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YOU NEED TO LEARN A
THING OR TWO ABOUT LOVE

Hanson's wasn't any busier than usual. With the sun down, the stars out, and the fading crimson hues poking just above the tips of the trees, there weren't many too apt to spend their Friday night at a corner store.

The arcane building smelt solely of old books, and perhaps that was due to the ample supply of aging novels, Hanson's looked more like a shopworn bookstore. I didn't complain. I liked the smell, it reminded me of home, or the hundreds of stories I'd explored.

Dallas strolled in with a hunch in his back, hand shoved in both pockets, and if I didn't know him I would have thought he was robbing the place.

"Holly and Dallas," Hanson greeted, smiling as wide as his aging skin would allow. The bags under his eyes were darker than usual and I wondered if he'd been getting enough sleep. He worked too hard to keep the store open.

"Hanson," I responded, ambling up to the front counter. Dallas followed behind me and gave Hanson a once over. He was clad in a tucked dress shirt, adorned with a colorful blue tie and grey slacks. His hair was neatly slicked back and glasses sat atop his polished head.

"What's the occasion?" Dallas asked. "Dressed to the nines. You going partying, Mr. H?"

The old man waved his hand in the air, as if swatting an invisible fly, and scrunched his face. "No, no. I'm much too old for that kind of behavior."

"What are you on about, man? You don't look a day over thirty."

Mr. Hanson emitted a sonorous laugh, hand pressed to his stomach. "My son's wedding is tomorrow morning. I'm closing the store early today," he said, then squinted at his watch for a few ticks, "in about an hour."

"You have a son?" I stepped forward with raised brows. I'd never been told about a son, only a wife, the one who'd passed from lung cancer, and might have heard about a daughter, but never a son. Hanson averted his gaze to the floors.

"This is the first time I'll be seeing him in many years. We haven't had the best relationship, him and I, but I received an invitation the other day. I'm driving down to Louisiana tonight."

I was silent for a bit. Dallas was minding his own business, dangling the end of an unlit weed between his lips, shuffling through the lighters. I wasn't sure why I was so bothered by the information. Hanson's brows knitted when he spoke of his son, his lips turned downwards in a slight frown, like there was something digging into his skin. I wondered if he'd done something wrong, to make his son leave him. I wondered if it wasn't his fault. I wondered what it was like to have somebody you love leave you.

"What's his name?" I asked. It felt important to know.

"Charles. The woman's name is Barbara. Quite young, the two, only twenty-one."

Hanson's wife, Agnes, had passed ten years prior. He kept a photograph of her above the cash. I thought she was beautiful. A young couple with their lips stretched, elated eyes, heads thrown back. His arm was around her neck, and her hair was curled behind her ears, vivid red lipstick still radiant even through the black and white, withering photograph. They were happy. It was 1918. An olive brodie helmet sat upon his long and youthful hair. Cowed by the inevitability of war, conscripted, he was free, he was happy. So was she. She died August 19, 1955. It was scribbled beneath her billowed dress.

"Twenty-one and hitched? Better start on those divorce papers." Dallas flicked the lighter onto the table and threw his leather jacket over his shoulder.

"Your optimism is refreshing," I said.

"Young man, I was married at nineteen and just as in love on the last day as I was on our wedding day." That shut Dallas up. He awkwardly scratched his jaw and glanced my way. "You need to learn a thing or two about love."

"Don't tell me what I know about love, man." Dallas swatted away the hand that landed on his shoulder. He scowled.

"You ever been in love, Dallas?" I asked. Hanson made his way to the other side of the counter and counted the cash Dallas smacked onto the counter.

"You ever been in love, Holly?" Dallas turned his head. I thought I loved him the night we kissed, his hair fluttering through the wind as he clutched onto the window sill. I felt warm. Like he was my haven from the cold outdoors. From the people out there. Sometimes, I had trouble distinguishing lust from love.

I didn't love him. The only person I'd ever loved was Steve, my father, and Hanson. Steve was given: he would go to the ends of the earth to protect me, and it meant more than I would ever know to have someone like that in my life. My love for my father was one that was there since birth. He gave me life, a roof, and food, but not much else. I loved him because I understood him. It was the same with Hanson, we understood each other, tacitly, in a beautiful way.

I wondered what his son looked like, then glanced at the yellow, battered photograph, and pictured a young man in a suit and tie, sans m1 helmet, with slicked back, modern Elvis-style hair, next to a beautiful girl in a beautiful dress. I hoped they rekindled their moribund relationship.

"I've never been in love," I said. "But I believe in it."

If it weren't for Hanson, I would have been more cynical, perhaps. Love wouldn't have been more than a literary theme. If it weren't for the way he spoke of her, with his old eyes holding a myriad of memories from years before. If it weren't for the battered picture. The way he held her. I hadn't seen love until that photograph.

"You're a romantic, Holly. A visionary. You're gonna find love someday, young lady, and I'll be there in the front pew to see it."

Nothing had made me happier than what he said that day. I visioned him there, in the first row. Only, I wished Agnes was by his side.

"I can't wait."

A flame lit beside us, and up came smoke from Dallas's cigarette. He curled his lips into an impressive smile and flicked his ashes to the ground.

"I'll be there if I ain't dead or in the cooler." He inhaled a little too much, then spoke through his smoke. "I ain't goin' if it's that Daniel guy, though."

"I don't even like Daniel," I muttered. I was never sure why Dallas had such a strong hostility toward him. He didn't seem bothered at the idea of me with another guy. Only Daniel.

He stared me down for a few moments, eyes flickering from my head to toe, then grinned. "Good."

I remembered suddenly why I was there. Hanson was dressed like it was the only day of his life that mattered, gazing through the window, in his own little world. Probably envisioning his son as he watched the bride walk down the aisle.

"Go."

"What?" Hanson broke his stare from the night sky.

"Go early. Dal and I came to ask about getting me a job here, but we can talk about that later. Go, I'll watch over the store for the last thirty minutes."

Hanson's thin lips parted, as he glanced down at the key he already had curled in his right hand. He'd been holding it for the past half hour.

"I know how to use the register, and Dallas can scare off any unwanted visitors. Go. I know you want to."

Dallas smirked, his sharp teeth poking his curled lips. If any Socs came strolling through the doors I knew they'd be out of there after catching a glimpse of that smile.

"I couldn't, Holly."

"Are you gonna make me pry those keys from your hand?" Hanson broke into a smile. He let out a soft chuckle and placed the silver in my hand.

"Alright, alright." He waved his hands in the air. "I'm out of here. But this place better not be on fire or in shambles by the time I get back."

"You got it," Dallas said, jerking his hand to wave goodbye. He gave one of his menacing smiles as the old man shuffled through the doors, making the bells ring through the empty room. The door shut, and the two of us were left in silence, gazing at each other with an unvoiced admiration. I caught his few glances to the yellowing photograph. I looked at it again, and noticed the corner of it folding over onto the beautiful woman's face. I touched it, as if it were the most delicate thing I would ever feel, and bent the corner into place.

"She kinda looks like you."

"What?" I was caught off guard.

Dallas was intently staring at the photograph. He reached out a hand and brushed his finger against the woman. His finger turned grey with dust. "Her."

I looked closely. She had brown hair, very short and curled to stop below her pointed ears, and I couldn't make out the color of her eyes, but if I guessed, I would say a deep ebony. She had a small nose, like me, and bigger lips, but her cheeks were thin and pointed like an elf.

"I don't see it," I said. She was beautiful. The kind of beautiful you could only perceive in an abstract way. It wasn't only her looks that made her beautiful, but the livewire personality I constructed in my mind.

Dallas didn't take his eyes off it. They seemed to study every inch of the photograph, from corner to corner, and I left him to be while he did. I sat on the counter and crossed one leg over the other, throwing my head up to the ceiling and shut my lids. When I opened them, Dallas was looking back at me, one corner of his lip upturned. I would give anything to know what he was thinking. Turns out I didn't have to give much.

"Beautiful. You're both beautiful."

An unsought redness crept onto my cheeks, and I had to turn so that my hair brushed over my face. He was grinning that half grin of his while the cigarette dangled loosely from his teeth. He was beautiful, breathtakingly beautiful, but I wouldn't tell him that; I'd never hear the end of it.

"Shut up," I mumbled. I kicked my feet together – nervous mannerisms were always my thing.

He took the weed between his fingers and flicked the ashes. "You don't have to believe me." He glanced at the photo and took the corner of it, then held it up to my face. He closed an eye and squinted the other. "Yeah... I bet its why Hanson likes you so much. You remind him of her."

I snatched the photograph from him and looked at it closely. It was hard to make out the details, every color and curve of her face, but I did see the similarities. Perhaps Dallas was right. Maybe I did remind him of his late wife; maybe she liked to read, write, and watch sunsets. Maybe she was a romantic. I placed it back on the stand.

"I think she looks like my mother." I fiddled with my fingers, because my mother wasn't a topic I brought up often, but sometimes it felt good to talk about it. "Her hair was longer, but they're both beautiful. I have this picture of her buried in a box in my basement, same size, same width, same black and white color with yellowing, fading edges. I would stare at it a lot when I was a kid. Brought me solace, maybe, when she died. Anyways, that picture gives me the same kinda feeling."

He stared at me for a few minutes, his sharp features contorted into something incomprehensible, then stomped out his weed into the tiled floors.

"Really? If I recall, Hanson gave us direct instructions not to burn down the place while he was gone."

Dallas held up his finger, as if telling me to stop talking. He turned around and walked to the back, where I couldn't see him behind the rows of shelves.

"What are you doing?" I called out. "You better not be stealing, not on my watch."

"What do you peg me as, sweetheart?" He hollered back. I could picture that smirk of his in my mind.

"A thief."

"That hurts." He emerged from behind a shelf of books, ripping open a package of something I couldn't make out. He gripped onto it with his teeth, and then I noticed the swinger camera in his left hand. He held up the roll.

"Black and white."

My lips parted. I wasn't sure whether to tell him to put it back, or let him keep going. I chose the latter. "That'll work."

He spit plastic to the ground and then pressed some buttons on the camera before standing in front of me. He held the device up to his eye and squinted.

"Look happy," he mumbled.

"I can't just look happy, I need to be happy."

He sighed and took the camera away from his eye. Seeming to think about it, he gazed out the window over my shoulder into the starlit night. Then he looked back at me. "Think about the letters you write or the books you read. I don't know, man."

I didn't think about either. Instead, I thought about Dallas, and how he made the idea to take the photo of me, knowing how much it meant. I thought about how special he was to me.

The photo developed quickly enough. Dallas didn't wait to see what it looked like. He smiled at me, with gorgeous eyes, I smiled back, genuinely happy, and he took another photo; this time quicker than I could react.

"One for you, one for me." He stated, grabbing the Polaroid as it slipped from the camera. It was wallet sized, black and white, but I really did look happy. He handed me the first photograph. He took the second and shoved it into the tawny leather pocket of his jacket.

"You better put that camera back," I teased.

"I know what you think of me, sweetheart." He placed the camera back on a random shelf, not bothering to put it in its rightful spot. "You know I'd never steal from Hanson. The old man's grown on me. He ain't too bad."

"He cares about you too." I jumped from the counter. Dallas's gaze was fixed. I took the time to look into his eyes. They were big, like round doe eyes, something you'd see on a baby. Deep brown, but they held such a weight to them, both a warmness and a cold, animosity toward the world. I guess the duality was what made it beautiful.

"Last week you called me enigmatic."

I parted my lips slowly because it took me a moment to snap out of my trance. "You remembered."

"You think I'd forget?" He crossed his arms over his chest.

"No, I mean-"

"Angelic."

I paused. "What?"

"That's what I think of when I look at you. It just comes to mind, I guess. Like an angel, or whatever."

I blinked five times before saying anything back. I was speechless.

"Thank you."

"Don't tell anyone I said that." He moved closer to me. I felt the heat emanate from his chest to mine, and his soft breath against my ear. "Keep it a little thing, between you and me. Sound good?"

"Yeah," I whispered, but the word barely made its way past my lips.

I thought he was going to kiss me, but then he pulled back and gave me a small smirk. I opened my lips to speak but was cut off by a booming bang against the windows. My head shot over to find five guys turning the corner of the store, making their way toward the entrance while hollering through the glass. Dallas stiffened up.

When they entered, the bell rang, and the first face I saw was a familiar one.

"Well look at who it is," he said, his smile sending a chill down my spine, "if it ain't Bonnie and Clyde in the flesh."

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