Photo by Stefanus Martanto Setyo Husodo
She looked lost, he thought, like she was in way over her head. Her eyes met his.
“Fletcher Agency?” she said.
“Yes,” Reid said. “I just happen to like music, too.”
She blushed.
He gestured to a chair. “Sit. Please.”
Photo by Abigail Keenan.
When the story finally let go, Emi looked up. She could not take her eyes off that room. She had never seen anything like it. A reading room like a music shop, records in crates, the player on a table.
Photo by Hieu Le.
Sixty-seven days before
The first time Reid met Emi, she was lost in a book, waiting in a pleather chair outside his office, the next in line for an interview. He stared at her, but the story held tight.
That’s how he knew.
Photo by The Anchor.
They occupied a booth at Casey’s Root Cellar that evening. She always loved that he would slide in beside her, even though there was another chair, even though it was business. They sat close, touching, talking about the book pitches that had come through and which ones were maybes, with a little work, and which ones were sure things. He couldn’t be bothered with the ones that didn’t even make the cut, so she deleted those emails without his ever seeing or knowing.
Somewhere in the course of dinner, his hand crept to her leg, and she felt it burn beneath his fingers. And then, too soon, they were back at the office and finishing up their work, and then it was time to part ways, like it always was, when he would say he’d see her tomorrow and she would lift her face, hoping for a kiss like the one he’d done in an alley on the walk back from Casey’s. His mouth had tasted like a roast beef sandwich with a hint of a rich cabernet sauvignon, but those were only the things she would remember later.
Never in a million years would she have guessed it was the last time. For anything.
