Songs to Get Over You (Playlist #2)

by Jay E. Tria

“Hi, Ana.”

  “I’m an Accounting major.” She announced her fact of life with a firm nod. “And I’m taking this elective only because everywhere else is full. Though books and I get along well enough. When I graduate, I’m going to work at a multinational firm, and a couple of years after that I’m getting my MBA. Maybe I’d come back and take it here, in this university. I like it here.”

  Miki nodded slowly, thinking he might have found someone Kim would get along with very well. A planner, a go-doer like him. Only he didn’t think Kim prattled on about his future plans to a complete stranger like Ana did.

  “Good for you,” he managed.

  Ana flashed him a grin, seemingly unaware of her word vomit. Or maybe that was her normal. “And you’re Miki.”

  “The guitarist from that band that plays rock music, yes.”

  “See, that’s better! We’re acquainted now.”

  Miki wanted to laugh out his amusement at this girl, but he thought it might be impolite.

  “You know I don’t really listen to rock,” Ana was saying.

  “I cannot imagine that,” Miki deadpanned.

  “Oh you’re hilarious.” She hit his arm with a playful fist, taking Miki aback. “But I liked you guys. Your bassist is funny. The one with the curly hair? Son, I think. He’s funny when he takes his shirt off and thinks it’s cool.”

  Miki finally barked out laughter. “Yeah, he does think that. We tell him he needs a six-pack for that stunt to work. But he doesn’t listen.”

  Ana pulled Jill’s seat closer to Miki’s and fixed a solemn gaze on him, her mouth still smiling. “I hope you get to sing more. I mean I love Jill’s voice. Isn’t she just sexy on stage? Oh and Kim sings great too. But it’s different when you sing.” She planted her chin on her palm, taking Miki in, her next words a low whisper. “It’s like you’re sharing a secret that no one else bothers to hear.”

  Miki found himself leaning closer to Ana as his brain picked at her words. This girl liked to talk. A lot. But Miki didn’t mind. He liked the things she was saying, and the way she said it. Like she knew a lot of things he didn’t, and she was willing to share them all with him.

  “I’m late. I know, I know.” Jill burst into the classroom, hair all over her face and her books nearly tipping onto the floor. “I don’t want to hear it, Mikhail.”

  “Hi!” Ana stood and righted Jill’s seat before she extended her hand, the open smile bright on her face. “I’m a big fan. I’m Ana.”

  Jill turned to Miki with a raised brow but shook the proffered hand anyway, just as the professor entered the room. The professor sauntered to his desk, armed with his rucksack of books, the Buddha beads around his neck clunking out a wooden sound with each step. Ana shot to the back of the room without another word, leaving Jill’s seat free.

  “Who was that?” Jill demanded in a whisper.

  Miki shrugged, smiling. “Ana, the Accounting major who doesn’t like rock music very much.”

  “Okay.” Jill stretched out the word with a questioning look. Then she shook her head and leaned towards him. “Anyway, see, I wasn’t late after all. The professor was late.”

  Miki smirked, lifting a hand to sweep the hair off Jill’s face, pinching her nose as he went. “Whatever you say, Jillian Marie.”

  September 11, Friday, morning

  “Zombie apocalypse, any day.”

  It was Date Number Five, if Miki counted ramen-and-sake night as Date Number Four, and he did. Ana decided to trash the horror movie idea entirely. She said she didn’t want them to spend money on another movie that will disappoint her. So she suggested they do something free, like playing Twenty Questions while hanging out at a sandwich place in her office building over lunch break.

  Miki had never played this game before, but Ana said she had only two rules, and they were simple. One, you answer all the questions. There was no dare option, which Miki had tried to pull when Ana asked him about the first album he ever bought. (It was a Backstreet Boys cassette tape. He wasn’t introduced to The Smiths and Silverchair until high school, okay? He had to dance with his classmates to Get Down for a mass demo at school and the song got stuck in his head.) Two, the questions don’t end at 20.

  “But only if I still find you interesting after that,” Ana teased him.

  Halfway through their 12-inch sub sandwiches and Ana’s lunch break, they had covered favorite movie villains (Miki chose Heath Ledger’s Joker, hands down), worst book ever read (Ana said The Lord of the Rings, because after 20 pages Tolkien was still prattling on about landscape. Miki had a lot to say about this), and first kiss (Miki had never been kissed before Ana. Ana hit his shoulder, accusing him of lying). The latest question was about the preferred way for the world to end.

  Ana’s brow furrowed, mouth curled in a scowl. Miki noted this as her you’re-an-idiot look. He tried not to smile.

  “You can’t truly believe you’d be equipped to survive zombies,” she said, all snooty. “You don’t look like the type who could run very fast.”

  “It’s not about running.” He pressed a knowing finger to her forehead. “It’s about strategy. I’ve told Jill this many times, she won’t listen. Just you wait. You’d all be scampering towards my safe haven when the time comes.”

  Ana’s lips moved to a straight line. “I like Jill.”

  “Me too.” The words were quick to pass his lips.

  She slid her unfinished sandwich to one side, leaning across their small table towards him. “No. You love her. What do you love about her?”

  Miki sputtered out the lemonade he was drinking. “Isn’t it my turn to ask the next question?”

  “You get double points later,” Ana said, dismissing his claim.

  “That’s not part of the rules—”

  Miki stopped complaining when Ana’s gaze held his, her eyes no longer smiling. He allowed his heart to beat its familiar rhythm of panic. “She’s my best friend.”

  Ana tilted her head. “What do you love about her, your best friend?”

  Miki spoke to his stupid heart, saying, this is a valid question. And there is no dare to get out of it anyway. Words and thoughts sprung up in his mind as soon as he allowed them. He had not spoken to Jill since last night when she’d left in the rain with Shinta. He hadn’t thought much about her either after that date, that walk he shared with Ana. Granted 24 hours had not passed since, but that was an accomplishment in itself. Miki wondered if this was how someone stepped away from the friendzone. If it only took one night over ramen, one kiss under the flickering light of a street lamp, and the attentions of someone who seemed to be sincerely into him.

  He picked one thought from the barrage that was flooding his brain. “Jill has a big heart. Bigger than what most boys could handle.”

  “Your blood-pumper is not too shabby either.”

  Miki chuckled, relieved that Ana’s eyes were smiling again. He seemed to have given the correct answer. “She’s braver than I am. She’s not a planner like you. She doesn’t like looking too far into future. We both think it’s a scary place, that dark realm of uncertainty, stretching on for days on end. But she knows what she wants, and when she sets her heart on something, she doesn’t let it go.”

  “Much like you,” Ana responded. “A person of commitments.”

  Miki thought that was a poetic way of putting it, of how both he and his best friend were stubborn mules. “I guess.”

  Ana leaned back on her chair, returning to her sandwich with renewed vigor. She didn’t release his gaze. “I should warn you both,” she said through bites of egg salad. “Commitments can make a fool out of you.”

  “I think you’re about to get wise Jedi on me. But I’ll bite,” Miki said with a grin. They had also covered favorite Star Wars character of all time, now that he recalled. Miki chose Yoda, because he always had the answers, though he made it difficult for people to get them because he said them backwards. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “When you commit, you ma
ke a decision,” Ana declared. “You decide to say yes to one person, all the time.”

  “Good. I was about to ask you about your ex-boyfriends, for my double point question.” He sincerely wasn’t.

  “Shush.” She was still eating, but that didn’t make her words lose their conviction. “You hold on to that decision, and you keep saying yes. Even when the correct answer is no. A very certain, blatant, in-your-face no. It stares you in the face at every turn, but still you refuse to see it.” She took a clean napkin off the table and dabbed at her mouth, leaving a lipstick mark on the tissue. Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “It’s a dangerous habit to fall into.”

  Habits are hard to break, the old thought repeated in his ear. Miki felt his brain start to multitask, slipping into two realms of consciousness. One was here with Ana, digesting her words, picking at them for truths. Another was replaying lyrics in his head, of a duet in a dimly lit studio in the wee hours of morning. About breaking old habits. About accepting that you were wrong, and the other was right. About endings and new beginnings.

  He must have murmured the last words, because Ana smiled as if she had heard them.

  Miki’s phone vibrated on the table, the light from the screen showing a message from Jill. “I’m awake! Sorry,” it read, because they had made a promise long before that they would both be the type of ‘rock stars’ that would wake up before noon, and get something done before then. “Lunch before practice?”

  He gripped his phone and pushed it inside his pocket, not only because he knew Ana was watching. It won’t take only one night, he realized. He had to say no, and yes, decisively every day, and to the right person.

  “I have to go,” Ana said, putting away her trash and things. “Break is over and my boss is bitching about a new deadline she wants me to be on top of.”

  Miki took a fresh napkin and pressed it against the corner of Ana’s lips, getting a spot of mayonnaise she had missed. “Okay. I’ll come back for lunch on Monday. Same time?”

  Ana smiled, catching his fingers as she got up from her seat. “Sure. We’ll make a habit of it.”

  September 26, Saturday, afternoon

  Son could laugh at him all he wanted. But although Miki was admittedly many colors of horrible on the first three dates, he did really well on the fourth and fifth one, until it became a very good streak. Apparently he only had to get through the first three dates and he’d be good on the rest. Good thing Ana was willing to stick through the initial hot mess.

  Today was Date Number Seventeen, including the quick lunch breaks that Ana was able to sneak off to on an almost daily basis. Miki was proud of himself for keeping count. Nino said that basically any time alone he spent with Ana should count as a date, whether they did something new or “special” or not. That criteria should be simple enough for Miki to remember. He shook his head, ashamed of himself for actually listening to Nino.

  Miki sat on the low concrete wall that marked the boundary of the College of Business corridors, waiting for Ana’s class to finish. She was taking up her MBA in the same university where they all got their undergraduate degrees, but Miki had never been to this side of campus before. The stark white walls and the old wooden doors seemed identical to the ones in his home college, and it gave him a sharp pull of nostalgia.

  His eyes roamed the empty halls, catching the door to the Library off the corner to his right. That would be where Jill would spend hours catching up on her Economics readings, because as she so astutely observed, they were always running away. And this corridor would be where she would be scrambling to chase after the period bell.

  Miki pressed his eyes shut, forcing the images back inside the deeper mines of his head. He had been doing so well not thinking about Jill in the past weeks. He didn’t want to lose his winning streak now. He opened his eyes and jumped off the wall, singing under his breath to chase away the memories. He was on the chorus when he heard the familiar laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” he grumbled, a smile pulling at his lips and ruining his snark.

  “Nothing.” Ana grinned, skipping towards him. “It’s just so cool to be fetched from my classroom by a rock star. I feel so popular.”

  Ana had leaned over to award Miki’s cheek with a soft peck, and the song stopped playing in his head. “You blush easily,” she noted.

  “Yeah, I’m having that checked.”

  Ana laughed, jumping on the low wall that Miki had abandoned. The rest of her class was streaming out of the room, huddled in pairs and threes, a stern-looking professor the last one out. A few of them raked Miki’s face with curious looks, murmuring ‘Trainman’ and his name. Miki nodded politely back and returned his attention to Ana.

  “Didn’t think you’d be free today,” she was saying. “Aren’t you guys usually fully booked on Saturdays?”

  “Yeah, we’ve pretty much sold all the weekends of our lives to Mars,” Miki said with a small grin.

  Ana knew that by now. She had been to too many gigs and events with Trainman in the past two weeks (not dates, officially, since everyone else was there), and weekends were spent running around the metro chasing one schedule after another.

  “But he got confused with the bookings,” Miki went on. “Missed this Saturday in his calendar.”

  Ana gasped, hands flying to her mouth for full effect. “His trusty notebook failed him? Oh no!”

  “Must be because he squeezed in a mall show with three gigs across two cities last night.” Miki’s whining mingled with a wide yawn. The band’s last set ended at three in the morning. Thanks to the horrid Metro Manila traffic, Miki wasn’t able to reunite with his bed until one hour later. “Nino and Son gave him hell for it. It was very fun to watch.”

  “Yikes. I’m glad Mars is losing his touch though. At least for today. I get to spend time with you somewhere that is not a dingy, packed bar.”

  “Or a sandwich joint.”

  “Yeah. Hey!” Ana laughed. “And here I was thinking you like that meatball sub.”

  “And here you got Kim thinking you like our music now.”

  She genuinely seemed to, most nights. She had taken to singing along to the lyrics when they played, especially when it was Miki’s turn on the mic. But whenever Miki drove her home, it was Ana’s pop-R&B playlists blaring out of the speakers. Miki never dared to object.

  “The music is okay,” Ana said, a teasing glint in her eyes. She lifted a finger to stroke his cheek. “But I’m really there because one of the guitarists is hot.”

  Miki pinned his gaze to the ground but caught her hand in his. “So what was that class?” he muttered, playing with her fingers as his new blush ran its course.

  “One that I’m failing.”

  Miki looked up to see Ana’s flat gaze. “Be more specific.”

  Ana hit his arm with a loud smack, but she answered him anyway. “Marketing.”

  “Why would you fail that?” He tangled his fingers with hers in a firm grip, lifting the knot to his lips. “You’re very good at selling ideas.” His breath was light on her knuckles.

  Ana’s cheeks burned a pretty plum shade, but Miki chose not to tease her. “I’m an accountant, Miki,” she plowed on. “I’m not a creative. I do spreadsheets, sums, balancing figures…Graphs, even. But I can’t do a marketing plan.” Ana had pulled her hand away and started tearing at locks of her hair.

  “Okay let’s not panic.” Miki jumped back on the wall, creating space for himself beside her. “You have groupmates, don’t you?”

  “Not in this one.” Ana dumped her forehead on Miki’s shoulder with a soft plunk, her next words muffled on his shirt. “This is the final project, and it’s individual work.”

  “I’m sure you can do it.” Miki squeezed her shoulder. “What do you have to sell?”

  “Toilet paper.”

  “Toilet paper?”

  She lifted her head and looked back at him with a watery gaze. “Yes, toilet paper,” she wailed. “The professor wants a 10-page minimum marketing
plan submitted, and a sample advertisement presented to class. All in a matter of two weeks.”

  Miki grimaced. “He does want you to fail, doesn’t he?”

  Ana started thumping her forehead against Miki’s shoulder in a quick rhythm. “I’m screwed.”

  “There, there.” Miki patted her back, digging through the corners of his brain for ideas.

  Mars and Kim talked about marketing a lot. They talked themselves dry on the topic when the band was starting, in efforts to get their names and their music out of obscurity. Now that the band had its growing stream of fans, Miki thought the pair of them would lie low a bit and maybe please shut up about it. But they did it even more intensely now. It seemed exhausting work. They discussed networking, doing guest spots, getting proper headshots and artsy behind-the-scenes clips, flyers, free CDs, house parties, dorm parties, and other guerilla marketing tactics.

  Miki and Jill usually stopped listening after ‘networking.’ They did not need to take any marketing courses back in college. Their syllabus was composed of every Economics class imaginable mashed with every other music and writing class available (Kim’s edict). It was a very straightforward curriculum. So he wasn’t sure how he’s going to be of any help to Ana.

  “We start by not panicking,” he declared, cheering himself on too. “And then we act.”

  Ana was still pounding her forehead against his shoulder. “What do you know about marketing?”

  “Virtually nothing whatsoever,” Miki said cheerily. He took her chin in his hand and caught her lips in a quick kiss. Some things he had recently learned to do without thinking too much. That was good, especially now that he had to free up his brain cells for something more productive.

  Ana was smiling when they pulled apart, marks of worry wiped from her brow.

  Miki grinned back at her, his thumb still on her chin. “But it’s never too late to learn new things, right?”

  ***

  “This is cramming. That’s what this is.”

  “What? How dare you accuse me of procrastination?”