Sequel: Running From Lions

Coffee Shop Soundtrack

Eleven.

“Are you okay?” I was completely zoned out of the conversation Ashlyn was having, or trying to have, with me. “John?”

“Huh?” I asked, snapping back to Ashlyn. I wasn’t paying attention to anything she said for about the past half hour.

“Is there something on your mind? What’s going on?”

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I lied. “There’s nothing on my mind.” It was anything but the truth. There was one thing on my mind and she had long brown hair and a smile that made your heart stop.

All I was thinking about was that kiss last night. How could I not think about it? It was probably the most idiotic thing I’ve ever done in my life, but she kissed me back. Well she kissed me back for a second, anyways. That has to mean something. And more than anything I wanted to figure out what it meant.

I needed to talk to her, I needed to see her. I didn’t know what I would say, but I just knew I had to. Right now.

“Actually, Ash,” I said. “I completely forgot, I was supposed to meet up with Pat. I’m sorry, it totally slipped my mind.” I stood up. “I’ll call you later?”

“Wait,” Ashlyn said, getting up. “It’s not a big deal, I’ll come with you.”

Shit. “Um, it’s sort of a band thing,” I lied again.

“Well what are you doing?” She asked, suddenly so interested. Fuck, she could tell I was lying.

“Ash,” I said, trying to sound annoyed. “We’re just doing band stuff. You would be bored.” I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll call you, okay?”

She gave me slight smile. “Kay.”

I walked away and jumped in my car. I left the Starbucks parking lot and drove towards Makenna’s. My stomach was in knots and it got worse with every second that I came closer to her house. I didn’t know what I would say to her, but I guess I would figure that out on the spot, like I usually did.

As her house came into vision, I noticed her car was not in the driveway like it usually was, meaning she was clearly not home. I relaxed a bit and parked on the street. I didn’t know where she was or how long this would take, but I was going to wait for her to come back for as long as I had to.

I sat on the hood of my car and watched cars pass slowly as minutes went by, none of them Makenna’s. I could feel myself sweating more and more every second and my arms burning under the Arizona sun. Finally, I spotted her car coming up the street. She clearly saw me as she pulled into her drive way but acted like she didn’t. I walked up to her car as she was getting out, my nerves once again acting up.

“Makenna,” I said.

“Go away,” she said, harshly. Pulling a plastic bag, her purse, and her cell phone out of the car before slamming the door shut. She turned away from me and started for her house.

“Wait, Makenna. Just let me talk to you.” I said.

She turned towards me. “I tried that before, remember? And now I’m done.” As she turned around again the plastic bag ripped and the contents within scattered to the pavement.

I leaned over, grabbing albums off of the ground and recognizing them very well. It was our music. All of it. Even the songs that were only available on iTunes were on burned discs.

“Did you get these from Pat?” I asked, standing up straight.

“Just give me them,” she said, grabbing the pile from my hand.

“Why?” I asked.

She looked at me. “Why what?” Her tone was harsh.

“Why are you listening to them now?”

She looked down at the pile in her hands and looked back up at me after a few seconds. “I’m trying to figure out which ones are about me, if you must know.”

We looked at each other, neither one of us saying anything. “Do you want help?” I said finally.

She rolled her eyes. “So you can lie to me about them some more,” she laughed sarcastically. “No, thanks.” She started to turn to walk inside.

“Ken,” I said, stopping her. “I’ll tell you the truth.” Her eyes dug into mine, trying to figure out if I was lying right now or not. “I promise.”

She must have really really wanted to know because she nodded and for some reason led me into her house. I kicked off my shoes at the door and followed her upstairs.

She sat on her bed, opening up her laptop and sliding Stay Up, Get Down in the disc drive. “I want to hear them,” she said.

I didn’t say anything as I took a seat at her desk. It was weird being in this room. It was all empty. In high school her shelves were full of picture frames and momentums. Now, they were gone. Replaced by her mothers decor.

Count ‘Em One, Two, Three, suddenly started playing and I waited for her to say something. She just sat there listening.

About halfway through the song she looked up at me. “This one?” She asked.

I swallowed hard and nodded. Her cheeks flushed as she pressed the next button. Daisy. She looked up at me and I nodded again.

“This one too,” I said as Shake It came on.

She pressed the next button and The Town’s Been Talkin’ came on. “This?” She asked.

I nodded.

“What?!” She asked. “This makes no sense.” She was clearly surprised that there was a song written about her that wasn’t all that nice.

I let out a small laugh. “I wrote it when you were dating Peter Sorty.” I looked at my feet and smiled to myself. “It was out of jealousy, mostly.”

Undressing The Words came on and I nodded automatically. Give Me Anything came on and I nodded again.

She looked at me. “This entire EP is about me?” She asked. “How is that even possible?”

She waited for an answer but I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged.

“Okay, fine,” she said. “The Way We Talk. Which ones?” She held the CD case in her hand and looked at the song list on the back.

“Um,” I thought about the EP in my head. “Everything except for The Way We Talk.” I looked up at her and I could see her thinking about the other songs. “You already know who that one is about.”

She laughed a little and I caught a glimpse of her real smile for the first time today. “We practically wrote that song together.”

It was true. Half of those lyrics were things that came out of Makenna’s mouth. I wrote that song about this girl Garrett dated in high school. Her name was Katherine Sukall and she was one of those girls that slept around. A lot. I wrote the song from what I pictured as Garrett’s point of view so that he would never know it was about Katherine, but eventually he figured it out.

“Anyways,” Makenna said, “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop?”

I thought about the track order in my head. “Um, Everything I Ask For.”

She rolled her eyes. “I thought that it was about Melanie Cortez?”

I smiled. “No, I lied. It was about you, but it’s just sort of sarcastic sometimes.” I laughed. A lot of those lyrics were completely false. Makenna hated Prince, and she loved my band.

She smiled a little bit but stopped. “Fine, what else?”

“We All Roll Along is about all of us, you know that one,” I said. “Girls Do What They Want is generally about you, but it was sort of about who all of the guys were into at that time. I Must Be Dreaming is, Into Your Arms is, Time To Go basically is.” I sighed. I always knew I wrote about Makenna a lot, I guess I didn’t realize exactly how much though. “I wrote This Is The End when you told me you didn’t want anything to do with me. The first time, I mean.” I smiled.

She rolled her eyes. She seemed to be doing that a lot today. “What else?”

I sighed. “Whoever She Is was mainly just generalized but the line “your best friends or just strangers in cars” was basically referring to you. Count ‘Em you already know,” I said, still going down the track list. It was a lot harder to tell her which ones were about her than I thought it would be ten minutes ago. It was embarrassing admitting that I wrote about her that much, that I spent so much time thinking about her.

“Kiss and Sell isn’t about you actually.”

“Wow, one so far. Amazing.” She said, sarcastically.

“You Left Me is about you, I thought that one was pretty obvious,” It was the only song that I never lied to her about, but I never told her the truth about it either. “And We’ll All Be is just about the band.”

She nodded. “The last two I knew.” She held up three albums, one of them on a burned disc. “What about these three?”

I stood up and took them from her hand. These were the all of the songs she didn’t know. I handed her Black & White. “This album came out after we stopped talking. Half of them are from when we were friends. Half of them weren’t. Right Girl is the last one I wrote, that’s the one you heard last night. The only songs on this album that aren’t about you are Growing Up, Every Road, and Color.”

She took the album and put it in her lap, making a mental note of what I just said and looking back up at me.

“This one,” I said, handing her In Darkness And In Light that was on the burned disc. “These are pretty much extras. A couple of acoustic songs and a couple that just didn’t make it onto that last album. Book Of Me And You is about you.” I flipped Pioneer over in my hands a few times. “This is the newest one. I was in a dark place when I wrote about half of these.”

“What do you mean you were in a dark place?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing, nevermind.” I said. “The only ones about you are Thinking Of You and I’m Sorry. I don’t know if you would count Like We Did, but I did think about you when writing it.”

“When you wrote this album, I was already married, right?” She asked.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“John,” she said. “We hadn’t talked for a long time. How did you even manage to write about me?”

I shook my head. “I don’t really want to explain, Makenna.”

The both of us were silent. I set Pioneer down on the bed in between the two of us. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say now. I basically just admitted to her that most of my music was written about her. Before I lied about who the songs were about, and now she knew. Now she knew that she was literally the only person I thought about back then.

“John?” She asked.

I looked at her. “Yeah?” I asked.

“Last night didn’t happen,” she said. “It was a mistake. I’m married, you have Ashlyn. You kissing me, can we just forget it?”

I nodded, even though forgetting was literally impossible. “Yeah. Of course.” But I also didn’t want to forget it.