Page 57 of Unlovable Player

I look at Austin after she leaves to see if he felt the intensity of that moment too, but he’s too busy rifling through the cupboard to notice anything.

“Pizza?”

Lisa hasher hair tied up in a messier style when she comes back down. Her face scrubbed clean of make-up. She’s wearing leggings and a t-shirt with some - I think - album cover, on the front.

“What did you guys order?”

“We got Luigi’s, should be here in about twenty minutes.”

Am I imagining things, or is Austin’s accent stronger here?

She takes a seat on the couch next to Austin. When she notices me looking at her shirt, she asks if I like Fleetwood Mac.

“Who?”

She shares a look with Austin and they laugh.

“What?”

“Who the fuck doesn’t know who Fleetwood Mac are?”

Lisa slaps his arm. “Language.”

“Sorry Ma.”

“You should play him some,” she says.

“Put some on now,” I suggest.

“Alright.” Lisa jumps up and stalks over to a stack of records in a little shelving unit in the corner of the room. There’s a modern record player there, and she takes whatever record was under the needle off and exchanges it when she finds what she’s looking for.

“This isRumours,” she says. “One of the greatest albums ever recorded.”

A song starts to play, kind of like the country playlists Austin’s been playing me, but kind of different.

Lisa sings along and, wow, even just singing in the living room, her voice is beautiful.

Austin taps his leg in time with the music without noticing. When I look at Lisa again, she’s singing unselfconsciously and looking at me.

The doorbell rings and she shoots off to go and get it before I can offer.

“Will your mom be offended if I try to give her money for the pizza?” I ask.

“Very offended, don’t do it.”

“But we eat like pigs.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll stuff some cash in her purse before we leave.”

“Shall we eat in front of the TV?” Lisa asks when she comes back in, balancing two huge pizza boxes and bags of fries and cans of coke like a pro.

We lay it all out on the coffee table, Lisa sitting on the couch, tapping her feet as she eats to the music playing in the background with ESPN on mute on the TV. I sit cross-legged on the floor next to Austin, feeling warm and sad at the same time.

“This music is amazing,” I say once I’ve had my fill of pizza.

While we’ve been eating, a slower song has played through, with a haunting kind of melody I wanted to ask Lisa to immediately put on again, (though I know that’s not easy to do on a vinyl record), two more upbeat songs. One that sounded vaguely familiar, like maybe it was on a TV show or an advertisement or something, and now a really slow, sad song is playing with a new singer.

“I can’t believe you’ve never heard Fleetwood Mac,” Lisa says, still eating fries at a snail’s pace. “What do your parents listen to?”

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