Store Down
The bell rang alerting me of a new customer but I didn’t even look up. Pretending to be doing the books is a lot tougher than you think. Especially when the store whose books you’re doing happens to be failing. I let Marci handle it but when I didn’t hear a greeting from her side, I finally looked myself. The door was just about to close and next to it I saw someone whose face I recognized. I felt a draft and crossed my arms over my chest.
“Is it just me or did my mother let in bitter cold in her wake?” I whispered to Marci, who just shrugged.
“Slow day?” I heard my mother’s scathing voice.
Try slow year, I wanted to quip but it would only hurt me. “If that jab was any more cutting, Mom, it would be in the Museum of Torture.”
“Keep up that attitude, Jessica and no man will find you attractive.” She walked up to me and started taking off her gloves.
“Dad seems to find you attractive enough.”
“Sarcasm,” she seethed. “Very clever. At least I got someone to marry me!”
I know carrying this further would not be in my benefit so I stopped and tried to concentrate on the accounting that was in front of me. “Mrs. Miles,” Marci spoke up. “Can I get you a coffee?”
“No thank you, Marci.” My mother smiled. She’s always smiling at Marci, my friend-slash-assistant. My own mother liked my friends better than she liked me.
“What brings you here, Mom?”
“I’m looking for a gift for a friend,” Mom said. “Thought you might have something fitting.”
“But you crap all over my taste, Mom. So, why would you want to buy jewelry I chose?”
I was still waiting for a reply when the bell rang again and this time I couldn’t help looking at the person who stepped inside. I’d recognize that scarf anywhere. I was the one who bought it. And he still wears the same cologne… I was losing this fight before I even began.
“Can I help you?” Marci launched into a greeting, which gave me time to recuperate. But he wasn’t even pretending to look at her. His gaze went right past her and came to rest on me. I was more uncomfortable than I was five minutes ago, when he stepped into my shop.
But before I could find the nerve to speak, my mother went toward him and they did their hugs and kisses routine, and he looked genuinely happy to see her. Why wouldn’t he? She liked him. She was the one who kept pushing me to go out with him, and that was probably one of the reasons why that idea even entered my mind. You see, to my mother, people of different genders cannot be friends. She was elated when we started going out and when we broke up, I had to go through yet another round of disapproval from her. I don’t think she ever got over it. But looking at her now, you couldn’t say she knew we broke up on bad terms. Is she supposed to be talking to him so nicely? Why can’t she give him her jabs and cutting words? Probably because she wanted to save them for me. I must mean a lot to her if she saved up her best stuff for me. Right?
“Mom was wondering where you were,” Callum said to my mother. “She says you haven’t been attending book club.”
“Oh, so good of your mother to inquire,” Mom was positively beaming. “I haven’t been well. I’ll definitely join them after the holidays.”
“I’ll let her know,” Callum said and My God, how devious is that guy! I wasn’t just angry at my mother, but at him as well.
“Well, I have to go get some things from the store next door,” my mother said, and gestured to Marci. “Marci, why don’t you come with me?”
Poor, goody-two-shoes Marci looked like she was having the worst day, and she worked for my business. The bar was low. Regardless, she couldn’t say no, and gave me a glare that said you better make up for it. The minute the door closed behind them, I realized what was happening here—Callum and I were in a small place, together. There was barely any room between us, and he was so tall, my store ceiling seemed to be having a bad day too.
“You realize your Mom wanted us to be alone, right?” Callum said.
“I’m aware of that,” I said. “But I don’t know how to tell her to work on her subtlety. She thinks she’s perfect. It’s hard to bring her down. Near impossible if you ask me.”
“Is she still giving you a hard time?”
“What do you think?”
He smiled. “It’s kind of cute.”
“No, it’s not!” I replied. “Pitt Bulls wearing crocs is cute! Cats playing guitar is cute! A toddler dancing to the milkshake song is cute, Callum! What my mother does, is…” I tried to look for a word that fit the anger that I felt toward her at that moment. “EVIL.”
This time he didn’t smile.
He simply walked toward me and started taking off that scarf.
How could he be that close to me while I was behind a counter?
I self-consciously twirled my hair. “Don’t do that,” he said. “It makes you look like some Mary Sue character out of a romance novel.”
“You talk like you actually read them.”
“I don’t, but I watch the movies. Doesn’t that count?”
“Not if you hate them!”
“I don’t hate all of them.”
“Callum, why are you here?” It seemed the right thing to do, getting to the point. Callum looked confused, like he didn’t know the answer to that himself, but I wasn’t buying it. I was certain he knew what he was up to. I wasn’t going to fall for anything he said, not after everything that went down—
“I’m sorry,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t.”
“I keep wanting to apologize and I keep fucking it up,” he sounded sincere at least, I’ll give him that. In fact, I bet he thought he was sincere, that he was ‘doing the right thing.’ Well, it wasn’t the right thing. I wanted him gone.
“You were leaving, weren’t you?”
He paused. “Is that what you want?”
“You were leaving!”
He sighed.
Shifted his weight.
He walked up closer to me, slow.
“I’m here for the holidays.”
I glared at him. “Why should it make any difference to me if you stay or leave?”
I think the words hit him harder than I thought they would. He clammed up. It was obvious he wasn’t going to continue. “You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t have assumed—”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
I don’t know what came over me. There were better ways to handle this, but none of them occurred to me at the time, mostly because I couldn’t stop being angry. Sure, a part of me wanted him to protest, to say that he wasn’t having any of it, that he would stay regardless of what I said—do you think I’m as crazy as I sound? Probably. I guess I wanted him to fight. To be angry at the prospect of not seeing me, but all I got in response was indifference. He even managed a smile as he was leaving. “Have a great life, Jess.”
I wish I could have returned the favor but I couldn’t.
It was when the door opened again the cold wafted in, that I realized just how warm I had felt in his presence. And now that he was gone, his footsteps made it out of my shop’s threshold, I was left feeling bitter and nostalgic. I would have cried, but the door opened rather quickly again, and Marci and Mom stepped in.
“Why is it so cold in here?” Mom complained.
“We’re trying to save on the heating,” Marci told her. My mother looked at Marci, slack-jawed, as though saving on heating bills was an unheard-of concept. Before Marci could say anything, I chimed in. “Yes, Mother. Us poor mortals can’t all be rich like Your Highness and have to think about annoying little things like bills,” I picked up the accounts again and started doing calculations but nothing made sense anymore.
“Tell me the truth, Jess, is the shop in trouble?”
This was the last thing I needed right now, my mother’s pity. If there was one thing worse than my mother’s love, it was her disappointment. I could see Marci opening her mouth to say something, but I interrupted her before she could. “The shop’s fine, Mom. Thanks for asking.”
I tried to ignore her to the best of my ability but she wasn’t having it. “Oh my God,” my mother sighed. “You’re really in trouble, Jess! Aren’t you? I can tell when you’re lying!”
This time I knew I had to get away. I set everything aside and came back from behind the safety of the counter. I grabbed my coat and wrapped a scarf quickly around my neck and headed out.
The cold wasn’t exactly welcoming outside, but it was better than what I had going on inside the store. As I walked in no particular direction, I glanced briefly at the people walking past me and I saw their lives for that one moment, and I saw they had something. There were couples, young and old, with or without kids, siblings and fathers and daughters, everyone, together for Christmas, leaving everything behind and just being there for each other and I hated it. I didn’t hate them, I wished them the best, but the more I saw these people out in the world, going toward some destination, I felt envy rearing its ugly head, and I felt more out of place than I felt inside with my mother and Marci. The problem is, Marci’s a good sport but I know we’re miserable. What we made through the store wasn’t enough to cover the bills, let alone bring us any joy. Forget bonus, I couldn’t even pay Marci’s salary this month.
I don’t know how I was still lucky enough to have her as a friend, but the truth was there were some important decisions I was going to have to make sometime soon. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I kept hoping Christmas would turn things around, I mean people are supposed to buy jewelry, right? But, nothing. I don’t know how long I can go on waiting. If I don’t get some sales soon, I’m going to be in so much trouble, I might have to move in with my parents and you can see why I’m not looking forward to that. My mother would love it of course. I’d become her pet project once again, just as I had been all my childhood. A living, breathing project who had no right to live its own life, but go instead on her commandments. Thou shalt not drink three cups of coffee. Thou shalt not wear ‘unladylike’ (whatever that meant) clothes. Thou shalt not listen to Taylor Swift.
And this problem aside, I had qualms about joining a new workplace. You see, I have tried working before, but it always ends up badly.
I guess with me everything ends badly.
Am I destined to fail?
Never thought I’d say this before, but I’m starting to lose hope.