Re: [Webster's Vinyl: Holly & Jamie]
Jamie didn't scream. Maybe that was the mutual similarity between him and the parallel ex, maybe it was the mutual similarity between him and the guy who wasn't Jamie's ex. You kind of had to muscle through even when it hurt, long after it started hurting until maybe it either stopped and you didn't notice because you were tensed all the way through or it didn't stop and you had just got used to being a perpetual fist, clenched against whatever it was it was going to do to you. Which was a major digression.
But wanting different things sounded, to Jamie's experience, less like a friend and more like an, uh, ex. Was that the kind of thing you said about a friend, that they wanted different stuff? More like, we grew apart or we went different places. Wanting sounded like a mutual thing that had been and then wasn't, and Jamie scratched his chin, and gambled with whether the cool, record-store guy (Holly) would take offence if he maybe implied he was into dudes. "An ex?" he hazarded, a little sympathy but not a lot, not so much it felt like he'd caught the guy naked or something.
And okay. Essential folk. Jamie's face held crestfallen pretty clearly, "So basically, you're telling me I suck at Spotify. Okay, okay. I have poor Spotify game if I'm missing a Waits, Cohen, Joni jump. I mean, Joni always feels like she's in her own place, doing her thing, maybe with a little Eva Cassidy if we want to get post-70s, but maybe that's my internal musical categorisation. Waits, I didn't know that. Where did you get that?"
And Holly smiled. It wasn't a big deal, it wasn't even a big smile, but from a guy who didn't read easy, if at all, it was something Jamie echoed: his a little bigger, a little more relaxed. "So you're into Armstrong. And I basically dissed Wonderful World on my way in. You could just tell me I'm an asshole with no Spotify game. I could take it. I take it back, okay? Wonderful world, awesome song. I was just having a really shitty day."
He grinned, and he looked down at the single in his hand, "Can we play it?" Nancy. And it was a definite we.
He didn't know he was meant to talk about ballet. He'd said Rec Center, and he meant it, and he followed the upward trajectory of Holly's point. "So you get to finesse your Spotify expertise."