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Onyx
When the memories are gone, it’s not home anymore.
Beck said that.
Okay, not quite, but I was taking creative license with the lyrics to Walking Light.
My record store might look like it was full of memories. Over the years I’d turned it into the kind of haven that made most music fans wet-and-or-hard, including me. From the signed album covers and photos with bands, to the collections of vinyl and 8-tracks that rivaled any collector.
The front door swung open, and Alys and Maddox walked in. My best friends. The memories I’d been losing for years, as they drifted away into their own lives.
And now it was time for me to move on and make new ones.
Not that I wouldn’t miss them—I would. But I already did, and it was easier to do so from another state than knowing they were only an hour away. It was too hard to see this place every day, this store that had as much of their influence in it as mine, without them in it on a regular basis.
Not that they knew any of this, and for now I shoved the mopey thoughts aside. They were here, and it was likely they would be a lot over the next couple of weeks, so I was going to enjoy our last hurrah together.
A tiny smirk played on Alys’s full, always kissable lips. A familiar look that said she was pleased with what was about to happen, and she was trying not to let that show. She tossed her hair—which was currently Hello Kitty Pink—with a flourish. “Excuse me, good sir.” Her accent was posh, loosely British, and bad. “I would like a selection of your finest mew-zik.”
Maddox pointed at the wall behind me. “I think we’re in the wrong place. It looks like all they sell here are dinner plates.”
I assumed he meant the records and CD’s. Smart ass.
He was a couple of inches taller than me, where Alys was four or five inches shorter. Maddox’s jet black hair was naturally that color, and mine was intentionally dyed a similar shade. Not because of him, but to keep up the appearance that I was the grumpy goth music store owner.
“They’re not dinner plates.” Alys’s huff was exaggerated. “They’re what people used to put music on.”
Maddox frowned. “Like… to eat?”
“How do you eat music?” Had I seen that in some long lost Bakshi cartoon? Like, animated fairies with their dicks and tits hanging out sampling the local ‘shrooms and supping on a fine meal of hallucination, heavy metal, and sex?
Maddox fixed me with a look of pure frustration. “I don’t know how it’s done. I was promised food, and we came here, which has dinner plates on the walls. If you’re the proprietor of this establishment, you should explain how it works.”
He was six years younger than my thirty-nine, and had a brother older than me. Alys fell between us age-wise and had been coming in here since the first summer after she started college.
Neither of them was confused about what was going on here, but whatever inspired them to act like this today, it was a fun distraction. “Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, our tribal elders entertained themselves with these fine specimens of history.” I gestured broadly at the room.
The way Maddox wrinkled his nose was adorable. He was the kind of creatively carefree and gorgeous that would’ve earned him patron after patron four hundred years ago. “By eating them? Dinosaurs weren’t alive when people were.”
“Don’t listen to his logic. He’s just hungry.” Alys playfully slapped Maddox’s arm. “The entire drive up here, he talked about how he was getting everything on his burger. Or his pizza. Or a burger on his pizza.”
“Oh.” Maddox’s eyes grew wide. “The things on the wall are pizza stones, right? The shiny ones are personal sized? Wait. Tiny pizzas… This is a library.”
All hail the king of tangents.
“Do you see any books?” I asked with authority.
Alys cleared her throat and pointed to the section where I kept books on CD.
“You win. You both win.” I shook my head in amused disbelief.
Maddox grinned. “Yay. Senpai noticed me.”
Fuck I’d missed them. “Did you feed the kid sugar on the way up here?” I asked Alys.
“I didn’t. I like my fingers intact.”
