Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 107204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107204 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I shrugged. “Mr. Parker let her go without paying, so it’s fine.”
“Uh, it’s not. Mr. Parker was a pushover.”
I laughed. “Pushover is my middle name.”
“Change your middle name,” Willow ordered. “Listen, not to sound like Avery, but screw Mrs. Levels’s deal and arrangements with Mr. Parker. You now own this place and need to run it like you’re the owner, not an employee.”
I pouted. “But it’s hard!”
“Hard work, big reward.” She brushed her thumb against her nose. “Or you know what? I can get Avery to give Mrs. Levels a piece of our mind and get her to pay.”
I shook my head. “Don’t you dare? The last time I asked her to stand up for me, a girl walked away with a bloody nose in fifth grade.”
“She called you brace-face,” she argued.
“You both called me brace-face, too.”
She waved me off. “That’s different. We’re your sisters. Bullying with siblings is the ultimate perk of having siblings. But anyone outside of us will get a bloody nose. I do mean it, though, Yara. You have to start standing up for yourself and your business at some point. I bet Mrs. Levels isn’t the only one who got away with not paying, is she?”
I swallowed hard, not wanting to mention how much the business had been suffering lately—even with having more dogs than ever before. Perhaps I let too many people slide by missing a payment here or there. Sadly enough, it was slowly catching up to me.
“How about you head in the back to help for the day like you said you would?” I mentioned. Whenever Willow was in town—which wasn’t often—she loved volunteering at my shop. If there was anything she loved as much as adventure, it was dogs.
Willow’s nose scrunched up. “Is Keri working today?”
“Yeah, she is. Why do you always make that face? Keri’s sweet.”
“She has a bad aura, Yara.”
I laughed. “Don’t do that. She’s just young. There’s nothing wrong with her.”
“If you say so, but all I’m saying is I have a sixth sense of sorts.”
“You can see dead people?”
“Well, that, too, but no. Keri gives me an odd feeling.”
“You’re overthinking this.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “Or maybe you’re underthinking it—like with people paying. It would help if you spoke up,” she said. “Or I’ll tell Avery to do it for you.”
I tossed my hands up in defeat. “Okay, okay, I’ll handle it.”
“If you want, you can stop by Big Bird tonight to decompress.” She waved my hand. “I can feel your erratic energy.”
I pouted. “I’m not erratic.”
Yes, I was. The bills in my back office were enough to send me into another anxiety spiral. The number of panics I’ve had lately behind closed doors in my office was almost concerning. I couldn’t find a way to pull myself out of the debt hole for the business I’d seemed to be digging for myself.
“I can’t come tonight. I have Sip & Dish with the girls,” I told Willow.
She released the most dramatic sigh. “Why are you still hanging out with those people? I thought you’d be free of them after the divorce.”
“They’re my friends. We’ve been doing Sip & Dish for years now. Plus, they’re coming over to see my new place.” Sip & Dish was when the wives of a few police officers and I went to one another’s houses to watch either cooking reality shows or bad reality shows where we’d drink fancy cocktails and dish about our lives. We’d just finished the cooking competition show Bite Sized and were now onto The Real Housewives of New York. I started the tradition after our husbands complained about our reality show addictions. It had been going on ever since, and I looked forward to it weekly.
“Just make sure to sage your space after they leave. And stop letting people get away without paying you,” Willow remarked before disappearing into the back to help out for the day.
I wished Mr. Parker would’ve thought about my anxiety before he left me his pride and joy. Sure, running the shop was a dream of mine, and having him pass it down to me felt like the greatest gift he could’ve ever given me. But each day I allowed someone to escape without paying, I felt like I let him down.
Each day, I wished I could be bolder like Avery or less afraid like Willow. Sometimes, I wondered what it was like to have a nervous system that wasn’t always in overdrive from any or all types of human interaction. I wondered what it was like not to overthink every situation and conversation during the day. But I settled into a pool of worry and anxiety that twisted my guts into such knots that I lived on the fear that, at any moment, my internal organs would erupt from the level of stress I was under. It only started when I became a business owner. What they didn’t tell you about running your own business was that you’d have to run your anxiety, too. My emotions over having a business were like another full-time job—which only paid in tears and tequila shots.