Chapter 3: The Record Store Test
Three days. Seventy-two hours of trying to forget the taste of vanilla and failing.
Zay had thrown himself into work like a man trying to outrun his own shadow. He'd restocked the jazz section twice, reorganized the soul 45s by label instead of artist, then reorganized them back because the change felt wrong in his bones. He'd met with his supplier, counted the cash from the Friday drop, sat through a painfully boring lecture on the Baroque period, and still—still—Nova's voice kept sliding into his head at random moments.
Prove it.
He was wiping down the counter when the bell above the door jingled. He didn't look up. Just kept moving the rag in slow circles, listening to the footsteps cross the worn wooden floor.
The footsteps stopped.
He looked up.
Nova stood on the other side of the counter, a record sleeve tucked under her arm, her head tilted at that familiar angle—the one that said she was already three steps ahead of whatever he was about to say. She wore a faded denim jacket over a cropped white tee, gold hoops catching the dim light, and jeans that hugged her hips like they'd been tailored for her body.
"Morning," she said.
"It's afternoon."
"Is it?" She glanced toward the window, where the gray light of an overcast day filtered through dusty blinds. "Huh. Time flies when you're avoiding someone."
Zay set the rag down. "Who said I was avoiding you?"
"Nobody." She stepped closer, sliding the record across the counter like a card dealer finishing a hand. "But you didn't text. Didn't call. Didn't show up at my place with flowers and a speech about how you can't stop thinking about me."
"Was that on the agenda?"
"Would've been nice."
He looked down at the record. Prince's Controversy. Original pressing. The sleeve was worn at the edges, the vinyl visible through the cutout, and he could tell from the condition that it had been handled with care—probably by someone who understood what it was worth.
"You collect?" he asked.
"I dabble." She crossed her arms. "Found it at a thrift shop in Decatur. Cost me two dollars."
Zay picked it up, turning it over in his hands. The weight of it, the smell of it—aged paper and something faintly sweet, like the ghost of incense. His fingers traced the spine.
"Two dollars," he repeated.
"Mmhmm."
"This is worth three hundred. Maybe more, depending on the buyer."
"I know." She smiled. "But I'm not a seller."
He set the record back down. Met her eyes.
"Why are you here, Nova?"
"I told you." She shrugged, casual, like the answer was obvious. "You said next time you wouldn't go easy on me. I figured I'd give you the chance to prove it."
The words landed like a match on dry paper. Zay felt the heat of them spread through his chest, slow and deliberate, and he had to remind himself to breathe. She was baiting him. Testing him. Same as she'd done in the stairwell, same as she'd done at the party.
But this was his house. His territory.
And he wasn't about to let her forget it.
He moved around the counter without a word. Crossed to the front door. Flipped the sign from OPEN to CLOSED. Turned the deadbolt with a click that echoed through the empty store like a gavel.
When he turned back, Nova was watching him with an expression that hovered somewhere between curiosity and satisfaction.
"Locking me in?" she asked.
"Locking the world out."
He walked past her, toward the back of the store, and didn't stop to see if she was following. He heard her footsteps anyway—quick, sure, like she'd already decided the risk was worth it.
The back room was smaller than the front, cramped with shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling. Boxes of unsorted inventory lined the walls, and in the corner, a vintage turntable sat on a wooden crate, its speakers wired to a receiver that had seen better decades. The air was thick here, warmer, smelling of dust and vinyl and the faintest trace of weed that had seeped into the walls over years of late-night listening sessions.
Zay pulled a crate from the bottom shelf and set it on the floor between them.
"Private collection," he said. "Not for sale."
Nova crouched down, her eyes scanning the rows of albums like she was reading a language only she understood. Her fingers danced over the spines—Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Aretha, Sly and the Family Stone—and then stopped.
She pulled out a record.
Purple Rain. First pressing. The sleeve was pristine, the vinyl inside still in its original shrink wrap, the hype sticker faded but intact.
"This is—" She stopped. Looked up at him. "You have a first pressing of Purple Rain."
"I have a lot of things."
She held it out to him, and he took it. Their fingers brushed, barely, and he felt the same jolt he'd felt in the stairwell, the party, the truck. That electric hum that said danger and yes in the same breath.
He turned to the turntable, slid the vinyl from its sleeve, and set it spinning. The needle dropped with a soft crackle.
"Rules," he said.
Nova raised an eyebrow. "Rules?"
"You can stay." He turned to face her, arms crossed, expression flat. "But you listen to the whole B-side without saying a word."
She blinked. "The whole thing?"
"Every second."
"That's like—eighteen minutes."
"Give or take."
She stared at him. He stared back. The opening notes of "Let's Go Crazy" filled the room, bright and urgent, and Nova's mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"You're serious," she said.
"Dead serious."
"And if I talk?"
He stepped closer. Just one step. Just enough that the space between them shrank from feet to inches, and he could see the flecks of gold in her eyes, the slight part of her lips.
"Then you lose," he said.
Nova held his gaze. The song shifted—"Take Me with U," then "The Beautiful Ones"—and she settled onto the floor, cross-legged, her back against a shelf of old blues records. She looked up at him with that same steady defiance.
"Fine," she said. "But you're gonna have to do better than a staring contest to get rid of me."
Zay didn't answer. He just lowered himself to the floor across from her, back against a stack of boxes, and let the music take over.
The B-side unfolded like a conversation neither of them was ready to have. "Computer Blue" thrummed with tension. "Darling Nikki" started with that infamous grinding beat, and Zay watched Nova's face for any sign of reaction. She kept her expression smooth, but her fingers tapped against her thigh—once, twice, a rhythm that matched the song.
He felt his own pulse respond.
The music filled the room, thick and heavy. The walls swallowed the sound, kept it close, and Zay found himself watching her the way he watched a record spin—fascinated by the way she moved even when she was sitting still.
"Darling Nikki" hit its bridge. The lyrics were filthy, unapologetic, and Nova's lips pressed together like she was holding back a laugh. Zay saw it. He leaned forward, just an inch, and her eyes snapped to his.
The song kept going. The silence stretched.
And then, halfway through, right as the music swelled into that breathless crescendo—
"I can't."
The words burst out of her like she'd been holding them underwater.
Zay's eyebrow arched. "You lost."
"I know." She shook her head, curls bouncing. "But this song—" She gestured at the turntable. "You can't just sit there and listen to 'Darling Nikki' with a straight face. It's impossible."
"I managed."
"Because you're a robot."
He laughed. Short, sharp, unexpected. "I'm a lot of things."
"You keep saying that." She leaned forward, mirroring his posture, and the space between them collapsed into something that felt inevitable. "But I'm starting to think you don't actually know what you are."
The song ended. "When Doves Cry" began, its lonely guitar line cutting through the silence like a question.
Zay moved first.
He reached out, hand closing around her wrist, and pulled her toward him. She came without resistance, her knees hitting the floor between his, her face inches from his. The music pulsed around them, and he could feel her breath on his lips, warm and quick.
"You talk too much," he said.
"You like it."
He kissed her.
Not like the party. Not like the truck. This was slower. Deliberate. He took his time, one hand sliding up her arm, the other finding the curve of her waist. She tasted like coffee and something sweet, and she kissed him back like she'd been waiting for it, like she'd known exactly how this would end.
The shelf behind her rattled as he pressed her against it, boxes of 45s shifting under the weight. A single fell—something old, something Motown—and neither of them cared. Her hands were in his hair, his were on her hips, and the music kept playing, "When Doves Cry" bleeding into "I Would Die 4 U," the rhythm driving them forward.
She broke the kiss first. Pulled back just enough to look at him, chest heaving, lips swollen.
"You still haven't proven anything," she whispered.
Zay's hand tightened on her waist. "No?"
"You've just shown me you're good at wanting." She held his gaze, unflinching. "That's the easy part."
He smirked. Leaned in until his lips brushed her ear.
"Wanting is the easy part," he agreed. "But I'm not finished."
She shivered. He felt it—the way her body reacted before her mind could catch up. But she didn't pull away. Didn't step back.
Instead, she tilted her head, meeting his eyes with that same steady challenge she'd worn since the first day.
"What are you offering?" she asked.
"A deal." He pulled back just enough to look at her. "One date. No games. No friends. No running."
Nova's eyebrows rose. "That's a lot of rules."
"You're the one who said I haven't proven anything."
"I'm still saying it."
"Then give me the chance." He let go of her waist, sat back on his heels. "One date. You pick the place. I show up. We see what happens."
She studied him. The silence stretched, filled only by the fading notes of "Baby I'm a Star" and the soft crackle of the needle hitting the run-out groove.
Then she smiled.
"Fine," she said. "But I'm picking the place."
"Deal."
She stood, brushing dust off her jeans. Zay rose too, slower, watching her move. She reached for the record on the turntable—Purple Rain, still spinning—and slid it back into its sleeve.
"I'm taking this," she said.
"That's not part of the deal."
"Consider it collateral." She tucked it under her arm, then plucked another record from the crate—Sign o' the Times, another first pressing. "And this one."
"You're robbing me."
"I'm investing." She walked past him, toward the door that led back to the front of the store. "You want to prove you're serious? You let me walk out with something that matters."
Zay followed her. Watched as she unlocked the deadbolt, flipped the sign back to OPEN, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The gray light caught her hair, her cheekbones, the curve of her smile.
"When's the date?" he asked.
"Saturday." She glanced back over her shoulder. "I'll text you the address."
"You don't have my number."
"I'll find it."
She walked away. The bell above the door jingled as it swung shut, and Zay stood there, watching her go, the two empty spots in his crate burning like missing teeth.
She'd taken his records.
She'd taken his kiss.
She'd taken his Saturday.
And he still didn't know if he'd won or lost.
But as he turned back toward the counter, he caught his reflection in the glass of a framed poster—and saw that he was smiling.
She wanted him to prove it.
Fine.
He would.
He would.
But Saturday took its time getting there.
Zay spent the days between the record store and the date doing math he didn't want to do. Counting hours. Counting reasons this was a bad idea. Counting the ways Nova had already gotten under his skin without trying. Marcus noticed the shift and said nothing, which was its own kind of commentary. Dee asked twice if everything was good, and both times Zay lied.
The real problem wasn't the date itself.
The real problem was that he'd already started thinking about what he'd wear.
She texted the address Friday night. No greeting. No explanation. Just coordinates and a time. He stared at the message for a full minute, thumb hovering over the keyboard, before he typed back a single word.
Bet.
Saturday arrived with gray skies and a cold snap that made the city feel smaller. Zay parked two blocks from the address and walked the rest of the way, hands in his jacket pockets, breath fogging in front of him. The neighborhood was quiet. Residential. The kind of street where people knew their neighbors and nobody double-parked.
The address led him to a narrow building wedged between a bookstore and a shuttered laundromat. A small sign above the door read Highland Rooftop in faded gold lettering. No bouncer. No line. Just a staircase that wound upward, the walls lined with photographs of musicians he half-recognized.
He climbed.
The rooftop opened up like a secret.
String lights crisscrossed overhead, strung between exposed beams and potted trees that somehow survived the cold. Heaters glowed orange in the corners, and the furniture was mismatched in a way that felt intentional—velvet couches, wooden crates for tables, candles flickering inside glass jars. A piano sat near the edge of the roof, and a man in a wrinkled suit played something soft and instrumental while a handful of people sat scattered at tables, talking in low voices.
It was intimate. It was unexpected. It was exactly the kind of place that would've never crossed his radar.
Nova was already there.
She sat at a corner table near the railing, a glass of wine in front of her, her coat draped over the back of her chair. Tonight she wore a cream-colored turtleneck and gold hoop earrings that caught the light every time she moved. Her hair was pinned up, a few curls escaping to frame her face, and when she saw him, she didn't smile.
She just watched him walk over.
"You came," she said.
"I said I would."
"People say a lot of things."
Zay sat down across from her. The chair scraped against the concrete, and a waiter appeared almost immediately, silent and efficient. Zay ordered whiskey. The waiter nodded and disappeared.
"No games, right?" Nova picked up her wine glass and took a slow sip. "That was the deal."
"That was my side of the deal."
"Same thing."
He leaned back in his chair, letting his gaze drift over the rooftop, the lights, the piano player, the few scattered patrons. Then he brought his eyes back to her.
"You picked this place," he said.
"I did."
"Why?"
She set her glass down. Considered the question like it mattered.
"Because it's quiet," she said. "And I wanted to see if you'd show up somewhere that didn't have your name attached to it."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning every spot I've seen you in, you owned it. The stairwell. The party. Your store." She tilted her head. "I wanted to see what you look like when you don't have the home advantage."
Zay felt something shift in his chest. She was studying him again, the way she always did, but this time there was no crowd, no music loud enough to hide behind, no counter between them.
"Fair," he said.
The waiter returned with his whiskey. Zay wrapped his fingers around the glass and took a sip slow, letting the burn settle before he spoke again.
"Your turn," he said. "Tell me something real."
Nova's eyebrows lifted. "That's how this works?"
"You picked the place. I pick the first question."
"What do you want to know?"
"Where you're from."
She smiled at that, small and private.
"Savannah," she said. "Born and raised. My mother sings in the church choir. My father runs a hardware store that's been in our family for three generations." She paused. "I have two older brothers who still call me every Sunday to make sure I haven't gotten myself into trouble."
"And have you?"
"Not the kind they'd recognize."
Zay swirled his whiskey. "Why'd you leave?"
"I outgrew it." She leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Not the people. The pace. I needed to be somewhere that didn't know my whole story before I got a chance to write it."
That landed somewhere Zay didn't expect. He looked at her, really looked, and saw the thing he'd been circling since the stairwell—the reason she felt different, the reason she didn't flinch.
She was building something. Same as him.
"Your turn," she said. "Where are you from?"
Zay took another sip. Longer this time. He set the glass down and turned it in slow circles against the wooden table.
"Here," he said. "Born in the city. Raised in it, more or less." He paused. "My mother worked two jobs. My father died when I was twelve. Everything I know, I learned on my own."
Nova's face didn't change, but her eyes softened.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be. It made me who I am."
"Everything does." She sat back. "But that doesn't mean it's all good."
He nodded. That was fair too.
"What about school?" she asked. "You're at the college. What for?"
"I'm figuring that out." He tapped the glass. "Business, maybe. Music. Something that lets me keep doing what I'm doing without being broke."
"And what is it that you're doing?"
Zay held her gaze. There it was—the question underneath every other question. She was probing, testing, and he couldn't tell if she already knew or if she just sensed it.
"I run a record store," he said. "You've seen it."
"That's part of it."
"For now, that's all you get."
Nova watched him for a beat. Then she picked up her wine, took a sip, and let it go.
"Fine," she said. "What music did you grow up on?"
The conversation shifted after that. Easier. Realer. They traded stories—Nova's first piano lesson at seven, Zay's discovery of his mother's old Stevie Wonder records in a cardboard box. She told him about writing her first song in tenth grade, a breakup anthem that was all anger and no craft. He told her about the first time he heard "A Change Is Gonna Come" and understood what a voice could do.
The candles burned low. The piano player cycled through his set. And for a while, Zay forgot about the deal, the risk, the reasons he didn't do Saturdays.
Then the music stopped.
The silence was sudden enough that they both turned toward the piano. The player—an older man with gray dreadlocks and a wrinkled blazer—was standing now, one hand still resting on the keys, his eyes locked on Zay's table.
"Wait," the man said. "Hold up."
Zay's jaw tightened.
"Zay?" The man stepped down from the piano and started walking toward them. "Isaiah?"
Nova's head swiveled. "Isaiah?"
"Nobody calls me that," Zay muttered.
The man reached the table, a grin spreading across his weathered face. "I knew it. I haven't seen you in—shoot, three, four years?" He stuck out a hand. "Reggie. We played that showcase at the arts center. You remember."
Zay stood and shook his hand. "I remember."
"Dawg, you still play?"
"Not much."
"Not much?" Reggie looked at Nova, then back at Zay. "This man used to tear it up. I'm serious. I've been playing piano for thirty years and I've seen maybe a handful of people with his kind of touch."
Nova's eyebrows had climbed high. She looked at Zay with an expression that hovered between amusement and genuine surprise.
"You play piano?" she asked.
"I did."
"Play something." Reggie clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Come on. For old times."
Zay shook his head. "I'm good."
"I'm not asking." Reggie stepped back, gesturing toward the piano with a sweep of his arm. "The people here are cool. They came for music. Give them something."
A few of the patrons had noticed the exchange. Heads turned. A quiet murmur moved through the tables.
Zay looked at Nova. She was watching him with that same steady gaze, but there was something different in it now—curiosity, maybe. A question she hadn't asked yet.
He didn't want to.
He also didn't know how to say no without looking like a coward.
"One song," he said.
Reggie grinned and backed toward the bar.
Zay walked to the piano.
The bench was cold. The keys were old, the ivory worn in places, but when he pressed a test chord, the sound that came out was warm and full. He closed his eyes for a second. Let his hands settle.
Then he started to play.
The song wasn't anything anyone would've recognized. He'd written it years ago, back when he was trying to figure out who he was, back before the streets had claimed him. It opened slow—minor chords that breathed like somebody sighing. His left hand carried the weight while his right drifted over the melody, and the notes didn't feel rehearsed.
They felt remembered.
The rooftop went quiet. The clink of glasses stopped. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath, and Zay's hands moved with a kind of precision that came from somewhere deeper than practice. His foot pressed the pedal soft, letting the notes blur into each other like watercolor, and he kept his eyes closed because opening them would mean seeing her.
Seeing what she thought.
The song swelled. The rhythm picked up, broke, reformed into something that felt like longing, and then it eased back down. The last note hung in the air for longer than it should have, and when he lifted his hands from the keys, he realized his chest was tight.
Silence.
Then applause.
Not polite. Not scattered. Real. The tables around him clapped loud enough that it echoed off the buildings next door. Reggie whooped from the bar. Somebody in the corner said something that got lost in the noise. Zay stood, nodded once toward the room, and walked back to the table like nothing had happened.
Nova was still watching him. Her wine sat untouched.
"You've been holding out," she said.
"I didn't hold out. You didn't ask."
"You wrote that?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"Years ago."
She shook her head, slow. "You just played a song in front of a room full of strangers like it was nothing, and you're standing here telling me it's not a big deal."
"It's not."
"You're unbelievable." But she was smiling. Not the sharp one she'd used in the stairwell. Something softer. Something that made the tightness in his chest worse. "This whole time I thought you were just some guy with a store and a truck and a bunch of records. You're a musician."
"I'm a lot of things."
"You keep saying that." She stood, grabbed her coat. "But I'm starting to believe you."
They left the rooftop together. Reggie caught Zay by the arm on the way out and said something about playing again soon, and Zay nodded without committing to anything. The stairwell was narrow, and Nova walked ahead of him, her heels echoing against the walls.
Outside, the cold hit hard. She pulled her coat tighter.
"You want to walk for a bit?" she asked.
"Sure."
They moved down the street side by side, past the bookstore, past the laundromat, past a small park where someone had left a string of lights tangled in the branches of a bare tree. Zay kept his hands in his pockets. She kept hers in her coat.
Neither of them said anything for a block.
"You know what I was thinking while you played?" Nova finally said.
"What?"
"That you don't play often. Not anymore." She looked at him sideways. "It hurt to watch you."
"Because?"
"Because you looked like you missed it."
Zay didn't answer that. But he felt it—the truth of it—sitting in his chest like a stone he'd been carrying for years without noticing.
They walked another block. The streetlights buzzed. A car passed with music leaking out its windows.
"Where's your truck?" she asked.
"Two blocks back."
"I figured you'd park close."
"I wanted to walk."
She smiled. Small. Almost to herself.
They turned the corner. The street where they'd started came into view, and the truck sat there under a streetlight, dark and patient.
Zay unlocked the doors. Opened hers.
"Such a gentleman," she teased.
"I told you I'm not."
"You keep telling me a lot of things."
They climbed in. He started the engine. The cab filled with quiet, and the heater kicked on, pushing warmth into the space between them.
The drive to her place took twelve minutes. Neither of them spoke much. The radio was off, and the only sound was the hum of the tires and the occasional turn signal.
When he pulled up outside her building, he parked the truck but didn't turn off the engine.
Nova didn't move either.
"For a man who doesn't do dates," she said, "you did pretty good tonight."
"Don't get used to it."
"Too late."
She looked at him. He looked at her. The distance between them was twelve inches of console, and neither of them closed it.
Then Nova unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned across.
Her kiss was slower this time. Deliberate. She cupped his jaw with one hand and pressed her lips to his like she was memorizing the shape of them. Zay's hand found her waist. Pulled her closer. The angle was awkward across the console, but neither of them cared.
She pulled back first. Just enough to look at him.
"We're not done," she said.
"I know."
She opened the door. Cold air rushed in. She stepped out onto the curb and looked back at him one more time.
"Goodnight, Isaiah."
"Zay."
"Isaiah," she repeated, smiling. Then she shut the door and walked up the path.
Zay watched her go. Watched the porch light flick on. Watched her disappear through the front door. He sat there in the dark, engine still running, and let the last ten minutes replay behind his eyes.
Then he put the truck in gear and pulled away.
He didn't know what this was. He didn't know what it was becoming. But somewhere between the rooftop and the kiss, the game had shifted, and he didn't mind losing.
Not tonight.