Which means I could call and say I’m busy...I could mention I didn’t know he was here.He’d be fine with it—Timothy is fine with everything.Predictable.Safe in a beige-on-beige kind of way.Like a lukewarm mug of over-steeped tea served with orthopedic enthusiasm.Reliable enough, but where’s the high?Where’s the reckless urgency?The need?
Where’s the fuck-me-in-the-backroom kind of chemistry that leaves your voice wrecked, your legs shaky, and your mind blitzed for hours afterward?
Nowhere.Not with Timmy.
Okay, there’s a guy who makes my entire nervous system respond even when I want to claw his face off—but we are not going there.Roderick and I have been over for years.Years.
I sigh.Fingers hover over the keyboard, about to hit reply, craft some forgettable response—when the bell above the shop door jingles.
Shit.
“I’ll be out in a moment,” I shout, the words echoing off the quiet of the office.
I scramble, exiting out of the screen, and disconnect the internet as if I’ve been caught doing something private.Which I guess I have.
Cleo knows I talk to people online.She teases me about it sometimes—laughs that I’ll send lengthy messages about music and things I’m passionate about to faceless usernames but barely speak at parties.She doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t judge either.
But my conversations with DeadStrings that’s ...different.He feels different in a way I can’t explain.
Different in a way that feels cellular.
There’s a cadence to how he writes—how he talks about music—that seeps into my bloodstream.He perceives the world through melodies and minor chords the same way I do.He feels songs, digs into the lyrics as if they’re memoirs.He understands how a line from an old song can gut you worse than a breakup.
There’s a pulse between our messages I can’t ignore.Some weird, electric thread that hums when he replies.Sometimes, I check my messages before I brush my teeth.Before coffee.Before anything, in case he sent something after I went to bed.
And that’s what makes me feel like maybe I’m wrong.Wrong in that I’ve never felt this way with someone I’ve actually met kind of way.Okay.There’sRoderick Wilder—but he doesn’t count.Heshouldn’tcount.
Still, DeadStrings makes me want something I’ve never had—and I know if I get it, it’ll ruin me.
But maybe ...maybe I want to be ruined.
Is it wrong that maybe I want to be ruined?Maybe I’m tired of beige-colored glasses and playing it safe.I’m done being careful.Perhaps I want someone who walks into my world like Barret did—loud, reckless, and impossible to ignore.Someone who doesn’t check if I’m available first.Someone who just fucking wants me.
I stand, my heart jumping like it’s gotten ahead of me.For one wild second, I hope it’s him.
Not Timothy.
Not a customer.
Someone who doesn’t need an excuse to show up.Someone who’d fuck me against the wall and call it music.
The laugh that bubbles in my head borders on unhinged.It’s somewhere between hysteria and surrender when I see Roderick Wilder flipping through albums.This is a middle finger from the universe to my hopes of finding love anytime soon.
I’m going to turn fifty, still screwing Timothy every Friday out of guilt and inertia.
Ugh, my love life is pathetic.
“Sorry for making you wait,” I say, instead of something like, “Get the fuck out of here,” or ...“Can we just fuck in my office—you know, for old times’ sake?”I add, “Is there anything specific you’re looking for?”
Roderick glances up, his brow furrowing as if I’ve yanked him out of something private.Then he notices me.His face shifts.
Smiles.
That slow, dangerous curve of his mouth that once made me forget where I was and what my name was.
“I was wondering why Tilly sold this store to that chick I saw the other day.”
I narrow my eyes.“You’ve been here?”
