Title: Release the Stars
Setting: Season 6. After "New Leads" and before "Happy Hour," when Andy and Erin have just started dating.
Summary: Without realizing it, Erin slowly helps Andy forget the past. One explanation of why Andy didn't tell Erin about Angela sooner.
Notes: All characters belong to NBC, Release the Stars belongs to Rufus Wainwright.
Andy Bernard had always loved music. He loved to sing. He loved to dance. But a deeper part of his passion came from how songs could basically act as time machines. Music became embedded in time, so whenever you heard a song from your past, you were immediately transported back to that time in your life.
Take ABBA, for instance. Andy had first heard them in college, though they had been around for years. When Andy first joined "Here Comes Treble," the group was going to put on an ABBA show. Wanting to impress them, Andy had bought a tape of ABBA's greatest hits and had listened to it over and over again. Now whenever he heard "Dancing Queen," Andy would remember belting the lyrics in his dorm room at Cornell, in preparation for rehearsal. He would remember being unfazed by the looks he would get in the hall from anyone who had heard him (and who couldn't hear him?), and how, even though "Here Comes Treble" had choreographed moves, when he was singing alone he had to move to his own beat.
Like the New Radicals would say in a few years, he had the music in him.
Andy loved college, loved "Here Comes Treble," so he loved that memory. The bummer was that type of mental time travel could work against you. For instance, when Andy first started courting Angela Martin a few years back, he had bought Rufus Wainwright's Release the Stars. Until that point he wasn't a follower of Wainwright, but he had read somewhere how the gay community positively responded to the music. So hoping to impress Oscar, Andy went out and bought the CD. Disappointingly, Oscar had never heard of Wainwright. But Andy found he actually enjoyed the music.
Because Release the Stars was regularly in his car's stereo going to and from work, that album became something of a soundtrack to the complicated few years that followed. So as much as he still liked Wainwright now, Andy couldn't listen to any track from Release the Stars anymore without it bringing back old feelings he'd just as soon forget.
Maybe it was part of the collateral damage, Andy rationalized. He knew that if you break up with someone, you inevitably lose certain other relationships. Wherever you stood with their family, their friends…that's all gone. You don't just lose one person; you lose their village. While Andy had lucked out and retained the same friends he had had before dating Angela, he figured maybe losing that particular album was part of the deal.
This is what Andy thought about on his way to pick up Erin Hannon for their first post-landfill-kiss date to the movies. The reason he was thinking about anything other than Erin was because he was cleaning out his car before he left, and found the CD jammed under the driver's side seat. Andy had forgotten it was there, but remembered the circumstances of why: he had come to work on January morning thinking everything was normal, anticipating finalizing some wedding details over his lunch break, and instead found out that Angela had been cheating on him with Dwight Schrute. He learned this important information from Michael Scott, through his boss's car window. While his co-workers watched from inside the building. Oh, and they were watching because everyone else in the office already knew about the affair. And Angela knew that everyone knew. She was standing right there with them.
Helluva way to start the new year.
Once Andy was done trying to run Dwight over with his car, he had become somewhat stoic and withdrawn for the rest of the day (admittedly, something he was not entirely known for). This attitude had continued until he got in his car to leave and the CD had clicked on. Through the speakers blared Wainwright's "Do I Disappoint You?" This was the same song from Release the Stars that Andy had been happily singing along to when he pulled into work a mere eight hours earlier. It sounded different now. He always thought the tune was so catchy, but now Andy wondered if maybe he had to notice how somber the lyrics actually were.
Sitting there alone in his car, Andy finally processed how much had changed in such a short time…except no, actually, that wasn't true. What Andy was realizing was that nothing was what it seemed. He had essentially been lied to for a year and a half by his girlfriend, and for a few weeks by the people he considered to be his friends. He was just now catching up to what everyone else already knew.
Andy had successfully completed anger management, and knew the breathing and visualization techniques to calm himself down. But they hadn't really gone into what he should do in the event that his feelings became justified. That class had been workplace anger management. They had taught him to control his feelings – to move through them rather than become overwhelmed. And that made sense for things like Jim's pranks and Michael's negligence. But for something like this…well, Andy felt a little fury was acceptable.
Screw the breathing techniques and positive visualizations. Andy punched the passenger seat and yelled. He grabbed the CD from the player, slammed it into the case, and threw it under his seat, out of his sight. He planned to destroy it in some sort of purging process when he got home, but because Poor Richards was on his way, he was late in returning. Also, his car had to stay behind for the night. And when he finally retrieved the Prius the next morning, his hangover kept him from remembering all of the ways he had planned to demolish the disc.
Now well over a year later, Release the Stars was in the passenger-side floorboard, its case cracked and dirty. When he got to Erin's, Andy planned to put it in the trunk and decide what to do with it after their date. No use ruining a perfectly good afternoon by having to revisit the past.
Andy pulled up to Erin's house ten minutes early. He meant to park the car and meet her at the door properly, but she was already waiting on the front porch. When she saw Andy's car pull in the driveway, she ran towards him, smiling from ear to ear. Andy completely forgot about the CD and grinned back – this one definitely didn't play games.
"Hey!" Erin chirped, getting into the car.
"Hi," Andy replied a little shyly. "You look beautiful."
"Thanks!" Somehow Erin's smile grew even wider. "Hey, the movie doesn't start for forty-five minutes – you wanna grab some ice cream real fast?"
"Yeah, I'd love to."
They weren't even out of the driveway before Erin saw the CD next to her feet. "Oooh, Rufus Wainwright," she said enthusiastically. "Who is he?"
Normally Andy would smile at Erin's obliviousness to pop-culture, but instead he quickly reached for the CD she held in her hand.
"Oh, that's nothing—that's just something I found—"
"Well, let's listen!" And before he could object, Erin had removed the CD from its cracked case and slid it into his player.
For the first time in over a year, Andy heard the opening to the first song – the song that had been playing the day he had had his last meltdown in the Dunder-Mifflin parking lot. The same day he had promised himself that when he got home he would not cry over what had happened. The same day he realized what you promise yourself and what you actually do are sometimes two different things.
In all honesty, the song had lost meaning months before their break-up, when he had played it for Angela (with the intent to sing along) and she had scowled in response before it was over.
"He's singing about sex, and violence, and smoking," Angela criticized bluntly. "You know I don't like any of that. Don't you have any better music?"
From that point on, it had been his private love song. He considered a song called "Do I Disappoint You?" to be a love song. In hindsight, Andy considered, that was probably a red flag.
Andy tried to fight back the memories, but as the song progressed, he could feel them washing over him, like some sort of malignant nostalgia. He didn't miss Angela—he could see now why they wouldn't have worked and was grateful they weren't together—but that didn't mean he wasn't still hurt by what happened. By how she treated him. It didn't mean he didn't remember how he had felt.
The stoplight ahead turned red, and Andy slowed the car. He was losing it – he had to get that music out of the air. He had to get ride of that CD, but first he had to tell Erin why. She deserved to know. Andy braced himself, and turned to her to speak. But Erin beat him to it.
"I really like this song, Andy!"
"That—great," Andy replied slowly. "Look, Erin, I—"
"I don't know exactly what he's singing about," she continued thoughtfully, "but when I picture it in my head, I think of it, like, when you have a bad day, and you think maybe you've let people down somehow. You don't even know if you have disappointed them, but you try to figure it out, and it seems like everything you come up with is what makes you 'you' in the first place. Like you disappoint them by just being 'you.' You know what I mean?"
Erin turned to look Andy in the eye, and her face fell as she misinterpreted his reticence. "You're not saying anything," she said softly. "It's stupid, right? That's not what the song's about."
Andy shook his head to clear his thoughts. "No," he whispered. "No, I don't. Erin, I think that's exactly what it's about."
He might as well have just told Erin she was a genius, because she broke into a big grin and squeezed his arm. "I really do like this music, Andy," she said happily. "Can we keep listening?"
Ahead of them, the light turned green. "Absolutely," Andy said with certainty as he took Erin's hand.
Driving along to the Baskin-Robbins, Andy marveled at the speed with which memory could change. Ten minutes ago, he never wanted to see that CD again. Never wanted to be reminded of Angela, of their past, of that final day of humiliation. Of how he could disappoint her by just being himself. But now the music had embedded itself into a new memory. The next time he heard that song alone (maybe later, on his drive home) he would think of Erin, smiling out the window, singing along to the bits of the chorus she had caught on to, her head swaying back and forth gently, the sun in her hair. Instead of the song representing how he felt about her, it represented how they felt about the world sometime. Together.
The past was slowly being buried. It was still there – it would always be there – but Andy wouldn't focus on it any more. Erin was more than his friend, more than the girl he harbored strong feelings for. She was like a bandage to his wound, only she didn't know it yet. Maybe one day he would tell her…just not today.
For now, he just wanted to enjoy the music again.