Ari and Zac

Chapter 16: Pillowtalk

Chapter 16: Pillowtalk

Ari snuggled her head into the hollow of Zac's shoulder, closing her eyes contentedly. She inhaled deeply, pulling in a lungful of the warm night air. The scent of it relaxed her: a mixture of ocean and salty seaweed, and the now-familiar odor of Zac's sunscreen that seemed to permeate all his clothes.

It blew her mind to think how comfortable she'd become with him. It had only been a week since she and Zac first laid eyes on each other. Now she was falling asleep beside him, on a beach blanket beneath the pier. And she felt perfectly at ease about it. That was the most mind-blowing thing of all. She felt like she had known him far longer than a week. In her entire life, she'd never felt this comfortable with anyone outside of her family—and certainly not this fast.

She could hear his voice in her ear, singing soft and slow under his breath. Her lips curved into a smile at the sound. He was always doing that. Always singing. In her whole life, she'd never met anyone who loved the sound of his own voice as much as Zac.

She recognized the song in some long-forgotten corner of her mind, but she couldn't quite dredge up the title or the name of the artist who used to sing it. Was that one of the old Justin Bieber songs, maybe? Ed Sheeran? No, that didn't seem right.

For the most part, she found Zac's taste in music completely baffling. Who even listened to that stuff anymore? Certainly nobody their own age. Maybe there were a few old people around who still used iTunes and hadn't yet caught on to the SirenSong technology, but even they were few and far between. Once someone caught a whiff of SirenSong, they were pretty much hooked for life, and none of the old music even entered their thoughts afterward.

Ari knew well enough how Zac felt about the whole topic of SirenSong though. All she had to do was mention it, and he would go off on one of his long tirades. How it was evil... How it was ruining the world, reprogramming people's brains...

She'd never really given it much thought before she met him, but some of the stuff he said made sense. It was weird the way he could sing a song that was super-popular back in the years before SirenSong came out, and it would only sound vaguely familiar to her now. It wasn't always like that. In the old days, she used to have all the hit songs committed to memory, whether she liked them or not. Songs used to get stuck in her head—even annoying songs that she wished she could forget. How long had it been since that happened to her? How long since she even heard someone use that expression? I have a song stuck in my head. No one ever said that anymore.

Not since SirenSong.

It was almost like someone had waved a magnet next to her brain and wiped the memory clean. All those songs, deleted. Irretrievably lost, no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on remembering them.

Just then, Zac stopped singing halfway through the song. Ari must have moved in his arms. His voice broke off suddenly, and she felt him move his head to look down at her.

"Ari," he whispered, his breath ruffling her hair. "Are you asleep?"

She shook her head, and she pulled out her phone to reply to him.

Ari: No, just listening. What song was that?

He snorted. "Seriously?"

She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows.

"You know this song. I guarantee there is some part of your brain that remembers this one. Think!"

She shook her head as she texted back to him.

Ari: I know, I know, it sounds really familiar. It's like, right on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite place it...

He groaned and tilted back his head, looking up at the wooden slats above them. "Unbelievable," he muttered.