"Big Girls Don't Cry" • Fergie (by Adam Shaw)

My college girlfriend broke up with me using Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry." She said we were done and asked if we could go on a drive, so we slipped into her ‘94 Cavalier, apple red exterior, white leather seats our skin had sweat on, stuck to the summer before. She asked me to keep quiet, just listen, and she muttered I’m sorry, slipped the CD into the console. Her tears came before the first la da da da and mine came at the smell of your skin, and I licked my lips for a taste of her pomegranate chapstick that had long since disappeared. I ran my finger along the seam of the seat and tried to figure out if I’d made her laugh enough, smile enough, feel enough even though we both knew what this was, a tangle of limbs and shitty movies and cheap booze. She kept driving after the last la da da da and we didn’t speak, didn’t even sniffle, just watched as field upon empty field disappeared into the reds and oranges and yellows of the Indiana sunset, crops ready to grow again, block it all out the next time summer rolled around.

I don't know when it happened, but at some point I looked back on this and wondered why. Why the drive, why the song, why the silence. I asked my then girlfriend, now wife, if I could tell her something weird and described the situation. She laughed, cackled really, fell onto her side and pulled out her iPhone, turned it on. She sang the first la da da da and held a finger to my lips, only she couldn't keep it up because the laughs came back, full-bellied ones that sent tears to the corners of her eyes while Fergie sang about a child missing its blanket. I said it's weird, right? and she said fucking hilarious, kissed me and gave me a pat on the back while I fiddled with a loose string on my parents' couch. The song coagulated onto the skin of our relationship, a joke that remained present as we moved in with one another, adopted a dog, got married, left town. My wife slipped it into playlists, asked me to go on drives, put her hand on my shoulder if it came on in a store, smirked the moment it started.

My wife and I took our daughter to the grocery a couple months back. It was one of those rare days neither of us had to work, and school was closed on account of a holiday or something like one. We had errands to run, groceries to grab and winter clothes to stock up on, a trip to the arcade if my daughter behaved well. My wife remembered that she had a telehealth appointment with her oncologist while we perused Publix, so she asked if she could go to the car, if my daughter and I could finish off the list of things to grab. I told her we could and she left, and it started, a couple soft strums and la da da da and I stopped, waited to see if she'd turn the corner. When she didn't and Fergie got to I need some shelter I turned into the international foods aisle, wondered why. Why the drive, why the song, why the silence. Why the grocery, why on a Monday afternoon, why during the holiday season. Why the coalescence into the story of my marriage, my family.

My daughter patted me on the hand, snapped me out of it. I said yeah hon?, and she laughed. I said what's up? and she laughed again, said you're silly, and I thought, yeah, I probably am.

Adam Shaw's work has previously appeared in Pithead Chapel, Autofocus Literary, HAD, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife and daughter in Louisville, Kentucky, and can be found online at theshawspot.com.