23. Luna
LUNA
I’m in the shop before Cherry and Mike for the second week running, which tells me something I already know and don’t need confirmed. When things are big, I clean.
Cherry’s theory is that I’m trying to bring the exterior into alignment with the interior, and Cherry’s theories about me are always uncomfortably accurate, so.
The shop’s already clean. I cleaned it on Saturday.
I deep cleaned it on Sunday. I reorganized the make-your-own supplies Monday, and on Tuesday morning I stand in my spotless shop with the morning light coming through the fixed window—the fixed window, because Ivan paid for the glass without being asked—and a mug of tea I won’t finish and think: this is my life now.
Wax and bergamot and a man who goes to the kitchen first, and a pregnancy I’ve told out loud to six people and a goldfish.
I tap the tank twice, the morning protocol. Hairy drifts up, faithful as the morning itself.
“We’re about to have a visitor,” I tell him. “Technically, I mean in about forty minutes when Cherry arrives, but more relevantly I mean in approximately six months.”
I watch him work his little mouth at me. “That’s the whole report. We’re having a baby. I think we’re keeping it. I’m not afraid.” I pause. “I’m not afraid,” I say again, to see if it stays true the second time.
It does.
That surprises me, the way the not afraid is solid. I’ve been afraid of things my whole life. Star’s moods, the lease, the year the shop nearly folded, Hugo’s face when I finally stopped trying to earn his affection. And this enormous thing sits in my chest, and what it is, mostly, is the hum.
Warm and certain and inconveniently timed and deeply, mine. Not something to fear. Something to cherish.
Until my stomach wages war. I set down the mug and run for the back bathroom, because the first trimester has opinions about tea, apparently, and the hum and the nausea are—per the pregnancy book Ivan left on my pillow one morning with no note attached—completely incompatible conditions.
I’m brushing my teeth when Olga Witte arrives.
I hear the bell from the bathroom, hear Mike’s voice beginning the welcome, and come out still holding the toothbrush to find Olga standing at the worktable with a large notebook and two coffee cups, which she has positioned with the precision of a woman who does not sit down at tables without a plan.
“I brought you a decaf,” she says. “I researched. The brand you prefer was in your last three Instagram stories.” She sits. “I thought about texting first, but I thought you’d tell me not to come.” A pause. “I’m glad I didn’t ask.”
“What is all this?” I gesture to the laptop bag on her shoulder.
“I’ve been thinking about your branding problem,” she says, opening a notebook to a tabbed page.
She has color-coded her own tabs. I feel a kinship with her I was not expecting.
“Your Instagram engagement is strong on process content and almost nonexistent on product reveals. The naming conventions are inconsistent—you have three scent families, and the names don’t signal family membership anywhere.
And your seasonal drops have no lead-up architecture, so you’re launching into silence instead of into momentum. ”
She turns the notebook so I can see the pages. Her handwriting is extremely neat, her annotations color-coded, her sketches in the margins surprisingly good. There is a whole page about target demographic that is more accurate about my customer than anything I have put into words myself.
“You graduated early,” I say.
“Two years early,” she says. “Everyone underestimates me. I’ve been letting them, because it was easier.
But marketing is my thing. I’ve been reconsidering a lot of things.
” She looks at the notebook, then at me.
“I’ve been living life in the easier column a long time.
It’s a comfortable column and it is finishing me off.
I need to work, Luna. And I need to help. You, specifically.”
“Why me?”
“Because of Hugo.” Those words are quieter. “Because of what he did to you. Please.”
“You’re asking to help me?”
She nods. “I know I can’t make up for what he did. But I want to try anyway.”
I sit with that for a moment. “Well, you’re right.
About a lot of things. Especially the part about people underestimating you, because the branding ideas are good.
” I flip through her notebook. “The naming convention problem—I’ve known about it for two years and kept putting it off.
The demographic breakdown is more accurate about my customer than anything I’ve put into words myself.
And the seasonal drop architecture is exactly right. ”
She smiles, and it is not the polished social smile of a Witte event photo. It’s small, real, and slightly surprised, the smile of a woman who has been underestimated so long that even accurate praise still arrives as a gift she wasn’t sure she’d receive.
We work for two hours at the worktable, her notebook and my laptop, and the tea she brought is going cold. She has already thought through the color theory and has a full proposal for how scent families could be visualized consistently across digital and physical touchpoints.
She asks questions that are smart enough to be annoying and then sharp enough to earn their annoyance. Mike passes through twice and brings us crackers the second time without explanation, which is Mike’s version of saying, “I noticed you haven’t eaten, and I care about you.”
The strangeness of today tickles me. My ex’s child bride has come to help me to alleviate her guilt that she never earned. The poor thing didn’t do anything wrong, but here she is, helping.
Where’s Hugo in all of this?
I’m tempted to ask her about it, but I don’t want to sideline our conversation. I note the strangeness and find what I mostly feel is interested. The world has a sense of humor I didn’t appreciate when I was young and afraid of it.
“I want to be clear about something,” Olga says, when we’re wrapping up, stacking the papers into her perfectly organized file.
“I’m not doing this strictly out of guilt.
I do feel guilty, but guilt is not a sustainable business model, and I don’t think you’d want my work if that’s what it was funded by. ”
“I wouldn’t,” I agree.
“I’m doing this because you’re interesting.
And because Wax & Wane is interesting. And because—” she pauses, and this time, when the micro expression passes through her face, it stays long enough to name.
It’s something just beginning to open, new light under a door she is still deciding whether to go through.
“I’ve spent my whole life doing what I was raised to do, and I’m starting to want to do something I decided to do.
This is the first thing. So, I’ll have a full proposal for you by Thursday.
The naming frameworks and the seasonal calendar both. ”
“That sounds amazing. And what is the fee for all this help?”
She rolls her eyes. “Like I need money.” She packs up and leaves, and that’s that, I guess.
Cherry materializes from somewhere in the shop—the back, the middle, possibly the air itself—with the timing of a woman who has been listening for exactly long enough.
She walks Olga to the door, says something low I can’t hear, and I hear Olga laugh, a short, clean sound, genuinely surprised, the sound of someone who didn’t know they were about to find Cherry funny and then did. The bell. The door.
“Bored as fuck,” Cherry says, tilting her head in the direction of the door. “I’d trade places with her, if I could. Not the Hugo thing, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But that kind of money? Yeah, I could stand some boredom for that. She’s going to be trouble in the best possible way, and you need someone in your corner who tabs.”
“I have you.”
“Baby,” Cherry says, picking up the good tape gun from the counter and heading back toward boxes, “I’m the whole committee. She’s the one who does the filing.”
I don’t even know what that means, but I nod along as I watch her go. There’s something happening in this shop that I did not plan, a collection of people arriving around this counter who all somehow belong here. I don’t have a word for what it is except the right word, which is mine.
I take Hairy’s flakes from the counter and shake three into the water, and he drifts up to them with the serenity of a fish who has heard worse news and taken it in stride. He’s a professional. He can handle the full briefing. We’ll get to it after close.
“Hairy,” I say quietly. “Big day.”
He does one more lap for me. His sources are excellent. He already knew.