Chapter Eighteen
The back room of the record store had always been Clyde’s domain—half storage, half shrine, half chaos.
Boxes stacked with no discernible logic.
Milk crates full of unsleeved vinyl Clyde had sworn he’d “get around to cataloging someday.” A narrow folding table scarred with ring marks from decades of coffee cups.
The old armchair shoved against the far wall, its fabric worn thin at the arms where Clyde used to sit when his knees got bad, listening to test pressings and humming along under his breath.
Ellis had avoided it since Clyde died.
Not consciously or anything. It was just that every time he passed the doorway, his chest tightened, his brain stuttered, and his body chose another task.
Reorganize the front bins. Wipe down the counter.
Fix the loose screw on the listening station for the third time.
Anything but step into the room where Clyde had existed so completely.
But the store was quieter now. Jace had left early, Issaky had a closing deal downtown, and the rain outside had settled into a soft, persistent patter that blurred the windows and muffled the street. The kind of evening that pressed inward, that asked things of him.
Ellis stood in the doorway and let himself look.
Dust mites hung in the yellowed light like suspended breath.
The air smelled faintly of cardboard and old paper and the ghost of Clyde’s aftershave—woodsy, a little too strong, stubbornly present.
Ellis swallowed, braced his shoulder against the doorframe, and stepped inside.
He told himself this was practical. Necessary. Clyde’s things couldn’t live here forever. The store was changing; they were changing. Ellis needed to know what was here, what stayed, what went. He needed to take responsibility for the space Clyde had trusted him with.
He grabbed an empty box from the stack near the wall and set it on the table. His hands shook a little as he opened the first carton.
Receipts. Old invoices. Flyers from shows long past, their neon ink faded into ghosts of themselves. Ellis sorted automatically, his brain slipping into the rhythm of a task with rules. Keep. Toss. Keep. His shoulders eased a fraction as the familiar pattern anchored him.
Then he opened the second box and there were envelopes. Dozens of them, maybe more. Bundled in stacks with twine, the paper browned with age, edges soft and frayed. Different handwriting. Different stamps. Different decades layered together like sediment.
Ellis frowned as he lifted one carefully, like it might dissolve in his hands. The envelope was addressed in looping cursive, the ink faded to a gentle blue-gray.
Jack.
Just that. No last name. No address.
He sat down hard in the chair, the envelope still in his hand, his pulse loud in his ears. Jack. The name threaded through Clyde’s stories like a quiet refrain. Always present, never explained. A he-shaped absence that Ellis had never known how to ask about without crossing a line.
He untied the twine with clumsy fingers and the letters slid free, heavier than he expected. He opened the first one at random.
March 3rd, 1971
Jack,
I don’t know if I’m brave enough to mail this, but I’m writing it anyway. You said once that even if no one ever read our words, the act of writing them still mattered. I’m holding onto that tonight.
I watched you sleep this morning, the light coming in through the blinds striping your face like a record sleeve shadow. I wanted to tell you I loved you. I didn’t. I’m writing it here instead.
–C
Ellis pressed the paper to his chest. He didn’t realize he was crying until a drop splashed onto the page.
He read another. Then another.
The years unfolded slowly, patiently. Letters written on cheap stationery and hotel letterhead. Notes scrawled in margins when time was scarce. Longer, careful missives when it wasn’t.
Clyde and Jack falling in love in the margins of a world that didn’t want them. Learning each other by hand. By ink. By the willingness to keep choosing.
They wrote about music–about finding each other in lyrics that felt too dangerous to say aloud. They wrote about fear. About hiding. About nights spent listening to records with the volume low, holding hands like it was an act of rebellion.
Ellis lost track of time.
He read about their first apartment. About jobs taken and quit. About the way Jack made Clyde laugh when the world felt unbearable. About Clyde’s stubborn optimism and Jack’s steadiness, the way he anchored them when Clyde’s hope ran too hot and threatened to burn itself out.
There were gaps. Months where the letters thinned, then resumed with an urgency that made Ellis's throat ache. He read about AIDS before the word settled into common use, about hospitals and friends disappearing, about the way grief accumulated until it felt like carrying stones in the body.
Jack’s handwriting grew shakier in places. Clyde’s grew firmer, as if compensating. They never stopped writing.
Even when they lived together and then apart, taking a break that Ellis knew–just from reading their letters–was a mistake. Even when they shared a bed and a life and a kitchen and a record collection that spilled out of every available surface.
We write because one day one of us won’t be here to remember the way the other breathes, Clyde had written once. I want proof that we existed.
Ellis's chest hurt.
He saw Clyde differently now–not just as the gruff, kind man who had taught him how to clean vinyl properly and how to believe in quiet things. But as a young man terrified of loving openly. As a survivor. As someone who had chosen tenderness over and over again in a world that punished it.
Ellis read until his legs cramped and his eyes burned. Fifty-three years collapsed into a single evening. Love that endured not because it was easy, but because it was chosen.
At the bottom of the last bundle, there was a single envelope. Newer. Whiter. Not tied with twine.
Ellis's hands trembled as he opened it.
Jack,
If you’re reading this, it means I didn’t get the chance to say it out loud. I’m sorry for that. I wanted to be brave at the end, and I don’t know if I managed it.
There’s a boy working at the shop now. His name is Ellis.
I never told you much about him because I didn’t have the words yet.
I see you in him. The quiet way he loves.
The patience. The way he keeps showing up even when it costs him something.
The way he survives. If he ever meets you, remind him that hope doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
Thank you for my life.
Still Here, Clyde
Ellis broke. The sound that tore out of him was raw and animal, echoing off the walls of the back room. He folded forward, clutching the letter, his shoulders shaking as years of grief and confusion crashed over him.
Someone had seen him. Not just the version of him that functioned. Not the version that tried to be useful or quiet or small enough to be safe. But the core of him. The way he loved. The way he stayed.
Ellis turned the page over with shaking fingers. There was a phone number written on the back and he stared at it for a long time.
Then, because something in him finally believed he was allowed to, he pulled out his phone and dialed.
It rang twice.
“Hello?” a voice said, old but steady.
Ellis swallowed. “I–um. Hi. I’m sorry. I–this number was written on a letter. From Clyde.”
There was a pause. A breath drawn in.
“This is Jack Henderson,” the man said.
Ellis closed his eyes and let himself breathe.