Romeo and Juliet

I heard our song on the radio yesterday.

I know you hate when I call it that. It’s not “our song.” It’s Dire Straits. It belongs to everyone. It belonged to Mark Knopfler and whoever broke his heart before it belonged to us. But for three years, it was ours, and I can’t unhear that.

You probably don’t even remember which song I’m talking about.

The DJ didn’t say the title. He didn’t have to. Those first three notes—that fingerpicked cascade that sounds like water, like time, like everything falling—and I was back in your apartment. The one with the radiator that clanged. The one where we’d lie on the floor because you didn’t own a couch yet and listen to this album on the record player you’d stolen from your parents.

“Stolen” is too strong. Borrowed. Permanently.

Knopfler wrote this about Holly Vincent. You told me that. You knew everything about the songs you loved—who wrote them, why, what year, which studio. I just felt them. You understood them. Maybe that was the problem.

“You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin.”

I didn’t promise you everything. I don’t think I promised you anything, actually. That might have been the problem too.

The song is six minutes long. Six minutes of a man who can’t stop replaying the moment before she left. The fingerpicking never stops—it just keeps cycling, like thoughts you can’t turn off, like driving past someone’s house even though they moved away years ago.

I don’t drive past your house. I want you to know that. I’m not that guy.

But I did sit in my car for the entire song yesterday. Engine off. Windows up. Letting Knopfler say the things I couldn’t.

“And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be.”

You’re married now. I saw the photos. He seems nice. The kind of guy who owns a couch.

I’m fine. I’m good, actually. It’s been eight years. I’ve had whole relationships since you. This isn’t some confession of undying love. I don’t want you back. I’m not sure I ever really had you.

But sometimes a song comes on the radio, and for six minutes, I’m twenty-six again, lying on your floor, listening to you explain why Knopfler doesn’t use a pick.

That’s all.

That’s the whole thing.