“Are you ready back there?” she asks.

“Yep,” I tell her. “Just keep your arms to your sides, and I’m pretty sure the four of us are going to be just fine.”

“The four of—” and she gets the joke. Laughing, she says, “Okay,” and crosses her arms over her chest.

I stand with my pelvis a bit farther back than usual, but I’m ready, so I start counting, “One, two, three.”

She falls backward and, thankfully, her arms stay where they are.

I catch her and just hold her there for a minute. “See? You can do this.”

“Uh, Eric?” she says, her voice devoid of the celebratory mirth I’d been expecting.

“Yeah?” I ask.

“You’re grabbing my boobs,” she says.

Not even thinking, I let go of her entirely and she falls to the floor.

Shit.

Chapter Eleven

Steel Wool

Jessica

After I picked myself up off the floor, I couldn’t get my mind off Eric’s hands on my boobs. It was the first time in a long while a guy has touched me like that and it was…nice.

I made sure to clear my head as Eric and I went over some specifics regarding how I should approach and train the person or people I’m ready to promote. He seemed to think that I should get at least two managers right away, but I think I’ll be more comfortable if I only do one at a time.

That said, I’m not sure why I’m so nervous.

I’ve decided to promote Cheryl, mostly based off of Eric’s recommendation that she seemed to have the best overall knowledge and savvy of anyone, other than myself, of course, in the store.

She just walked in the door so I stroll out to meet her.

Cheryl has been with me for a long time, but I think I know her less than pretty much anyone else in the store. It’s not that I’ve specifically avoided her or anything; she just seems to be less chatty than everyone else.

“Cheryl, could I talk to you for a minute?” I ask as she’s making her way to the break room to drop off her purse.

“Sure,” she answers and changes course to come into my office.

“Would you mind closing the door?” I ask.

“Sure,” she says nervously.

“There’s something that I wanted to talk to you about, and I’m not quite sure how to start. This is kind of new to me,” I begin.

“Okay,” she says.

“You’ve been here at this store for a while, and I think it’s time we make a change,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well, it’s become apparent to me that things around here need to change,” I tell her. “I don’t think the way I’ve been going about running this business has been—”

“I can work weekends,” she says.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Holidays,” she says. “I don’t mind working overtime. You don’t even have to pay me an overtime wage. I just really need this job.”

“That’s not where I’m going with this,” I tell her. “I’m talking about fundamentally changing the way that I do business—the way we do business. You see, for such a long time, I’ve felt the need to lord over every decision, be here at every moment, and that’s not a sustainable business model.”

“I really need this job,” she says.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“I’ve been here since you opened up, and I think it’s pretty screwed up that you’re talking about firing me when I have given so much of my life to help this place off the ground,” she says.

Now it makes sense.

“I’m not talking about firing you, Cheryl,” I smile.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, if you’re going to cut my hours, I really wish you would have told me before now so I could look for another job to supplement my income, I—”

“I asked you in here so I could offer you a promotion,” I tell her.

“Well, you’d better just think about what you’re—I’m sorry, what?” she asks.

“I’m offering you a position as assistant store manager,” I tell her. “It’ll be an increase in responsibility across the board, but you’ll also get a pretty handsome raise. Does that sound like something you’d be interested in, Cheryl?”

She doesn’t answer.

“I’ve come to realize that, despite how much I feel the need to control every portion of this store’s operation, every day, I’m not infallible, and I sure as hell don’t know everything. What I need to do,” I explain, “is start trusting my staff. You and the others have put so much time and so much energy into this place, and I know it wouldn’t be as successful as it is without any one of you. Cheryl, you stand out from the crowd. You have a degree of insight into this place that gets people to stand up and take notice, and I want you to know that you are valued here. So, do you think you’d be interested in being my assistant store manager?”

She looks down at the ground, then back up at me.

“Yes,” she says in a quiet, shaky voice.

“Great,” I tell her. “Now, we’re going to have to help each other out here. This is new territory for me, and so I ask for your patience. That said, I’d like to go ahead and make your new position official today.”

“I’m ready,” she says.

“Great,” I tell her. “First off, I’m going to need to ask you something.”

“What’s that?” she asks.

“What does an assistant store manager do?”

*                    *                    *

“You actually asked her what an assistant store manager does?” my text friend writes.

“I’m new to this,” I write back. “I’m sure there are keys involved, but how much of my daily workload do I delegate? I’m not sure what’s appropriate here.”

I’m sitting at dinner with Kristin and Jed.

I do not like Jed.

“Who are you talking to?” Kristin asks.

“Just a friend,” I tell her.

“Oh,” she says. “You mean that friend.”

“How long have we been sitting here?” Jed asks. “I feel like we’ve been waiting for our meals for a really long time. What’s taking them so long? The place isn’t that busy. I don’t see how hard it is to make three simple meals and bring it out to a table.”

“We just ordered,” I inform Jed. “It usually takes more than two minutes for a restaurant to cook something.”

“It feels like it’s been longer than that, though,” he says. “I don’t know. I’ve been so stressed lately. I think I’m getting an ulcer.”

“If anything’s going to give you an ulcer,” Kristin tells him, “it’s going to be how much you constantly worry about getting an ulcer.”

My phone beeps and I read the message, “It sounds like you might want to have that guy come back and show you the ropes. Was he helpful before?”

I write back, “He was helpful, but it kind of got a little weird last time.”

“Jay, there’s something we’d like to tell you,” Kristin says. “Actually, it’s the reason that we asked you out to dinner.”

“I know,” I tell her. “You’re still waiting for me to give you that discount you decided you were entitled to as my sister, but we’re just barely starting to recover from the months of construction in the store, and with this new deal—if you can even call it that—I’ve got with one of my main suppliers, I really don’t think I can start offering you designer products for seventy-five percent off. I could maybe do ten or something, but even that would be—”

“It’s not that,” she says, “although I do think it’s pretty sad that you can’t even give your own sister, a woman that you shared the same womb with, a silly little major discount on some clothes.”

“We’re not twins,” I tell her. “We didn’t share a womb.”

“We came out of the same vag,” she says. “Whatever. Anyway—”

My sister is something special.

My phone beeps and I shift my attention from Kristin to the screen.

“It got weird?” he writes. “What do you mean?”

I write back, “Well, it came to light that I might have a little difficulty trusting others, so we did a little trust exercise. There were injuries.”

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” she asks.