Page 71 of Stacked
No, my math wasn’t wrong. My addition and subtraction were correct. We hadn’t just done well in the days and hours since the viral video. We’d done a historic number. It put the store in the black for the month, and a few more days of good sales would put the place in profit for the year. Usually, that didn’t happen until December, and only after I’d run dozens of promotions, discounts, and sidewalk sales.
Not right now. Not this year. Even the rare books were selling—a lot.
I printed the spreadsheets and put them in a manila file folder. I was supposed to see Gwen in about an hour, and she was going to love this news. I knew she understood the video had been a good thing for advertising and awareness about the store, but this was proof. This was undeniable. I grinned as I pictured the look on Gwen’s face when she saw these numbers. This was game-changing.
I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Satisfied, I clicked through the onslaught of online orders and inquiries that also awaited me, thanks to the increased store visibility. I had most of them fulfilled, and I was glad I had enough stock on hand to meet the customers’ demands. I was also glad our website hadn’t crashed and paying for a premium domain and web hosting for a few years had been worth the cost. Now that it had been stress tested, I knew I was on the way to better days.
The doorbell rang, and I started. Then, I swiveled so I could see who was at the front door on the closed-circuit camera. It was only nine, and we weren’t scheduled to open for another hour.
Robert.
I leaped out of my chair, pinching my cheeks and giving the mirror a glance before I walked from the office to the main showroom. I hadn’t seen him in two days. Twolongdays. Since that morning in bed, when he told me he wanted to open his bookstore ahead of schedule, he’d been pretty much unreachable, answering only a few texts and not meeting up with me at all. I knew this had to be a stressful time, and I wanted to give him space, but I also missed him.
A lot.
I crossed to the front door and let him in the store. After I closed the door, I leaned in for a quick kiss. “Didn’t expect to see you today.”
“Glad you’re here.”
“Where else would I be?”
He laughed once, but he wasn’t smiling. “Yeah, I guess that’s a fair comment.”
“Everything okay?”
Robert shook his head. “Not really. I ... I need to go out of town for a few days.”
“Now? With everything going on?”
He gave me a grim nod and ran his fingers through his hair. “Something has come up that I need to take care of in Miami.”
“Miami?”Maybe I heard him wrong.“As in Florida?”
“Javier says that’s the best place we can get some artwork for the store, and I want to see it in person.”
I raised my eyebrows. I prided myself on smelling bullshit, and this stank at least a mile away. See the artwork in person? Why would anyone want to do that when we had FaceTime and the internet? “They can’t just send you some photos?”
“The seller doesn’t like to use technology.”
I struggled with that answer too, given Miami’s reputation as a destination for art, tech, and innovation. I’d never been, but that hardly mattered. The city was growing and had become a major hotspot in the last few years—more than ever. It was the place to be, and everyone knew it. In fact, there were probably more opportunities there than in Silicon Valley.
“I struggle to think a gallery in that part of the country wouldn’t be interested in the latest ways of doing business,” I replied. “Just doesn’t seem to make sense, given what that city is supposed to be like.”
His jaw hardened. “Not everyone follows trends.”
“Online selling is hardly a trend.”
He let out a long sigh. “Look, I need to go down there for a few days, okay?”
I bristled at his tone. “You didn’t have to come out of your way to tell me. We were supposed to see each other for dinner tonight.”
His shoulders slumped. “I know, but I can’t make that. I gotta cancel. I’m catching an afternoon flight.”
Now I knew for certain that something was up. A decorating emergency so severe he'd booked a last-minute trip across the country. No way. Things weren’t that important and couldn’t bethatimpressive. And a plane ticket like that probably cost him well over a thousand dollars. Why would Robert waste money like that? Even if he did have plenty of cash to burn...
“For art?” I asked. “Come on, I don’t buy it.”
