Page 26 of Never Been Worse

“Wes, this is kind of embarrassing—” she starts but stops when I pause my scrolling, open an app on my own phone, and hand it to her.

“This is mine.”

“Yours?”

“My favorite songs. Or you can look at my other playlists. They’re all labeled.”

She sits there with my phone in her hands, looking from it to me and back again before giving in with a small sigh and starting to scroll. Almost instantly, she lets out a small laugh.

“Spice Girls? You have the Spice Girls on your playlist?”

“The start of girl power? Hell yeah. ‘Wannabe’ is amazing,” I say, sitting back with a smile. The smile is mostly because I just learned my wife hasamazingtaste in music, similar to mine but with a bunch of bands and artists I’ve never heard of. She listens to songs from every genre, every decade, and it’s fascinating to see how she pairs them into different playlists for different moods.

“Why did you give me this?” she asks, still holding my phone in her hands like it might bite her.

“Because turnabout is fair play, and I believe it’s the best way to get to know someone. Their favorite songs, their taste in music. It’s like a glimpse into who they are.”

“I guess…I guess that makes sense,” she concedes with a small smile, and I feel like I won. “I guess you can find out a lot about someone that way.” Her eyes drift to the phone in her hands. “And I could use all the help I can get when it comes to you.”

The irony is, if she just asked, I’d tell her everything. Anything.

I see an opening to learn more about my elusive wife and leap for it.

“Want to play a game?” I ask, reaching into the carry-on and pulling out some headphones.

Her brows furrow. “A game?”

I lift the armrest between us, and then pull her closer to me. She squeals with the movement but doesn’t shift away, which I’m calling a win. Flipping open the case to my Bluetooth headphones, I slide one in one of my ears, then hand the other to her. She takes out her own headphones and puts mine in.

“Give me a topic,” I say, and she looks at me confused. “We’re playing musical memories.”

“Musical memories?”

“Songs hold memories,” I tell her, as if it's common sense, which, to me, it is. “The quickest way to get to know someone is by their memories.” I half expect her to roll her eyes or shift away, but instead, she shifts closer, looking at me, then at my phone.

“Okay. How do we play?”

My blood races in my veins with the thrill of her proximity, and I smile at her eagerness to indulge me.

“One of us picks a topic—I’ll go first to give you an example—and we both pick a song that reminds us of that. Then we listen to it.”

“Oh…okay?” she says, still confused. It’s a game Reed and I used to play all the time on the tour bus, and I’m excited to learn about my new wife in this new medium.

“Your first concert,” I say and grab my phone, scrolling until I find “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys and pressing play.

“You saw the Beach Boys live?” she asks, incredulous.

“A bunch of times when I was a kid,” I say with a nod. “My parents were big fans. I can sing most of their discography by heart.”

She smiles at me, and my heart pounds a bit, like I’m a kid with my first crush.

“Very cool,” she says gently.

“Your turn.”

Her face screws up in an adorable look before she grabs my phone and scrolls until she hits “Bye Bye Bye” by *NSYNC. I laugh out loud.

“Your first concert was *NSYNC?” She nods. “That’s kind of iconic.”

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