"Yes!" They were there, still wrapped in plastic. I ripped it off and tossed it into the trash, unwinding the earphones and grabbing my phone from the table.
Seconds later, I was back out on the patio looking over the pool area. It was Saturday after all, so there was a good crowd to be found. I realized I wasn't that interested in listening to their commotion. I wanted to dig deeper into Jack Teller.
I opened Spotify on my phone and typed in Jack's name. The list that came up sprawled for pages.
Holy shit, I thought.
After telling it to shuffle, I sat back and listened to whatever came up.
He had an incredible voice, something I wasn't expecting after he claimed he was better at writing for other people. When someone that talented and confident says they're bad at something, you usually take their word for it. I shouldn't have listened to him.
I won't lie—I didn't like every song that came up. Just because I was dating the guy that wrote them didn't mean that I would pretend to be the biggest fan ever. Jack would have appreciated that, I was certain of it. I also wasn't listening to full albums, so I didn't totally grasp where the songs fit in artistically.
This was just a crash-course in Jack Teller while he was dealing with business.
The more I listened, the more I realized just how talented Jack was. There seemed to be every style imaginable in that playlist, and on top of that, collaborations he had done with internationally popular artists showed up as well.
I started laughing loudly as I realized that a song that had played constantly on the radio during my shifts at the college bookstore had actually been written by the guy I was now dating. It had played so much that it almost drove me mad. I couldn't blame Jack for that, but maybe I would pick on him for it someday.
It was as if I had known this man too well prior to ever meeting him.
I kept jumping back and forth between Spotify and Wikipedia, gobbling up every bit of information I could. When I heard a song from Once show up, I thought my playlist had gotten off course.
Nope. He actually had written one of the songs in the show and hadn’t told me! I had sat there and watched that whole play, not realizing that he had contributed to it.
I buried my head in my hands, my cheeks burning red with shame. I knew that Jack was successful, but he hadn't pushed it on me at all. Hadn't begged me to listen to material. Hadn't bragged that I was probably familiar with his work. His rants about the music industry never included his gigantic contribution to it over only a half-decade. He mentioned that people made a lot more money than he did off of his own work, but I just thought that was part of his whole the system is broken rant.
After realizing I hadn't even made a dent in the list of available material, I yanked the ear buds out my ears and set them by my nearly empty drink.
Don't let it get to you.
Jack was a complex guy. He had his reasons, I knew. I couldn't beat myself up over this. He said someday he'd show me stuff, that we'd have a listening party. He had broken down to me over the tragedy in his life, opened up that part of himself and given me a full view inside.
Wasn't the point of being in a relationship to give all of yourself to the other person? The good and the bad? Nothing but the real? I was vaguely reminded of prototypical wedding vows.
Maybe he was hiding from his work because it reminded him too much of his past. Maybe he just didn't care about introducing it to me. I would have kept thinking about the matter, but Jack popped back into the room. I abruptly closed Spotify, not wanting him to know what I had been doing. I didn't understand my desire for secrecy.
"Still in your robe, I see." He strolled toward me on the patio, glancing at the spilled contents of my bag on the floor, but not actually saying anything further.
"Hi, Jack," I said excitedly. "H-how was the meeting?"
"Better than usual. I will admit some aspects of the business are easier to deal with out here than in NYC."