8 - Sage
Sage
The bell above the door chimed as we stepped into Vinyl Reverie, and the familiar smell of paper sleeves and old wood wrapped around me in the best way.
The store was narrow, shelves climbing almost to the ceiling, records stacked in tight rows that forced you to move carefully if you didn’t want to bump into someone.
“Sage Robinson.” Marco looked up from behind the counter with that lopsided smile of his. “I thought you skipped town.”
“You should be so lucky,” I replied, feeling Aiden pause close by my side. He hadn’t spoken yet, but his attention on Marco and me was palpable.
He laughed and leaned forward on his elbows. “Who’s your friend? I told you the in-house discount applies to my favorites only. No strangers.”
“Aiden.” He stretched out his hand, which Marco shook warmly. “And I’m happy to pay full price for whatever you’ve got going on in here.”
Marco snorted but quickly stifled his laughter again. “In that case, you sound like just the guy I should take behind the black veil in back.”
“Black veil?”
I gave Marco a dismissive wave, and hooked my arm through Aiden’s leading him gradually away from the conversation that would never end. Not the way I knew the manager.
“He’s messing with you.”
“No, I’m not,” Marco called out. “She can show you. She knows every corner of this store.”
We started in an aisle that boxed us from Marco’s view. I flipped through the first few rows of records, but Aiden didn’t immediately join in.
“Every corner, huh?”
“I had way too much time to kill when I was younger.”
Joni Mitchell, Joan Osborne, Kate Bush. Marco’s system wasn’t alphabetical, based on genre, or time-stamped. The system was that there was no system. He’d always said the best part of finding an album you love was having to search for it.
The space narrowed as the shelves tightened around Aiden and me, forcing us to walk side by side. I was aware of how close he was without having to look, and whenever he reached across to slide a record back into place, his arm passed in front of me with careful precision.
Without touching.
“So, do you always bring guys here?” He tried to sound casual as we reached the classic rock section.
“Only ones with really bad ink.” I made no sign I’d caught the way his expression changed. Instead, I was suddenly totally absorbed by a series of jazz instrumentals.
“Ha, ha,” he deadpanned, and that’s when I finally met his gaze.
“Oh, not you. Obviously.” But I made sure the laugh that followed was a little too forced. Too hollow.
Aiden fell for it like I knew he would, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. This time my laugh was real, getting louder the more insulted he looked.
“I don’t have bad ink.”
“You should see your face right now.”
His frown deepened. “Yeah? Well, you should see yours. It’s— It’s—”
“It’s what?”
The idea was to be coy and pressure him into fumbling harder. Except. I must not have been paying attention, because Aiden was suddenly way closer than I’d first thought.
The aisle wasn’t wide to begin with, crates of vinyl stacked to knee height, album covers flashing color between us.
Now there was barely a sleeve’s width separating my shirt from his, and I was sure he could feel the way my heart had just spiked into overdrive.
If I so much as shifted my weight, I’d be on top of him.
If I breathed any harder, he’d feel it on his face.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said quickly, my mouth totally dry. In keeping with unexpected ways in which my body had betrayed me.
I tipped my chin up to keep the upper hand, which would’ve worked if my eyes hadn’t dipped just a fraction. His mouth was right there, close enough that I could see the tiny nick in his lower lip, the way it curled when he almost smiled. My brain stalled on it, traitorous and fascinated.
But no. What was I thinking?
I snapped my gaze back up, and realized his clear blue eyes had been set on my lips this whole time.
So we were both guilty.
Aiden cleared his throat right when I was about to say something about that little development. Maybe it was for the best.
“So, what are you hunting for tonight?” His voice was a notch rougher than before, and he crouched to get to the next crate and flip through the records there with unnecessary focus.
Air rushed in where he’d been standing, and I hated that I noticed. That I missed it.
I ignored the sinking feeling settling in my stomach. It was probably better to lean into the relief that we’d both silently agreed to just move on and pretend nothing happened.
“Something classic,” I said, joining him. “You probably won’t know it.”
He smirked. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special.”
And just like that, we were two normal people in a vintage record store again.
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, my guard softening by inches.
It seemed to have the same effect on Aiden, because when he looked at me that smile seemed almost malleable. “I was just fucking with you. And also, I happen to be a fan of the classics.”
He pulled a record from the crate, and brandished it between us. Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.
The jury was out on what the hell was happening between Aiden Santos and me, but in that moment, he’d scored a bazillion points in my book. No matter what the final verdict turned out to be.
“That’s one of my favorites,” I said. “My dad used to play it while he cooked. I think I learned timing from it.”
“Timing for what?”
“Everything,” I said. “Art, conversation, knowing when to shut up.”
“Still working on that last one, huh?”
My body responded all on its own, confused about whether to kiss that shit-eating grin off his face or wrestle him to the floor until he cried ‘Uncle’. I settled for a playful jab to his upper arm that made him sway slightly on his haunches.
Once our laughter subsided, I did the polite thing and asked about the kind of music he liked. A life raft in a sea of landmines we had no business crashing into.
“Growing up, my taste in music was whatever my older siblings had on repeat,” he said. The nostalgia in his voice was laced with something harder, but it was way too soon to go digging there.
So I just said, “Which was…?”
“Alternative. Indie. Some bands no one else cared about.” He slid Bowie back into the crate and continued the blind search for nothing in particular. “My sister was crazy about Madonna—”
“Who wasn’t?”
“—and to this day, I can break down a flawless routine to Express Yourself, circa the Blonde Ambition Tour of 1990.”
My laughter knocked me flat onto my ass in the middle of the aisle. “What have you done? Now I have a mental image of you in a cone bra.”
“Hot, right?”
I laughed even harder.
“If you’re nice to me,” he went on, “I might share actual photos of pre-pubescent me proudly wearing a golden bra my sister had made out of papier-mache.”
“Stop. I can’t breathe.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what you get for doubting my absolute superiority in the classics.”
He pushed to stand, and held out his hand to me. My amusement simmered just as quickly as it had erupted, cold common sense shoving back into my head.
“I’ve got it,” I said, and struggled to my feet all on my own.
At the rear of the store, there was a small shelf of local pressings and handmade art books. Aiden paused in front of it, caressing one of the wooden frames that displayed limited editions.
He ran his fingers along the edge of the shelf, not absentmindedly but with deep interest, as if assessing the lines and joints.
“You like shelving?” I asked.
He looked up, surprised that I’d noticed what he was doing instead of what he was browsing.
“Something like that.”
I came to stand beside him, and nudged him with my shoulder. “I already know about the cone bra. You can’t hold out on me now.”
He gave a soft laugh, and said, “Woodwork’s kind of a hobby. Off season, or when I just… need to clear my head.”
“I have the same thing. Working with my hands means things get quieter up here.” I tapped my temple, and he nodded with a half-smile.
It wasn’t the first time tonight I’d caught a hint of sadness in that very look.
Hidden behind his eyes. I was sure it was a default of his.
Of all the times I’d been in Aiden’s company so far, there’d been a worry, a bother, a blueness about him.
And although he was quick to share tidbits about his life and childhood, this was something he guarded fiercely.
“I also just like doing something that doesn’t boil down to stats or a scoreboard,” he said. “Something that’s just mine, and it doesn’t need to be liked or sold or graded.”
A record in my hand slipped slightly, and he reached to steady it before it fell, his fingers grazing the edge of the sleeve and mine at the same time. The contact was brief and accidental, but neither of us moved away immediately.
His eyes stayed on mine for an extra breath before he pulled back.
And when we walked back toward the front of the store together, talking about bands, about favorite tracks, about concerts we had loved and ones we had skipped, the conversation felt easy in a way that didn’t need to be declared.
We found our way to the crates labeled RECENT INTAKE in thick marker.
“This is my favorite part of the store,” I said, getting comfortable on a leather ottoman nearby. “You never know what someone just decided they didn’t want anymore.”
“One man’s junk,” Aiden quipped.
“Or inheritance,” I said. “Or a breakup.”
He crouched to flip through the front half of the crate while I took the other side. The cardboard edges scraped faintly against the sleeves as we worked.
“You judge people by what they get rid of?” he asked.
“I judge them by what they keep,” I said. “The rest is context.”
He glanced up at me, considering that, then returned to the stack.
I had written him off the first night we met.
I had assumed he was another athlete riding momentum, chasing a contract that might never come, living inside a locker room narrative I had heard too many times before.
Standing here with him, listening to the way he talked about music and wood grain and joints that had to hold under pressure, I realized how lazy that assumption had been.
He paid attention.
He noticed.
I slid another record aside and then froze. “No way.”
Aiden looked up immediately. “What?”
I pulled the album free and turned it toward the light. The cover was worn but intact, the corners softened by time. Nina Simone stared back at me from the sleeve of Silk I’m more than capable of finding my way back to the—”
“I don’t wanna go to the arena just yet.”
I held onto my keys and studied his face closely. “Then where?”
His answer was to curl his fingers, patiently waiting for me to hand over my driving rights. Curiosity burned stronger than my rule to never let anyone else behind the wheel.
“Fine,” I said, and dropped the keys into his waiting palm.