The eighth song on the playlist was “Synchronicity I” (not II) by The Police, a song I hated because it reminded me of a time Patrick and I were fighting. The year Patrick and I spent our first Christmas together in the same household, I bought him a beautiful gold Movado watch. I’d gotten a huge bonus at work and had been recently promoted to a marketing manager, so I had a nice sum of money to spend that year. Patrick had been wearing the same Seiko with a plain black leather band ever since I’d started seeing him, so I decided he needed something fancier that he wouldn’t have to wear every day, but that he could put on when we went out to dinner or for drinks with friends.
When I gave him the watch, I could tell right away that he hated it. His first question was, “How much did this co
