The Invitation by Vi Keeland(14)
For the next hour, I explained how Signature Scent worked. I gave Olivia the full demo—she sniffed all twenty of the little samplers and rated them, and then I asked her all of the questions that would eventually be up on the website as part of the ordering process. She asked a ton of questions, seeming very interested in the business side of things. I wrote notes on each of her bridal party members, and she picked out the bottles for each of them.
“So when does Signature Scent officially launch?” she asked as we finished up.
I frowned. “I’m not sure.”
“How come? It seems like you have everything all ready to go.”
“I do—planning wise, anyway. But I ran into some financing issues. It’s a long story, but I had a partner and needed to buy him out. I’d used a good chunk of the business funds we had to purchase inventory, so buying him out drained every penny of what I had left. Though it was fine, because I had a business line of credit large enough that I’d still be able to launch. I’d applied for the loan almost a year earlier, just in case I ran short. But when I went to draw on it the first time, the bank told me I needed to do an annual update to keep the line of credit open. I hadn’t been aware of that. I’d just left my job at Estée Lauder, and when I wrote down that I’d had a change in employment, they yanked my line of credit. If I’d done it a few days earlier, I wouldn’t have had to write that, and I would have been fine.”
“Oh, that sucks.”
I nodded. “It does. And no bank wants to lend to someone who’s unemployed. I applied with the SBA. They’re pretty much my last hope.”
The waiter brought the check. I reached for it, even though I hated to waste a dime these days. It was the absolute least I could do for this kind woman whose wedding I’d crashed.
But Olivia beat me to it. “This lunch is on me. I invited you.”
“I can’t let you do that. I already owe you one meal.”
She waved me off and grabbed her wallet from her purse. Sticking her credit card in the leather check folio, she folded it closed. “Absolutely not. I insist.”
Before I could argue further, she held up her hand and the waiter swooped in and took the bill.
I sighed, feeling like a loser. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“Anytime.”
We walked outside together. I was going uptown to run some errands, and she was heading downtown back to work, so we said goodbye. Olivia pulled me in for a hug like we were the old friends I’d said we were at her wedding.
“I’ll have your scents ready next week,” I told her. “I can ship them to you or to each individual person, if you prefer.”
She smiled. “Call me when they’re ready, and we’ll figure something out.”
“Okay. I will.”
***
A week later, I was up to my eyeballs in cardboard.
“That’s the last of it.” Fisher stacked the last carton on top of an already five-foot-high mountain of boxes. He pulled up his T-shirt and used the bottom to wipe sweat from his forehead. “You better be making stuffed manicotti soon for all this lifting you had me do today.”
“I promise I will. I didn’t realize how much I’d accumulated in that storage unit. I can’t believe there were two-hundred boxes in there.” In my ongoing effort to cut costs, I’d enlisted Fisher to help me relocate everything from my pricey self-storage unit to my apartment. Since I no longer had a roommate, I had the space here.
Fisher reached behind him into the waistband of his shorts. “I almost forgot. I picked up our mail on my last trip in. This package you got is falling apart. It looks like the mailman ripped it when he jammed it in your box to make it fit.”
Everything was damp from his back sweat. My nose wrinkled. “Gross. Put it over there for me, please.”
Fisher tossed the pile on the kitchen table, and the envelopes fanned out. The logo on the corner of one caught my eye. The SBA. I picked it up and examined it.
“Oh my God. This is a small envelope. That’s not a good sign.”
“Who’s it from?”
“The Small Business Administration—I was supposed to get a decision on the loan I applied for in two to three weeks. It’s barely been two.”
“That’s great. They probably loved your business so much, they couldn’t wait to approve you.”
I shook my head. “When you apply for something and you get back a thin envelope, it’s never a good sign. It’s like finding a regular-sized white envelope from the college you applied to in your mailbox instead of the big brown one they send with all your welcome stuff inside. If they were approving me, this would be thick.”
Fisher rolled his eyes. “Most things are done online these days. Stop being so negative and open the damn thing. I bet there’s a login and password for you to go online and sign whatever they need you to sign.”
I blew out a deep breath. “I don’t have a good feeling, Fisher. What am I going to do if they decline me? I’ve applied at three banks already. No one is giving an unemployed person a loan. I was an idiot to quit my job and think I could make a go of this business. They already filled my job at Estée Lauder, and most of the decent jobs for perfume chemists are overseas now. What the hell am I going to do? How am I going to pay my rent?”