If I Fell

Chapter Fourteen

I was officially never leaving.

Well, that was pushing my luck, wasn’t it? What was true was the fact that I was quite prepared to spend so much time here that I might as well have never left in the first place. At least something similar to that.

Flicking through the records with the tips of my fingers, I didn’t bother to glance up as I announced, “I hope you know that I’m coming here all the time now.”

“Are you?”

Cole’s amused voice was enough to bring up a more obvious grin to my mouth, but I didn’t want to broadcast that fact, at least not now. So I kept my head down as I looked through the stack of albums, my hair creating a dark curtain around my face.

However when I reached the end of the ‘B’ section, I dragged my eyes up, leaning my forearms on top of the piles of records gently as I looked at him. He was at the opposite end of the store from me, resting back upon the front counter that was papered with stickers, his elbows propped behind him with a tattered paperback held in front of him. He wasn’t reading his copy of a poem anthology by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, though.

Instead he had the book held open in front of him as he looked at me over the low rising shelves.

In that moment I found it all too easy to ignore the middle aged man that was standing over at the windows in ratty sweats who was gaping at us open mouthed.

“If I can remember where we are, that is,” I replied with my mouth quirked up to one side.

Despite the fact that Cole laughed at my dry comment, it was an honest thing to point out. It felt like we’d faced a maze in order to get here. While Cole might know the way here like the back of his hand, it was going to take me a bit longer. Because while it might be right in the middle of town, there were too many turns and odd roads to make sense of on my first trip to the place.

Before he had the chance to reply beyond a laugh, Cole had his attention stolen when one of two others in the record store who had wandered cautiously up to the counter.

Going back to the records, I moved onto the next section of bands and artists that begin with ‘C’ and were from the folk-rock genre. However I couldn’t help myself from sending a discreet glance upwards.

Cole had wandered around, tossing the creased paperback carelessly onto the counter that he now stood behind. The girl that had had the vinyls pressed against her chest nervously was now smiling just as anxiously while he flipped through her selections. She was probably but sixteen, looking uncomfortable in those thick-framed glasses, and it was hard to miss the blush that was colouring her cheeks.

However Cole didn’t seem to notice as I had. No, he was just looking through the selection of records before jotting them down in the notebook – the record store hadn’t upgraded in technology since the seventies, according to him.

Shaking my head, I looked down to my hands, but I found myself unable to stop myself from looking up again.

This time I caught the sight of Cole looking up to her for the first time, his mouth moving in words that I couldn’t hear across the store. It was the smallest shadow of a smiles tracing his mouth that had me frowning. And when she gave a loud laugh that sounded delightedly eager my frown only deepened.

Now when I focused my eyes downwards, this time I didn’t look up.

What was up with me? That shouldn’t bother me. It wasn’t even a portion of the grin that I had gotten used to, let alone the smile. I was so used to enjoying his smile that this feeling caught me right of guard. This was definitely the opposite of what I had been feeling in the past weeks.