AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I took a deep breath as I carried things out to the car. With Jesse gone, it was so quiet in the house. I wondered if I would find his noise endearing now that we were getting along. I already kind of missed his voice.
I shook those thoughts away. Once I packed all the extra jewelry safely in the back of my car, I drove to the store. Upon arriving, I was a little glad to learn I had arrived a half hour earlier than I even meant to. That would give me plenty of time to set up the new jewelry displays and make sure all the posters were up properly for our fundraiser. We’d be closing the store for that, but that was only because we were going to be at the expo center and hadn’t yet hired enough employees to be able to run both at once.
I hoped that by next year, we could keep the store runningandhave a fundraiser stall going at the expo center.
That was also a rather ambitious thought. We hadn’t even officially opened yet!
I took the time to put up the rest of the jewelry displays. I even managed to put up a few displays that mounted on the wall. I was pretty impressed with how great they looked, and I started filling them with jewelry I had brought from home.
Once I was done with the new displays, I had a single jewelry box still filled out of the four large plastic ones I had brought with me. Thankfully, I had also anticipated this. I’d brought abunch of beading supplies and some of the fundraiser colors to make sure that I could keep busy while people browsed.
Ten o’clock in the morning finally came around, and I had managed to make a few bracelets in the meantime. The earrings I would be making at home. Always. The felt work was too complicated to put down and restart multiple times, in my opinion. There were probably plenty of people who could do it while talking to others and taking breaks without getting lost. I simply hadn’t gotten there yet.
“Welcome!” I smiled as I saw the first customer come through the door. “Come on in. Grand opening today.”
He smiled.
“Have anything that says, ‘I want to be your boyfriend’?” he asked.
I pursed my lips. That was an odd request, but I was sure that if he just looked around, he would find something.
“That entirely depends on what she likes. Don’t be shy,” I said as I motioned around to the jewelry and the other artsy items on sale. “Have a look. I’m sure that if you can’t find the perfect piece of jewelry, there might be something else that she’d like! We have some beautiful purses as well.”
He nodded slowly and then started to look around. I didn’t have time to start up another beading project because more customers were coming in. I was soon ringing people up and making sure the tags matched the prices I was putting into the system. Maria had done her own pricing, and they looked reasonable for the amount of time and material I knew went into what she made.
The jewelry appeared to be a little more of an eyecatcher for most, but with some sticker shock. I had based my prices off what the most popular pieces were in my online store, adjusted for the fact that they were not paying for shipping. I wonderedif I hadn’t adjusted the prices enough, but the jewelry was still coming off the walls and displays faster than I could put it out.
We needed to have more than two employees if we were going to run this store properly, in my opinion.
Around noon, I finally got a bit of a break. Instead of sitting down to bead, I decided that it would be better to eat the sandwich I had brought in for my lunch. I wasn’t sure when I’d get another break, and there was no telling if this pattern would hold.
About half-way through my sandwich, the bell over the door rang. I looked up to see a man walking in.
“You should give up the lease for this building,” he said, a set frown on his face as he spoke. “It’s big city folk like you that haveruinedour little town!”
“May I help you sir?” I asked, suddenly very aware of how alone I was in the store.
I didn’t want to indulge the crazy person, but something told me that I’d have to at least hear him out to get him out of the shop.
“Give up this lease! Quit this place!”
And he stopped making sense to me after that, talking about a business that should have succeeded, but people were too stupid to see the beauty in what had been happening here before we arrived. I grabbed my cell phone.
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside.”
He kept talking, beginning to gesticulate wildly in the air, stabbing a pointed finger at the purses, curtains, and jewelry.
“Sir,” I said again more loudly. “Please leave, or I’ll call the police.”
Even with my voice raised, I tried to sound as calm and authoritative as possible. He narrowed his eyes at me, but I decided to go ahead and dial the line anyway. This startled him out of the shop.
Instead of hanging up to call the non-emergency line, I gave a description of the guy to the first responders and apologized for the last-second bump to a non-emergency, but I didn’t want to have cops coming to the shop if I could help it.
“Now, just be careful. Sometimes, these people are just off their meds,” the first responder said. “And if they’re willing to leave when you threaten to call the cops, maybe they’ve realized that they need to step back and calm down.”
“He didn’t leave until I dialed,” I admitted.
“Either way, you have a record of the incident, and I hope that at least makes you feel better,” he said. “Have a good day, ma’am.”
