Chapter 2 The Antique Shop Guy
THE ANTIQUE SHOP GUY
WHERE I DISCOVER THE ONLY QUIET PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE, AND IT’S GUARDED BY A MAN WHO HATES ME.
Downtown Fairhaven on a Tuesday morning was usually quiet. Sleepy, even. The kind of place where the biggest drama was whether the coffee shop had run out of pumpkin spice syrup or if someone had parked in front of the fire hydrant again.
Today, it felt like a minefield.
I saw him first—a guy in a neon pink mesh crop top and short shorts, standing on the corner still doing something complicated with a Rubik’s cube—and ducked into the nearest doorway before he could spot me.
My phone buzzed. 847 matches now. The guy appeared in my notifications: Brad wants to connect! You matched in 1985!
So that was his name. Brad. Of course it was Brad.
In 1985, I’d been in elementary school, deeply invested in Care Bears and completely unaware that somewhere in the universe, a guy named Brad in short shorts was cosmically destined to find me attractive. The magic clearly had a sense of humor.
The phone buzzed again. And again. I pressed myself against the brick wall of whatever building I’d taken shelter against and tried to breathe.
An elderly woman walking her dog gave me a wide berth.
Great. Now I was the crazy lady hyperventilating in public. This was exactly the kind of personal growth I’d hoped my forties would bring.
I peered around the corner. Brad had wandered off toward the fountain, where he appeared to be taking photos of pigeons with deep suspicion.
Near him, a cluster of men stood around looking vaguely familiar and profoundly lost. The greaser from my porch was examining a Tesla like it might bite him.
A guy in bell-bottoms was having what looked like an existential crisis in front of an ATM.
My phone buzzed. 863.
I couldn’t go to the coffee shop—I’d dated the owner’s nephew for three weeks in 2014, and the last thing I needed was him showing up looking like he had during our brief and ill-advised fling.
I couldn’t go to the bookstore—I’d had a very intense eye-contact moment with the clerk back in 2020, and who knew if that counted as romantic potential to whatever insane magic was running my life.
I definitely couldn’t go to the winery. Valentina would take one look at the parade of confused men following me and fire me on the spot, and honestly, I wouldn’t blame her.
I needed somewhere I’d never been. Somewhere with no romantic history. Somewhere—
A man rounded the corner. Tall, dark hair, wearing a jacket that looked exactly like one Todd used to own.
Oh god. I didn’t wait to see if it was actually him. I bolted.
The nearest door was old, wooden, slightly ajar. I didn’t look at the sign. Didn’t care what kind of business it was. I just needed to not be on the street.
I pushed through the door and into darkness.
The smell hit me first. Old wood. Dust. Something faintly metallic, like pennies left in a drawer for decades. Beeswax and leather and the particular mustiness of things that had been loved by people who were now dead.
The light was dim—just a few lamps scattered around a space crammed with…
everything. Furniture stacked on furniture.
Paintings leaning against walls three deep.
Boxes labeled in handwriting so old it had faded to whispers.
A grandfather clock that wasn’t ticking stood sentinel by the door, its face frozen at 3:45.
A taxidermied owl perched on a bookshelf, glass eyes following me with judgmental precision.
An antique shop. I’d fled into an antique shop.
And it was magnificent.
I’d never been much for old things—my apartment was strictly IKEA and Target, functional and forgettable—but this place felt like stepping into someone else’s memory.
Every surface held something: a brass telescope with a cracked lens, a collection of ceramic dogs arranged in size order, a vintage typewriter with keys that looked like they’d written love letters and suicide notes and everything in between.
A music box sat open on a side table, its tiny ballerina frozen mid-pirouette. As I walked past, I could have sworn she turned her head to watch me.
I was definitely losing my mind.
“We’re closed.”
I whirled toward the voice. A man stood behind a cluttered counter at the back of the shop, watching me with an expression of absolute neutrality.
Silver threaded through dark hair. Reading glasses pushed up on his forehead.
A face that was handsome in the way of old photographs—the kind of handsome that took a moment to register and then refused to leave.
He did not look happy to see me.
“Your sign says open,” I managed.
“My sign is wrong.”
“Then why is your door unlocked?”
“Because I forgot to lock it.” He set down whatever he’d been examining—a small brass compass, I thought—and fixed me with a stare that could have frozen coffee. “A mistake I’m now regretting.”
Behind him, I noticed a vintage radio sitting on a shelf. It crackled softly, even though it wasn’t plugged in. The static sounded almost like laughter.
I opened my mouth to apologize, to explain, to make some kind of excuse—
And then I realized something was different.
My phone had stopped buzzing.
I looked down at it. The screen was still lit, still showing the endless cascade of matches, but for the first time since last night, it was silent. No vibrations. No notifications. No insistent, relentless demand.
Just… quiet.
I stared at the phone. Stared at the man. Back at the phone.
“What did you do?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t do anything.”
“My phone stopped.”
“Congratulations. Is that unusual?”
“You have no idea.” I held it up, showing him the screen full of faces like it was evidence of a crime.
“It’s been doing this for sixteen hours straight.
It hasn’t stopped once. Not when I threw it across the room, not when I tried to drown it in the sink, not when I put it in the freezer.
And now I walk in here and it just… stops? ”
He looked at the phone. Looked at me. His expression didn’t change, exactly, but something shifted behind his eyes—curiosity, maybe, buried under layers of deliberate disinterest.
“That does sound like a problem.”
“It’s a NIGHTMARE. There are men wandering around downtown right now who think disco is still relevant. One of them tried to pay for coffee with a Susan B. Anthony dollar.”
The unplugged radio crackled again. This time I was sure it was laughing.
“Your radio’s broken,” I said.
“It’s not broken. It’s just opinionated.” He said this like it was perfectly normal. Like vintage radios having opinions was just part of running an antique shop.
Maybe it was. What did I know about antiques?
“I’m sorry for barging in,” I said, and meant it. “I just—I needed somewhere to hide. There’s a man outside in a leisure suit who keeps calling me ‘foxy mama’ and I think I’m having some kind of breakdown.”
He studied me for a long moment—this disheveled woman in yesterday’s clothes who had burst into his closed shop babbling about possessed phones and disco enthusiasts.
Then he sighed.
“Tea’s in the back,” he said, turning away from the counter. “You look like you need it.”
The back room was small, cramped, and inexplicably comforting.
A worn leather armchair that had probably been expensive in 1972 sat next to a window overlooking a tiny courtyard.
A hotplate with a kettle. Shelves crammed with books and boxes and objects I couldn’t identify—a jar of old keys, a collection of glass eyes (unsettling), a porcelain hand that I chose not to look at too closely.
The walls were covered in photographs. Old ones, in silver frames tarnished with age.
A woman with dark hair and a bright smile, caught mid-laugh on what looked like a pier.
The same woman on a beach, shielding her eyes from the sun.
The same woman in what looked like this very room, surrounded by boxes, grinning at the camera like she owned the world.
In every photo, she was radiant. The kind of person who made rooms brighter just by being in them.
I didn’t ask. Some things you don’t need to ask about.
He made tea without asking how I took it. Two sugars. Splash of milk. Exactly right.
“How did you know?” I asked, accepting the cup.
“Know what?”
“How I take my tea.”
He shrugged, settling into a wooden chair across from me. “Lucky guess.”
It didn’t feel like a guess. But I was too tired and too grateful for the silence to push.
“I’m Diane,” I said. “Diane Martinez. I work at the winery up on Hillcrest. The big one with the aggressive geese.”
“I know the geese.” His mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close. “They chased my delivery driver into the parking lot last month.”
“Yeah, those geese have a vendetta. Valentina—my boss—she thinks they add ‘character’ to the property. I think they add lawsuits waiting to happen.”
“Marcus,” he said. “Marcus Chen.” He didn’t offer more than that. Didn’t seem to think more was necessary.
“Marcus.” I wrapped my hands around the warm cup. “Thank you. For the tea. And for… whatever this is.” I gestured vaguely at my silent phone. “The quiet.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Something’s doing something. And right now, you’re the only thing that’s different.”
He didn’t respond to that. Just sipped his own tea—black, no sugar, like a man who’d given up on small pleasures—and watched me with those unreadable eyes.
The silence stretched between us. Not uncomfortable, exactly. More like… waiting. The shop around us creaked softly, settling into itself. From the main room, I heard the music box start playing—a tinkling melody I almost recognized—even though no one had touched it.
“Your shop is weird,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Like, genuinely weird. Not just old-stuff weird. The radio that isn’t plugged in. The music box with the ballerina that watches you and apparently plays itself. That owl that I swear moved when I wasn’t looking.”
“The owl doesn’t move.” He paused. “Usually.”