Page 81 of The Scent of Happiness

She was deep into the Pinterest boards, hopping from link to link, when her phone rang. Emma calling. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m hanging in there,” Brooke said.

“I’m really sorry,” Emma said. “This is the worst possible time, but I need to bail on Saturday’s show. A big job came in. It’s an office this time, not a house, so I have to reorganize it on the weekend.”

“It’s okay.”

“I can’t afford to turn down this job.”

“No, it’s really okay. I can handle the booth myself. The VFW is always a small show, and I don’t have much inventory anyway, since I sold almost everything online.”

“That’s good, right?” Emma asked. “That’s what you wanted.”

“I guess?” Brooke said. “Ordinarily I’d have plenty of stock this time of year. Now, I’m running close to empty.” She did a mental inventory. She was low on Mocha Monday, she only had a few bars of Pixie Wings, and she’d completely sold out of Citrus Ginger.

“What are you going to do?”

Brooke started a new Pinterest board. “Well, for one thing, I’m not going to make unique soaps anymore. I need to stop experimenting and stick with the tried-and-true classics that everyone likes. I have to do the math.”

“What do you mean?”

Brooke cast her eyes to the large calendar she’d stuck over her dining table. For once in her stupid life, she was thinking ahead, planning for the future. “I make it today, it cures for six weeks, by then it will be mid-December, after the local craft shows are done for the year. But I can still ship internet orders for last-minute Christmas gifts.”

Emma was silent for so long that Brooke wondered if the call dropped. But Emma finally spoke. “What about Saturday? And the weekend after that? You rented a table and don’t have inventory to put on it.”

“Got a plan,” Brooke said. She’d been furiously pinning recipes during this conversation. “I’m going to make bath bombs and bubble bars. Those dry in days. Not weeks, days. Can you imagine how much inventory I can turn out? And everyone loves bubble bars. It’s just solid bubble bath but people go nuts for it.”

“Sounds good,” Emma said. “But have you—”

“I could make a batch tonight,” Brooke said. “I’d have to go to the store to get a couple of things, but I could be done in a few hours.”

Emma paused. “Do you have the day off tomorrow or something?”

“No, I start work at eight.” Brooke checked the calendar to be sure. Yes, eight. It was almost eleven o’clock right now, but there was a 24-hour drugstore near the CU campus that she could hit up for supplies.

Silence on the other end of the line, longer this time. “Have you slept?” Emma asked.

“Some,” Brooke said, trying not to let the impatience into her voice. She needed to end this call and get started soaping. “I’ve slept enough.”

“You need at least seven hours. Eight would be better.”

Brooke sighed. “All right, all right. I will.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“I mean it, Brooke.”

“I will. I’m as good as my word.” She said goodbye to Emma and put down the phone. She closed the computer and wandered into the bedroom. Still no sheets on the bed. That’s right, they were in the dryer. It had finished its cycle at some point when she was wandering the endless paths of Pinterest.

She pulled out the sheets and gave them a sniff. They smelled of soap and nothing else. Good. She would put them on the bed and not think about Theo. She wouldn’t think about fantastic sex in fun positions. She wouldn’t think about waking up and checking her phone so she could see Theo’s messages first thing. She wouldn’t think about that time he brought her strawberry ice cream and held her until she fell asleep. Theo was out of her life now, and he needed to be out of her thoughts, too.

* * *

Brooke trudged out to her dad’s car after Saturday’s craft show, carrying boxes that weren’t much lighter than when she’d carried them in. Without Emma’s help, her table had looked haphazard and cluttered. She’d sold a few bath bombs and bubble bars, but her regular customers kept asking about soaps she didn’t have. “I’m out of Citrus Ginger,” she’d say. “I’m out of Mocha Monday.” Finally, she’d scrawled a sign and slapped it on the table. What you see is what you get.

Fewer customers stopped at her table after that, and those that did, didn’t stay long. Halfway through the day, Brooke opened her computer to check her online sales, but they’d slowed as well, probably because her ad budget was gone. She could dump more money into them, but if she was spending more in ads than she was making in revenue, what was the point?