose.

he’d make me tea, luke warm and barely steeped. we’d share clementines and kisses and lay on his living room rug listening to my playlist.

when we stopped seeing each other, i was devastated. i was still raw from my last breakup, and the sting of another failed relationship was difficult. i romanticized him and the short time we spent together until i drove myself completely insane.

our “maggie’s coming over” playlist became the repeated anthem of our breakup, if you could even call it a breakup.

last week i saw wet play live at schubas tavern. wet was all over the playlist. i’m not sure how he discovered them, or when he originally started playing them for me, but i loved them. i still love them.

it’s weird. last year at schubas i had a pretty enlightening experience about a guy i’d been sleeping with and the guy i wish i was still sleeping with instead. seeing lucy rose and crying in public was a religious experience for me.

seeing wet in person was another religious experience, totally and completely. it’s amazing how you can feel so many things from a past period of time, all at once.

i was immediately brought back to his apartment. i could distinctly remember what the inside of his freezer looked like, and the drawer that he threw all of his beer bottle caps into, and the smell of the hand soap in his bathroom. i could remember how it felt to wake up in the morning and feel his arms around me, exactly where they were when we fell asleep… like nothing had changed in the night.

and i remembered what it felt like to have him stop responding. i can hear the phone going to voicemail, always premature. i can see the blank screen on my phone as i check it every five minutes, hoping he would text me. i hear his voice, telling me he wasn't ready for something serious.

and i could see myself, covered in water, holding my breath in the bathtub, opening and closing my eyes through the water, wondering if there would be a day that i wouldn’t hate myself for loving someone who didn’t love me back.

“i believe that you did what you could, you gave what you could, and you loved how you could.”