“Okay, so I’m in Delaware. There’s a pool tournament going on here and it’s fucking wicked.”

This is one of the guys I just risked my livelihood for.

“You’re in Delaware for a pool tournament,” I echo. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Well, it’s not like I knew that I was going to be rehired today,” he says. “Besides, I kind of, you know, already found another job.”

“You really could have told me that,” I scold. “I’m going to look like a fucking idiot when you don’t show up here.”

“I’m really sorry about that,” he says. “I’ll totally quit this job and come back to work for you, only…”

I’m waiting for the end of the phrase, but it looks like it’s not going to come of its own freewill.

“What?” I ask, “Only what?”

“Well, I kind of promised these guys that I’d stay on at least until the job at that store finished up,” he says. “I figured you’d hire me back eventually, but I didn’t know you’d do it so soon.”

“This really sucks,” I tell him. “You know you’re putting me in one hell of a position here.”

“Sorry, bro,” he says. “I need a job, and I didn’t think I was going to have one with you for at least a little while longer. I can talk to my boss here and see if we can—”

“Don’t worry about it,” I sigh. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Thanks, boss,” he says. “If you want, I really do have the day off tomorrow, so I’d be happy to drive up there—you know, assuming that I can get a little reimbursement for gas money.”

I hang up the phone.

Fuck.

How the hell am I going to spin this so I don’t end up looking like the idiot I apparently am.

Sure, it makes sense now that I should have called Alec before giving that ultimatum, but in my defense, Alec’s one of the laziest motherfuckers I know. How was I supposed to know he’d actually go out and get himself a new job?

I walk back into the store, smiling at Linda as I pass her on my way to the newly sunken floor which, after a whole lot of back and forth and more wasted concrete than I’m prepared to admit, now sits level at sixteen-and-a-half inches below the rest of the flooring.

Really, unless Jessica comes out here with a list of changes sometime in the next day or so, we’re pretty much done here.

The old storage room was taken out weeks ago, the floor—well, we’ve already covered that—and my team is now in the process of setting the window.

There are a few more things left to do, mostly small and cosmetic, but maybe this won’t be the end of the world after all.

I really need to learn how not to be optimistic about anything.

Jessica’s door opens and Mr. Burbank comes walking out with a smile on his face. Jessica’s smiling, too, but hers is strained.

She waits for Burbank to pass hosiery before turning toward me and motioning for me to meet her in her office.

This should be fun.

I step into the office and close the door.

“You’re probably going to want witnesses,” she says. “In fact, knowing that someone could see what I would really, really like to do to you right now is probably the only thing that’s going to keep me from doing it.”

“I know I took a hard line before, and I just—”

“I’m not done talking,” she interrupts. “It’s bad enough that you forced that ridiculous decision onto me, but doing it where one of my most important business contacts could potentially hear you was beyond irresponsible and I can’t tell you how livid I am at you for it.”

“You’re absolutely right,” I tell her. “It was wrong of me to do that. So, to make it up to you, I’ve decided not to bring Alec back onto my team until we’ve finished up this contract.”

“Great!” she says manically. “That’s just great! I was so pissed off at you that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what Mr. Burbank was proposing, and I just agreed to a cost structure that’s going to completely gut my profit margin on everything he’s going to supply for me.”

I wince.

“How much does he supply for you?” I ask.

“All told,” she says, “about a third of everything I carry.”

I’m about to tell her that a third isn’t that bad, but then I pull my head out of my ass.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” she says, “shit is right. Do you want to know what’s worse? Do you want to know what’s even worse than that?”

I cringe. “It gets worse than that?”

“Yeah,” she says. “You know how I wanted you to remodel the plus section so I could expand it?”

“Yeah,” I answer, confused. “That’s kind of why we’re here.”

“Oh, I know,” she laughs. “What’s worse than everything else is that I just agreed to make Mr. Burbank my sole supplier of plus-sized clothing. So now, all of the extra business I was going to do giving women something chic and sexy to wear for a price they won’t have to sell their firstborn to afford is fucked! I have two choices: Either I can keep the prices where I want them and lose thousands of dollars a month on clothes that I’m actually selling, or I can raise the prices on everything in the store—‘cause I’m sure as hell not going to make one demographic of women pay more than another—completely obliterating my whole mission statement, business plan and just about the only reason that I got into this stupid fucking business in the first place.”

It’s certainly not my fault that she blew it in her meeting, but I really didn’t help matters, either.

“But hey, at least you had a change of heart and decided not to follow through with the threat that put me in this position in the first place. That’s just perfect,” she says.

I don’t know what to say to her, but she’s waiting for me to say something.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her.

At least it’s a true statement.

“You’re sorry,” she says. “Well, that magically makes it all better. You want to know what pisses me off even more than everything else I just told you?” she asks.

“Do I?” I ask.

“Oh yeah,” she says. “It’s actually good news for you. I’ve already sunk so much into the whole remodel that there’s no way it would be cost-effective for me to just fire your ass once and for all. So, even after this situation which you and your men caused by breaking into my store, letting the wrong guy quit while protecting the one who actually did it, yelling at me in front of my employees—”

“Hey, we both did that,” I interrupt.

Apparently my attempt at levity is not appreciated.

“Then,” she says, “to top it all off, you all but blackmail me into agreeing to do what you want me to do in the first place which, let’s face it, boils down to me covering your ass for a mistake you made, putting me in a position where I wasn’t in any way prepared to negotiate a business deal with one of the top clothing suppliers in New York, and I can’t fire you!”

“Hold on,” I tell her. “I know you’re upset, and I know it’s because of me, but will you just take a quick walk with me? I want to show you something that might cheer you up.”

“What do you think could possibly cheer me up right now?” she asks.

“Just come with me,” I tell her. “It may not make everything better, but it might just turn things around enough that you can go home tonight with at least one thing to be happy about.”

I would tell her that it’s not my fault she couldn’t stop her emotions from affecting her business transactions but, ironically, I would feel too guilty.

“Just give me a minute,” she says and takes a deep breath.

“Okay,” I tell her.

“Outside,” she says.

I walk out of the office and I can hear her heels behind me. I turn around and she stops in front of me.

“What?” she asks.

“Follow me,” I tell her.

From there, I walk her up to the front where the guys are putting the finishing touches on the window.

“Now, we’re going to keep the grating up on the outside—permanently if you’d like it, otherwise, at least until the window cures—but that’s basically done. I need to get my carpet guy in here to take care of this section, but I can call him tonight and have him here by tomorrow. Every possible bit of space that we could get without encroaching on another section is here, the sunken floor is set and ready to be carpeted with the rest of it and other than a few things here and there, we’re basically done.”