“Yeah,” I said, tucking my phone into my pocket, looking down at the ground. “Really unexpected.”
“I’m going to have to charge you for this since it’s outside the cancel window,” the woman said, leading the gigantic horse back to the barn. “But I’ll give you half off your next ride, how about that?”
“Sure,” Frank said. “We’ll try again another time.”
“I’m so sorry about the money,” I said. “I can pay you back.” But it was more than the money that was suddenly making me feel awful, now that the giddiness of getting out of this situation had subsided. I had the opportunity to cross something else off the list just handed to me, and I’d taken the first excuse to run away from it. And I’d wasted Frank’s time, all because I wasn’t brave enough to even try to get on a horse.
I gave Frank a half smile and got into my car, pulling out faster than was probably advisable when surrounded by giant horses, but I just wanted to get out of there. And as I turned down the street that would take me back home, I suddenly wondered if trying to ride a horse would have actually made me feel any worse than I did right now.
Mix #7
Don’t You Worry Child
Swedish House Mafia
Jolene
The Weepies
King of Spain
The Tallest Man on Earth
She Doesn’t Get It
The Format
Dirty Paws
Of Monsters and Men
Blackbird
The Beatles
High School Reunion
Curtis Anderson
The Gambler
fun.
Now Is the Start
A Fine Frenzy
5 Years Time
Noah and the Whale
I Will Wait
Mumford & Sons
Paperback Writer
The Beatles
Synesthesia
Andrew McMahon
Where Does This Door Go?
Mayer Hawthorne
House of Gold
Twenty One Pilots
Misadventures at the Laundromat
Curtis Anderson
Young Love
Mystery Jets
It Won’t Be Long
The Beatles
Truth in the Dark
The Henry Gales
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
The Beatles
Re: Your Brains
Jonathan Coulton
Hannah
Freelance Whales
Mtn Tune
Trails and Ways
Home
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
Trojans
Atlas Genius
When They Fight, They Fight
Generationals
Take a Walk
Passion Pit
“I’m really sorry about that,” Frank said as he looked over at me. It was two days later, and we were running. I’d shown up at his house that afternoon, ready to apologize, but Frank had just shaken off my apologies and then, to my surprise, had offered his own once we had gone about a mile into the five-mile loop I’d planned for us. “I never should have just sprung that on you. I keep thinking how I would have reacted if someone had just told me to go to the top of a skyscraper, with no warning. It wouldn’t have been pretty.”
“I am going to need to do it at some point, though,” I pointed out.
“You will,” Frank said, with such confidence, that I almost believed him. We ran for another mile before he looked over at me. “Music?” he asked.
I nodded and handed him my iPod. We’d been running together three more times now and had worked out our routine. We talked for the first mile or so, while we were warming up. When breathing became more important than talking, we switched to music, which we would listen to for the rest of the run, and then we’d turn the iPods off as we’d cool down and walk to one of our houses—we alternated. But the run before, Frank had proposed that we switch iPods so that he could see if my “music, not observational comedy” theory was effective in terms of helping him run faster, and I could apparently learn all about some group called Freelance Whales which was, apparently, an actual band. I’d made him a mix of my favorite songs that hopefully weren’t too alienating for someone who claimed he never listened to country and had no idea who the Cure was.
We fell into our running rhythm, and I noticed that our shadows were lengthening out in front of us in the late-afternoon sunlight, occasionally overlapping each other on the pavement. Even though it had been a hot day and was very humid out, I pushed us, keeping the pace up, and we both struggled to maintain it for the last three miles. As ever, we sprinted toward the finish. Frank was right next to me until the very last second, when I managed to spring forward, hitting our mailbox with an open palm, then bending double trying to catch my breath. I turned my head to the side and saw Frank doing the same.
“Would you think any less of me,” he managed, “if I collapsed in that hedge?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I might just join you.” I straightened up and started shaking out my legs and hands, getting a fun preview of just how sore I’d be in the morning. We started walking in the other direction, cooling down, like my track coach was always yelling at us to do.
“I liked the mix,” I said, handing him back his iPod. “But what was with all the handclapping songs?”
“That was Mumford,” Frank pointed out, looking scandalized. “Do you know how many awards they’ve won?”
“Then you would think they’d be able to hire an actual drummer,” I said, as Frank shook his head.
“Do you have any idea how many songs about trucks I just listened to?” he asked, as he handed me my iPod. “Five. Seriously. Not even just the country songs. What’s that about?”
“You’re the one with the actual truck,” I pointed out. “So you’d think you’d be more in favor of them.”
“If that logic made any sense—which it doesn’t, by the way—you, with your Volvo, would have been way more into Swedish House Mafia.”
“Which one was that?”
“Track one,” Frank said, and I made a face. “Told you.”
“Well,” I said, trying to think back to what I’d just heard, “I’m sure the Beatles sang songs about trucks occasionally.”
“Not that I can think of,” Frank said immediately. “Unless you mean the fire truck in ‘Penny Lane.’ ”
I shook my head and he lifted up his shirt to wipe his face, and I took a long look, then glanced away quickly, before he could catch me staring. “So what’s with the Beatles?” Seeing the look of incredulity on Frank’s face, I added quickly, “I mean, you told me why you started listening to them, because of the codes. But there were a lot of Beatles songs on that playlist.”