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Maggie wasn’t sure when her feelings for Nina began. They’d been neighbors for years, of course, sharing the same street since Maggie took over her grandmother’s record store across from Nina’s coffee shop. At some point, though, her visits stopped becoming purely for coffee and also for something a little bit different.
Nina hadn’t noticed. She knew Maggie and knew she ran the record store across the street. That, essentially, was it. It wasn’t that she hadn’t recognized that Maggie frequented her store, but she had a lot of regulars on a busy street in SoHo, and it wasn’t abnormal at all for someone to come in multiple times a day, even. Maggie’s store had been there long before Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death had been. Nina had no business, of any kind, that required a record store, and so, their relationship ended at Nina’s “have a nice day” pleasantries and Maggie’s anxious responses for her to do the same.
However, now, of course, everything was different. Ever since Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley got “involved”, Nina and Maggie knew each other. Nina knew Maggie was interested in her, which was very strange. Given Nina’s recent track record with women, it was unusual for another person to actually like her, let alone fancy her.
Lindsay had been kind in the beginning. But Nina understood that their relationship was not nice. Long before things ended between herself and Lindsay, Nina knew their relationship had grown toxic, but she simply had spent too much time, too much money, too much energy, too much of herself invested in Lindsay to just give up. They’d spent years building whatever it was they were calling “love”, and that was pretty loving, wasn’t it? Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley certainly loved each other, didn’t they? But they almost also as certainly didn’t always like each other. Nina could tell that.
“Nina,” Maggie’s voice cut through Nina’s thoughts. The coffee shop had been closed for hours, and Maggie had come round to work on her books while Nina prepared her own for the month ahead. The end of a long month requires a lot of paperwork, and having Maggie around…well, it just made it easier to get the work done. Nina looked over at Maggie, sitting under the pendant light of a booth, her blond hair shining under the yellow bulb. “You ok, love?”
“Yeah, yeah. Of course I am,” Nina hesitated, “It’s just all this paperwork. I get caught up and then it’s the end of the month again, and I’m back to square one. Did you need something?”
“Well, no. I just said that I love this song,” Maggie pointed up at the ceiling, indicating the song playing softly over the shop’s stereo system.
Nina looked up, her eyes focusing from their glazed-over appearance. She strained to hear Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” playing. Nina smirked and looked back at her. “Of course you love this song!” Nina turned in her chair at the table next to Maggie’s to face her.
“But have you actually listened to the lyrics?” Maggie responded, smiling earnestly. “It’s a bit like, well, it’s a bit like Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley, isn’t it? You hear Paul sort of making sense of the fact that a love song, though maybe overdone, is timeless. Those two have been together, as long as I’ve had my shop. I’ve known Mr. Crowley even before I knew Mr. Fell. It was Mr. Crowley that came into my shop first and brought Mr. Fell back to meet me. I think both of them even knew my mom and my Gran.”
Nina considered this for a moment, “I think it’s a stretch, Mags, but I can see where you’re going with it. With those two, its impossible.” Nina stretched her arms over her head. She noticed Maggie watching her as the song swelled up through the speakers again.
“Love doesn’t come in a minute, sometimes it doesn’t come at all. I only know that when I’m in it, it isn’t silly, love isn’t silly, love isn’t silly at all.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever thought too hard about this song, Mags,” Nina brushed off, avoiding eye contact as Paul McCartney pondered how to describe his love and the amorphous idea of being in love with another person. “And don’t get me started on ‘but it’s Sir Paul McCartney’. Yeah, he was a member of The Beatles, I get it. I’m sure you sell a million Beatles records annually, so, I get it.” Nina noticed that Maggie had not stopped watching her with a half smile painted on her red lips since she’d started refuting Maggie’s points about love songs. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” Maggie asked, her face unchanged.
“Like how you’re looking at me, like, I don’t know. Stop it,” Nina locked her computer screen and stood up suddenly.
“I don’t know how I am looking at you, how am I supposed to stop it?” Maggie laughed and stood up too, closing her paper records book. “And by the way, my records,” she tapped the cover, “Would not show the sales of a million copies of Beatles albums every year. I think the last copy of an album of theirs I sold was to that police officer. The weird one. It was like they’d never heard of the Beatles before.”
Nina turned to look at her, her face scrunched in laughing confusion, “That tracks, I mean, they just stared at their scone here the other day. Didn’t even order a coffee or anything. It was weird. What was that you were saying about Mr. Fell and Mr. Crowley? That they’re like this song?”
“I guess I just mean that, Mr. Crowley, he’s so…” Maggie made face, pursing her lips and drawing her eyebrows together, “Serious. And Mr. Fell, well he’s himself, right? And they’re like that, but they love each other anyway, and it doesn’t make sense, but it does. They say they’re not a couple; they don’t need to explain it.”
When had they sat back down? When had Maggie sat across from Nina at her table? Nina hadn’t noticed, but there they were, looking at each other.
“You’d think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs. I look around me and I see it isn’t so. Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. Well what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know…’Cause here I go again. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”
Maggie smiled and rolled her eyes as the song continued to its end, “I guess it is a little bit silly,” she said, her smile turning closed-lipped as she looked away from Nina.
“It’s not silly,” Nina sighed, giving in. “It’s sweet and nice. It’s just… hard to imagine.”
Maggie looked up at Nina, smiling in a way that conveyed empathy and something else. Maggie nodded, understanding, “It would be hard to imagine if it was something a person might not have experienced before.”
Nina looked back at Maggie and pursed her lips, nodding in response, “I guess so.”
“I’m not going to say I totally understand what’s happened between you and Lindsay, because I don’t. I know what I’ve been through, and that’s all I can offer. And I can offer it as a friend just as well as I could as anything else. I know a relationship is scary, so I’m certainly not going to push you,” Maggie said, reaching for Nina’s hand, and turning their joined hands so that Nina’s rested on top. “But I’m here for you, Nina. If you’ll have me.”
Nina noticed the subtle shift in their hands, turned so that she could remove her hand if she chose. Nina chose not to, and instead turned their hands again so that Maggie’s was on top, and then placed her other hand on top of the back of Maggie’s. “Thank you, angel,” Nina said, giving her hand a gentle squeeze, and noticing the way Maggie lit up from within at something so simple. It made Nina’s breath quicken, ever so slightly, “Yes, you can stay, I’ll have you. You and your love songs.”
“They aren’t all love songs,” Maggie countered, raising an eyebrow, “Some of them are angry, or sad, and some of them make you feel things you’ve never felt before.”
“I guess I don’t have to take your word for it, hmm?” Nina said, giving her hand another squeeze, “You can show me- your collection- if you like. I’m all done here, we can lock up and go to your shop?”
“I thought you’d never ask!” Maggie brightened so much, Nina mused, a miracle. “Come on, let’s go!” And so they did. Walking quickly through the cold, they breezed right past the weird police officer and their clipboard.