Page 44 of For the Record

Adam paused his raging questions such as give me names, and it was almost like you could hear the cogs in his brain moving, realizing what today meant.

“He’s not keeping it, is he?” The disappointment in his voice matched what I felt in my bones.

“It’s stupid.” I sniffled, all snotty and weepy. “It’s just a store.”

“Not to you.”

Gah, this man. It was going to hurt far, far worse when I eventually lost him.

My head drooped as I pulled my knees close to my seat, trying to ignore the dig of the seatbelt into my thighs. Maybe I was overdramatic. I’d always had pretty big feelings when it came to the things I was closest to. I’d seen my sensitivity as a flaw until I realized it was what made me me. So maybe to some people, this would be a ridiculous thing to cry over, but Adam was right. This loss didn’t feel stupid or dramatic. It dug deep, like a blunt knife in my gut swirling around.

Adam let me cry for a moment before asking, “Can I…help?”

But what could he even do? If anyone was going to convince Art not to sell, it would be me, and I’d fallen flat in an instant. No one we knew was a billionaire who could drop that kind of money spontaneously.

I sniffed. “You can’t help. No one can help. All I can do is drown in my misery with Billy Joel and ice cream.”

And that was exactly what I planned to do. I had an in case of emergency Ben and Jerry’s sitting in my freezer calling my name. Time to put a record on and wash away my sorrows on my living room floor with a pint of cookie dough ice cream.

“Are you headed home now?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to—”

“I’ll see you in thirty.”

A snort left me. My chest was already feeling lighter. “You do have magical hands, Adam, but I don’t think that would help right now.”

Lies. It would help. Well, temporarily.

I was pretty sure he mumbled something along the lines of “little perv” before speaking clearly. “I just meant to be there like…”

“As a bestie?”

“Please don’t say it like that.”

I smiled to myself and peeled out of the parking lot. “You’ll catch on to it soon, I promise.”

By the time I got home, Adam was already there, leaning against my doorway with his broad shoulders taking up a majority of the frame. He wore that gray shirt with his nephews’ soccer logo on it that I loved so much. It was cute how he never really said out loud how much he cared for them but showed it in tiny actions like that. Well, between that and him tattooing their names in their baby handwriting across his bicep.

I pulled out my keys and twirled them between my fingers, trying desperately to not look like a part of me was crumbling, but there was no point, really. The way that Adam’s shoulders dropped, how he sent me this sympathetic scowl, showed that he knew exactly what I was feeling.

Adam lifted one arm up and jerked his chin at me. Like I was going to pass up on that offer. I took long strides to reach him, then dipped under his arm and cuddled into his chest as he reached for my keys to unlock the door. With his arm around me, we walked into my apartment. His hold on me felt like it was the only thing holding me up, and maybe it was.

“Do you want to explain it all?” he asked when we got settled on the couch, my feet in his lap and an ice cream pint in mine.

“He’s going to list it at the end of the year. Arthur said he would try to convince the new owners to keep me on, but chances aren’t likely since they’ll probably want to bring more modern stores to match the rest of downtown.” I took my fancy spoon, one that was pretty small and had floral details on it—I saved it for special occasions—and dug into my pint. “But isn’t that the art of that place? The fact that it’s not like anywhere else? That you step in there and it’s as if you took a trip back in time? It’s incredible. I mean, to take that and toss it all away to sell fifteen-dollar cups of coffee makes me sick.”

Adam’s hand landed on my ankle, his thumb gently rubbing back and forth over my skin, heating me from the outside in. “Have you looked at working at another record store?”

I could. Philly was big. There had to be another place that would hire me with my experience but…

“No.” I forced my focus onto the ice cream in my lap. “It has to be that one.”

He fell silent for a moment. The only sounds were my spoon scraping the paper container and his thumb still rubbing against my ankle, sometimes giving it a light squeeze.

“Why?”

My heart began racing, my pulse picking up speed under my skin. Telling Adam why I had to work there would leave me bare, raw, open to any hits I might take when he left. Even Layla didn’t know, or my dad, technically, since he couldn’t remember.