Carolina Sun

Please note that this piece discusses grief and implied loss of a loved one.

Julius knocked on my bedroom door. “Are you dressed yet?”

“No.” I replied, looking down at the outfit on my bed. He’d picked through my laundry and tried to find me something clean to wear. It was too bad all his effort would go to waste.

“You’ll just go in your pajamas then,” he replied, poking his head around the door. “At least brush your teeth, though.”

“You can't be serious!”

“Try me.” He disappeared back through the door.

I stood there for a minute, fuming. I left my pajamas in a heap, jerked the clothes on over my head, and stormed out into the kitchen. “Look, Jul, you can't just blow in here and drag me off to work with you.”

“If you’re going to shut yourself up for months, the least you can do is come sit in the breakroom for a bit.” Julius pushed a brown paper bag into my hand. “I brought you breakfast. You can eat in the car.”

“Hold on just a minute!”

“Ah, you’re not fully dressed yet.” He took my engagement ring off the cluttered table and slipped it onto my finger. “There you go. Now, chop chop. Store’s not going to open itself.”

Julius ignored my protests while he drove. He seemed rather pleased that he’d forced me out of my apartment. The scenery became uncomfortably familiar as we approached the old strip mall.

“Come on, Sonia.” Julius gave my hand a little squeeze as he threw the car into park. “Give me a hand getting Sonny’s open.Then you can grumble in the breakroom as much as you want. Scout’s honor, no crossed fingers.”

Humid heat radiated off the pavement the moment I opened the car door. Julius slipped his hand into mine and we made our way across the full parking lot to Sonny’s. It was the only store that wasn’t open yet. In spite of the heat, I wrapped my arms around myself as Julius unlocked the door. He held it open and beckoned me through patiently. “After you.”

It felt like an eternity since I had been inside. I took in the neat stacks and the framed posters. Old, unplayable records dangled from the ceiling. Pop had insisted that they were unplayable before we strung them up.

“You haven’t changed anything.”

“Of course not.” He locked the door behind us. “I have to get the owner’s approval, and she hasn’t been here in months.”

He took a record sleeve off the top of one of the bins and dropped it into my hands. “Go get this playing, and I’ll get the lights and register up.”

I turned the sleeve over. It was completely blank, no title, no album cover. I pulled the record from the sleeve, but there was no title on its center either. As the lights flickered on overhead, I could just make out a little patch of adhesive where a sticker should have been.

“What’s on it?” I placed it carefully on the record player behind the counter and punched the worn play button. I propped up the blank sleeve on the nearby ‘now playing’ stand.

Julius shrugged as he booted up the register. “Dunno. I grabbed it from the mystery bin yesterday. I figured we could use something out of the ordinary.”

“Am I allowed to go grumble now?” I asked. No sound came across the speakers yet. I turned up the knob on the record player. A song I didn’t know tumbled out softly across the stacks, something overly cheery about strawberries and sunscreen. Julius perked up. He seemed to recognize it, at least. I was fine without recognizing it. It was just one less song to get attached too.

“Almost.” Julius finished up with the register. “Could you run in the back and get the cash box?”

Nodding, I pushed my way through the ‘staff only’ door and into the office. Julius hadn’t even cleaned out the office. Stacks of file folders sat in the chair behind the desk. The warped corkboard covered in old staff photos, receipts, and schedules hung lopsided just above the floor safe. It was almost exactly as I had left it. It was almost exactly as he had left it.

There was only one thing out of the ordinary: a relatively fresh, shiny photo pinned in the top left corner of the corkboard.The spidery handwriting scrawled across its margin left my chest feeling hollow: Sonny and Me, Dec. 15th. I knew every inch of that photo by heart. It’d been my lockscreen for months, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to look at it. Forcing the hollowness down as far as it would go, I ducked down to plug the code into the safe and pulled the cash box out.

“Here.” I set the cash box down on the counter much harder than I meant to.

“Thank you, darling.” Julius seemed determined to ignore every little provocation. He pulled a stack of fives out of the box and began to count them out. “I think it’s someone’s personal mix.”

“Huh?”

He nodded towards the speakers. “The record.”

The song had changed over to Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers”.

“Oh.”

“Wouldn’t be a bad first dance,” he said, dropping the bills into the till. The little metal holder slapped into place. “We still haven’t picked a song.”

“We still don’t have a venue.” I grabbed the ones and flicked through them out of habit.

“Well, if you want to make some calls during your grumbling session, I won’t complain,” he replied.

I shrugged. “It’s not like I’ll be doing anything else.”

“Great.” He tapped a sticky note on the counter. “While you’re on the phone, might as well give these suppliers a call. They’ve got some bulk they want to move.”

“Stop it, Jul.” I placed the ones next to the fives and made sure the holder slapped down as loud as possible. “I’m not quite ready to come back yet.”

“I’m not the owner, Sonny.” Julius turned to look at me. “We’ll run out of stock eventually, and I can’t make bulk purchases, remember?”

I let my eyes slide over the stacks without thinking. Some of the bins were low, lower than I’d ever seen them before. Even the discount bins were running dry. He was right. I knew he was right. I didn’t want him to be right. What I wanted was to hide away in my apartment, safely insulated from music and memories and the hurt that comes with them.

I took the sticky note and glared at him. “Fine, I’ll make the calls.”

The beeping of Julius’ watch interrupted us.

“Doesn’t Kalie come in on Tuesdays?” I asked, looking towards the door.

Julius pushed the till closed with his fingertips. “I gave her the day off. I didn’t think you’d want to see the others on your first day back.”

“This isn’t my first day back!” He was beginning to take this too far.

He shrugged and moved out from behind the counter. He let his fingers trail lightly over the record sleeves as he walked towards the front door. “Why don’t you go ahead and turn the music up?”

“I think it’s fine, Jul.” I eyed the dial. The music was already loud enough for me.

He opened the door and kicked the doorstop into place. Heat billowed into the store accompanied by the restless hum of cicadas. “Turn it up, Sonny. That’s how we attract customers, remember?”

I kicked the dial up a notch or two. Julius came back over and rested his head on top of mine, humming along with the record. I leaned back against him. I could feel the song in his chest. We used to stand like this all the time, whenever the shop was empty. It brought with it comfort I’d long forgotten.

“Y’know, we could always choose something out of your Pop’s collection.” The song suddenly switched to the rumble of his voice. “Music has memory. It’ll be like he’s there.”

I shook my head. My hand flew to the dial and I turned up the music. We couldn’t talk if it was too loud to hear. We were safe just like this. Why ruin it?

Julius gently turned it back down. “Do you want to go grumble now?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I replied.

Julius pulled away from me and pushed the door to the back open. “You are free to go grumble as much as you wish. Just don’t forget to make those calls.”

“I won’t, don’t worry.” I pushed past him, past the office, and into the breakroom. Flopping down on the couch, I closed my eyes and leaned my head back. The day had only begun and I was already worn thin. I looked down at the sticky note in my hand. The sooner I dealt with these calls, the better.

To my surprise, Julius had even added a few venues to the sticky note. The first two were a fair bit out of our price range. They had been ideal about five months ago, but not after Pop. Endless bills will do that to your savings. The third didn’t seem to know what a calendar was.

“July 29th,” I said for the twentieth time. “We’re looking at Saturday, July 29th.”

I rubbed circles against the band of my engagement ring. I’d almost rubbed part of it smooth.

“Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?” I could hear papers shuffling around on the other side.

“Is the 29th available or not?” Julius wouldn’t snap at people. I wasn’t Julius.

The papers finally stopped. “It looks like we’re booked for the 29th, but the following two weekends are available.”

“We’ll keep that in mind, thanks.” I rubbed the band harder. I could feel the metal bite into my finger. Julius wouldn’t snap. I would try not to.

I hung up and looked down at the venue information. It wasn’t our first option, but it fit the revised budget. If backing things up was our only option, then it was our only option. Good thing we hadn’t scheduled a caterer yet. We didn’t even have an officiant. We had had it almost all planned out. It would have been a perfect summer wedding. Now all we had was stacks upon stacks of records. We didn’t even have a Pop to go with them.

I turned my attention to the two other numbers on the sticky note: the suppliers. I let a breath out slowly. Surely I could manage being Sonny again for half an hour or so. That didn’t stop me from begging for the answering machine. I wasn’t that lucky.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Marty? This is Sonia from Sonny’s Classics.” My cheery tone sounded forced. “My manager told me you had some bulk records you wanted to move.”

“So you’ve taken over Sonny’s officially now.” Marty’s happiness didn’t sound forced at all.

“Ah, well, all the paperwork finalized in January,” I replied. “Anyway, about that bulk.”

It didn’t take too long for us to settle on pricing for a good number of records in prime condition. The second supplier wasn’t worth his salt. If Pop had taught me anything, it was how to sniff out a good supplier.

Julius poked his head into the breakroom. “Want to come up front and eat with me? Store’s empty.”

“What’d you get?”

He grinned. “Rosa’s, what else?”

“You good if I just eat in the back?”

Julius’ grin faltered. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s fine.”

Suddenly, all I could feel was guilt. I’d let so many things fall to the wayside, but I’d promised myself that my fiancé wouldn’t be one of them. Yet here he was, running Sonny’s single handedly. They say grief breaks people. I didn’t realise how much it broke me.

“Is everything ok?” Julius’ brows knit together.

“No, no, everything’s fine,” I answered. “I just…thanks.”

Looking concerned, he nodded and slipped back out. I pinched the bridge of my nose to keep from crying. Maybe just a few minutes at the counter wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I ran my hands over my face and pushed up off the couch. I came out of the breakroom and made my way out to the counter.

“Hey, Jul,” I eased the door open. “I changed my-”

The track had changed again. John Denver. “Sunshine on my Shoulders.” Any song but that. I turned on my heels and ran. Any song but that. Julius was right. Songs did hold memories. This one held too many.

It held memories of running through the stacks while cicadas made their own music outside in the parking lot. Pop’s large, rough hands guided mine through slotting a record into place, through which buttons were ‘play’, ‘stop’, and ‘skip’. I had skinned knees, pb&j’s behind the counter, and lollipops “just between you and Pop, ok?” We practiced the box step in the kitchen before Julius picked me up for prom. My thumb rubbed small circles on his hand, dodging the bruising from his IV. His voice was broken and dry. He didn’t remember all the lyrics anymore, just the chorus. Just the stupid, stupid chorus.

I banged through the store’s back door and stood there in the blazing Carolina sun, sobbing.

“Sonny.” Julius touched my shoulder. I squeezed my eyes shut and buried my head into his chest. I could still hear Denver’s soft crooning through the store’s open back door. Julius began to rock me back and forth. He was whispering something to me, but I couldn’t hear him over the sound of my own cries. He pressed something into my hand and I recognized the feel of photo paper. I rubbed circles on the photo with my thumb. Would I rub it smooth too?

My chest heaved painfully as I swayed back and forth in Julius’ arms. I turned my head to the side so I could breathe a little easier. The sudden burst of sunlight stung my eyes. That’s the thing about sunshine. Whether it’s in your eyes or on your shoulders, sunshine hurts. I decided it was high time I let it hurt.