Page 84 of For the Record

But wasn’t this what I knew was going to happen all along? I’d sat there, waiting and waiting for that shoe to drop with Adam. I only had myself to blame for letting that reminder go.

People leave you in life, and there was nothing you could do to prevent it. Adam was just another one of those people. So why did this hurt more than the rest?

Currently playing: Homesick by Noah Kahan

***

After checking the back of the store for further damage and locking the place up, I reached for my phone to call Nathan.

Technically, he wasn’t my brother. Not by blood, anyway. But he was as good as. Plus, any of my siblings right now would pester me with questions about why I needed a ride and what I was doing outside the record store. Nathan was a good enough guy to keep his mouth mostly shut and not press on the harder questions.

“Hey, man,” he answered after two rings.

“Hey, any chance you could give me a ride?”

There was a silent pause between us. If he couldn’t, I wasn’t above getting an Uber. This seemed easier.

“Yeah. Where are you?”

I rattled off the address. I could hear his brain putting the pieces together, but he didn’t question me. He simply just said, “I’ll be there in twenty.”

When he pulled onto the street, I hopped into the passenger side, swinging the spare key for Sip ’n’ Spin around my fingers. As suspected, he didn’t ask questions.

As we were approaching the highway exit that would lead me to home, Nathan kept driving. I tossed a thumb over my shoulder. “Turn’s that way.”

“What?” he asked, looking behind him and then turning back around, shaking his head. “Oh, no. We’re going to Romfuzzled.”

I shuddered. The last thing I needed was all of my family members jumping me at nine in the morning.

“It’s not open.”

“It’s always open for us. Besides, Luke asked Crew to help with some food truck event thing, and I’m bored. So you’re coming.”

My head rested against the seat. “I’m not good company right now.”

“Are you ever?” He snorted. “Kidding. Well, kind of. But either way, Calla gave strict instructions to bring you back so that when she’s off work, she can come by, and I can’t say no to that girl.” He said it with this dreamy voice that was comparable to a thirteen-year-old talking about his neighborhood crush.

I groaned. If my baby sister had to marry someone, I guess Nathan was as good as we could get in this family.

We pulled into Romfuzzled and entered through the side door, finding Crew and Luke arguing while Layla sat at the bar with a laptop, typing away. Marigold sat beside her, leaned back in the chair with two hands on her barely swollen belly.

“Luke, stop moving and listen to me. It’s swing, two, three, four and turn, two, three, four—”

“I didn’t sign up for dancing when you said you were going to make a TikTok for the bar.”

“Oh yes you did.”

“Where?”

“In the fine print right next to where you need to be better at lip syncing and cutting out your millennial pause—” Crew stopped and looked over at me, eyes squinting.

“Adam.” He tilted his head. “Whoa. What happened?”

He set down his phone and ran over to me, passing Nathan and putting the back of his hand to my forehead—which I promptly smacked away. “Did you get in an accident? Oh no, where’s Rachel?”

I scrunched my eyebrows together and opened my mouth to answer, but he kept going.

“Are you guys getting divorced?”

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