The Big Rewind by Libby Cudmore

Mark’s. But a pashmina, I realized as I walked out the door, is really just a security blanket adults can wear.
    At Bouquet Liquors I picked out an eleven-dollar Riesling with a funky label. That was how Catch and I had always picked out wine. I hadn’t had a Riesling since we’d broken up, and it seemed so long ago, I couldn’t remember if it was a deliberate act of casting him off or just changing taste. It left me with two buckscash and less than a hundred in my checking with student loan payment due soon. I was going to have to get work—real, full days of work, not just three-hour washerwoman duties—soon.
    Josie lived in a studio apartment in Brooklyn Heights above one of those boutiques that carries only four items, none of which are in your size. She’d painted each wall a different color: green around the kitchenette, blue behind the futon—which had striped sheets on it—bright red behind the record cabinet and bookshelves, and purple in the bathroom.
    â€œI like your scarf,” she said after hugging me at the door. Today, hers was blue, worn over an untucked black blouse so sheer it looked like it was made of spiderwebs and dreams.
    She already had our two plates waiting on the table, plated effortlessly with frilly-toothpick meatballs, caprese salad, and tiny egg rolls. “These were just the prewedding appetizers,” she said, pouring the wine into Pokémon juice glasses. I got Meowth; she had Togepi. “I must have made twenty different tapas plates, and bridezilla had the nerve to bitch that my quiche cups didn’t look exactly like the ones on her Pinterest board. By the end, I wanted to dump a tray of chicken satay on her head. But eat up, there’s plenty more. I know I’m supposed to get rid of it after the event, but that just seems so wasteful for such good food.”
    â€œI won’t sue if I get food poisoning,” I joked. I hadn’t eaten since the scrambled eggs and toast I made for breakfast, and I was so hungry it was taking everything I had not to just dump the entire plate into my face, frilly toothpicks and all.
    She held up her glass for a toast. “To KitKat,” she said.
    â€œTo KitKat,” I repeated, clinking my cup against hers. I tasted Catch in the first sip. His hands, his eyes, his laugh all washed over my palate. Memory linked this bottle with the last one we’d shared, watching Pacific Heights on VHS while the entire city was shut down with snow, his arms around me, wine-fragrant breath warm on my cheek. But now I wanted to spit him out, wash him away with Listerine, bleach him out of my brain and blood andheart forever. Instead, I crammed a meatball into my mouth and tried not to cry.
    â€œSo let’s get to this tape,” Josie said, taking a sip of her own drink. “I’m excited—when was the last time you got a real physical mix someone actually made?”
    â€œI can’t even remember,” I said, handing her the cassette. That was a lie. I remembered the moment perfectly, the same way I remembered every moment with Catch. He had come to pick me up for a movie, and while I fretted with my earrings, he’d reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and produced She Doesn’t Think My Tractor’s Sexy Anymore: Live’s “All Over You”; Garbage’s “The World Is Not Enough”; Bryan Adams and Sting and Rod Stewart, “All for Love,” because at his core, Catch was an utter cornball. I’d kissed him quick and played that CD until it skipped on Nightwish’s “She Is My Sin.”
    â€œI’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss those days,” Josie said. “Finding that tape in your locker, playing it over and over, trying to figure out what he was trying to say. Tapping a playlist off some guy’s iPhone just isn’t the same, you know? How the hell else are we supposed to know what love is, from a