The Playlist You Skipped

The playlist took me three weeks to build.

Not because it was hard, exactly. Because every song had to earn its place. I'd sit cross-legged on my dorm room floor at two in the morning, headphones on, skipping through tracks, asking myself the same question over and over: does this sound like something we'd listen to on the roof of the Phi Delt house at three a.m. when neither of us could sleep? Does this feel like the drive to Santa Cruz last spring when he rolled the windows down and didn't say a word for forty-five minutes and I knew, somehow, that he was happy?

I named it "For the Road." Simple. No hearts, no emojis, nothing that would make him look at me sideways and laugh that slow laugh of his, the one that starts in his chest and works its way up like he's surprised to find anything funny at all.

Harry was in the parking lot when I came down, leaning against the hood of Liam's Range Rover with his ankles crossed. The morning light caught the rings on his fingers. He had this way of standing, like he was posed for a photo nobody was taking.

"You made me a playlist," he said. Not a question.

"Don't make it weird."

"I'm not making it weird. I'm acknowledging the gesture." He pushed off the car and walked toward me, and I held the phone out between us like a shield. "Nikki Martinez made me a playlist. Should I frame it?"

"Should I delete it?"

He snatched the phone before I could pull it back, and his fingers brushed mine, and neither of us acknowledged that either. He scrolled through the track list, and I watched his face the whole time, which was a mistake, because when he smiled, really smiled, the kind that crinkles the corners of his eyes, I felt it in my sternum.

"This is the song from that night on the roof," he said. "The one you swore you hated."

"I do hate it."

"You know every word."

"Knowing and liking are different things."

He looked up at me then, and the smile shifted into something quieter. "Thank you," he said. And for a second, the parking lot, the idling cars, the whole stupid morning disappeared.

That was the thing about Harry and me. We existed in these pockets of stillness where everything else fell away. Everyone said we were a couple who refused to admit we were a couple. Harry said it himself, at parties, with his arm slung around my shoulders and a drink in his other hand. "Nikki and I? We're the couple who refuses to admit we're a couple." And everyone laughed, and I laughed, and somewhere underneath the laughing, I kept a running list of all the reasons he was wrong.

Reason one: he'd never actually asked me to be anything.

Reason two: I'd never let him.

Reason three: we were friends with benefits, and I was the one who'd suggested it, and I was the one who'd said it was simpler this way, and I was the one who'd been lying.

The girls piled into the car first. Aria claimed the back row with Emily, which left the middle seats for Hanna and Spencer. That meant the front passenger seat was mine. It was always mine. Harry drove, or Liam drove, and I sat beside him, and that was the arrangement. Unspoken. Permanent. Like gravity.

I was already reaching for the door handle when Chloe walked up.

I'd met her twice. Once at a party where she'd told me she loved my hair, and once in the library where she'd asked if I knew where the sociology building was, even though she was standing directly in front of a campus map. She was pretty in a way that felt deliberate, like she'd practiced being pretty in the mirror until she got it right. Blonde. Soft voice. The kind of girl who laughed at everything a guy said, even when nothing was funny.

"Room for one more?" she asked, and she was looking at Harry when she said it.

Liam was already in the driver's seat. He glanced at me in the rearview, and I saw the question in his eyes. I shook my head, just slightly, and he looked away.

Harry didn't.

"Course," he said. "Plenty of room."

He opened the front passenger door for her. Held it. Waited while she climbed in and adjusted the seat and buckled her belt and did all the small things people do when they're settling into a space that isn't theirs.

I stood in the parking lot with my hand still on the back door handle, and I watched him close her door and walk around to the driver's side, and I told myself it didn't matter. It was a seat. It was just a seat.

Aria caught my eye through the window. Her eyebrows went up, just a fraction. I shook my head again, and she nodded, and I climbed into the back like it was what I'd planned all along.

"Everything okay?" Hanna asked, sliding over to make room.

"Fine."

"You're doing that thing with your jaw."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you're not fine."

I pulled out my phone and stared at the playlist I'd spent three weeks building. "I'm fine."

The first hour was tolerable. Liam drove, and Niall argued with him about the route, and Louis told a story about a professor who'd fallen asleep during his own lecture. Normal things. Familiar things. I watched the coastline blur past the window and let the conversation wash over me.

Then Harry plugged his phone into the aux cord.

"Playlist time," he said, and I sat up straighter, because he'd remembered. He'd remembered. "Chloe, you wanna DJ?"

The car went quiet. Not completely. But the kind of quiet where everyone's still talking and nobody's saying anything.

"Sure," Chloe said, and she picked up his phone, and she started scrolling.

The first song lasted thirty seconds before she skipped it.

I recognized the opening chords. It was the song from the roof. The one I claimed to hate. Harry had heard it and thought of me, and now Chloe had heard it and thought of nothing.

She skipped the next one too. And the one after that. Each time, she'd make a small sound, a little laugh, and say something like "Not feeling this one," or "Ooh, wait, I love this next track," and Harry would nod, or shrug, or say "Your call."

By the fourth skip, I'd stopped watching the road and started watching the back of his head.

By the seventh, I reached forward and turned the radio off.

The silence that followed was enormous.

"Nikki," Harry said.

"Nothing," I said. "Apparently my opinion only matters when nobody else has one."

I leaned back against the seat and closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. I heard Aria whisper something to Emily. I heard Hanna shift beside me, felt her hand hover near my arm like she wanted to touch me but wasn't sure it would help. I heard Chloe say, in that soft, practiced voice, "Did I do something wrong?"

And I heard Harry say, "No. You're fine."

*You're fine.* Two words. Nothing. Everything.

Hours passed. The coastline gave way to farmland, then to desert, then to nothing but highway and sky. People talked. I didn't. At some point, Harry climbed into the back to sit with Chloe, and I felt the car shift with his weight, felt him settle somewhere behind me, close enough that I could smell his cologne if I tried. I didn't try. I kept my face pressed to the cold window and let the vibration of the road hum through my teeth.

I wasn't crying. I want to be clear about that. My eyes were watering because the air conditioning was too high, and Hanna kept looking at me like she knew the difference, and I kept not meeting her gaze.

Six hours. That's how long we went without speaking. Harry tried, once, to hand me his headphones. I shook my head. He offered me his hoodie when the sun went down and the car got cold. I said I was fine. He asked, finally, in a low voice that only I could hear, "What did I do?"

And I looked out the window at the dark blur of trees and said, "That's the problem. It's not one thing."

He didn't answer. What was there to say?

The hotel was the kind of place that had a pool shaped like a kidney bean and a lobby that smelled like chlorine and stale coffee. We checked in, divvied up rooms, and I ended up with Aria and Hanna, which was fine. Better than fine. Necessary.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at my phone. The playlist was still there. "For the Road." I thought about deleting it. I thought about playing it. I thought about throwing the phone against the wall and watching it shatter.

"He's an idiot," Hanna said, flopping down beside me.

"He's not."

"He is. He's a beautiful idiot with nice hair and a terrible sense of priorities."

I laughed. It came out broken, but it came out.

Later, at the pool, I sat on a lounge chair with my feet in the water and watched the others splash around. Harry was there, and Chloe was there, and she was wearing his hoodie. The one he'd offered me in the car. The one I'd refused.

A guy I didn't know swam up to the edge and started talking to me. Nice enough. Asked my major. Asked where I was from. Asked if I wanted to get a drink later.

And I felt Harry's eyes on me from across the pool. Felt the heat of his stare like a hand on the back of my neck.

"Thanks," I told the guy. "But I'm here with friends."

When he swam away, Harry drifted over. "Making friends?"

"Something like that."

"You could've said yes."

"Could I?"

"You're single. You can do what you want."

I looked at him. Water dripping from his hair. Rings glinting in the pool light. Chloe's laughter carrying across the water from where she sat wrapped in his hoodie.

"We're friends with benefits, remember?" I said. "That's the arrangement."

His jaw tightened. "Nikki."

"I'm going to bed."

I stood up and walked away, and I felt him watching me the whole time, and I didn't turn around.

The gathering happened the next night. Someone's suite, too many people, music too loud. I was standing by the window with a drink I wasn't drinking when Harry came up beside me, close enough that our shoulders almost touched.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"I've been thinking about what you said. In the car."

"Which part?"

"All of it."

I turned to look at him, and he was looking at me, really looking, the way he used to before everything got complicated. And for a second, I thought maybe we'd say something real. Maybe we'd finally say the thing we'd been circling for months.

"Nikki," he said. "I..."

And then Chloe appeared at his elbow, and he glanced at her, and when he looked back at me, something had shifted.

"Chloe," he said. "Right. Sorry. Chloe, this is..."

He was introducing us. We'd met twice. He'd forgotten.

He called me Chloe.

Called me by her name.

I laughed. I don't know why. It just came out, this bright, brittle sound, and I said, "We've met," and I walked away, and I didn't stop walking until I was in my room with the door locked and my back against it and my hands shaking.

I didn't cry. Not then.

I waited until Aria and Hanna were asleep, until the hotel was quiet, until the only sound was the hum of the ice machine down the hall. Then I slipped out. Down the stairs. Through the lobby. Out the side door to the little patch of gravel that passed for a parking lot, where the highway lights buzzed and the night air smelled like diesel and sage.

I sat on the curb and put my head in my hands.

I heard footsteps. I didn't look up.

"I thought you'd be here," Harry said.

I didn't answer.

He sat down beside me. Close, but not touching. The way we used to.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For the name thing. For all of it."

"I know."

"I didn't mean..."

"I know you didn't mean it. That's not the problem."

"Then what is?"

I lifted my head and looked at him. His face was half in shadow, half in the orange glow of the highway lights, and he looked tired. He looked young. He looked like the boy I'd met at orientation three years ago, the one who'd sat next to me in the dining hall because every other table was full, the one who'd made me laugh so hard I'd choked on my water.

"The problem is that you don't see me," I said. "Not really. Not when it counts."

He was quiet for a long time.

"I see you," he said finally. "That's the thing. I see you, and I don't know what to do about it."

My heart was beating so loud I was sure he could hear it.

"What do you mean?"

He turned to face me. Reached out. His hand hovered near my cheek, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his palm.

"I mean," he said, "that I..."

His phone rang.

We both looked at it. Lit up in his hand. The screen said *Chloe*.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

And then he answered it.

"Hey," he said, turning away. "Yeah, I'm outside. What's up?"

I stood up. He didn't notice. He was talking, laughing at something she said, and I was walking, and the highway lights were buzzing, and the night air was cold, and I was walking, and I was gone.

He didn't call after me.

I don't know if he even saw me leave.