Try Me

22.

-one month later

After designing a few items, Jazzy's work had been in high demand; the three of us had been working at the front of the store, the place was packed with customers who were eager to purchase the new clothing. The store was only open for another thirty minutes and I was certain that we had experienced one of our busiest days yet. I was running on two hours of sleep because Jay kept me up all night; since the first time we had sex we've been on each other like white on rice.

The past month had been amazing for me, the store was successful, Jay and I were enjoying each other's company and my father found his way back to whatever hole he had crawled out of. I was an eternal pessimist though and couldn't help but wait for the other shoe to drop; I couldn't fathom the idea that nothing was going wrong. As soon as Lea locked the front door, I collapsed behind the counter, my exhaustion finally caught up to me and I felt like I could sleep for days. Jasmine chuckled and sat down next to me while handing me a bottle of water, Lea disappeared into the kitchen and re-emerged shortly after holding a bag of chips.

"I think that it's time to hire employees." Lea said with a mouth full of chips.

Jasmine sighed as she took a handful of chips out of the bag, "I was waiting for someone else to suggest it." I knew that we were all thinking it but didn't want to give in to the idea so soon.

"I know that we wanted to have the opportunity to interact with customers and we would still be able to, but we're spreading ourselves too thin right now." I added.

The administrative work that we all had to handle, coupled with Jazzy's new responsibility of designing clothing had put even more of a strain on us; our business had also grown significantly since the launch of our physical location.

"You're right sis, we just outgrew our warehouse and had to move to a bigger space though, can we afford employees right now?" Lea asked, I knew that we were doing well but we never liked to agree to spending money unless we could pay for the space or employee wages for at least a year.

"We'll revisit the topic tomorrow but I'm pretty sure that it's within the budget to hire three sales associates. We can't be trying to do eight things at once, especially when we can hire people to do some of it; being so spread out runs the risk of us becoming sloppy." Lea sighed as she got up off the floor and held her hands out; I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of this little ass girl tryna pull us up. Jazzy and I got up and the three of us went to pack our stuff up and call it a day.

I was about to leave the office when my phone pinged and became agitated as soon as I read the message; it was an unknown number, but I knew exactly who it was.

Hey Nicole, I'm coming back to New York and I think that we should meet up. There's a lot of shit that I wanna say to you so please text me back. 6:30 p.m.

It was just like him to treat me terribly, then act like everything was fine; sadly, he may have been right. I saved the number and contemplated my next actions; I sighed and rubbed my forehead before rejoining the girls in the front. My mood was shot, and I wouldn't even be able to act like I was okay.

"You look upset, what happened KiKi?" Jasmine asked as she rubbed my back.

"Demarcus wants to meet and talk." It physically hurt to say his name.

Lea's head snapped around immediately, "We're not doing this. Fuck him Kira; he wasted enough of your time."

I shook my head, "I'll think about it, half of me just wants him to see how different I am now. I never got the chance to stand up for myself and I want to." I wanted to show him how great I was without him, but didn't want to sit down and listen to any apologies that he could hit me with.