The Middle | Hemmings + Styles AU

1. meet quiff boy

The small CD store I worked in wasn't what you'd call busy. 

Which made sense. It was 2015, after all. Most people bought their music online these days, or used Spotify. Not me, though.

Call me old fashioned, but I still liked the idea of tangible music. I revelled in the feeling of clutching onto a new CD and playing it for the first time. Music was like a drug to me and there wasn't genre that I wasn't happy to get my hit from.

The store was kept in business due to two types of people: older people who had no clue on how to use iTunes or Spotify, and pompous wanna-be musician types. 

The day that Luke Hemmings walked into the store, I took one look at him and knew he belonged to the latter collective.

Within seconds of surveying his ripped black skinny jeans and a quiff so high it practically added an extra foot to his already tall stature, I'd figured him out. "Excuse me?" he asked. His tongue quickly coated the silver metal that hugged his lip. "Are you Stella?"

I pointed to the name tag on my black singlet, "Unless I'm wearing the wrong name tag, then yep."

The store owner, Mr Polenta (also know as Grunge from his days as a local metal-band bassist) insisted all employees wear name tags. Something about being relatable and building relationships with the customers. It might have been less pointless if there were more than two employees.

The blonde boy tilted his head slightly, not seeming phased by my sarcasm that usually earned an eye-roll from the other music jerks who came in here.

"I'm Luke... I'm in a local band," Of course you are. "Our drummer, Ashton, said that it was okay for us to put some of our posters up here?"

Usually I didn't remember customers by name, but Ashton was a rare exception. It was hard not to remember his huge smile or the endearing shaggy curls that graced his head. Plus, he kind of laughed like a little girl which I happened to find really cute.

"You can put them over there," I nodded my head over to the back wall which we used for promoting local bands. "No more than three."

It had been my idea and word quickly spread around town which was why so many of our customers were in bands themselves. Allowing advertisements for their gigs had boosted our sales too. That made Grunge happy, which made me happy. This store was everything to me.

While my friends were busy at university or across the globe travelling, I spent my days working in the store. I'd just finished a diploma in Business Management and one day, I wanted to own a crappy little CD store myself, and then eventually a record label. Kind of like a shorter, younger, female version of Richard Branson.

"No one will see them there," Luke scoffed, his eyes scanning the room before he finally pointed to the glass window at the front of the store. "Can I put one there instead?"

"No."

He lowered his blue eyes at me, his tongue licking his lip piercing again; probably his usual go-to move when he was trying to charm girls. It's not going to work on me boy. "Please? Come on, Stella, just this once... for me?"

He was extremely good-looking, and his level of cockiness balanced finely between charming and repulsive. I wasn't yet sure which way it would go. "Nope," I smiled. "And now you can only put two on the back wall."

He pretended to look hurt and I left him to hang the posters while I served another customer. It was an older guy who was trying to find a CD for his step-daughter. By the time he picked and paid for two CDs, Luke came to the counter with a Nirvana album in his hands. I laughed as I scanned the barcode.

"What's so amusing?" He asked, taking out his wallet to pay.

"If I had a dollar for every time a musician came in here and bought a Nirvana cd then..."

"Then you wouldn't be working in a CD store?" He finished, biting down on his lip. I took the cash from his hand and put it into the till.

"Pretty much," I laughed, handing back his change and Luke smiled an all-white teeth smile. He was definitely a bit charming, I decided in that moment. "Did you get your posters up?"

"All two of them, yeah." he laughed. "But considering you were so mean about it, I think you need to do something to make it up to me."

"If you're talking about a quickie out the back of the store, then I'm sorry but I'll have to decline," I joked.

"I was going to suggest you came to our show," he pointed to the two black posters on the back wall. "And then I'll take you backstage for a quickie."

I laughed at his joke and squinted my eyes, trying to make out the writing on the posters. "5 Seconds of Summer," he explained. "Or 5SOS."

"I'll have to consult my calendar, quiff boy," and he laughed.

"If I had a dollar for every time a girl called me quiff boy, then..."

"Then you wouldn't be in a record store hanging posters for a gig that only a handful of people will attend?"

"Exactly."

The two of us laughed again. It seemed like we hadn't stopped the entire time he'd been in the small store. It was refreshing, and fun, and maybe I didn't have him figured out at all.