20. Kiss of Silence
T he water is like glass this morning, and I hate it.
It is still and unbothered. The skimmer pole slices through the surface, ripples folding over each other before settling again.
I’m not even sure there’s anything to scoop—a leaf or small beetle, perhaps.
It doesn’t matter. I need the motion. I need to feel that something’s moving or changing.
The sun’s already burning. My shirt clings to me in the worst places—lower back, underarms, the band where my cap meets my forehead. I don’t bother adjusting it. Let it sting.
Kevin hasn’t called.
Thursday night is starting to feel like a dream I keep trying to hold under my tongue, sharp at the edges and dissolving too quickly. But it’s Monday now. It has been a long weekend with even longer silence. There has been no call, no word from him.
Probably busy, I tell myself. Kevin has work and classes, homework and projects, and exams to study for.
He’s got Josh to spend time with. Maybe he lost Naomi’s number and couldn’t call during the weekend.
Maybe he called the shop, and I missed it.
Maybe he tried, but it was the weekend. Perhaps he’s not allowed to use the phone like a normal person.
But the truth presses in harder than the heat. Kevin’s not calling. Not yet. Maybe not at all .
I rinse down the stone decking and check the filter.
I pretend not to care. But all I can think of is the waiting, like last time, after our swim at Emory.
It was five agonizing days before I heard from him, yet he eventually called.
He invited me to the film festival—we laughed, we touched, and at the end of the evening, we kissed.
After four years, we kissed again. And now I’m clinging to Thursday night like it meant something.
Like it meant everything. Like it still might.
But what does a kiss mean when nothing follows it?
~
Naomi is sitting on the front steps of our apartment building when I park in the street in front of it. Her braids are loose, one end fraying down the side of her shoulder like she did it in a hurry. She’s holding a glass of something bright and fizzy, condensation dripping down the sides.
“You look like someone spit in your cereal,” she says before I’m fully out of the car.
I force a grin. “Just tired.”
“Sure,” she says, unconvinced. “Tired’s when your eyes are puffy and you smell like shampoo. You look like you just lost a bet with God.”
The car door shuts harder than I intended. “It’s a Monday. Mondays suck.”
Naomi hums. “Sure. But yours looks like it came with a dash of existential dread.” She sips her drink, eyes still on me.
“Stop stealing big words from your clients,” I say as I walk up the steps. “Speaking of which, why aren’t you inside working? ”
“I needed a break and some fresh air.”
“So you’re not out here simply to ambush me for something?”
Naomi chuckles, takes another sip of her fizzy drink, and offers it to me as I sit on the step beside her.
“Wanna hang later?” she asks. “We can watch Tootsie again and cry about your love life while pretending it’s a comedy. Or how about Endless Love, and discuss your inability to process red flags?
Smirking, I wonder how long she’s been sitting out here cooking up movie titles to throw at me. “My love life is fine. I’m fine,” I reply.
“You’re not fine ,” she says. “You’re buzzing. And not in a good way.”
“I’ll let you know about hanging out,” I say, standing to enter the building’s door.
Behind me, she calls out, “That means no, which is fine. But stop pretending I can’t tell the difference.”
~
B-Side is quiet when I arrive, the warm light filtering through the windows casting long shadows across the bins.
I head straight for the familiar shelves.
Jazz first. Then Bowie. The Cars. My fingers move more than my mind does.
It’s not about finding anything specific.
It’s more about the rhythm of flipping through jacket covers, pretending that one of them might unlock the next step forward.
When Mateo arrives ten minutes later, he’s still in his diner work clothes: sleeves rolled, collar open, sunglasses pushed up into the waves of his dark hair.
He must have worked a double today, serving breakfast and lunch with cleanup in between.
He sees me but doesn’t come over to greet me, walking in like we planned to run into each other accidentally.
He heads straight for the disco and funk section and pulls out a Donna Summer album, holding it by the edge like it’s a mirror. He returns it and draws out Controversy by Prince, giving it a little shake like he’s deciding whether to commit.
“You’ve reorganized that section three times,” he says, still not looking up.
“How do you know? You just walked in,” I answer. “Besides, it was crooked.”
“Nope.” He finally turns to glance at me. “That’s not it.”
Somewhere between Nina Simone and Springsteen, I glance at Mateo’s hands—long fingers flicking through sleeves with a smooth, practiced rhythm.
Something is soothing about the way he moves—it’s deliberate, like the albums are telling him secrets—he’s reading a language he knows better than I ever will.
The first time I saw Mateo was here, maybe a year ago, not long after I arrived from Bayview.
Holding a Nina Simone record, he made a witty remark about heartbreak being a seasonal disorder.
I laughed, and he asked me out. A few drinks, and then sex at his place.
It didn’t turn into more than that, but somehow, we stayed in each other’s orbit—an arrangement built on vinyl and sarcasm.
There was always a quiet pull between us—something softer than friendship, steadier than desire, and easier for both of us to leave undefined.
A Rollins record gives me pause with its worn edges and yellowed liner notes. Jazz always felt like something that asked for patience. Kevin was like that—linger too long on the surface, and you’d miss what he was really trying to say.
A worn copy of The Cars’ title album slips into my hand.
My thumb finds the corner where the sleeve is soft and curling.
Kevin loved that album. I remember us in his Bronco with the windows rolled down, heading to the beach, the Florida air full of humidity and salt.
“Moving in Stereo” would come on. We’d both go quiet, pumping our heads to the deep beat and miming the words until the song rolled and melded seamlessly into “All Mixed Up,” pounding our palms on the dash of his Bronco and bursting into full sing-and-shout mode.
Kevin didn’t just like the same things I did—he introduced me to most of them.
The Cars. The Police. George Benson. Even jazz.
He once played Billie Holiday for me as if it were a confession.
No one else ever did that—shared music like it meant something.
At the time, I didn’t get it. I thought we were just into the same bands.
Now, I know better. We weren’t just matching tastes; we were matching frequencies, traveling the same emotional terrain.
I don’t think I ever gave that enough weight.
“You look like you just saw a ghost,” Mateo says, finally looking at me fully.
A soft exhale through the nose. “Kevin hasn’t called.”
Mateo raises an eyebrow. “Okay. So he blew you off?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?”
I hesitate, then tell him anyway. “We kissed.”
That stops him. He adjusts the record in his hand like he’s thinking through more than just the album art. “When?”
“Thursday. He invited me to this weird little film festival at the Plaza. It wasn’t even about the movie. We walked and talked a little afterward—then it just happened.”
Mateo doesn’t react right away. When he does, it’s measured. “And now, radio silence.”
I nod .
He hums. “That tracks.”
“That’s all you’ve got?” I ask.
Mateo shrugs. “What do you want—balloons? A slow clap?” He slides the Prince record back. “You don’t know what it meant to him.”
“And you do?”
“No,” Mateo says, “but I’ve known enough Kevins to know how this ends. He’s got a boyfriend.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know him.”
“No,” he repeats, softer this time. “But I know you .”
The sting of it isn’t in the words. It’s in how casually he says them—like he’s known it all along.
Mateo wanders toward the funk section again, flipping through Chaka Khan and Earth, Wind & Fire like he’s cruising for a distraction.
I pretend to dig into some Dylan reissues, but I’m not reading anything.
Just listening to the vinyl sleeves slide against each other, that soft, papery sound that somehow feels like time passing.
Kevin would know that sound. He’d name the artists I skipped.
He’d care about the liner notes, the track order, and the B-side most people forget.
That’s the difference. Mateo listens with detachment. Kevin listens with his heart.
We move through the shop like two people sharing the same dream from different angles. When we both reach for the same Grace Jones LP at the same time, we stop and laugh. I let him take it. He lets me pretend I don’t care.
We head toward the front of the store when he asks me. “Does Naomi know yet?”
“No. ”
Mateo shakes his head and checks out. He leaves first, saying something about needing to go home and change before his shift at Burkhart’s tonight.
I tell him I’ll hang back for a while, but that’s not true.
I don’t want to leave yet, though the shop is nearly empty now.
It’s just me, the warm scent of old sleeves, and the creak of the wooden floor beneath my feet.
It all feels like residue—something left behind.
Kevin and I used to come here. Not this exact place, but shops like it in Bayview—quiet corners filled with other people’s soundtrack memories.
Maybe that’s what I miss most about him.
Not the kiss. Not even the history. Just the way he heard things the same way I did.
Like songs were messages. Like music wasn’t just sound but permission to feel something all the way through.
I remember that night four years ago, after our midnight swim—how he played Zenyatta Mondatta and Ghost in the Machine , low and steady in the background, like it knew something we didn’t yet.
Whatever the silence means now, I’m tired of sitting in it.
Most people are now switching to cassette tapes. Some are even buying compact discs—perfect sound, no skips, no hiss, just sterile clarity. But records? They breathe. They crackle and warp and force you to sit still. You can’t fast-forward a feeling. You have to let it play through in order.
Kevin is like vinyl—warm, imperfect, steady. The kind of sound you have to slow down for. And maybe that’s why I keep coming back here, flipping through old pressings no one else wants. I’m not chasing what’s next. I’m chasing something I didn’t listen to closely enough the first time.