I Want It That Way

I was working

All summer

At this computer retail store

Near the Everfast Mall

Doing all the basic stuff

Like putting price tags

On mousepads

And one day

This girl walks in

Never seen her before

And she walks right up to me

And says—

Hey, is it your birthday?

And, like

Crazy story

It was my birthday

And I had completely

Forgotten about it

I’m not even kidding

That summer was—

I was all over the place

Working at that store

And my uncle’s restaurant

And at the beach

Whenever I wasn’t

At either of those two places

This was when I thought

One day I would wind up

Being, like, some Hawaiian drifter

Or just some really Zen

Surfer guy or something

Time and birthdays

Just weren’t anything

I was too concerned with

Plus, my dad died

When he was twenty

And I was two

So I wasn’t really looking forward

To hitting the age he was

When he left me

But the girl

This, like, vision

Shows up

And asks me

If it’s my birthday

And I say—

Yeah

And right at that moment

The power goes off

Not just in the store

But, like, the whole block

The mall

Everything

And they have

Those back-up generators

But it didn’t matter

Because it was some

Transistor

Or some charger

Or something that, like

Is really hard to fix

And when it happens

The girl doesn’t even blink

She just looks at me

And goes—

You wanna get out of here?

We went to the beach

And made out in the sand

She told me a lot of stuff

But truthfully

I don’t remember any of it

And I feel like that’s okay

Because we never even exchanged names

I remember she had, like,

This little radio with her

Battery operated

And she had it next to her

While we were kissing

And talking

And it kept playing

‘I Want It That Way’

By the Backstreet Boys

And I hated the song

But I was like ‘Who cares?’

And by the time the sun set

I was in love with her

The song

And Brian Littrell

At one point

She got up

Took off her shorts

And her shirt
And walked right into the ocean

I was going to follow her

But then I laid back

And closed my eyes

And when I woke up

I was in my bedroom

With the alarm going off

Letting me know

I was ten minutes late

For work

I never went in that day

And I told my uncle

My dishwashing days

Were over

Hitchhiked my way

From the east coast

To the west

And when I got there

I…

Became the store manager

At a Pottery Barn

Sorry, that probably

Wasn’t the ending

You were expecting

To be fair

It wasn’t the ending

I was expecting either

There were a lot of zigs and zags

In between making it to LA

And Pottery Barn

But none of those are as interesting

As sitting on a beach

With a girl who might have been a ghost

Listening to the Backstreet Boys

And thinking—

Well, not thinking

Knowing

That life just wasn’t

Going to get

Any better

Than that