The record store

After dropping Lydia off at her house Reese spent the next few hours working and running errands. They were a little tired from last night, having slept relatively little, but they had an outstanding project that made them anxious. Not that the project itself was particularly difficult; it was the knowing that it wasn't done yet. They had issues with anxiety in general, and while the project's unfinished status would have gnawed at them regardless it was all the worse for their client. They were editing a commercial for a local outlet mall, a fairly straightforward job complicated by vague and often contradictory client input ("Can we make this a little... flashy? Flashier? This is too flashy."). But with grit, determination, and copious amounts of caffeine, Reese finally met their client's specifications and sent the final project over.

They went grocery shopping, had lunch, cleaned up around the house a bit (the commercial project having monopolized time that would normally have been spent tidying up). They actually felt like a decent adult for the first time in a while, and this disturbed them, so they decided they needed to indulge in a bit of light whimsy. Only light whimsy, though, because anything else would have been stressful.

The party at Grimm's, or rather, the events following Grimm's party, had inspired Reese to give his friend (of a friend) a visit.

The record store, Apropos (apparently a reference to a novel by Dostoyevsky) was located beneath a vegan burrito restaurant frequented mostly by students and cyclists. You could enter from an exterior stairwell or, if you were also looking for a quick bite to eat, go into the restaurant, walk through a door opposite the bathroom, and descend a narrow flight of stairs that felt like something out of a horror movie. Depending on who was working that day, it sometimes sounded like a horror movie, too. And they never maintained the lights in the stairwell, either, so it was always weirdly dim.

This is all to say that Reese was claustrophobic and didn't like the narrow stairs. None of this was Grimm's fault.

So anyway, Reese went in through the exterior this time. Grimm wasn't there -- Reese wasn't surprised, given how much they'd seen the man imbibe at his party -- so Reese relaxed a little. They dreaded running into people they knew. Trying to maintain a conversation was like pulling teeth, they were so bad at it, so awkward. And it was frustrating, because it always seemed like everyone else was great at it.

There were only two other people in the store, including the woman behind the counter.

Reese wasn't really sure what they were looking for, but they'd recently acquired a CD player that was thrown in with some conversion equipment they'd bought, so they wanted to get something for that. They only had, like, three CDs to their name, leftovers from high school that had somehow survived to the Spotify era. And Reese was not interested in isolating their outdated format intake to the first two Gorillaz albums and a Joy Division compilation.

They pulled a few CDs from the racks -- Cocteau Twins, the Church, Gravediggaz, MF Doom -- and brought them to the counter.

"The Church! Nice!" the Apropos employee chirped, smiling as she manually typed up the price of the CD. "Ever listen to them before?"

"I love The Blurred Crusade."

"Ah, I'm an Of Skins and Heart-kinda girl." She smiled. "And Heyday. Duh."

"Me too! But 'You Took' kind of edges out everything else for me." Reese found it easier to talk about art than pretty much anything else, at least in public; music and literature, movies and television -- those they understood. People confused the shit out of them.

"Ah, a person of culture, I see." She giggled.

It was such an asshole thing of Reese to do, but their lizard brain took secret note of the woman standing behind the counter.

She was maybe two or three years younger than them, so around 23, a little shorter than them. Black hair styled into a long side-parted undercut, with a few strands tucked pleasingly behind one ear. Light brown skin, dark brown eyes. She was wearing glasses which rested on the tip of her nose, and she kept pushing them back up. A futile struggle Reese was all too familiar with.

She was wearing a pastel blue crewneck with YOUR BAND SUCKS written across the chest... and that's where Reese really felt like an asshole, because that gave them an excuse to think about just how big (how very, very big) her chest appeared to be.

"So will that be all?" the woman asked.

"Uh, nope -- I'm good." Reese smiled awkwardly as they handed the employee their card. As the woman took it Reese noticed her nails were painted cobalt blue.

Reese thanked the woman and started to walk out --

"Umm, wait, have we met before?"

Reese paused. "I don't think so..." To be fair, it was hard to confuse Reese with anyone else.

"You're friends with Chick, right? Chick Hicks and the Compulsive Masturbators." That fucking band, man.

"Oh! Yeah, I know Chick. We went to high school together."

"You're, like, a photographer, right?"

"Umm, occasionally. I do mostly video stuff." And so on and so on.

"...but I think the whole thing's overrated, honestly. Like, don't tell Grimm this, but punk really is dead. Y'know?" Noa took a bite of her burrito. She and Reese were sitting on a bench outside of Apropos.

They'd chatted for a while, and just when it seemed like they should part Noa's shift ended and her coworker took over. The day was still fresh, and Reese was in a great mood, and Noa was hungry, so they popped upstairs so she could get a burrito, and now here they were.

Reese's legs were drawn up against their chest. There was a cool breeze blowing down the sidewalk, but they felt warm.

Noa was fun to talk to. She was sitting crosslegged, decrying the total failure of punk music to change the world, pausing only to munch on her burrito.

"Yeah, but I like that he tries." Reese took a sip of the coffee they'd bought at the restaurant. "I weirdly... admire him, actually."

Noa smiled. "I get that. He's a doofy weirdo, but I like him." She paused. "Umm... if you have somewhere you've gotta be --"

"Nope!" Reese flashed a smile. "I'm done for the day. You?"

"Do naps count?'

"Arguably."

"Then I've got one of those scheduled. Other than that, I plan to spend the rest of the day bored."

"You plan to?"

"Sure, why not?" She stretched her legs and twirled her ankles; there was an audible pop.

Reese snorted.

"Oh." Noa took another bite. "Gimme your phone."

"Uh --" Reese saw the look in Noa's eyes "-- okay..."

Noa quickly gave it back. "Cool." She sniffed.

"Umm."

"Hmm?" She took another bite. "Oh, I sent myself a text." She showed Reese her screen: "Punk's not dead," read the message from their phone.

"Oh." She puffed out her lower lip in a caricature of a pout.

"Is that okay?"

"Totally! Sorry, that just caught me off guard."

Noa giggled. "Am I being too forward?" Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight.

"No --"

"Here, let me be subtle."

Reese's phone buzzed. "Wanna be bored together?" They blushed.

Noa looked smug.