Secondhand Purses (21 page)

chapter twenty six

I sat there for a few moments, with the paper dangling from my hands, thinking of everything that brought us to this moment. I looked over at Nonna’s face, smiling from the picture frame across the room and over sixty years ago.

“I don’t know if I’m really ready for this yet, Nonna, but ready or not, it looks like our bakery is finally happening.”

“You’re ready.”

I swear, I just had a heart attack. Because that voice came out of nowhere, and for about ten seconds I stared at Nonna’s picture in shock that somehow she was speaking to me beyond the grave.

“Hello?”

This time it registered that the voice came from behind me. Oh, thank God.

I turned around slowly, a little concerned about the fact that someone just walked right in and I didn’t hear them.

“Hi, I’m sorry if I scared you, but the door was open. I hope you don’t mind that I came in.”

It was Leah from the kickboxing class last night. I felt a moment of happiness at seeing her again, until images from the class flooded my mind and I remembered how I left.

“No problem, just was a little spooked. Come on in, have a seat. Can I get you something? I am not going to have any fancy coffee, because I like Cheryl a lot, but I have regular, plain old coffee, water…” My voice trailed off, because that was really all I had at this point.

“I’ll have a cup of coffee if it’s no trouble for you. I just really wanted to come and check on you, make sure you were okay and to bring you a picture.”

I stood up to go to the coffee maker. It was a Keurig that I was going to set up so people could do single serving brews. All I was offering was straight regular and decaf coffee, and I ran it by Cheryl so she wouldn’t think I was trying to steal any business of hers. She was really cool about it, and even suggested maybe we could cross promote once I got my feet under me.

“I’m fine. Last night was a shit night. I think you unfortunately saw the end of a budding relationship that started ten years ago. I’m hurting a bit now, physically from the class and emotionally from the guy; but I’ll be okay. Fortunately, I have something that is going to keep me good and busy for a very long time.” I managed a somewhat genuine smile as I gestured around the room.

“I hope you’ll consider coming back to class. And I don’t just say that because I am the owner. You really have great form and it was fun watching the facial expressions on Corey when you were wailing on him. He was expecting a newbie and you tore it up.” She laughed before taking a sip of her coffee.

“You’re the owner? Oh man, no wonder you looked at me funny when I asked if you worked there.” I felt embarrassed. I don’t know why, I just kind of figured that a kickboxing gym would be owned by a guy.

“I get that a lot. FierceFit isn’t just kickboxing, we have so many classes. Like, seriously,
so
many classes. I have a hard time keeping them straight sometimes.” She looked into her coffee cup somewhat pensively.

I wanted to pick her brain until it was empty. I had apparently made a friend who was a small business owner. Maybe she could give me some pointers for what I needed to do to make this work. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, aside from baking and selling the things I baked.

“How did you know how to run a business? Did you go to school for this? What has been the hardest part?” I was firing questions off rapid fire, all of my fears and concerns coming out in these questions.

She just smiled and sat back, considering her words.

“I knew I wasn’t going to be happy working for someone else all the time. I thought it would be less stress running my own business without having to answer to anyone. Instead, I just traded one stress for another. My business degree from UMass was great for teaching me the mechanics of business, but it didn’t really teach me the human element. It’s crazy dealing with all the personalities, from the members to the staff to the training clients.” She was kind of looking off into nowhere while answering me.

“There are so many moving parts all the damn time. This is going to be hard work, I won’t lie. There are going to be times that you are excited, frustrated, angry, stressed, elated… the feelings just will come and hit you non-stop throughout the day. Best advice I can give is not to take it personally. It’s also the hardest thing to do because this will become who you are. I have almost no life because of the business, I’ve let it consume me. I am readily available to everyone who is or who has ever been a member by phone, pretty much twenty four hours a day. Find some balance in your life, it will help you out tremendously. Find something away from here to be involved in. Like, kickboxing perhaps.” She ended that on a wink.

I took her words to heart. I could see how this could become consuming, it already had taken over my life, and I hadn’t even opened yet. I would have to work at making sure the hours I chose to be open allowed me some time to just be Alex, not Alex the baker chick.

“Thanks, I really appreciate your honesty. I won’t lie to you, I’m scared to death. I have no experience, no education. All I know how to do is bake. I don’t even know how to price everything out, I have nothing to go by.”

She nodded sympathetically.

“I guess that I would suggest for prices you should find some bakeries in the upper part of the Cape, the areas within a ten mile radius of the bridges. Price yourself about ten percent lower. Prices are always higher over the bridge. We get a huge tourist business here in the summer, but the real price gauging happens once the tourists cross the Bourne Bridge. So if you price yourself a bit under those bakeries and you’ll be all set.”

“That sounds like an awesome type of road trip. I’ve made a couple friends since moving here, you should join the three of us as we do our ‘research’.”

She perked up at the thought of this.

“That sounds like fun!” She grabbed my phone and started tapping.

“Just entered my number into your phone, text or call whenever.” She started to get up to leave.

“Wait, didn’t you say you had a picture?”

“Oh my gosh, I almost forgot.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a five by seven photograph.

She looked at it for a moment with a nostalgic smile and then handed it over.

“This is how I will always remember Nonna.”

I saw my Nonna, a little older than she was in my mind, with boxing gloves throwing a left cross jab.

I looked up at Leah with surprise.

“She did kickboxing?”

Leah laughed.

“She never told you? Yeah, she came in a few years ago and told me that her granddaughter had told her about this crazy kickboxing class she took in Atlanta, and that she needed to start taking it so that she could come with you when you moved up here.” She smiled sadly at me, knowing that the words would sting a little.

“She was pretty good for an old broad. How old was she, anyway? None of us ever knew, and it wasn’t in the obituary.”

Ah, so my Nonna had some secrets. I just smiled at the picture, and without looking up at Leah I replied.

“Ageless.”

Leah nodded, still smiling.

“Ageless, yup, that sounds about right.” She stood up, and grabbed her purse again.

“Hope to see you again soon, it was really awesome to just sit and talk to someone without being asked about eating the right stuff or what type of exercises they need to be doing.”

“You do realize that I’m going to be selling the type of foods that you’re going to be telling people to stay away from, right? You might get lynched if any of your members see you hanging around with me.”

She smirked.

“I’ll just have to wear a disguise when I come in, then, won’t I?” She waved as she walked out the door. I looked down at Nonna’s picture. I had a bunch of old frames that I’d found in the house. I found one that fit it and put it up on the wall. It was absolutely perfect.

I thought about Leah and what she said about having no life because of her business. I wondered if she could use a few new friends.

I grabbed my phone and group texted Ashley and Karyn.

‘Hey guys, just met this cool chick, Leah. She owns a gym. Would love for you to meet her. My house, tomorrow night, 8pm, red wine. You in?’

I didn’t have to wait long for the responses to come in.

‘Wine? Yes. You had me at wine.’

‘Sure thing, sounds good. Did you like the article?’

‘Can’t wait to see you guys. Article was awesome, you’re amazing.’

I searched through my contacts to find Leah’s number that she just put in. Leah FeirceFit. Really, that was how she put herself in my phone.

‘Leah, be at my house at 8pm tomorrow night for red wine, new friends, food you shouldn’t eat and all other sorts of debauchery.’

I got up from the chair and grabbed my box cutter and screw driver. Today’s goal was to put together all of the tables, and move the equipment into its final place in the bakery. I wasn’t going to plug in any ovens or refrigeration cases until a few days before opening. I didn’t want to waste the electricity, but needed the cases to be cool enough to hold inventory once it was delivered.

I looked at the calendar on my phone. If I scheduled my delivery for the Monday before the grand opening, I should be in good shape. I would have to be here all day that Tuesday, making doughs that I could refrigerate to use on Wednesday morning. I should probably decorate with balloons or something. I knew nothing about this stuff. Maybe the girls could help me figure it out.

Huh. The girls. I had never in all my twenty seven years had a group of friends that I referred to as the girls. It seemed crazy, because I’d only known them for a very short amount of time. Ashley and Karyn, well, I felt like I’d known them for months not a week. I had a feeling that Leah would fit in perfectly with the three of us. My past experience with female friends was pathetically limited, so this was unchartered territory. I would have to be careful not to get too attached, because they could walk away at any time. But for some reason, I didn’t see that happening here. Odd.

I felt my phone vibrate in my hand.

‘Debauchery sounds good. Can I bring anything?’

‘
Only if it’s really bad for you. No fitness chick mentality allowed in my house.’

‘Hahahaha, okay. Sounds like a plan.’

I smiled at the phone. Okay, that was easy. Looking around the bakery I lost my smile a little bit.

While I realized it was in pretty good shape, the ‘to do’ list was growing by the minute with each square foot I looked at. Grabbing my pad of paper, I started writing down everything that I had left to do, growing increasingly disheartened as the list grew to three columns on one page. Ugh. Time to get busy.

***

I practically crawled in the house nine hours later. Oh my sweet Lord, every inch of my body felt as if someone had taken a baseball bat to it.

In between hammers, nails, screws and screwdrivers, there was cursing, laughing and crying. I had absolutely no construction experience whatsoever, so I was completely winging this. I’d hit my thumb once when trying to hit a nail, dropped the hammer on my foot, banged my head on the shelves more than once, plus a bunch of other small injuries I couldn’t even remember. I imagined I would look pretty battered tomorrow. Right now I wanted a hot bath, then a book and a warm blanket.

There had been a steady stream of people to come by with their pictures. I already had around twenty of them. I had vastly underestimated how many I was going to get, and I was already out of frames. Fortunately, there were a ton of antique stores in the area, so I had a shopping excursion ahead of me. Any excuse to shop was a good excuse. I decided that I was taking tomorrow off of bakery building to find décor items from antique stores.

Once the tub was full of hot water, I sank to my neck in steaming bubbles. Oh God, that felt good. Like crazy good. Like better than I imagined sex would be good. Crap. That made think of Nick. I snapped the rubber band around my wrist that I had placed this morning. Any time I thought of Nick, I snapped the rubber band. It hurt like hell, but worked back when we moved away from Providence. I already had a small welt forming, though. That probably was not a good sign.

I laid there in the tub until I started shivering. I stood up and carefully stepped out of the tub, my muscles all complaining at once that this was not what they wanted to do. I wrapped myself in a big, fuzzy bathrobe that hung from the door. It must have been Nonna’s because I never would have bought something as pink and fluffy as this thing; but it was awesomely warm and felt incredible. The fact that she probably had it wrapped around her naked body at one point in time was something I was
not
going to think about. Nope. Not thinking about that.

Ew.

I curled up on the couch and grabbed a paperback I’d found on the shelf. Apparently Nonna liked romance novels. I had a glass of red wine poured and took a sip. Ahhhh.

I mentally gave myself about fifteen minutes before my brain would cease to function, but I planned on using those fifteen minutes for mindless romance.