Chapter 16
Brent sat on his couchlooking down at his laptop. George was curled up in a warm ball pressed up against him.
“What do you think, bud? Are we ready to press the burn button?” He’d narrowed his list down to eleven songs. He’d tried and tried to get to the pastor’s recommended ten, but he just couldn’t part with any of the final eleven. And so eleven it would be. A nice, non-round number. It could be worse. He’d started with at least fifty.
He didn’t know if the project was as good as it could be, but he was tired of working on it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d concentrated so much on something for so long.
He’d started out this crazy mission intending to keep his identity a secret. But then he’d realized that anonymity was a lost cause. If he was going to gift Sammy a collection of meaningful songs, then she was going to know exactly who had put that collection together. They’d simply shared too much life together for it to work out another way.
This made him incredibly nervous. More nervous than he’d been the first time he’d asked her out, more nervous than he’d been before he’d proposed, more nervous than he’d been before their wedding.
On each of those occasions, he’d been pretty sure that Sammy would say yes.
He wasn’t so sure this time.
This time, he’d hurt her. This time, she’d lived a lot of adult life without him. Maybe she’d figured out that she didn’t need him, that she didn’t want him.
This time, she might very well say no.
He knew that such a rejection wouldn’t kill him, but it sure was going to hurt, and frankly, he feared that pain, not to mention that embarrassment.
George uncurled and stretched beside him, still not opening his lazy eyes. Brent ran a hand down his silky fur. “I know, I know, bud. I need to get a move on.” Everyone always said the first step was the hardest. That was decidedly not true in the case of creating a win-your-ex-wife-back mixed CD.
But he had to get this CD to her so that he could get the rest of the gifts to her. He had his list all planned out, each gift being delivered with two lines of the poem, until she had the whole poem. Then he would reveal himself officially. That was the plan, and he was going to stick with it—unless she asked him to stop.
His eyes reviewed his list for the zillionth time.
He had really struggled to pick a leadoff hitter. There was a lot of pressure on the first song. If she didn’t like it, or if she thought it was weird, she wouldn’t listen to the rest of the songs. And then the hours and hours he’d invested in this little project would all be in vain.
After much solitary turmoil, he’d decided he needed to put God front and center. In everything, yes, and also in this CD. Let Sammy know right off the bat that her admirer prioritized God. But then he’d struggled withwhichGod song. He didn’t want to sound super religious or super serious. He needed something upbeat, but he didn’t want fluffy meaningless lyrics either.
And then one day in the oil truck, he caught the tail end of a song that he thought might be a contender. He typed a few of the lyrics into a search engine and learned that the song was called “Who I Am,” and he laughed out loud.
A little on the nose.
It was perfect.
So he’d led the mixed CD off with a song about who he was now because of Jesus.
Batting second was the song that his cousin had sang at their wedding: “From This Moment On.” It was one of the many dead giveaways on the CD, but he couldn’t not include it. It was so perfect, and Shania was one of the few country singers that Sammy actually liked.
Next was “Bless the Broken Road.” He’d used the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band version because they were the ones who’d written it. He loved Rascal Flatts’ version too, but he’d heard the Nitty Gritty version a million times first thanks to his father’s vast Nitty Gritty cassette collection.
And then, in case she got annoyed with all the country, he’d tried to branch out. If this worked, and they ended up back together, he didn’t want their rocking chair years to be peppered with complaints of “that time you made me an all-country mixed tape.” He smiled at the image.
Brent mostly listened to country, but he knew Sammy listened to lots of stuff, or at least she used to. She’d driven him crazy in high school with her Katy Perry obsession, and he’d done the same to her with his Rascal Flatts CDs. In fact, she was lucky that “These Days” was the only Rascal Flatts song that had ended up on this playlist. Brent had started out with eight of them.