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Sapphire patted the dust from her apron. It gathered from where her skirt pressed against the small shelves lining the counter of her store, in those crevices and quiet spots she didn’t care to clean. It clung to the tops of jars on the highest shelves and hid between the aged floorboards and spun through the beams of early morning sun and waning afternoon light, day after day. Sapphire ignored it as well as she could.
To most, this place was the last stop off the highway for a hundred miles. It was the desperate final sigh of relief between a bright red “E” and a car wheezing its last breath between here and there while being nowhere in particular at all. There was one dusty street, unpaved and unnamed, but made rugged with use. Head back down to get on the interstate and straight on to find a farm hidden by towering stalks of corn. And then another, and another. Travelers might stop here before some great adventure to experience something almost like civilization one last time, preserved under a thin layer of dust.
The general store was small in the way the countryside was big and the people who lived there thanked the land and the Lord for their bread and butter. They needed not much more than that. Customers came in to buy a box of blackberries, or electrical tape, or order products from an ancient warehouse teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Sapphire rang up each item and sent travelers and locals alike on their way with barely a word. The store was never busy, and long spells of empty air and silence kept her company. Sapphire stood unmoved beside the cash register, and she waited.
It was on an early June day, as on many days, a particular customer came in. Sapphire didn’t know her but in the way everyone knew everyone in a town like hers, by a name and a family history that preceded them both. Her name was Ruby. Sapphire had seen her before at the farmer’s market and at the church, but only once. Ruby gave her condolences at the funeral. So had everyone. It wasn’t very memorable. More memorable was the way she had taken to circling through the store. Ruby’s densely curled hair bounced above her shoulders, and her pockets jangled with her steps as she made her way through the food section. The sound would be musical if not for the erratic way she moved. Ruby stopped to peer thoughtfully at a stacked display of canned green beans. Without warning, she moved on, jerking in a new direction as if surprising even herself with the decision.
Ruby soon found herself out of shelves and with a single item in her hands. She dropped the glass bottle of Coca-cola on the counter and added her elbows for good measure. Sapphire picked up the bottle to scan as Ruby leaned forward over her arms.
“I bet you sell a lot of pop when it’s so hot outside like this, huh? Though it’s not actually that satisfying when you’re thirsty. I usually get it anyway. What’s your favorite?”
“Water. Cold enough to hurt my teeth.” Sapphire set the bottle down and adjusted her eyepatch. “One dollar and thirty-three cents.”
Ruby straightened and rummaged in her pockets. She pulled out two crumpled bills. The yellowed letters on the cash register peeled from their buttons like shriveling leaves. Sapphire pressed one flat, holding it beneath her thumb. It curled back onto itself the moment she released as if ashamed by its age, too faded to read. It couldn’t stick anymore. Sapphire slid open the drawer, a hollow sound.
“I got this ‘cause it’s hot out and I’m working on my truck. I’m gonna go on a trip real soon. I’m gonna go far away from here, like on a big adventure! See some exciting things.” Ruby gestured broadly to the view outside the store window and smiled at Sapphire, teeth white against the dark of her cheeks. Outside a single gas pump slumped above the oil-stained concrete and a tobacco field wilted in the dry afternoon. It stretched as far as Sapphire could see.
Sapphire held out her hand. “Sixty-seven cents.”
Ruby accepted the change and poured it into her pocket, save for the three pennies. She dropped them into a repurposed crystal ashtray, gray with the stains of cigarette ashes and broken lungs. They still jingled against the glass like a celebration.
Ruby held her bottle and looked at Sapphire behind the counter with her eyes hidden behind long hair and her skirt longer around her. Sapphire didn’t notice, and she watched the beaded condensation on the bottle drip down Ruby’s arm and onto the floor. Ruby didn’t notice, and Sapphire would leave it to evaporate inside these closed walls.
Ruby left then, with an awkward goodbye and a backward salute. The metallic clinking of the coins in her pocket trailed after her as the wooden door swung shut, and Sapphire suddenly wondered where she was going.
—
Sapphire opened the store the next morning at nine, and Ruby wandered inside at nine thirty. Sapphire said hello, and Ruby waved back and shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. She quickly disappeared down the bread and biscuit aisle. When she emerged on the other side of the store, it was with a small screwdriver.
“Do you work here all by yourself?” she asked, spinning the screwdriver on the glass surface of the counter. “I’ve never seen anyone here besides you.”
“It’s the family business, and I’m the family now,” Sapphire said plainly. The screwdriver spun off the counter and skittered across the floor. Ruby burned red and bent down quickly to pick it up. She cleared her throat.
“Sorry! I’m sorry. Uh.” Sapphire shrugged and rang up the screwdriver. Ruby continued, “D-do you like running the store? It seems like a lot of work.”
Sapphire would wake up early to a house quiet to the world but for wooden beams groaning in the wind. She would wash and dress and eat breakfast. The sun’s light began to stretch against the dark sky as its one great eye fluttered open to saturate the morning. Sapphire didn’t watch its ascent, and she didn’t think about the newness of the silence without the sizzle of her mother’s skillet and the soft buzz of the morning radio her father had loved. Her store was downstairs, and there she stayed. She counted inventory and stacked little boxes of local hard candies in the way her family had for years, unchanged by time or by tragedy. Stale air lingered in Sapphire’s throat. The dust had long seeped into her bones and the past made its home in her quiet ribs.
“It can be, yes. But it’s what I do. It’s what we’ve always done. Three dollars and seventeen cents.”
Ruby pulled six quarters, a dime, and a nickel from her pocket. She slid two pennies from the ashtray into her palm and handed the coins to Sapphire. They were heavy in her hand. Ruby hummed.
“We have a farm, down the road a ways. You can’t see our house through all the corn, it’s so tall. But it’s yellow too, so it’d be hard to spot anyway. I’ll tell you something—yellow is the worst color. I wanna see anything else, and I’d be fine never having to see it again.” She sighed loudly, exaggeratedly.
“Is that why you’re leaving?”
“Probably,” Ruby said, something like sorrow tinting the last syllable. Sapphire thought of her peace with the browns and grays of her store and didn’t understand. A tractor rolled by outside, coughing on its diesel-fueled lungs. Ruby glanced at the wax papered caramel cubes in neat rows beside the register. She turned one over in her palm before putting it back in the container, a little lopsided.
“But I can’t go just yet. I’ve still gotta fix my truck, and I told the mayor I’d see if I could find the leak in his plumbing this Tuesday. And I’m gonna help the Frymans build a treehouse next weekend. There’s so much to do!” She shook her head, hair bouncing around her face.
“Not for me,” Sapphire said, closing the drawer and motioning to the empty store with a flick of her wrist. Cardboard boxes lay abandoned beside a half-prepared display Sapphire never planned on completing. Ruby hesitated, but Sapphire smiled back, and so she laughed. The room brightened with the sound. Light filtered over Ruby’s radiant features and through the blockade of Sapphire’s bangs, hot on her brown skin. The parched flowers in the window boxes spread their leaves to meet the early sun and hoped for a summer rain. Sapphire felt her heartbeat sudden and strong in her chest.
She reached below the register and pulled out the plastic bag of carefully peeled apple slices she brought for lunch. Sapphire offered a slice to Ruby, who popped it into her mouth and sucked its juice from behind her teeth. Ruby licked her fingers clean, and Sapphire used a napkin.
Ruby stayed for a long time, helping Sapphire rearrange the local selection of marmalades, their lids tied with red gingham fabric. She didn’t turn all the labels toward the customers, but Sapphire left them because it felt genuine. Sapphire wanted to ask if the screwdriver would fix something to take Ruby far away, like she wanted. She didn’t know Ruby, though, and held the words on her tongue.
—
Sapphire began to keep track of the things Ruby bought on her visits. It was always one item, chosen abruptly and often at the last minute before she headed to the front to find Sapphire. She kept the list written on a notepad stuffed between the register and the book of inventory reports. Three bottles of coke. A small screwdriver. A larger screwdriver. A package of double stuffed Oreos. A miniature snowglobe. Engine oil. A postcard of city hall. Cinnamon altoids. Two sets of rubber bands. The collection was as eclectic as it could be in a general store off the interstate, small like bread and butter. Sapphire waited for the day when Ruby wouldn’t buy anything, when she would say goodbye one last time or else stay for her company alone.
She didn’t come every day. On those days, Sapphire watched the door more closely than usual and felt disappointment weigh her shoulders each time it opened and a head of curls didn’t accompany the cheerful bell. Sapphire listlessly shuffled displays of pickled beets in mason jars and stacks of light bulbs and wrote discount signs in her delicate, curling hand. Dust motes twisted in the beams of light, and Sapphire stood watch over her kingdom of dusty shelves and conveniences as she had always done. It was quiet. Even the summer was suffocating, the air heavy with heat. The lone, wheezing fan in the store, propping open the door to provide customers with momentary relief, could only do so much. The grass along the single road withered and dried for want of water.
Ruby came again, like a mirage emerging from the waves of heat rising off the concrete, on a Thursday when the sun burned harsh in a cloudless noon and threatened to drown Sapphire in her collared shirts and modest skirts. Ruby’s overalls were rolled up to her calves, her shoes browned with dust, and her torso and strong forearms were spattered in engine oil. A straining rubber band held back an explosion of dark curls. Ruby put a fist on her hip and an elbow on the countertop, smearing oil on the glass.
“Come here often?” she asked.
“I should ask that of you,” Sapphire said.
There was black thumbprint of oil on Ruby’s cheek. For a moment, Sapphire thought of rubbing the smudge from her skin, but she couldn't. She dropped a dish towel from under the register over Ruby’s head. Ruby squeaked in surprise and pulled it from her face. Her eyes were wide and full of righteous indignation. Sapphire tried to smother the smile twitching at her lips.
“How’s your progress on the truck?” she asked, smoothing into her usual monotone. Ruby wiped her chin with the cloth.
“Oh, well, I actually finished it up about a week ago,” Ruby admitted sheepishly. She handed the cloth back to Sapphire. “I’ve been working on Barb’s car, you know, Barb from the post office. It’s a good way to make a few bucks. Plus, I can save up for my trip! It’ll be so great, you’ll see.”
Ruby nodded to herself and flipped a pack of gum between her fingers. Sapphire didn’t rush her. She gathered her hair up for a ponytail, pulling away the slick strands stuck to her neck with sweat and tying them with a delicate ribbon. Sapphire tugged her shirt collar to allow more air reach her overheated skin. The fabric clung tightly to her shoulders and waist.
Ruby looked everywhere but at Sapphire, on the washed out sign above her for a brand of cigarettes that long ago went out of business, on the single shiny car outside the window rolling off the highway to pump gas, on the humming fridge that housed fresh milk and mismatched eggs.
“I heard that if you swallow a piece of gum it’ll never digest. Or maybe it’s seven years. Either way,” Ruby said, staring at the fridge.
“I doubt it. Seven years is a long time.”
“Yeah, but I kinda like thinking that something can’t be broken down for so long. You’d carry it with you, you know? Wherever you went, like a memory.”
“That’s pretty gross.”
Ruby startled into laughter and threw her head back, overcome by her own spontaneity. Ruby finally turned to Sapphire and kept her gaze firmly on her face. Her dark eyes were full of mirth and something else, honest and raw. Sapphire looked down and rearranged her bangs over her eyepatch. Sweat dripped from her collarbone, and Ruby had oil smeared thin across her nose. Neither of them cared.
“I used to chew a lot of bubblegum, when I was younger,” Sapphire said, breaking the silence in a soft voice.
“Did it get stuck in your hair?” Ruby grinned. She placed the pack of gum back in its box.
Sapphire nodded. Her mother would laugh, and her father carefully picked out the sugary gobs without complaint. Sapphire had been a whirl of uncombed locks down to her waist, warmed with sun and tangled with the kind of adventuring only children could accomplish. She chased clouds through the fields of fragrant tobacco and her ankles could never really lose the smell, no matter how many baths they made her take. As her mother brushed the knots from her hair, Sapphire would almost fall asleep in the warm suds. They still had to heat the water themselves, back then.
Sapphire should miss those moments, feel nostalgic for a time when someone else would bandage her knees when she scraped them on the concrete. Instead, Sapphire had worn a long dress of black lace that fell from her shoulders like a shadow when the graves had been fresh with dirt. She read their tombstones (Devoted Father, Friend, and Son; Beloved Wife and Mother of One) and recited her part with no tears in her single eye, no pang in her chest. Townspeople she had once known held her hand, her shoulder, praying her to stay strong. She was fine, and in that her own heart betrayed her. She never took them flowers.
Maybe Ruby saw some darkness hidden in the set of Sapphire’s lips or in the cascade of hair around her face, because Ruby knit her eyebrows together with an expression pitiable enough to count tenfold for Sapphire’s cold apathy. Emotion came so easily to her.
“I was quite a handful, if you could believe it,” Sapphire explained. “I used to play in the neighbor’s fields with the other children, though we weren’t supposed to. No one does it anymore, at least that I’ve seen.”
“Kids don’t get up to any trouble these days. No one’s around anymore. It’s like everyone’s gone out into the world except you and me. We're still here,” Ruby said. She took a sidelong glance at Sapphire and a deep breath. “It’s pretty lonely, but it’s not as much when you got someone to talk to. So I’m glad you’re here. Now, with me. Not glad that you haven’t been anywhere, that would be cool. You just make it less that way. Lonely, I mean. Less lonely.”
Ruby slapped her hands over her face to hide her darkening cheeks, and Sapphire hadn’t been lonely before. She had never been lonely, but now when Ruby didn’t come to the store, she was. Ruby was muttering a repeated “Oh my God” from between her fingers, smearing the Lord’s name across her palms like a prayer. Sapphire tilted her head and answered it.
“I’m glad too,” she said.
Ruby lowered her hands to the counter. Her eyes shone with embarrassed tears and awe. Sapphire slowly, slowly placed her hand on top of Ruby’s.
The customer with the shiny car came in then, mumbling about cash only service. Ruby jumped away and tore her hand from beneath Sapphire’s, which slipped smoothly from the counter. Sapphire greeted the man as he approached and handed her his cash. Ruby hurried down an aisle, wringing her hands. The customer tapped his foot. Sapphire could hear Ruby in the back, shuffling through something out of sight.
Sapphire handed the customer back his change, two bills and twenty-two cents. He dropped the coins, dimes and all, into Ruby’s ashtray with a hollow ringing sound that followed him through the door. Ruby emerged from between the dairy section and the office supplies. A ten-foot length of hose looped messily around her shoulder.
“No gum?” Sapphire asked.
“Nah, I don’t think I’m ready for the kind of commitment that comes with seven years of digestion.”
Sapphire giggled, and Ruby lifted her chin.
“Five dollars and twenty-nine cents.”
Ruby tried to slide the hose from her shoulder but tangled her arms in her haste. While she struggled, Sapphire slid the coins left by the customer into the register, leaving only Ruby’s change in the crystal ashtray.
—
A Skittle flipped into the air. It spun over itself once, twice, and fell. Ruby caught it in her mouth. She pumped her fists in triumph, and Sapphire clapped gently beside her. It was a slow day near closing time, the sun falling behind the flat horizon at an unhurried pace. Orange tendrils of sleepy sky made themselves comfortable along the shadows of plants shriveled in the drought. Ruby sat on the counter, resting against the wooden panels at her back. Sapphire leaned forward as Ruby dropped another candy into her waiting palm. Ruby, expectedly, didn't like the yellow ones. Sapphire pressed it between her teeth and savored the tart taste.
The window stared back at Ruby, reflecting the frown tugging at her lips. She grabbed a handful of Skittles and tossed them into her mouth at once. She bit down violently.
“Sapphire, what do I want?”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know!”
“Hmm. I’m not sure we stock that.” Ruby threw a Skittle at her.
“Shut up. I don't know! I'm so bored, and I can't think of anything to fix or patch up. I've got nothing this whole week!” Ruby crossed her arms over her chest and thumped her head on the wall with a noise of frustration. Sapphire parted her hair to pointedly roll her eye.
“Nothing at all?”
“Besides giving you all my Skittles—that I paid good money for, remember—nope.” Sapphire stuck out her tongue and Ruby slipped her a grape one, her favorite.
“So generous. What about your trip?”
Ruby smacked her forehead. “Oh. Oh! Right. I’m almost ready to go, yeah, but I’m sure there’s something I’ve forgotten! I always forget things and remember at the last minute, you know me. I can’t go yet.” Ruby laughed weakly. Sapphire did know Ruby, and there was desperation in her voice that she hadn’t heard before.
“It’s been months,” Sapphire said. An arid August seethed outside the window. Ruby rubbed the back of her neck.
“I know. I mean, I really want to go, but it never seems like the right time. I don’t know. But I’ll go, I will. And it’ll be great.”
A wild eagerness lived in Ruby's restless limbs, and Sapphire was a still house. The season would be too dry without her, but Ruby was impatient and these country days were molasses slow. Their dripping lethargy would take her away, leaving Sapphire’s windows bare of kindness and company. Acidity burned beneath her skin.
“Ruby.”
“You know, I don’t think the cassette player in my truck works, and what’s a road trip without music, right? I'll get on that!” Inspired, Ruby hopped off the counter, but her skin pulled white over her knuckles. She didn’t move away from the register.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere, yet! I don't have any cassettes, but I think there might be something in a box somewhere. Do you think Mr. Smiley would have—”
“For your trip, Ruby, where are you going?” Sapphire interrupted, her words sharp.
Ruby stared wide-eyed at Sapphire. The half-emptied bag of Skittles, torn asymmetrically from top to bottom, hung limply from her hand. Sapphire felt her stomach drop.
“You’ve been talking about it for so long. It must be exciting, I mean. Where are you going?” Sapphire's voice wavered.
Ruby blinked. “Here and there, but definitely out there somewhere.” She looked out the window, her voice growing more confident. “I want to see big mountains with purple shadows and deep, deep canyons and forests that don’t have a beginning and don’t have an end and I want to see all the parts in the middle. You know?” She made a gesture with her hands, fingers splayed as far as she could manage, before slumping against the counter. She rolled a package of Mentos underneath her finger, back and forth.
“I want to see the city, too. I might even stay,” Ruby continued, softer. “It’s so quiet here.” She laughed once, but it was more of a sigh. The wind blew outside and the wood of the building groaned in protest. Dust kicked up outside the store, tumbling crumpled paper and dry leaves along the road.
“You don’t go though.”
“Yeah.” Ruby stilled her hand, and was motionless for a moment like she never was. Her eyes were on Sapphire and full of heavy things like affection and melancholy and the scent of rainwater. Sapphire was scared, because it hadn’t rained in months, and the water could erode the soil from beneath her roots. She could fall like a tree, or like a girl in love.
“Why?” Sapphire couldn’t move and her heart beat stutteringly, claustrophobic in her throat. The stacks of crafted fruit preserves loomed overhead, threatening to tumble.
“It’s okay here, mostly. I’ve only seen pretty pictures of forests and mountains. They take my breath away, and those are just on a tiny piece of paper and look a little grainy. I don’t know if I could breathe at all if I saw them in person, but I want that. I don’t want to just see brown and gray and yellow forever and ever. I can’t breathe here either, and it’s different. But I’ve only seen those pictures. Here I know the names of all the shopkeepers at the Saturday market. I know whose fields to keep out of at night and whose to steal the good blackberries from, you know? The ones that stain your fingers the prettiest purple, the ones that explode in your mouth like little fireworks. It’s quiet, but it’s been the world, you know? It’s like. I don’t know a lot of things. I can fix tailpipes and leaky lead pipes and I still think it’s a pipe dream that I could leave. But I can. I can go right now and not come back and no one could stop me. My parents wouldn’t care. I’m old enough and they’ve got hands on the farm. But I don’t know a lot of things. And there’s a lot of things besides Saturday markets and blackberry bushes, and a lot of things bigger than a little grainy picture on a piece of paper. What if. What if the world out there doesn’t want me as much as I want it?”
“That’s a hard question,” Sapphire told her.
“Yeah.”
“Why ask me?” Sapphire owned an old general store off the highway. She was stagnant, drowning in nostalgia, and rarely smiled. Her thumb itched to smooth over Ruby's cheek.
“Because you're nice. Because you talk to me, even though you don't like talking to anyone. Because you laugh like it’s just us in this town. Because you're stuck here like me, and I shouldn't be glad about it but I am.”
Ruby wasn’t looking at Sapphire, but Sapphire was looking at her. Ruby tugged one of her curls, pulling it straight with tension and releasing. It sprung free and bounced against her jaw.
“I think you know about a lot of things,” Sapphire said, and then she kissed her, for a soft moment.
The gentle pressure was barely there, a whisper of honesty, of hope like delicate spring petals. Ruby’s lips were chapped and sweet with artificial fruit flavoring, but Sapphire knew there was doubt in her eyes and anxiety in her twitching fingers. The sunset had faded to cool reflections and long shadows, and Ruby shifted to hold Sapphire’s cheeks between her warm palms. Sapphire couldn't answer her question because she never had the words, but she tried, in her way, to kiss faith into her mouth.
—
Sapphire swept the floor every so often, a futile effort at best, and attempted only when she felt particularly ambitious. She had even tried to gather the courage to visit her parents this morning. But she had her hand on the doorknob rubbed free of paint and saw fields of brown dirt and brown plants and her throat was dry like the soil they were buried in, so she stayed and grabbed her broom. Clouds hung dark and bloated in the sky for the first time in months. They hid the sun, and the weak light filtered the warm yellows of the plain into a mottled wash of grays. Dry stalks of corn shivered in the sudden chill.
Ruby would be able to go, with her expressive eyes and open heart. Sapphire’s grip tightened around the handle. Maybe it could be clean like it used to be, when she was younger and had bruises on her shins. Maybe she could do it now, though she hadn’t in years. The dust had always remained, and the land claimed her skin. Dirt hid under Sapphire’s fingernails and in the creases of her knuckles and couldn’t be scrubbed clean with water nor soap. She would have accepted it as inevitability once. The general store had ten aisles, though before it had been fifteen, fifty, a hundred. Now it felt like five, and Sapphire had no more room to breathe. So she dusted the shelves and swept the floor, hoping for fresher air.
Arms wrapped around her waist and Sapphire gasped in surprise. She was lifted from the floor, broom and all, and spun around, skirt flaring at her knees. The arms lowered Sapphire gently down, and their owner giggled in her ear. Her chest welled up with warmth at the sound. She turned and swatted Ruby with her broom.
“You little troublemaker.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet.” Amusement twinkled in Ruby’s eyes.
She released her hold around Sapphire’s waist, but her hand lingered in the way it had taken to since Sapphire kissed her. The brush of fingers was light, dancing between hesitance and excitement in equal measure. Sapphire leaned into the touch. The subtle smile that tilted Ruby’s lips and pulled at the corners of her eyes remained as well.
“I have to do inventory today,” Sapphire said, staring at her mouth.
“Let’s do it then.”
Ruby sat on the floor with her legs crossed and balanced the ledger on one thigh, noting down the numbers as Sapphire recited them. In the time between, she doodled in the margins. Sapphire counted the beeswax tealights, the light scent of honey saturating the space between them. She peered over her shoulder. Ruby had her tongue stuck out in concentration. A simple square car sat over a long, serpentine line that ran off the edge of the page.
“Thirty-five.”
Ruby scribbled the number on the appropriate line, but with a backwards five. She corrected the digit and shook the pencil between her fingers absentmindedly. The eraser tapped against edge of the book in a steady rhythm, mingling with the sound of Sapphire counting the next set under her breath.
“I fixed my cassette player,” Ruby said. Sapphire lost count. The pencil continued its beat against the ledger.
“I still haven’t found any tapes, though.” Ruby sighed, and Sapphire let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. She felt selfish. Guilt prickled at her skin. She started her count again, and the silence stretched between them.
“Forty, even.”
She glanced to the next item in inventory, a collection of porcelain dishes with Home Sweet Home painted on along the lip. A rustic house in soft colors and softer brush strokes was nestled beneath. She had never hated something so lovely, but in that moment she loathed its quiet door and complacent stoop. In the slide of its roof, Sapphire thought she saw her own tumble of hair over her shoulders, the grim set of her lips in the rigid windowsill. Her hands fell to her sides. She was tired of counting and tired of endless dusty minutia, like the candles and the gum and the shame she always carried in the pit of her stomach.
Sapphire straightened. “Wait here.”
She disappeared into the back room and returned with a single cassette tape clutched in both hands. Tucking her skirt beneath her legs, she lowered herself to the floor next to Ruby, who watched her with concerned eyes. Sapphire stared at the floor. Their knees bumped.
“This belonged to my parents,” she said. She rubbed smudges from the plastic case. There used to be more tapes, but she wasn’t sure what happened to them. “They played it constantly. I remember them humming and swaying to the music as they dusted the shelves.”
The singer’s throaty voice had woven through the aisles like the rumble of a river, powerful and life-sustaining. Sapphire watched her parents dance between the aisles with her foot tapping to the slow quaver of a fiddle. When a customer came in, her mother would greet them by name with a smile, her father’s arm still around her waist. He asked how their families were and listened each time without fail. The glass cases of the store had shone bright, full of carefully arranged items selected with love. But they died, and without their care the general store withered.
“They loved this place so much.” Sapphire’s gaze slid over the aisles, dust covered and unorganized, before falling to her lap. “I wish I could.”
“Do you like working here?” Ruby asked again.
“Yes.” Sapphire clutched the cassette tighter in her palms. Then, softer, “No. But the store was their entire lives. Maybe I can make it up to them, now that it's mine too.”
“Make up for what?”
“Not missing them,” Sapphire admitted through clenched teeth. It felt criminal, it felt like a sin.
“What?” Ruby gave her an incredulous look. “Of course you miss your parents!” Sapphire whipped her head up to glare from under the thin strands of her hair. Words fell from her lips like a confession.
“I didn’t cry.”
“So?”
“I don’t leave them flowers.”
“And?”
“And.” Sapphire paused, emotion thick in her throat. “And how could I claim to care if I can’t even be bothered to say goodbye?”
She shoved the cassette at Ruby, who grabbed her hands and held them against her chest before they could fall away to cower around Sapphire’s shoulders. The cassette was held between them. A wind picked up outside, and the wooden shelves never seemed more imposing, towering and ominous.
“You love them so much that you keep running this place just because they did. You don’t think you care, but everyday you open the store and stand there behind the counter, not even pretending to be happy. You hate this place, maybe even more than I hate this town, and you stay anyway. What’s keeping you here, besides your grief?”
Ruby searched her face for something, some sign of understanding. The anger left Sapphire all at once, and she sagged against Ruby’s shoulder. The corner of the ledger dug into her hip, but she ignored it. The sky rumbled outside with electricity. Ruby wrapped her arm around Sapphire, clutching the cassette in her other hand.
“I don’t know,” Sapphire murmured. “Maybe nothing.” They watched the heavy clouds sweep over the fields in the window.
Ruby leapt abruptly to her feet with a gasp, knocking Sapphire’s head from her shoulder and the ledger from her lap. Loose pages scattered at her feet. The pencil rolled under the nearby shelf. Sapphire stared at her offered hand in confusion, as Ruby looked down at her with excitement scrawled across her features. She wiggled her fingers. Hesitantly, Sapphire took the hand and was yanked to her feet. Ruby took hold of her shoulders.
“Come with me, then!”
Ruby flashed a dazzling smile. Sapphire blinked against its brilliance.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. Wherever we want!” Ruby pulled her close, one hand splayed over the small of Sapphire’s back, vibrating with enthusiasm. She spoke lowly into Sapphire’s neck. “Let’s blow this joint.”
Lackluster cleaning had left streaks blurring the glass countertop. The vegetables were out of order, carrots uncomfortably mingled with zucchini and an onion misplaced among ripe tomatoes. A box of pans lay open beside their display, never removed from shipment. It didn’t matter. The ten aisles of the store made of rickety, ancient wood were home to hundreds of dusty products, but no longer to Sapphire. She failed no one.
Sapphire pulled Ruby forward. She snatched the change left in the ashtray as Ruby fumbled to slide the cassette into her pocket. The wooden door slammed behind them with finality, rattling in the sharp wind. Sapphire spun at the edge of the road and threw her arms around Ruby’s neck. Her hair wrapped around them both in a tight embrace. She caught her lips with her own, and it was a thank you. Ruby moved to nuzzle Sapphire’s neck, her nose still warm even with the chill in the air. Thunder cracked above their heads and the ground trembled, weak in the knees. The clouds buckled, and droplets fell onto the fields that had nearly given up hope for rain.
It was with a melancholy sweet and heavy like caramel that she pulled lightly on Ruby’s dampening curls. Sapphire pressed their foreheads together and felt at home in their shared breath.
“Let’s go.”
—
It was hard to say what happened after that.
Maybe Sapphire picked a single flower of deep red petals from a neighbor’s garden, mud gathering under her fingernails, and placed it between her parent’s tombstones. Maybe she held Ruby’s hand tight as she did it, palms made slick with rain and worry.
Maybe, instead, they didn’t stop, with Sapphire looking out at the graveyard from the passenger seat with her parent’s cassette playing. Maybe she cried, with the wind whipping her tears into the downpour and bringing life to the yellowed grass alongside the road. Maybe she threaded the flower through Ruby’s curls, weighed down to her shoulders with water.
Maybe Ruby stuck her hand out the truck window as they slid onto the highway, flipping the bird to the town that gave her both home and hardship. Maybe she shouted a “Take that!” that was lost to the howling wind of the storm hot on their heels, while Sapphire collapsed with laughter beside her.
And maybe the rain glued Sapphire’s hair to her cheeks and to Ruby’s when she took her face in both of her hands and kissed her hard enough to bruise. Her skin was slippery wet, sliding beneath her hands, and she clung on with desperation and joy and something like freedom but a little bit sad. Ruby smiled into her mouth as laughter shook her shoulders, and maybe that was all it would need to be.