E + N

Prologue

I don't own anything. All characters and existing plot lines belong to Beth Reekles and Netflix.

Do you ever hear a song and the world slows down for a minute? You feel the music in your bones and the lyrics seem to perfectly express everything you're feeling inside but can't quite put into words yourself. You get goosebumps and for just as long as the song lasts you don't feel as alone in the world as you did just three minutes earlier. That how I've always felt about music. As a baby my mom would sing to me. She would sing anything and everything from nursery rhymes to her favorite songs to little songs she would make up on the spot. As I got older we would dance and sing together for hours. Eventually Lee would come over and join our impromptu dance parties which is where our joint love for dancing was born. When my mom got sick I would visit her in the hospital and bring my iPod, filled with our favorite songs. Sometimes we would dance, sometimes we would sing along, and other times we just held each other and cried, soaking up all the time we had left together and remembering the life she built for me through the music she loved. 

At first, after she passed, it was hard to listen to those songs. I would avoid the playlists we made together and anytime I heard a song that reminded me of her I would hurry to turn it off. Soon, however, the silence became deafening and little by little I started to listen again. It was the way that I felt closest to my mom. It was like for those precious few minutes she was with me again, singing along with me and reminding me I'm not alone, and that she'll always be with me, one way or another. 

That's how making playlists became a new pastime for me. I made one for new songs that I thought that my mom would like or that reminded me of her. I made one for Lee, full of songs for us to dance to when we couldn't make it to the arcade. I made one for my dad, for Brad, and June. I made playlists for when I was happy, sad, angry, ones full of love songs and ones full of breakup songs. I had my girl power playlist and my 80's jams. My taste in music was definitely eclectic. I loved everything from pop to oldies, R&B to indie, even show tunes on certain occasions when I just needed to belt out all my problems. 

The most important playlist I ever made, though, was one entitled E + N. I first made it when I was 15 and realized how hard I was crushing on Lee's older brother Noah. I couldn't let Lee know about it so of course I set it to private. It was mostly full of sappy love songs and romantic ballads at first but then as I got older and my relationship with Noah evolved from just being his little brother's annoying best friend to falling in love, I added songs that reminded me of moments with him. I added the song that was playing in his car when he drove me to the Hollywood Sign after that day on the beach. I added the song that playing at the party when he grabbed me off the pool table and hauled my drunk ass back to his room to save me from further drunken embarrassment. Songs that played at prom before Noah appeared at the Kissing Booth and proclaimed his love for me in front of the entire school, one from the really bad movie that was playing in the airplane that first time I flew out to Boston to visit him. Another from that time he surprised me at work by playing a song on the jukebox and asking me to dance. And some that had no specific connection to a memory with Noah but just reminded me of him or of my feelings for him or towards our relationship at any specific time. 

When we started dating I had added him to the playlist so that he could see it and add songs too.  We created quite the set by the time we broke up that last summer after high school. After that Noah seemingly cut me out of his life pretty completely. He unfollowed me on all social media, purged his accounts of any trace of us, and so I also assumed he unfollowed our playlist. I, however, wasn't as ready to escape all reminders of our relationship. I did the typical post breakup purge but I couldn't bring myself to delete the playlist. Even if Noah didn't want to remember, I did. It was like how it had been with my mom, this felt like all I had left of him. Through the years I continued to add songs, a lot in the beginning, and then less and less as time went on, but I never stopped completely and I never stopped listening. Little did I know at the time, however, a certain someone never did either.