The Tiny Vicious

1 | .going under

It's 7:30am when I unlock the door into Mz Hydes Records. Cameron walks into view from the room at the back of the shop behind the counter. He's tall, with lean musculature, and soft brown hair that I've noticed looks tickled with honey in the sun.

"Morning, Strange Girl," he says, walking over to me.

He's called me Strange Girl for a few years now, ever since I got him to listen to the song by Halestorm on repeat, for an entire week until he threatened breaking my record.

He told me that it captured my essence.

We stare at each other for a minute, in complete silence. I examine his eyes which are sea-green with flecks of hazel.

"I thought I was opening the store, today?" I ask him, folding my arms across my chest.

"You are," he nods. "Just wanted to check in! I heard your mom is doing the music scoring for an upcoming indie movie, is that true?"

"Yeah, it is," I chuckle.

"Okay," he says. "That's, uh, pretty cool, actually!"

Jay is a film buff as well as a music connoisseur, so it's taking quite a lot for him to stifle his excitement like this.

"Are we still on for tonight?" I ask him.

"Yeah, we're all set," he says. "I'll see you later!"

He walks to the door and closes it behind him, briefly looking back at me.

I spend the next hour preparing for the day ahead. We had a late delivery last night of new vinyl which still had to be opened and priced. So I sit down of the floor to start combing through the collection.

The door opens again and I hear the tiny copper bell tinkle.

"Aria?" I recognise Silver's voice and get to my feet so she can see me.

She's holding a cardboard cup holder in one hand with two coffees in it, I can smell the strong smelling brews instantly. In her other hand she has two pastry bags.

Her tights are artfully ripped and the heavy boots she has on are buckled with the odd scuff mark. She kicked me once, by mistake and I had an abstract buckle-mark bruise on my ankle for weeks. She has short, wavy auburn hair, bright blue eyes, and bold, full red lips.

She holds her bottom lip between her teeth as she looks at me. Her light blue button-down shirt is tucked into her high-waist skirt which has a studded belt.

"I got you a coffee and a croissant," she holds them up.

Silver hasn't been in Nashville long. She and her parents moved ten months ago; like my mom, she's a New York girl at heart. However, and quite interesting - Silver's dad is French, so she's lived in Paris, and London, depending on where her dad needed to be for work. Travelling for work was how her dad met Silver's mother, in New York, Manhattan.

"I thought you might like coffee and something to eat," she adds.

If I'm on an early shift at the record store, I tend to have the unhealthy pattern of skipping out on breakfast which Silver had been quick to pick up on.

"Thanks," I say. I'm distracted by my phone which is only on vibrate when I'm working. It's a message from mom, she's sent a picture of a cluster of sock singles.

"What is it?" Silver asks curiously.

"My mom. She hates chores but considers herself to be really good at sock matching. She always gets so sick of single socks. On multiple occasions she's taken a picture of like twenty different singles. It's a problem that bothers her," I explain.