The Recluse

Adeline did not speak of her midnight encounters with the random tattooed man, and nobody bothered to ask why she’d shown up to work in the same outfit as the day before and passed out in the break room. The employees at the record store were used to her unusual antics on weekday mornings at this point, and let her do paperwork for the rest of the day. At the end of the work day, she gathered her purse, still stuffed with heels, and traipsed to the bus stop to make her way home. Everything continued as usual. She thought little of the mystery man she’d managed to bang.

Maybe they didn’t actually do anything together. Maybe they just got naked and crashed on his bed. … It didn’t seem very likely, but she wasn’t going to dwell on it.

The hungover young woman fell asleep on the bus ride home. She fell asleep at the kitchen table after making and stuffing herself with an oven pizza. She fell asleep in the bathtub after a failed attempt to relax her frayed nerves. She then went to bed, after a hard day of mostly sleeping and running away from her problems. Nothing was new, and Adeline was entirely content with this fact.

Her real problems began in the days to follow. Work had piled up for her at the shop, since she’d shirked most of it while nursing an alcohol headache. She’d failed to beat her writer’s block with her promiscuous night out, and thus she failed to write anything new for her demo CD. In general, everything was suddenly falling down around her. And she’d forgotten to tell her little brother happy birthday the previous night. This would result in spending obscene amounts of money on the latest version of Super Smash Brothers and some new styli for his Nintendo 3DS. He forgave her after some latent pouting and an hour of him kicking her ass at the game.

Friends called to ask her where she’d been in the days previous, interrupting any productivity she’d managed to conjure as she explained all her latest adventures. Her mother sent long-winded text messages to her detailing exactly why she was her favorite - and only - daughter. Adeline’s employer emailed her the addresses of several recording studios that she could buy time in for her demo, which she’d barely read, but had thanked him for. The dead-beat acoustic artist thought she was home free after she’d shut off her computer for the day, after her phone had died, after the mail had already came.

Then she remembered she had a roommate.

“Whaddup, Addy?” Greeted her pot-smoking, blonde friend, who haphazardly tossed a seemingly large, dark object towards her as she spoke.

Adeline fumbled to catch the proffered item, barely able to grip the material in one hand while the other was busy cradling a bottle of creme soda to her chest. She stared at the item, a well-worn black notebook that she couldn’t recognize for a lengthy few moments. “Shit, Jenny, I didn’t even know I lost this!” The bedraggled female exclaimed, flipping through the notebook to make sure everything was still in tact, “Where’d you find it?” They spoke of her cheap-ass, dingy, little writing journal. All of her things were scribbled within its yellowed pages - passwords, brief diary entries, doodles - but the most important thing was the entirety of the work-in-progress that would hopefully, maybe, prayerfully be her demo CD. And her stupid ass hadn’t even noticed its absence. Probably the fact that she’d taken up smoking weed with Jenny that week.

Her friend shrugged back at her, grabbing a creme soda for herself from their fridge. “I don’t know, man. Some dude from your work said somebody dropped it off for you,” Jenny rambled in between sips of the nostalgic beverage, “It’s all very suspicious. They probably stole your lyrics or something.”

Still in a weak state from the past month’s events, the dazed lyricist felt the color drain from her face at the thought of anyone taking credit for her months of hard work. She could’ve written more to make up for the lost songs, but with her stubborn case of writer’s block, it was likely that she wouldn’t make any headway for at least a month. “Aw hell no,” Adeline mumbled with disbelief, rubbing at her forehead stressfully, “You don’t… You don’t really think anyone stole my shit, do you?” Typical Addy - being more concerned with her writings than the password to her PayPal account.

Jenny scoffed at her worry, “Don’t stress on it, dude. Nobody would take a risk like that. You’d call them out on it before they could even breathe a word.”

Her words were less than comforting, but they held some sort-of truth. “I guess you’re right… I’d probably shank them,” Addy admitted casually, “... You got any weed?”

“You know I do, babe.”

The following evening consisted of baking pot brownies, which tripped the nearly-virgin weed smoker out far too much to function, and then the two roomies crashed on the couch together with a bag full of Cheetos nestled between them. It was a good night, as far as they were concerned.

Adeline returned to work the next morning, in a better mood than she had experienced in the whole year. Her fellow employees gave her questioning looks, but she was used to it by now. They’d been doing that since the day she’d slept with some tattooed player, probably a result of her sudden lack of good judgement and mild mental breakdown. None of them were seriously worried, however. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t crying, but she definitely smelled like marijuana.

… That was more comforting than it should have been to them, really.

Some people say, ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn.’ Other people say, ‘There’s always a calm before the storm.’ Adeline, while she didn’t want to mention it, was feeling the second one on this particular day. Paranoia ran through her veins like she’d drunk a large glass of crazy that morning. It was probably the hallucinogens, she reasoned, but that didn’t stop her from spending her work day in the storage room, sorting through their new records and CDs.

“Hey, Addy,” Her boss, Eric, called from the front counter, “Some kid is here to see ya’.” He popped his head into the back room, finding one of his oldest employees cradled in the corner with her nose buried in a dusty old magazine. Eric frowned at her laziness and overall ineptitude that she was suddenly displaying. “... You crazy, hun. Lay off the bong for a few weeks or I’m gonna have to dock your paycheck.”

Adeline’s mental involvement with the store piqued at his lame attempt at a threat. She knew he didn’t really mean it, but he’d definitely get more annoying if she didn’t drag herself out of this weird funk. Rocking back onto her feet, she set the magazine down in the corner and sulked her way into the front of the store. Eyes scanning the room for any familiar faces, she itched senselessly at her left temple, confused and on edge.

With little to no warning, her nostrils flared quite inexplainably and violently before she ducked back into the storage room, where Eric was still working. She clapped a hand onto her nose, breathing roughly from between her skinny fingers as she sunk closer to the dusty carpet. Her boss cast the girl a questioning look, gesturing for her to get back to the counter. Addy shook her head vehemently.

“Do you smell that?” She whispered to Eric harshly, still covering her muzzle with both hands.

Eric quirked an eyebrow at his erratic employee. “What? Cigarettes? It always smells like ciggs - it’s Los Angeles. Not even the nice part of LA.”

“Not just the cancer sticks, man! It’s the whiskey!” Adeline spat, trying her best to be quiet. A bell was being run quite frantically at the front counter, making her flinch visibly. “I fucking know that scent! I’m not going out there!”

“... Please don’t come into work high anymore, Adeline, or I really will have to fire you…”

“You can’t make me go out there. I’ll quit. I’ll jump out the back window,” She rattled off quickly, eyes flickering back and forth.

Eric sighed in exasperation, “Addy, we don’t have a back window… There’s a window out frontwhere you should be!”

“I’ll call the cops. This is unreasonable.”

“I’m just gonna invite the man back here, actually,” Her boss concluded haughtily, calling out, “Be right there, sir!”

Adeline shrieked into a gloved sleeve, scampering off into the corner where the boxes were piled most densely. They’d never make her come out. She’d stay here all week if she had to. There were demons outside. Figurative ones. But also - very real ones. … Point was, there was no way in Hell, Heaven, or high water that she was going to speak to that man.

“That’s alright, dude. She’s back here. She’s just really busy - Addy is super dedicated to her job,” Eric bragged, arms gesturing wildly, “Best employee I have, honestly. Gonna be real sad when she hits it big time and has to leave me.” A deaf person could hear the fake grief in his voice as he spoke. It made his spontaneous guest laugh, though.

“... You sure she’s even in here?” A deep voice asked jokingly as they gazed around the storage room in search of the strange young woman.

“Unless she’s learned to teleport, she’s back her, man,” Eric grumbled, scratching at the back of his neck absently, “Adeline, if you don’t get your ass out here right now, I’m pulling my money from your demo donations.”

Finally having gotten her attention, Addy sprung up from her hiding spot, knowing full well that he was contributing a great majority of the funds. “Indian giver,” She accused gloomily, her shoulders sinking before they tensed considerably at the sight of the no-longer-mystery visitor, “... Hey there, sir. Can I help you?”

The stressfully familiar-looking man laughed with depth, his voice seeming to echo throughout the entire room before bouncing back to punch you in the face. “You might be able to,” He joked, stepping over a couple boxes to move closer to Adeline. Sticking out a hand amiably, he introduced himself, “I’m Andy.”

With the manners that were engraved quite deeply into her bones, she accepted his hand shake almost immediately, her grip firm. “Adeline, as you may have heard…”

His hand hesitated over hers momentarily, fingers tightening briefly before he pulled away, digging his hands deep into his pockets. Andy grinned toothily, warmly, the air that hung around him seeming to radiate with aloofness. “Heard a lot about you from your boss, actually. From what I hear, you’re something special, Addy. Can I call you Addy?”

His voice rang in the young woman’s ears. He sounded so sincere. Sounded so truthful, so calm. She could feel her paranoia melting as he spoke, something that stressed her out more than she liked to admit. Addy wasn’t one to be unfriendly to newcomers. She wasn’t one to be anti-social with people. No, she didn’t want to be that frigid bitch down the street. This guy, though, he rubbed her the wrong way. “Did you? Figures. He likes to talk shit about me…” She joked half-heartedly, “Yeah, that’s cool. Lotsa people do, I guess. I’m sorry, have we met before?”

Andy’s ears almost visibly perked at her words. “He only said good things, I promise,” The tall, lanky man assured, “We’ve met once. A couple weeks ago. You left your notebook at my apartment - I brought it here yesterday.”

Adeline felt a flush run up to her cheeks, sinking back down into her toes almost as soon as it came. “Oh - oh yeah! I remember you! Your… Apartment is really nice, dude,” She said shakily, “That was you? I can’t thank you enough for that! That notebook is so, so important to me right now, seriously.”

“Nah… My house is kinda messy actually, but thanks,” Andy scoffed good-naturedly, thumping her on the shoulder in a playful manner, “Good to know that I could be of service, then. … Actually, I wanted to talk to you about that notebook for a while… Think you could come out for coffee?”

“Well… Uh… I-”

“I don’t mean to take you away from your job! If it’s okay with your boss, though, I’d really like to talk.” He exclaimed hastily, glancing backwards at Eric, whom had never quite left the room, still lurking at the other end of storage while he fiddled with some boxes.

Eric took that as a cue to step into the conversation, “Addy, I’ll pay you if you go get a drink with him. Take her, dude. She’s all yours.”

The bribe of money, while tempting, didn’t seem like enough to deal with this guy for more than she had to. It was a little late for second guesses, however, as she was already gathering up her purse and following Andy out the front door.

“Well… Uh… Where to, then?” She asked him lamely, glancing up at the tall man from beneath a pair of cheap Ray-Ban sunglasses.

“Coffee. I keep my promises, hun,” He said simply, gesturing for her to walk with him. She did.

Notes