“Don’t give me any ‘poor Liam’ shit. He knows what he did.”

I didn’t want to say I was surprised Brougham knew the members of One Direction, just because he was a straight guy. But a part of me did wonder if he got his base knowledge from Winona by any chance.

Brougham settled for Khalid. “I know, I know, I like top forty stuff,” I started. “But it’s good. Sue me.”

“Totally. Just because something’s popular doesn’t make it bad.”

I couldn’t help but look over at him at this, but he didn’t notice. He was too busy delving deeper into my playlists.

“You know, though,” he started, and as soon as I heard the tone of his voice I hit the steering wheel.

“Here it comes! I knew I was gonna get roasted!”

“What? I said I like your music.”

“So you weren’t going to get all indie and suggest something better?” I asked.

Brougham hesitated. “Kind of … sort of … ‘better’ is a strong word, though.”

“Hah, I’m sure.”

A Jeep took a break in the oncoming traffic to overtake us, followed closely by a sedan. Apparently I was the only person in California who followed the suggestion to drive slower in the rain. Even if the rain was getting lighter the farther away we drove, as far as I was concerned, that was no excuse for driving at the speed limit like a reckless hooligan. Mom’s words, not mine. She had a real thing about hooligans.

“No, I swear, your stuff is good! But before I was saying how fun it was to move here, because we get all of your media. And the thing is, we get all of yours and you get so little of ours, and honestly you’re missing out.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it is. Like, classic rock, for one. Have you ever heard of Midnight Oil or Cold Chisel? Jimmy Barnes?”

I shrugged. Honestly, I wasn’t that interested in what I was missing, but Brougham seemed passionate about this so I let him run with it.

“Jimmy wrote, like, Australia’s theme song,” he said, half to himself, while he started searching on Spotify.

Good-bye, Khalid. You were wonderful to drive to while you lasted.

As predicted, Khalid’s smooth tones were snatched away from me, and they were replaced with some eighties sounding piano chords. “Woah, that was a vibe change.” I grinned.

Brougham was unswayed. “‘Working Class Man,’” he said, like that was meant to mean something to me. “You’ve never heard this?”

“You know I haven’t—” I started, but the music picked up in pace and volume and Brougham began honest-to-god bopping in his seat to what seemed to be Australia’s take on Bruce Springsteen. I was so stunned my train of thought evaporated.