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Not just Dean, but the work itself, and the music. The music from the eighties was so much better than in my own time. What had happened to all the rock stars?

There was something satisfying about knowing where things belonged and being useful without anyone admiring my dress, asking if I was excited about moving to Cleveland, or reminding me what a catch he was.

Here, nobody cared whether I knew which fork to use first.

They only cared whether I could find a used copy of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road in under thirty seconds.

I could, which felt better than it probably should have.

The bell rang again, and two teenage girls came in whispering to each other. One had braces and a Madonna-style lace bow tied around her ponytail, while the other wore three rubber bracelets on one wrist and a sweatshirt sliding off one shoulder despite the heat.

They made a slow circuit of the store before approaching me.

“Do you have any Prince?” the girl with braces asked.

I looked toward the Purple Rain display, which occupied an entire section near the front window.

“A little.”

Her friend snorted. They bought the cassette, then stood beside the register debating whether one of their mothers would object to the cover.

“Yes,” I said.

Both girls looked at me, heads tilted like exotic birds.

“Yes, your mothers will object.”

“Do you think they’ll take it away?”

“If they find it, yes.” I plucked a Carly Simon cassette from the used bin. “Hide it in here.”

Dean grinned and gave me a thumbs up.

After the girls left, I went back to pricing cassettes while Prince played through the speakers.

Dean had changed out of the dark T-shirt he’d spilled a Coke on and now wore a gray one. His hair was longer than I remembered, dark and thick enough that it kept falling over his forehead whenever he bent to sort records, and every few minutes he shoved it back without seeming aware he was doing it.

At fifty, I’d remembered Dean mostly in pieces.

His hands and smile, the way he listened when someone spoke, as if he had nowhere else to be. And the look on his face that night at the club.

Being around him again was filling in the rest. The small scar near his chin and the faint crease that appeared beside one eye when he laughed. The way he scratched Otis behind his torn ear whenever he walked past, whether the dog was awake or not.

Memory had kept the parts that hurt. Reality was giving me everything else.

“You’re doing it again,” Dean said.

I blinked. “Doing what?”

“Looking at me like you haven’t seen me in years.”

“I wasn’t.” My heart beat faster, but I knew even if I tried, the words wouldn’t come out. I couldn’t tell him the truth, no matter how much I wanted to.

He slid another album into the bin and glanced toward me as I smiled and looked down at the price stickers before he could see how warm my face had become.

A few minutes before ten, the last customer left with a used copy of Synchronicity tucked under one arm, and Dean crossed the store to flip the sign from OPEN to CLOSED.

The moment the lock turned, something changed. Nothing dramatic happened. The fluorescent lights still buzzed overhead. The fans kept rattling. Otis remained asleep beside the counter with one paw twitching in a dream. But now, it was just the two of us.