Page 37 of Wishing for Love

He sighed. “I’m struggling at work. Don’t worry, I’m not broke or anything. Just struggling. It’s not going as well or as easy as I thought it would. Maybe I’m not meant to run a business. I don’t know. I’m trying.”

“Not everything is easy for everyone,” she said. “Did you think it would be? I mean if owning a business was so easy, everyone would do it.”

He laughed. Not a funny sound either. “Good point.”

They returned home. “Do you want me to put these upstairs or hide them somewhere else in the house?”

“I can put them with the rest of the things in my room.”

She grabbed two of the bags and followed him in, then stopped when they got to the doorway of his room. “Are you going to wrap them all or will you need help?”

“I would love help,” he said. “Come in. It’s fine.”

She moved into his room. It was bigger than she thought. Nice and neat too, but he didn’t have a lot of things in it to clutter it up.

He opened the door to a closet and she moved to put the bags in there and realized this was more for storage.

“How many closets do you have?”

“Two,” he said. “I guess it’s supposed to be a his and hers. I use the bigger one but don’t need it. This has just had a few things in it and now is mostly Christmas stuff.”

“Comes in handy then,” she said.

Her eyes moved toward his bathroom and she got a quick glimpse in there too. She saw a lot of tan and brown. Not white and gray like so many new places were. Not like Maryn’s place was.

She thought the colors of this house fit Phoenix more anyway.

Once everything was put away, she followed him to his office in the front.

He opened his laptop and then turned on a monitor on his desk, he was shifting through screens and the designs of the woman’s bags.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I love the design. They are similar to the men’s but scaled smaller with more pockets. Good. Womenlovepockets and places to store things.”

“Maryn said that too,” he said, his eyes softening. “How about these colors? What if I just wanted to start with let’s say three colors, what would you choose?”

“Black for sure,” she said. “Make it easy because a lot of women will do that. How long before you get the product?”

“I’m hoping I could have it in an eight-week turnaround. Only because it’s a new product so the setup takes longer. After that it should be half that.”

“Not sure how long it takes you to launch all that stuff, but I was trying to figure out when you’d have it ready to use to go with the next colors.”

“The plan had been spring, but now I’m sure it’s pushed back.”

“Then your other two colors need to be bright and cheerful. I like this color here. It’s not pink or red. More like a coral, but not so bright it blows your eyes out.”

He laughed. “Maryn picked that color and had me add it to the list. I wasn’t sure about it.”

She felt some pride in that. Maybe she had more taste than she thought. “Seems like fate then. For no other reason than she picked it. Do you name your bags?”

“Name them?” he asked. “Like a person’s name?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” he said. “I give them a functional name.”

“Boring,” she said, waving her hand. “Call this one Maryn for her. Pick her color. What other one do you think she would have gone with?”

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