Accidentally on Purpose

Chapter Fifty-Four

Two days passed by and the yellow folder Mr. Herberg had given me still lay abandoned on my desk as my eyes focused on the screen in front of me.

Editing the home videos was so frustrating. It didn't help that I had to watch through hours of footages of all those dates Jonah and I had with Daisy.

Most of the time, the videos weren't about Daisy at all. It was about us.

All the kisses, the twenty questions games we often had in that tree house at the park, those early evenings at the diner when I would wait at the empty table for him and saw him smiling at me across the room, those car rides when I secretly recorded him singing along to the song on the radio.

It made me smile and want to cry at the same time.

"Okay, so you can play guitar."

"I can. A little bit."

"Play me a song, then." Me and my phone that was recording moved closer to him as we both sat on the floor of his bedroom. "Where's your guitar?"

"I'm not good at it," he said with a sigh, but he smiled a little. "But okay, I'll go get it. Whatever for you."

I laughed and turned the phone around as he stood up to get his guitar. "Okay, so this is the first time he plays guitar in front of me," I said to the camera. "Does he suck at it or does he not? We're gonna find out soon."

He came back into the room a while later and sat down in front of me with the guitar on his lap. "Okay. What song do you want me to play?"

"Anything is fine. I just wanna hear you play it." He thought for a while and began plucking the guitar strings. "And sing to the song so I know the song you're playing."

"God, Hannah, my voice is horrible."

"So is mine, but that doesn't stop me from singing in the bathroom!"

He rolled his eyes at me and focused back on the strings he was playing. "Alright. I've been learning to play this song because Clara wanted to do a cover of it with my help."

I saw myself nod. "Okay."

He tore his gaze from the strings for a while to look at me—at the camera. "You'll be recording the whole thing, aren't you."

"Yeah. So I can play it every night before I go to sleep."

He chuckled. "Creepy. But don't put this into the home video."

"Sure, yeah, whatever. Play the song already!"

"Okay, okay." He took a deep breath and starting playing a different tune, and then he began to quietly sing, "What will I do without your smart mouth? Drawing me in, and you kicking me out. Got my head spinning, no kidding, I can't pin you down."

I remembered feeling the exact same kind of warmth spreading over my chest when I heard him sing. His voice wasn't the best, but it was the way he slowly, delicately played the song for me as if it was something breakable, the way his voice sounded hesitant as if he wasn't sure I would like it, that made my heart flutter. He avoided my eyes as he sang, his eyes focused on the guitar strings even though I had a feeling that he already knew how to play it by heart.

"My head's underwater, but I'm breathing fine," he recited quietly, "you're crazy and I'm out of my mind. 'Cause all of me loves all of you."

The video shook a little bit—I remembered how I was slowly swaying to the left and right to the song.

"Give your all to me, I give my all to you. You're my end and my beginning. Even when I lose, I'm winning."