Ten
Garrett asks Dad if he can work a few shifts each week, so Dad has me train him on the front register.
On a Saturday afternoon, I stand behind the counter with Garrett, the soft cadence of an all-day rain pattering against the windows, very aware of how close we are to each other.
He wears a navy-colored T-shirt that’s tight around his arms and chest. It looks good with the red-brown of his hair.
I really need to stop thinking about him like this.
“So you just leave all the cash in the register at the end of the day?” Garrett asks.
“What else would we do with it?”
“I dunno. Bring it to the bank? Lock it in the safe or something? It seems like you’re asking for trouble, just leaving it all in there.”
I snort. “I love that you think we own a safe and have enough cash to be worth stealing. Everyone pays with cards these days. Plus, this is Irontown. Who the hell is going to break into our antique shop? We have a fifty-year-old lock on the front door, and that’s about it for security.”
He looks uncertain but doesn’t have a chance to respond.
The front door opens, and Mrs. Makinen toddles in.
She removes her plastic poncho, hangs it on a peg near the door, and approaches the counter.
She’s five feet tall with curly gray hair pulled back by a headband, her teal sweatshirt embossed with a pair of kittens.
“Hi, Enzo!” she croaks, the smoker’s rattle of her throat making my name sound gravelly. Her eyes drift over to Garrett, and her face spreads into a toothy grin. “And who. Is. This?”
“I’m Garrett.”
“You’re not from here,” she says with the self-important excitement of an archaeologist discovering a rare artifact.
“No, I’m from Georgia.”
She reaches forward and gives the back of his hand a playful tap. “A Southern boy!”
I try to save him. “Garrett is staying with us for the year. He’ll be helping out around the shop.”
“Then maybe he can help me! Today, I’m looking for something … surprising. Something … luminous.”
Her favorite pastime is to provide a vague adjective and have me or Emma or my dad, but not Aunt Liz—she hates Aunt Liz—guide her around the shop.
She never has a specific thing she wants, other than companionship and a sense of importance.
After half an hour, she’ll buy an item, its price based on how enthusiastically we engage her in small talk.
Garrett shoots me a worried glance. “I don’t know the shop that well yet.”
“Nonsense!” Mrs. Makinen says, moving beside the counter and grabbing his arm. The top of her head barely reaches his bicep. He allows himself to be guided out from behind the counter. She gazes at him expectantly.
He looks back at me. I can see on his face that he is trying to figure out where in our shop he might bring her to find something “surprising” and “luminous.”
Unfortunately for him, the door opens again, and Ryan Beltrami enters. He has a great taste in music, and whenever he visits the shop, we spend at least an hour flipping through the new crates of old vinyl records Dad brings in.
“I gotta wait on other customers,” I say helplessly. “But you two take your time.”
Garrett shakes his head at me, the corner of his lip curved upward, and flips me off behind Mrs. Makinen’s back. Then the two of them head off, Mrs. Makinen clutching Garrett’s arm.
For the next half hour, Ryan and I look through the records, but I listen as Garrett and Mrs. Makinen move through the house.
I hear Mrs. Makinen telling him all the same stories she tells me.
Her voice gradually grows more animated, and I assume he must be a good listener, asking the right questions and responding how she wants.
At one point, he makes a joke that causes her to laugh so hard that I think she’ll choke up sixty years of cigarette smoke.
When they return, he’s carrying a psychedelic glass lava lamp from the seventies—both surprising and luminous.
Well done, Garrett. It’s also priced at $90, so he must have made a decent first impression on her.
I slide behind the front counter, she pays and dons her plastic poncho, and Garrett follows her outside with the lamp.
A moment later, he walks back through the front door, raindrops clinging to his hair. He shakes his head.
“This town,” he mutters, “is so fuckin’ weird.”
For once, it doesn’t sound like an insult.
The following Friday, I’m hurrying down the stairs from my bedroom, dressed in concert black and carrying my oboe case, my collapsible music stand, and a folder of sheet music.
Our quintet has been hired to play for Casino Night at the Irontown Senior Center.
It’s not glamorous, and there’s a one hundred percent chance we’ll spend the night having people wander up to us to complain that we’re either playing too loud or too soft. But it’s a gig.
I arrive at the bottom of the stairs the same moment Garrett steps out of the bathroom.
He’s wearing only a towel, a cloud of steam billowing behind him.
I’m moving too quickly and have no time to think, let alone veer around him.
We collide. My cheek slaps into his collarbone and my arm makes contact with his stomach, the back of my hand brushing against the spot just above his hip bone and beside his abs.
My oboe case and music stand spill out of my arms. The folder of sheet music tumbles open, scattering pieces of paper around his bare feet.
We both swear and apologize at the same time, and I crouch down and begin gathering up all the things I’ve dropped. He holds his towel—riding dangerously low on his hips—in place with one hand, bends down, and begins passing me pieces of sheet music with the other.
I saw him shirtless when we went to Lake Superior together, but I had time to prepare that day, there had been several feet of distance separating us, and I kind of hated him.
But this. This should come with a warning label.
He’s inches away, and I can feel damp heat radiating off his body.
This close, I notice the shifting patterns of freckles on his skin, how they’re thicker on his forearms and shoulders, how they taper off farther down his torso.
A single drop of water lazily runs down his perfect chest. I want to reach out with my thumb and catch it.
I realize he’s saying something to me. I collect the last of my sheet music, stuff it into my folder, and stand up. I take a step back. “Huh?”
“I said, do you have a gig or something tonight?”
“Oh. Yeah. Just this thing at the senior center.” I begin moving past him down the hall, very late and very flustered by the memory of his skin on mine.
“Casino Night?”
I stop. Turn around. “How’d you know?”
He scratches the back of his head. “I’ll actually be there, too.”
“You’re going to Casino Night.” I scan his face to see if he’s joking.
“Yeah. Mrs. Makinen invited me while I was helping her in the shop the other day. Well, mostly she told me I’m going to Casino Night with her and her friends.
” A patch of red appears on each of his cheeks.
“And it’s not like there’s a ton of things to do in this town.
And I’m counting it for volunteer hours. ”
I shrug, enjoying his embarrassment. “I’d have thought Mrs. Makinen was a little old for you, but no judgment here.” I settle my sheet music in the crook of my arm. “You should probably go get dressed for your date.”
“I knew you’d be jealous.”
“You’re not my type,” I quip, then instantly realize his joke was about my being jealous of him for going to Casino Night with Mrs. Makinen. Not the other way around.
Shit.
He looks at me funny and there’s an uncomfortable pause, like a dropped beat in the middle of a measure of music. “Right.” He gestures up the stairs. “I’m gonna go change now…”
“See you later!” I say too brightly, already rushing off down the hallway, my back to him. I’m positive my voice betrays the burning I feel in my cheeks.
The Irontown Senior Center looks like a middle schooler’s New Year’s Eve party threw up everywhere: black and gold streamers, polka-dotted plastic tablecloths, helium balloons, all beneath harsh fluorescent lights. The staff kind of tried, but not really. The effect is depressing.
But the old people don’t seem to mind. They sit around tables with cards and dice in their hands, laughing and chatting.
I spot Mrs. Makinen at a table with several other ladies, all of them nursing water bottles they snuck past the staff, which are definitely not filled with water.
She wears a green plastic visor and a flowery blouse; it’s the most dressed-up I’ve ever seen her.
After setting up, our quintet plays a Sound of Music medley. We’ve created a set list of music from old movies and some light classical music that the old folks might recognize. We’re only background music, so in about an hour we’ll switch to stuff that’s actually fun to play. They won’t notice.
We’re about to start a Handel piece when Garrett walks in, wearing a navy suit, a white button-down, a skinny tie, and brown loafers.
He has carefully combed his hair up and away from his forehead and is carrying a bouquet of coneflowers I’m guessing he grabbed from our yard on the way out the door.
He looks incredible.
Against the shabby decor and the varying levels of effort people put into their own outfits, he’s like a Caravaggio that has wandered into an elementary art class gallery.
He strides over to Mrs. Makinen and hands her the bouquet.
The reaction from her entire table is so extreme I worry one of the ladies will end up in the hospital.
I’m reminded of a flock of seagulls after someone tossed a loaf’s worth of breadcrumbs onto the beach.
They chatter and pinch at his suit and fawn over the flowers.