Chapter 2 The Antique Shop Guy #2
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I laughed—a real laugh, surprised out of me. He looked almost startled by the sound, like he’d forgotten laughter was something that happened in this space.
“This shop,” I said, “how long have you had it?”
“Long time.” He didn’t elaborate.
“And before that?”
“San Francisco.” His voice made it clear that San Francisco was not up for discussion.
Fair enough. I had plenty of things that weren’t up for discussion too.
We sat in silence for a while. I drank my tea. He drank his. The music box in the other room finished its song and went quiet. Somewhere, a clock I couldn’t see ticked steadily—strange, since the grandfather clock in the main room was definitely broken.
“So,” he said finally. “Men following you around.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.”
I looked at him—this grumpy stranger with his sad eyes and his haunted shop and his tea that was somehow exactly right.
“Would you believe me if I said magic?”
“Yes.”
I blinked. “Just like that?”
“I own an antique shop where the radio has opinions and the music box plays when it’s feeling nostalgic.” He set down his cup. “Magic isn’t the strangest thing I’ve encountered.”
“The radio has opinions?”
“Strong ones. Mostly about jazz.”
On cue, the radio in the main room crackled to life with a burst of what sounded like Duke Ellington.
“See?” Marcus said.
I stared at him. Then at the doorway to the main room. Then back at him.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “So. Magic. My best friend accidentally cursed my phone with some kind of romantic chaos energy, and now every man I’ve ever had any connection to—dated, almost dated, made eye contact with, apparently just existed in the same decade as—is showing up.
Physically. In person. From whatever time period we supposedly had ‘potential.’”
“That explains the leisure suit.”
“Greg—I wasn’t even born yet. And there’s my prom date who is literally stuck in the 90s. And the greaser who keeps asking about sock hops. And Brad.”
“Who’s Brad?”
“Neon crop top. Short shorts. Really committed to his Rubik’s cube.” I took a sip of tea. “He’s from 1985, I think.”
Marcus processed this. “So the magic isn’t just pulling from your actual past.”
“Apparently it’s pulling from every possible romantic timeline in the multiverse. Lucky me.”
“And when you came in here…?”
“It stopped.” I held up my phone. Still silent, but now the numbers had stopped climbing too. Frozen at 869. “The buzzing stopped when I came through the door, but look—it’s not even adding new matches anymore. For the first time in sixteen hours, it just… stopped.”
He frowned at the phone, then at me, then at the phone again.
“That’s unusual.”
“That’s what I said.”
“I mean—” He stood, moved toward the doorway to the main room. The moment he crossed the threshold, my phone buzzed. Once. Twice. He stepped back into the room. Silence.
We both stared at each other.
“It’s you,” I said. “Whatever’s happening—you’re doing something.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Then something about you is doing something.” I stood up, moved toward the door. The buzzing started—aggressive, insistent, climbing. I stepped back. It stopped. “See? When I’m near you, it stops. When I move away…”
“That’s not possible.”
“None of this is possible, and yet here we are.” I gestured at my phone, at the self-playing music box, at the world in general. “Possible left the building yesterday.”
We stood there, a few feet apart, the phone buzzing angrily every time I shifted away from him. He looked at me. I looked at him. The moment stretched.
Then he sighed—a deep, resigned exhale that seemed to come from somewhere around his shoes.
“What time do you need to leave?”
“What?”
“If you need quiet.” He gestured vaguely at the cluttered shop. “I open at ten. Usually. When I remember to flip the sign. But if someone needed… quiet. I wouldn’t turn them away.”
I should have said no. I should have thanked him for the tea and left and figured out my own problems like a functional adult.
But my phone was buzzing. And outside, somewhere, Greg was probably asking innocent bystanders about 8-track players. And this grumpy, sad, inexplicably soothing stranger was offering me the only peace I’d found since this whole nightmare started.
“I might take you up on that,” I said.
“I might regret offering.”
“Probably.” I moved toward the door, and the buzzing crescendoed. Paused at the threshold. “Marcus?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For not asking too many questions.”
Something flickered across his face—not quite a smile, but a softening. “You looked like you’d had enough questions for one day.”
“For one lifetime.”
I stepped into the main room. The phone exploded with notifications—962, 978, 1,003—and the music box started playing again, something that sounded almost mournful. The taxidermied owl’s head was definitely in a different position than before.
“Your owl moved,” I called back.
“He does that.”
“You said he didn’t!”
“I said usually.”
I laughed again, despite everything. Stepped outside into the chaos of notifications and the October sun and a world that had apparently decided my love life was a multiverse-spanning emergency.
1,047 matches. 1,089. The numbers climbed like a fever.
But I knew where the quiet was now. I knew where I could go to make it stop.
Tomorrow, I’d come back. I’d sit in that cramped back room with the grumpy antique dealer and his opinionated radio and drink tea and pretend this was all going to work out somehow.
The phone buzzed. 1,124. A new message: Someone special is waiting for you!
I shoved it in my pocket and started walking back toward my apartment, where my best friend was probably still explaining smartphones to time-displaced men and a disco enthusiast was asking about 8-track players.
Somewhere behind me, I heard a burst of jazz from the antique shop. The radio, apparently, was feeling celebratory.
I walked faster.