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“I was never part of the plan,” he said.
“No, you very much weren’t. I regret a lot about us, but not that we happened.”
“That’s something.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and chuckled. “I feel like I’m in a movie with this fucking song playing in the background.”
That made me smile. I held my hands up like a camera. “Two former lovers meet on a bench, the pain of their past sitting between them. Cue poignant rendition of ‘Yesterday.’”
Jude laughed harder. “We’re not even stuck in a good movie. Might be a cheesy, made-for-cable-TV drama.”
“No, not cable TV. They couldn’t afford the rights to use this song. Maybe Netflix.”
“Look at you.” He gave a slow shake of his head. “Music manager until the bitter end.”
“I don’t deny it.” I hit his leg with the top of my hand. “Did you know Michael Jackson bought the rights to a lot of the Beatles music for a little less than fifty-million dollars? And then, a decade later, he sold half the rights for more than double the money?”
“I’d heard something about that.”
Before this conversation devolved into a lecture about recording artists retaining the rights to their music, I wiped my hands on my legs and stood, my carryout coffee in one hand and a bag of our trash in the other.
“Let’s walk. There’s so much more you need to see,” I said.
We went slow, wandering into galleries and peering into shops. We stopped for a while at the window of a design studio, watching a young woman sew brightly colored fabric.
Moving on, we walked for a bit before Jude grabbed my shoulder. “What the fuck is going on in this store?”
Laughing, I peered through the window in front of us. The pedestrian lights in Berlin were adorable. Instead of the boring, plain white walking men we had in the U.S., they had a short, green man wearing a hat, and this store was full of little green man merchandise.
“Let’s go in. I need to buy Nina a postcard. She’ll be completely confused to receive a card from this place in the mail.”
I’d seen this store several times before, but seeing it with Jude made it all brand new. He was astounded there were so many different things with the green man on them. He kept picking things up, shaking his head, and setting them back down.
He held up a towel and shook it at me. “Really? I’m gonna dry my face with the traffic guy?”
I laughed, snatching it from him. “I’m buying this for you. You need a traffic guy towel in your life.”
Jude picked up a little green man blanket. “You need this, Stripes. You can snuggle up with it and remember our weird as hell day together.”
“While playing Beatles music in German.”
He gave a sharp nod. “Obviously.”
After buying a few things neither of us needed, we strolled through courtyards full of metal sculptures and works from outsider artists. Jude stopped to consider each piece, and I took sneaky pictures of his profile. Probably to send to Nina, but possibly to keep for myself.
“You can take a picture of me straight on,” he said without looking up from the placard he read.
“Oh, did you think I was taking a picture of you?” He glanced up, and I blinked innocently at him. “I was taking a selfie”
He cocked his head, huffing through his nostrils. “I don’t believe you.”
“Do youwantme to take a picture of you?”
“Do youwanta picture of me?”
Annoyed, I tucked my phone in my back pocket. “This is silly.”
Jude stepped closer, holding his hand out. “Let me see it.”
I took a step back, scuffing my heels against the facade of the old building behind me. “You’re not getting my phone.”
