Page 4 of Resonance
“Nothing!” He blinked rapidly as I reached and mashed the button on the CD player to power it down. The store went quiet. The ghosts evaporated. Peace descended.
Owen’s gaze skittered over the player, then up to me. “Sorry, I know I shouldn’t have…”
“Where’d you find it?” Those were B-sides, and rare ones at that. Never mastered, never released.
And I knew where he’d found it.
“The Hoard… I mean the special collections room,” he backpedaled, and I had to bite back a grin. Guess that made me the dragon. My employees seemed to have the idea that I was blissfully unaware of half the shit that went on when I wasn’t around.
“And where’d you get the key?”
“Ru left it out.” When I started to frown, Owen corrected himself. “But under the counter, and he only ran down the street for coffee. Not, like, out where everyone could see or anything, and I put it in my pocket.” He patted his pocket, and then his face contorted with panic. As I watched, he dug his hand into his jeans, sighing with visible relief as he pulled out the set of keys and dangled it in front of me triumphantly. “So it’s safe.” He paused and licked his lips. “I’ve been here a pretty long time, shouldn’t that be okay? Haven’t I proven myself or whatever?”
I eyed him pensively and yeah, part of me was just having a little fun with him. He drove me up the wall about as much as I enjoyed his flighty ass. “The only thing you’ve proven is that you already thought you lost the key.”
“Nah, that was just me wanting to assure you I had it.”
“You have zero poker face, kid.”
He rolled his eyes—maybe at the truth or maybe because that I’d called him kid. Couldn’t help it, but I was working on it. More so lately since certain parts of my body had started having some stronger opinions about him. I wasn’t sure when the hell that had happened or why, but I wasn’t thrilled about it. Owen was a walking, talking caffeine buzz in a disco club, while I was a guy who’d prefer the peace and quiet of a funeral parlor.
And he was my employee. I reminded myself of that as those magnetic green eyes widened on me again and something in my chest tightened.
“I’ll put it back. I’m sorry.” His voice got quieter with the apology, and I shook my head. Messing with him was one thing, but making him actually feel bad was… well, I struggled with it, even when he legitimately screwed up—which was rare in the first place. He was a great employee. Customers loved him. There was just a lot of aura compacted into what I’d gauged to be a five-and-a-half-foot frame.
“I’m screwing with you. I’ll do it.” I held out my hand, caught the keys he tossed me, and then retrieved the CD from the disc changer, carefully placing it back into the jewel case I found next to it.
Owen tapped the plastic lightly after I closed it. “‘Lay Down Your Burden’ is really good. It’s a shame y’all never released some of these.”
The case squeaked from the pressure my fingers exerted on it as I picked it up. “No it’s not.”
The special collectionsroom was a fancy name for what was nothing more than a cinder-block storage room, but it was secure, and I’d installed a dehumidifier to fight Nashville’s oppressive humidity during the summer months.
I managed to avoid looking at the cramped handwriting on the white label until I navigated to the shelf where it resided along with a handful of other unreleased sessions. Then I gave myself a half minute. A half minute to look at those ballpoint letters and remember them on notebook pages. Hundreds of them, thousands maybe. Centered on the page or wrapped around mine. Bolstered up or under, or off to the side. A note, a comment, sometimes a stupid drawing.
Once it’d been my arm. Some afternoon on a date I couldn’t remember. A lazily swaying breeze. The bus parked to refuel, and the windows open for fresh air. We’d been on tour for weeks. The air smelled like exhaust fumes and gasoline and life. I’d been lying on the couch, one hand over my eyes. Sunlight pressed down on my chest like a warm hand, and as Ryder laughed and scrawled, the pen tickled against my skin, lifting goose bumps.
And after I’d filled in the rest of the verses, that particular song had topped the charts. Originally called “Lover on the Road,” released as “Love Her on the Road.”
A tired old ache rambled through me, looking for a foothold, but I wasn’t interested in hosting it for a pity party. I slotted the jewel case alongside the others that no one in a decade had expressed any interest in.
Then I went and shut myself in my office.
* * *
The scentof coffee preceded Ru as he drifted in a half hour later, extending a paper cup toward me as I eased back in my chair. “Plain like always.”
I accepted the cup with a nod of thanks, and Ru leaned against a file cabinet, his hair reckless and scattered, plaid shirt open over the T-shirt underneath. Rufus Merrill—Ru—was my best employee, and the way he was standing there, posture poised and patient, he wanted to talk. I prompted him with a slow sip of my coffee and a lift of my brows.
“You want me to go with you to the Knoxville closing? I can find someone to cover my gig at Howie’s. NBD. Can’t imagine anyone noticing.”
“NBD? Can’t even be bothered with the whole three words?”
“Maybe after coffee.” He grinned at my eye roll.
“Nah, it’s fine. Not much to oversee. The auction guy’s just gonna pick up everything in a big truck. The rest’ll go to recycle or refuse. Not gonna take but a few hours to get it squared away.”
The online outfit I’d sold most of the stock in the Knoxville shop to was set to arrive with trucks at 9:00 a.m. and cart it off to a warehouse somewhere. The rest, well, I couldn’t bear to toss it, so I’d had my remaining employee there, Aisha, do a social media blitz and put up a bunch of flyers for a yard sale. Most of it had sold the weekend prior for pennies. It was humbling. I’d been too loud and proud telling everyone I’d go down before my shops did. It turned out human willpower was a shitty match against the digital age and retail hotspots that seemed to shift every year.