“Sorry. I’m sorry,” I say for the tenth time.
His mouth is a straight line. “It’s fine. You don’t have to keep apologizing.”
“Right. Sorry.” I roll my eyes at myself and set another record on a shelf. I’m not sure why there’s no speaker system in the stockroom, but there’s no music back here, only the sounds of our breathing and the soft hiss as cardboard covers slide against each other. We could open the door to hear the music in the shop, but for some reason, neither of us has.
I glance over at the box he’s sorting through. My box is filled mostly with traditional country western music and Broadway soundtracks, but he has a whole stack of dusty Beatles records in his hand.
When he reaches down into the box again, my eyes catch a glimpse of a tattoo on the inside of his arm. I can tell that it’s words, can make out the cursive script, but I can’t read what it says while he’s moving. I grab a handful of records and walk to his other side, pretending to look through the stack while trying to read the words on his arm, which is easy to be subtle about thanks to the sunglasses. He stops moving momentarily, and I finally get a good look.
the things that we have right now are the best things that we’ve had yet
“Is that ‘Molly’?”
Oliver’s head comes up, and he turns toward the door, his brow furrowed. “Who’s Molly?” he asks.
I point at his tattoo, hidden again by the sleeve of his shirt. “On your arm. That’s ‘Molly,’ isn’t it?”
His head turns toward me, and I feel like he’s probably looking at me, even though I can’t tell, and the longer he stands there like that, the more nervous I become, until I’m on the verge of twitching. I was very clearly wrong about the tattoo. “I’m sorry. I must have read it wrong.”
“You know the Front Bottoms?”
I look up at him. He still wears that bewildered expression, and I’m almost not even sure he really asked the question.
But he waits. I shrug. I still have a stack of Brooks & Dunn albums in my hand. “Sure. I’m actually surprised you know it. ‘Molly’ was only on their first EP. I never hear anyone mention it.”
“It’s my favorite.” He says it almost like a question, and something about the tone of his voice, the way it seems to make the entire rest of him soften, makes me smile.
“Mine, too. I mean, it would be great if their band wasn’t named after the female genitalia, but, you know, what are ya gonna do, right?”
He’s still staring at me, and I know for sure this time, because he’s reached up and pushed his sunglasses onto his head, and then the door opens and Brooke sticks her head in.
“Amy, could you help me up front?”
I step around Oliver to get to Brooke, and just before I close the door, I shoot a look over my shoulder at Oliver, who’s still standing in the middle of the room, looking at me like I’m a completely different species.
OLIVER
I INADVERTENTLY WATCH Amy for the rest of my shift, even when Brooke moves me out to the floor with Morgan and I can only see Amy through the open stockroom door. I’m not trying to be skeevy, but I feel like I’m seeing her completely different now. It’s not just that she knows my favorite song by my favorite band, and well enough that she recognized an obscure line from it that I just happened to have tattooed on me.
I guess, more than anything, it’s this knowledge that I misjudged her, and somehow, she seems more like a stranger than she did before.
So, later, when she grabs her stuff from Brooke’s office and comes back out swinging her bag in that overly cheerful way that she does, with her heart-shaped sunglasses still on, even though it’s dark outside, I can’t seem to take my eyes off her.
“So, I guess I was just wondering what you thought about the idea?”
And then I realize that Morgan is talking to me, and that I have absolutely no idea what she said. I tear my eyes from Amy and look down at her. Morgan has been working here for almost a year, but I don’t know her very well. Mostly because I don’t know anyone very well.
“I’m sorry, what idea?”
Morgan, who’s going through the hold shelf to pull out anything that’s been sitting longer than the three-day limit, looks up at me, and I’m thankful when she doesn’t look annoyed that I wasn’t paying attention.
“Karaoke night. I’m thinking about pitching it to Brooke. Like, sing karaoke and get twenty percent off. We could do it next month. I totally have a karaoke machine.”
“Oh, uh.” The idea of having to listen to customers sing karaoke all night makes me want to gouge my eyes out. “Sure. I mean, if Brooke thinks it’s a good idea.” I send Brooke a telepathic message to convey how awful something like karaoke night would be for all of us, but especially for me.
My eyes slide back to the front door, and I realize that Amy is still standing there. In her blue jeans and her black coat and those heart-shaped sunglasses, she stands on the sidewalk right outside the shop, glowing just slightly red from the sign that hangs above the door.
But she’s not alone. She’s talking to someone.
She’s taken her sunglasses off now, and they dangle from her index finger as she angles her chin to look up at the guy she’s with. Is that her boyfriend? Amy is looking at him in this timid way, like she’s unsure of something as the guy speaks to her, his mouth moving quickly. But then she smiles down at the pavement, and the guy steps forward to put his hands on her shoulders.
“Do you think I should talk to her about it now?” I hear Morgan ask me this, but I can’t bring myself to look away from what’s going on outside the window.
“Oliver?”
“Yeah.” I turn to look down at Morgan. She’s not as short as Amy, but she’s shorter than I am by quite a few inches. “Sure. I think Brooke is mopping the bathroom. You could go talk to her about it.”
Morgan bites her lip and nods. She walks around me. Just when I think she’s gone, and I’ve turned my attention back to where Amy and that guy are still by the door, this time with his face low beside hers, maybe whispering something in her ear, I hear Morgan’s voice from behind me. “Maybe we can do a duet or something.”
For a second, I stare straight ahead, thinking maybe I heard her wrong. But then I look over my shoulder, and I see that Morgan is actually blushing, like she’s embarrassed that she said anything at all. She shrugs. “You know, we’ve been working together for a long time, but I don’t really hear you sing or anything.”
I blink at her. “I don’t sing.” Mostly because I find the idea of singing in front of people to be absolutely appalling, but also because I have a terrible singing voice.
She seems to think this is funny or cute or something because she winks at me. “Okay, Oliver.” That’s all she says, and then she smiles and turns away from me, vanishing in the direction of the back hallway, where the bathrooms are.
When I turn back around, Amy and the guy are gone.
AMY
I’M ON MY break Tuesday night, trying to fit in some calculus homework, when Oliver walks into the office and finds me at Brooke’s desk. It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say that Oliver hasn’t spoken to me since that night we worked together in the stockroom, but we definitely haven’t had any meaningful conversations since then, and as far as I can tell, he still hates me, our mutual love for the Front Bottoms aside.