Chapter Text
August 28th, 2015. Zoey’s Apartment.
“Judd Nelson lifting that fist into the air—best movie ending ever ,” Max said quietly, mimicking the motion as it played out on the screen. “And don’t even get me started on how perfect Don’t You (Forget About Me) is for that moment. It’s really the best movie soundtrack of all time .”
Zoey turned her head, glancing over at him. They were both on the couch in her apartment, closer than they’d been at the start of the movie.
It was the fourth or fifth time they’d had a movie night together since Max’s return to SPRQ Point and it was quickly becoming one of Zoey’s very favorite pastimes. Tonight he’d picked The Breakfast Club after Zoey admitted earlier in the week she’d never seen it.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Zoey responded. “It’s the first time I’ve ever heard any of those songs, and I’m pretty sure the only movie soundtrack I know anything from is the Lion King… and that’s only because every time David sang ‘I Just Can’t Wait to be King’ I’d scream Queen instead.”
“You’re kidding, right? There’s no way you haven’t heard that song before. Your dad and I talked about Simple Minds’ first foray into the American music scene following this movie the first time you invited me to their house!”
Zoey shrugged, sitting up straighter and looked at Max with a ‘I don’t know what to tell ya’ look on her face. She tucked her legs underneath her and waited.
“You’re not kidding?” he asked, exasperated.
She just shook her head.
Max stood abruptly and walked to her kitchen, grabbing the partially drunk bottle of wine off the counter and came back to refill both of their glasses.
“If we’re going to do this,” he said upon return, “I’m going to need more wine.”
Max settled back into the couch, and Zoey noted that he returned to the spot he’d vacated rather than the spot he’d started the night in. When she leaned back after picking up the glass of wine he poured, their shoulders settled against each other and neither of them moved to fix it.
“Do… what exactly?” she asked.
“Educate you on all things music,” Max said as if it were the only possible answer. “On orientation day you didn’t know Thinking Out Loud. Anybody who has turned on a radio in the last six months could sing that song in their sleep, Zoey.”
“Annnnnd?”
“Annnnnnnnd,” he continued, “fine. Didn’t think too much about it past that day. Some people don’t like Top 40s! I can live with that—respect it even. But you also don’t have any idea about 80s music! So unless you’re a secret screamo or indie fan, I’m just going to go ahead and assume that look on your face means you were too busy taking apart and immediately rebuilding all the radios in your parent’s house to actually listen to a single song… like, ever?”
“I kind of like Kelly Clarkson,” she admitted timidly. It still surprised her sometimes how well she and Max already knew each other despite only having met a few months ago. “David was really into American Idol in the early 2000s.”
More and more often recently Zoey found herself telling Max things she would normally never dream of admitting of her own volition. She’d had friends, sure. There were lots and lots of acquaintances in her life. The Clarke family was sometimes almost creepily close despite the deep differences in personality and preferred passions.
But there was something about Maxwell Richman. There was something about him and the friendship they’d formed that made her want to tell him anything and everything—because it always felt like he actually wanted to hear the answer.
Max pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled Zoey’s attention back to him when he said, “Noted. So do you even have Spotify or do we really have to start at square one?”
“Of course I have a Spotify account, Max,” Zoey said. “You know how much I love the new Analog Dialogue podcast.”
“My apologies—how could I ever forget. What’s your username?”
“Why?”
“This is clearly a project that could take months or even years to complete,” Max said. “Just trust me, Zo. It can’t be more embarrassing than mine.”
“Fine, it’s CoderClarke001.”
Max started tapping on his phone screen and a minute later her phone buzzed where it was sitting on her side table. When she picked it up there was a Spotify notification that read ‘NewYorkStateOfMax invites you to collaborate on Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist’.
When she opened the link, Don’t You (Forget About Me) and Thinking Out Loud were already populated on the playlist.
“How is that embarrassing?” Zoey asked, scratching the side of her head. “I don’t get it. Is it just because you’re from New York?”
Max leaned forward and grabbed his glass of wine, taking several large gulps before turning back to her.
“Ooookay , lesson one: Billy Joel has a verrrryy popular song called New York State of Mind. Speaking of Mr. Long Island himself, I don’t know that you’re quite ready to start with New York State of Mind or Piano Man.”
Zoey watched as ‘Vienna’ popped up on the playlist next. I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers, Raspberry Beret by Prince & The Revolution, and Africa by TOTO followed as quickly as Max’s fingers could move across his phone screen.
“Wow, this is really amazing!” Zoey said excitedly, less about the music and more about the technology she was seeing in action.
“You are literally a programmer at one of the largest tech companies in the world,” Max said, seeing right through her. “You know as well as I do it this functionality was probably done in an afternoon of coding. Even Tobin could get it done.”
“Yeah, but think of all of the possibilities!” Zoey exclaimed. “A simple afternoon of coding to change the permissions on the shared data set so we can both see the same playlist, sure. Whatever . But how many songs are on Spotify? Like thousands right?”
“More like multiple millions,” Max interjected.
“Okay fine millions of songs. And then they have millions of users likely listening at the same time, too. Just thinking about how mind-bogglingly giant their servers have to be!” she said, tapping away on her phone to find the streaming rate of Spotify songs.
“This article says Spotify songs stream at 2.4mb/minute,” Zoey continued. Max was looking at her with equal parts awe and aggravation written on his face. “Let’s say each song is roughly three minutes, so about 7.2mb per song you listen to. It obviously depends on how many songs each person listens to and how many songs there are actually in Spotify’s library, but if my quick math is right I’d bet they need at least 500 terabytes of storage space, and that’s not taking into account if they use any third party CDNs or if they back up drives in case multiple discs fail at the same time!”
“Zoey, you are literally the only person I know who cares more about Spotify’s storage system than the music held on said storage system. What should really be mind-boggling is that you probably don’t know a single song I added to the playlist,” Max whined, though Zoey could tell he was having fun.
“Hey! I’ve heard Africa,” Zoey defended. “Everyone’s heard Africa!"
“Everyone’s heard Thinking Out Loud and Don’t You (Forget About Me) too.”
“Oh, give it a rest Mr. Too Much Top 40s,” she said, referencing a comment he’d made offhand the day they met.
She didn’t think much of the comment until Max’s head immediately snapped up from his phone to her eyes. For a moment they just looked at each other, the air heavy between them suddenly. Zoey tried to figure out why the callback made him look at her like that, but suddenly his eyes were the only thing she could think about—all warm and deep and looking back at her like that .
Maybe he didn’t even remember saying it? Maybe he thought she was… making fun of him? Poking fun at each other was kind of their whole thing, though, and Zoey couldn’t remember a single time it had made his eyes bore into her with that much attentiveness… and affection ?
Max made the first move, jumping up from the couch. He seemed to deliberately step away from her and she tried not to admit, even to herself, how much she already missed his presence right beside her.
“Speaking of, I, uh, think we need a Top 40s dance break,” he said. He moved to the small bluetooth speaker she kept on one of her bookshelves and turned it on, connecting his phone.
Zoey won the speaker at some SPRQ Point event or another, and it had gone largely unused since. She kind of wanted it to stay that way.
“Max, you know I don’t dance.”
“Just look at the last title.”
Zoey glanced down at her phone which had locked from inactivity. The music started and Max turned it up as loud as the speaker could go—which was, honestly, not that loud at all. She unlocked her phone and opened the playlist to read ‘Shut Up and Dance’ as the singer’s voice rang out with the same words.
Max looked back at her and shouted the words along the next time the lead singer of WALK THE MOON repeated them, an easy smile returning to his face.
He started nodding his head to the beat, goofily dancing over to her as he sang. ♫ “We were victims of the night. The chemical, physical, kryptonite.” ♫ Max reached where Zoey was still sitting on the couch.
Zoey couldn’t remember hearing Max sing since that first orientation day, and she was glad to note she hadn’t built up in her head how great of a singer he really was.
“C’mon, Clarke,” he said quickly. “Shut up and dance with me.”
Her resolve was quickly crumbling as he continued singing.
♫ “Oh, we were bound to get together; bound to get together!” ♫
Apparently anticipating the next line, Max held out his arm for her before he sang out, ♫ “She took my arm. I don’t know how it happened… We took the floor and she said,” ♫
And Zoey couldn’t resist any longer. She did take his arm, and he bounced them back to the open center of her living room and started jumping around after nearly tripping on a pair of her shoes that were lying near the couch.
♫ “Oh don’t you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me. I said you’re holding back; she said shut up and dance with me. This woman is my destiny, she said ooohohoooohh, shut up and dance with me. ” ♫
Their dancing was more like flailing.
The two of them spun in circles in Zoey’s living room, trying and failing to dance to the beat together before settling on a sad combination of fist bumping and head nodding and clapping instead. Max’s singing turned to something more resembling shouting and Zoey’s breathing turned more sporadic as she laughed and jumped and tried to not care too much about her slightly off-pitch notes when she decided to sing along to the few words she remembered during the next chorus.
When they collapsed next to each other on the couch after the song ended, Zoey couldn’t find it in her to care about how ridiculous the situation was or how her neighbors had definitely heard their antics. Not when it had been so damn fun.
“Okay, you should definitely add more songs like that,” she said between breaths, and watched as Maxed added songs called She Looks So Perfect, Electric Love, Cheerleader, and Super Bass.
“Done and done,” Max smiled. “Next order of business—and this is a very important question, Zoey: what is your favorite Taylor Swift era?”
Zoey looked at him with a scrunched smile, and hoped the lack of answer gave him all he needed to know. When he just groaned in response, she knew it had.
“Fine, I’ll start you off neutral with something from Speak Now.”
Max and Zoey sat shoulder to shoulder for another thirty minutes, arguing about whether or not she should know songs that Max added to the playlist anyway. They were getting a little too cozy and enjoying each other’s company a little too much for how basic of a premise the idea of a shared playlist was. But for the first time she could remember, Zoey was excited to listen to music.
“Oh and on this perfect note, pun very much intended,” Max said as he tapped on his phone one last time before standing and sliding it back into his pocket. “It’s about that time. Goodnight, my friend.”
Zoey looked at the song that had popped onto the bottom line of the playlist: See You Again by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth. She bit back the disappointment she was almost certain was written all over her face as she got up to walk Max to the door.
Despite the affront she’d presented for most of the night, Zoey’d had fun watching Max get excited about the playlist he was making specifically for her.
“So, what? I just listen to these—” Zoey paused to count the songs on the playlist. “— twenty-three songs and I’m cured of my lack of pop culture knowledge?”
“Oh, no no no,” Max said with a devilish grin plastered across his face. He paused, putting his coat on before he looked back at her and said, “this is only part one. I expect you to have at least 5 of these songs memorized by next movie night! I’ll have your next lesson prepared for you then.”
Frankly, she wasn’t sure how she was going to survive more than one lesson.
Just imagining listening to the entire playlist was still slightly overwhelming despite there only being twenty-three songs. Zoey really didn’t understand how so many people could listen to so much music. The little she heard was already more than enough from her point of view. But the smile Max had on his face all night made her want to give it a try, so she agreed to doing her best and said goodnight.
After Zoey changed into her pajamas, she cocooned herself into her comforter and pressed play.
