When he handed me the playlist, he smiled like he was giving me a piece of his soul. “Every song made me think of you,” he said, sliding his phone across the table. I pressed play, expecting love songs that would carry the weight of our story, our inside jokes, our late-night confessions. But by the third track, my stomach twisted. By the sixth, my hands shook. And by the tenth, I knew the truth: this playlist wasn’t for me. It was for her.
I’ve always loved music. It’s how I remember moments—what song was playing when we first kissed, what melody hummed through the car speakers when we fought and made up. He knew that about me. So when he said he made me a playlist, I thought it meant something. Proof of how well he knew me. But instead, it became proof of how little he did.
The first song that caught my attention was one I’d heard him humming weeks before, a soft ballad with lyrics about a girl with green eyes. I don’t have green eyes. I asked him about it back then, and he brushed it off, saying, “Just stuck in my head.” On the playlist, it was the first track.
The second was a song I’d never heard, but I remembered hearing him once mention it to his coworker on the phone. “It’s her favorite,” he’d said casually. At the time, I thought he meant some friend. But hearing it now, back-to-back with the ballad, my heart sank.
By the tenth song, the pattern was undeniable. They weren’t songs we shared. They weren’t tied to our moments. They were tied to hers.
I tried to ignore it at first. Maybe I was being paranoid. Maybe I was overthinking. But the human heart knows betrayal long before the brain wants to admit it. And mine knew.
That night, I asked him casually, “Why did you pick these songs?”
He smiled, brushing his hair back the way he does when he’s pleased with himself. “Because they remind me of us. Didn’t you listen to the lyrics?”
I stared at him, searching his face for a crack. “They don’t sound like us,” I said softly.
He laughed, leaning over to kiss my forehead. “You overanalyze everything.”
But later, lying in bed with my headphones on, I replayed the songs. Each one was a confession hidden in plain sight. Lyrics about a forbidden love, about someone who belonged to another, about stolen nights and whispered promises. And then came track fifteen, the one that broke me completely.
The song was titled with her name. Rachel.
My breath caught. My chest tightened so violently I ripped the headphones out as if they’d burned me. I stared at the ceiling in the dark, every lie he’d told me threading together into a noose.
The next day, I didn’t ask him about it. I didn’t need to. His playlist said more than he ever would. Instead, I watched him. The way his phone never left his hand. The way he smiled at messages he never showed me. The way his eyes glazed when I spoke, as if his mind was elsewhere—probably with her.
Two nights later, I made a choice. While he slept beside me, I slid out of bed and grabbed his phone. His password was my birthday, which felt like a cruel joke now. My hands trembled as I opened his music app. My throat closed when I saw the truth spelled out in the playlist’s description.
“For R. Always.”
Not for me. For her.
Every track, every lyric, every carefully curated moment of supposed intimacy wasn’t mine. It belonged to Rachel.
He stirred in his sleep, murmuring something, and I froze. Then, as if to twist the knife, I heard it again. Her name. Whispered. Tender.
I put the phone down. My chest was heavy, but my decision was clear. In the morning, I packed a bag.
When he woke, he blinked at me, confused. “Where are you going?”
I met his eyes, and for once, I didn’t feel the urge to cry. I felt steady. “To find someone who makes a playlist for me, not for her.”
He scrambled up, stammering excuses, swearing I was imagining things. But I didn’t need his words anymore. I had the music. And music doesn’t lie.
I walked out, headphones in, silence filling my ears. No songs. No playlists. Just me. For the first time in years, the silence didn’t feel empty. It felt like freedom.
Final Thought
We expect betrayal to come in shouts, slammed doors, or text messages at midnight. I never thought it would arrive in the form of love songs. But sometimes the cruelest betrayals hide behind the sweetest gestures. His playlist was never mine to begin with—it was hers. And in realizing that, I found my strength. Because I deserve a love that sings my name in every lyric, not one that plays me someone else’s song.
