One Night Stand // Brian 'Otis' Zvonecek ✔️

04 || RECORDS

Obtaining the newest Rush album for Mouch's birthday present. A relatively easy sounding task, right...? Wrong. It was not an easy task, not one bit.

It turns out that getting a copy of this particular record was proving harder for Otis than his failed attempts at finding his mystery woman was. He'd been to five different record stores this morning in search of this record and every single time he'd had to hear the same two words coming from the shop owners lips.

Sold out.

Otis was beginning to grow tired. Fed up. Not just from hearing those words every twenty minutes but also from simply searching for the record itself and from trying to track down his mystery girl, who at this point was becoming nothing more than a distant dream. One he was falling quickly out of hope would ever become a reality.

It had barely been a week since Mouch's big speech about how Otis shouldn't give up in his quest at finding her. His big speech about how he never gave up. How they'd never seen him give up. How they weren't going to allow him to give up. And while Otis appreciated the support he'd been getting from his friends, and while he didn't want to personally give up, he was finding that with each passing day where his luck remained the same, absent, he was slowly edging his way towards giving up completely.

"Yo, Otis, are you listening to me?" Cruz's somewhat booming voice snapped Otis from his thoughts, causing him to glance towards him as the vacant look on his face was replaced by his permanent, and most recent, bleak one.

"What?" Otis blinked in confused, having completely forgotten that Cruz was even with him as they strolled down the sidewalk towards the sixth store in their record seeking quest.

"I said..." Cruz began, clearly annoyed at having to repeat himself again for what Otis didn't know was the fourth time. "...what's the name of this next record store?"

"Oh, uh, I think it's Moore Records." Otis replied, pressing his lips together into a semi-apologetic smile. He hadn't meant to fall into another mental battle with himself over his mystery girl, but sometimes he just couldn't help it as she was all he could think about.

"Moore? What's that, a last name?" Cruz asked, parting momentarily from Otis's side to allow an elderly man and his dog to walk through them.

"I think so." Otis breathed out, scratching at the back of his head as Cruz fell in line beside him again. He yawned, a deep and rather tiresome yawn before he ran his hands down his tired face.

"Did you get any sleep last night?" Cruz questioned with concern, worried about his friends mental state as lately he'd heard him pacing around his room at night when he should be sleeping.

"Couple hours." Otis murmured in response, choosing to ignore Cruz's almost parental sigh over his lack of sleep.

"Dude, you need to slow down before you burn out." Cruz said seriously, unable to see the way Otis tried to roll his eyes but found he was too tired to do so. He gently grabbed Otis's arm, halting his movements as the two of them came to a sudden stop at the edge of the sidewalk. "I'm serious, Otis... You're exhausted."

"I'm fine." Otis protested, earning an unconvinced look from Cruz. He shrugged his arm from Cruz's light hold, spinning briefly on his heels before he went to step out onto the road to cross it.

Only, before Otis's foot even stepped down off the curb. Before he could even feel the surface of the road beneath his shoes, he was pulled rather harshly back by his collar, his back crashing hard against Cruz's front as a city bus went speeding past them, its horn blaring loudly enough that it woke Otis up more than he'd been in days.

"Please, tell me more about how you're fine." Cruz said with a touch of sarcasm, only after the slight panic in his chest subsided over Otis's near miss with a large bus.