The Stars Will Shine (12 page)

“Damien Kent,” I read then flash him a mocking look. “Someone’s been up to trouble.” Dylan snatches the fake I.D. and wallet from me, and I laugh. “Looks like you two pissed off some people.”

Dylan shrugs as he slides the I.D. back into its spot. “They deserved it,” he mutters.

“Hate to break it to you, cousin, but it looks like you lost.”

Dylan’s nostrils flare before, to the best of his inebriated ability, he marches away up the stairs. “C’mon, man,” he calls to Aiden without another look back.

The way Aiden’s gaze subsequently hits mine, slow and deep, stops my breathing.

It’s a long drawn out moment before I nod to his clothes and say, “You’re turn,” my voice too tight and too high, the opposite of the casual indifference I mean to convey, considering how embarrassingly I lost my cool the last time I saw him in just his boxers. He watches me while he holds back a smile or something—I can see it glittering in his eyes.

He knows I’m picturing him naked already.

“Alright then,” he says, keeping his gaze straight on mine, so the incident is heart-pounding and intimate.

“Alright then,” I say back, quieter now and still hardly breathing.

Slowly, he lifts the hem of his shirt, revealing tan, toned abs that flex and relax with the movement. His eyes are still on me, I think, but mine have moved downward and are now stuck to his stomach. When his shirt is off, he scrunches it up and passes it a couple times back and forth between his hands, watching me with an amused smile.

I blink a few times, pull myself together, and snap, “What?” I’m looking him right in the eye now—right in the eye and not at his chest, not at his abdomen, not at the lines below that slant toward his…

“Nothing,” he says, really grinning now. The laugh lines at the corners of his eyes are deep and endearing, and I hate them for it. My face feels hot, unbearably so, like the house has suddenly turned into a freakin’ sauna. I do my best to shrug as I sweep my eyes over his body, going for “unfazed.”

“Meh,” I mutter.

Then I spin away and bolt for the living room so he can’t see me anymore, and maybe more importantly, so I can’t see him. Because there is no way in hell I can stand there and watch him strip off his jeans without wanting to jump him on the spot.

Damn the bastard.

Damn him to hell.

***

At Miles of Vinyls
the next day, Trevyn and Amber are aflutter as they dart about the store, adding and arranging furniture and decorations. A leather sofa now sits along the right wall, which was empty space before. Band posters enclosed in antique frames hang on the walls. A Persian rug lies on the floor of the vast front entry space, tying together the historic feel from ceiling to floor. In her hands, Amber holds a stack of posters I can’t make out until she lays them out on the temporary table she set up.

“Oh, no, no,” I say when I see the spread of black and white photographs. The ones showcasing the interior of our record store are artistic and beautiful, but then there are others in which I can clearly see myself. “Amber, what are you doing with those?”

She doesn’t look at me right away, just keeps shuffling around the spread of photographs, a sly smile on her face. Finally, she steps back, and satisfaction makes her entire face glow. But me?—I move to stand beside her, and I stare those photographs down with a vengeance.

Many of them are candid ones of me, not the poses I remember doing for her. She must have taken them in between shoots when I didn’t realize she was still clicking away. I narrow my eyes at her in a sideways glance.

“You’re going to be the face of our advertising campaign,” she tells me, her voice soft and her eyes expectant, reminding me so much of Leah’s. “If that’s alright with you, of course. Trevyn is head over heels for these pictures.”

“Amber,” I finally groan, pressing my hands to my head. I should’ve known it was a trap. “I thought you were just wanting me to, I don’t know, pose for you because you like taking photographs and I happened to be in the vicinity.”

“Well, it was like that at first,” she admits. “But then they turned out so…authentic…and fitting for how we want people to see this place, you know? Like I said before, there’s something about you…You capture the passion we want others to see here and to have here among all these wondrous works of art.” She gestures to the shelves, stock full of vinyl records, old and new, popular and undiscovered.

I turn my attention back to the photographs, but it’s hard to keep my eyes on them because I don’t quite recognize myself. I don’t look like the girl I’m used to seeing—the tragic, broken girl I face every day in the mirror. In these photographs, there’s something foreign and striking in my eyes as they roam the shelves of vinyls; there’s a delicateness with which I reach to touch them, and wonder in the small space between my lips and in the tilt of my head. My dark hair looks completely black, contrasting my pale skin. The disparity between all the shades of dark and light gives further meaning and emotional depth to the scenes.

“They’re really good,” I admit in a whisper. My throat swells with a feeling I fight to push down. With shaky fingers, I touch the edge of one of the photographs.

“
You
make them good,” Amber says with sincerity as she touches my elbow. “I’d like to put some of them up with the flyers, and hang some around the store if that’s alright with you.”

I take in a shallow breath. I can do this for Trevyn. She’s right—as much as I don’t want to see myself in them, the photographs really are perfect. I nod.

“Thank you, Delilah.” She pulls me into a hug. I’m not sure how to react at first, so I just let my arms hang stiffly at my sides as her own pull me closer. Slowly, I lift my hands to her back. And with that action, I feel a little bit of my stress slip away.

“Want to come around town with me and put these up?” she asks me as we break apart. She’s already gathering up the photographs again. “I’ve got the fliers in my car.”

“Uh—” My eyes scan the store and catch a flash of Trevyn in the back as he heads into the stockroom. “Well, I usually man the register,” I finish, but it comes out sounding exactly like a feeble excuse.

“Trevyn!” Amber calls out. The twinkling in her eyes informs me she won’t let me get away with it. But even when the girl shouts, her voice sounds like an angel calling, so it’s hard to resent her for it.

A muffled acknowledgement from the stockroom follows.

“Mind if I kidnap Delilah for a little bit?” she asks. Trevyn emerges from the center aisle and meets us at the front.

“Only if you promise to bring her back in mint condition,” he says, grinning at Amber. “She’s my best worker.”

“I’m your
only
worker,” I say. “So, it’s probably not worth the risk.” But with a wink at Trevyn, Amber hooks her arm through mine and drags me out to the parking lot.

Amber’s car is a Volkswagen Beetle and has a personality befitting her own. Its faded pale yellow paint is chipping off at the sides, and when we crawl inside, I notice the ceiling has been replaced with a neutral paisley-patterned fabric.

“Nice,” I say, pointing up at it. The whole ensemble reminds me of something I’d see in someplace like Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. She laughs as she turns the key in the ignition and straps herself in.

“Bought this from an old lady in Texas who only ever drove it 68,000 miles. Mostly to the hairdresser and to church.”

“She must’ve had the best hair in the congregation then. What year is it?”

“1990.”

I let out a low whistle. “Impressive.”

“Yep. The interior lining of the roof was sagging, held up with pins. I replaced it with something that has a little more soul.”

“I see that.” Wrapping my seatbelt across me, I add, “I like it.”

We arrive at the nearby grocery store eight minutes later, and Amber pulls her long blonde hair into a loose ponytail before she steps out of the car. The sun is bright today, not a single cloud in the vibrantly blue sky, and I’m suddenly wishing I put on shorts this morning instead of these black skinny jeans, which are suffocating in the heat.

We make our way through the automatic sliding doors and over to the community board just inside, a board I doubt anybody ever looks at. Amber is hoping my photograph draws their eyes; I, on the other hand, am still not sure I want all those eyes on me.

We’re out of the store in a minute and on the road again. We pull over at random lamp posts and telephone poles to stick a flyer on each. We pull up to shops—cafes, bookstores, beauty salons—and get permission to stick our flyers and photographs on the walls and windows. We’re out and about for a total of two hours before Amber finally decides to drive us back to Miles of Vinyls. As we walk inside, she slaps a flyer and photograph to the inside of the glass door so that it faces outward for all the passers-by to see.

Inside, Trevyn is leaning into his elbows on the checkout counter, his hand lazily controlling the computer mouse. He straightens when he sees us and flashes a grin. “How’d it go?”

“Good!” Amber chirps and moves softly on her feet to place a whisper of a kiss on his cheek. Trevyn’s eyes brighten.

I exaggerate an eye roll. “You guys make me sick,” I say and embellish it by sticking a finger in my open mouth and making gagging noises.

As I’m carrying this out, the door jingles and someone saunters in. Of course, I nearly choke on my finger when I see that it’s Aiden. I quickly drop my act and meet his eyes with wide ones of my own. He stares back at me, holding my gaze like we’re in a challenge, one of his eyebrows cocked in a complacent manner.

Finally, my eyes drop to his hands, which hold one of our flyers and, to my dismay, a close up photograph of my profile with some out-of-focus shelves of vinyls behind me. In it, my head is tilted slightly, exposing the line of my neck, and it suddenly looks too intimate in Aiden’s hands. By the way he stares down at it, I wonder if he thinks so, too.

My heart squeezes then reboots with an erratic rhythm. Curse the thing. It never knows what’s good for it.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him. His head lifts.

“Huh?” He seems dazed as he brings himself back to the conversation at hand.

“What are you doing here,” I repeat. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Trevyn and Amber head away into the stacks of vinyls, appropriately deciding this is a conversation they shouldn’t eavesdrop on.

“Nice fliers,” Aiden says brightly, holding up one of Amber’s fliers and choosing to ignore my tone.

I cross my arms. “Amber made them.” I motion to where she and Trevyn just ran off.

“She take this picture, too?” He holds up the photograph in his other hand. “You look beautiful. As usual.”

“Where did you get those, Aiden?” I ask with a sigh. “We seriously just put those up, and, now, here you go taking them down.”

Aiden smiles, and I can see something forming in his eyes—the kindling of a jest. I bite my lip.

“You know how many teenage boys are gonna tear down these photos and hang them on their bedroom walls?” he says.

I shake my head at him. “Please, shut up.”

“You know how many of them are gonna come running to this store because of you?” His lips press together hard in an attempt to squash his smile. It doesn’t work; it only makes his whole face look like he’s on the verge of bursting.

I glare at him, really drill it into his forehead, but it glances off him with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Just saying!” he says. “You’ll see.”

I start to walk away, but he catches up and, with a laugh, stops me by my shoulders. “You’re the smokin’ hot record store girl. They’ll be descending in droves.”

“Drop it, Aiden.” I push past him.

With another laugh, he says, “It’s not just you, though, you know. The girls are gonna be all over me, too.” I stop walking and slowly turn around, although I fight myself the whole way. He appears smug that he got my attention.

“And why is that?” I ask, doing my best to sound extremely over this conversation.

He straightens to a fuller height and runs a hand over his hair, and my eyes follow the movement unwillingly. He holds up the other flier, the one inviting local bands to audition for our in-shop concerts.

“Dylan’s and my band is playing at your first event.”

I bite my cheek. “You haven’t even auditioned yet.” And what is this now? They have a band? Okay, from what I’ve heard them playing in Dylan’s room, they’re pretty good, but I had no idea they were
that
serious.

“We’ll be the best. By far.” Aiden seems quite sure of this as he looks me over for a second. “Are you gonna be one of the judges?”

“You and Dylan have a band?” I ask instead of answering. He nods. “A
real
band?”

This amuses him. “You don’t have to sound so skeptical about it.”

“What is your part in this”—I wave my fingers like I’m merely entertaining him—“
band
of yours?”

But he sees right through me, because he steps a little closer, his face dipping a little as his eyes fasten on my face.