Our Bridal Shop

Chapter 13 - Alex

Alex woke sweaty, pasty-mouthed, abysmal in body and mind.

The ruins. She wanted to go back to the ruins, even closed her eyes and buried her head to make it happen, but Kingsley retreated, unreachable but for the sketch in her journal.

She sat up, regretted it. Someone had parked a bus on her skull, and she far preferred forks in her eyes to the direct sunlight slashing through Jonah's living room. Water from the drinking glass on the coffee table was warm and tasted like old pipes.

"Morning, Miss Alex."

A girl's voice. Isabel. The sound that had summoned her from the depths of safety, the best Alex had felt in weeks, decades maybe.

"Are you sick?" Isabel flew around, flitting off surfaces, unsatisfied with landing in any one place.

"No. I was too sleepy to drive." Funny how half-truths were just as difficult with Isabel as with her father, like some kind of blindingly pure genetic code.

"Good."

Isabel took this as an invitation to commune on the sofa. Two low ponytails fastened from crazy braids and fuzzed out from sleep, whipped around in her jubilance.

Alex scooted over to make room. Normally, touch in the morning made Alex's skin crawl. Touch on a hangover, even worse, like a glass vase that threatened to shatter on a breeze. But Isabel sat pressed beside her hip, sharing the blanket, both sporting bed head, tempted Alex to sink into Katherine's role, if only for a moment. She closed her eyes to the sensation, found she didn't hate it.

"You're still wearing the bracelet." Isabel rotated the bird charm, head tilted, as if time and distance had played havoc on her memory of crafting the piece and she was seeing it with fresh eyes.

"Of course. It gave me inspiration to hunt for patterns."

Isabel beamed. "Did you find them?"

Did the pattern of self-flagellation count? "Not exactly."

The girl's expression shifted, a visible curtain. "I had a rough week in business, too."

When faced with business woes, those belonging to Alex and those in the cutthroat enterprise of playground economics, Alex far preferred a recess. "What happened?"

"Sadie Sparks started selling necklaces."

"Ah. Competition."

"Not really. Her goods are subpar."

A laugh trickled past Alex's hangover defenses. The answering pang behind her eye took her breath away.

"She uses plastic that turns people's skin red and smells like an old lady's breath," said Isabel. "But her sales are still neglecting my bottom line."

Alex pressed her lips together to conceal a smile. Isabel's precocious verbiage, keen business sense, and solvable problem was better for Alex's mood than a hot pull of dark roast. She rearranged herself to face her.

"You might be looking at this wrong. Competition is the lightning rod of business. What drives companies to improve. What do you offer customers that Sadie doesn't?"

"I don't threaten to take their milk at lunch if they don't buy one."

"Wow. Guerilla marketing. What else?"

"Mine are handmade. Her mom buys hers, and she resells them."

"Which forces her to anticipate what people want. Nearly impossible, right?"

Isabel tucked her legs beneath her on the sofa, mirroring Alex's posture. "Right."

"And leaves Sadie with excess inventory if she guesses wrong, which, in turn, neglects her bottom line." Isabel's phrasing had been too irresistible to correct.