For the longest time

VI

I didn't know where we were going, I literally had never been to NYC until the previous Thursday and sitting down next to Ed Sheeran in the subway was definitely something that wasn't on the tourist pack.

"Where are you from?"

We were alone in the wagon, which I guess was some kind of privacy, and it felt nice. I rubbed my hands together, warming them up and turned to him. "Chicago, originally," I told him. "I grew up there and then went to college in Indiana. And now I'm here."

He smiled at me, keeping his face hidden from the automatic door that was opening at the station. "Did you finish your studies? You look a bit young to be out of college. How old are ya?" It was really funny, the whole situation, I couldn't help but laugh a little. He looked up at me, his elbows rested on both his knees and his face was inching forward, but looking for mine. "What?" he asked. 

"Nothing," I smiled. "It's just weird." The whole co-existing thing had been a silly plan, but now that we were trying to put it in motion, I felt ridiculous. But I figured that it was better to feel ridiculous and laugh about it than just being constantly upset. "Okay, so you might say that because my face is lying," I grinned, "I know I look a lot younger than I am. I'm 22. And no, I didn't finish it. I was a Creative Writing major. And now I'm not. And I'm broke. And I'm riding on the train with a guy with hair so bright and accent so thick I still can't believe nobody's tried to corner you somewhere and ask for a selfie."

Ed laughed with me. I loved his laugh. His eyes would crinkle at the edge of them and his almost-blond eyebrows went up a little. The magic trick, he did it again. From cold-tired almost grey eyes, the most beautiful and bright blue emerged. He shook his head, laughing it off and we heard the next station being announced.

"Let's get out here," he stood up and extended his hand for me to grab. I hesitated, looked at his calloused fingers and the rough edges of his palm. The train warned us to get off and so I didn't grab his hand and stepped out of the wagon after him.

"Where are we?"

"Dunno," he shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't understand what they said."

There was no one else on the platform and we just laughed. "I'm hungry," I announced. "Do you want to go get pizza? Or fries?"

We ended up in a diner in the middle of Williamsburgh. We sat as far away as possible from the entrance, in the same booth, and ordered three large portions of fries, a chocolate milkshake and a coffee for me. It wasn't really crowded, the place. And our waiter looked too stoned to even recognize anything. 

"It was a good show," I told Ed once our food was in front of us. I took a fry and dipped it in mayo. He did the same, but with ketchup.

"I fucking love ketchup. Did you think so, really?"

I nodded. "But, why does it matter if I liked it? I'm just one person and there were at least... I don't know, I'm bad at counting more than forty people," Ed laughed, "besides, hasn't your record, like, gone platinum?"

Ed blushed and laughed weakly, his mouth full of fries. He took a sip from his milkshake and swallowed the whole thing. He looked like a real person, not someone I'd only seen on Youtube videos. "Yeah, alright, time for the live-action sketch." He cleaned his hands and wiped some ketchup off his chin with paper napkins and started rearranging the items on the table. "This," he took the mayo bottle and placed it on the left corner of the table, right next to me, "this is you, cos you love mayo, right?" I nodded. "And this is me," he positioned the ketchup bottle next to him. "This," he pushed the plate of fries at the end of the table, "is the stage, the interviews, the whole... it's all the work that has nothing to do with my music. The managing part of the label, the press conferences, the logic of it all, yeah?" I nodded once again, watching his clear-mapped concept. "And this, this is my music," he said, placing his milkshake right between us. 

"You see, I'm over here, with my fucking brilliant Heinz logo and I'm looking at my music, almost over-analyzing it, d'ya know what I mean? And there's you, you with your pale skin and dirty blonde hair and you're mayo and you're there and you listen to everything the milkshake is, right? No, wait, that's wrong," he mumbled the last words and took the mug of coffee from my hands and put it in front of the mayo. "Okay, you're way over there, Mayo. And this mug of coffee is people. People in general, alright? I want to give this milkshake to you, to all of you, to the coffee and the mayo. But, oh wait," he took a fry and dipped it in the milkshake, "all the corporate shit has dipped their fucking opinions in my music, in my milkshake. And what the people get, they get a version of my music that's not completely raw. Now okay, I'm not going to say that my own songs without any help are fucking Bohemian Rhapsody because I may be cocky but I'm not a prick." He brought the dipped-in-milkshake fry to his lips and ate it. "And I just have to accept the fact that this version of me is not entirely me, d'ya know what I mean? And in between this whole process, the milkshake is not entirely mine, but the fries tell the coffee that it's completely mine and I just keep eating milkshake-dipped fries to maybe figure out what's happening. Cos whatever that shit is, it's not me. And I'm not sure what the ketchup is anymore," he sighed, holding the bottle of Heinz in his hands. I looked at him but I didn't say anything, something about his look told me he wasn't done with his unexpected presentation. "But, somehow, this," he smiled softly and grabbed the mayo, "this mayo noticed something. Something off about the whole show. Because she saw me onstage and off-stage. And you, Erin, I don't know what you thought or what you think of me, maybe I'm just making all this shit up, but I have a feeling that you feel the same way. That you have no idea what the fuck's happening anymore."

He stayed quiet, looking down at the bottles of mayo and ketchup and dipping fries in his milkshake and then eating them.

I took a sip of my coffee, the coffee that was not the people anymore, and I looked at his face. So hyper one moment so passive the next. He was right, I could relate to him. I didn't know who the fuck I was either.

"You got me," I finally said.

"Uh?" he looked up at me, a bit confused.

"You got me perfectly with your mayo reference," we both chuckled softly, "and I think you know yourself better than that bottle of Heinz. I think sometimes you forget that and compromise because you don't want to disappoint people. Or, you know, my coffee."

Ed looked up at me, he'd been hunching over the table for a while now, and he smiled, biting his lip, "I do know shit loads of Heinz facts."