Page 2 of When Best Friends Fall

Hell has a special place for me, I have zero doubt.

And when I complained about my looks in any way, Jane always scolded me. In some ways she taught me how to love myself and my extra ten pounds with no boundaries. When I started thinking about opening my store, she cheered me on and helped me name it. Trina’s Designs existence comes at least partially from Jane’s encouragement.

My store inventory is all my own designs and styles range from simple to eclectic to glamorous. A fair amount of my sales come from the special orders I receive from women who aren’t the typical sizes. I specialize in garments for what I like to call “ladies of reduced height” like myself, sizes for curvy ladies (also like myself). Also included are outfits for the tallest woman in Oak Valley and my friend, Amanda, and tall women like her who have a terrible time trying to find any pants or skirts long enough.

It’s rewarding and allows for me to share my lunchtimes with Harrison. Good thing he doesn’t realize that any time I’m not with him, I’m thinking about him and what it’d be like to be his.

Not that that’ll ever happen.

“That’s an interesting expression,” he remarks, and I yank myself back into the present.

“What?”

“Your face… You looked as if you just tasted something disgusting. Was your sandwich all right?”

Harrison has to use the past tense in reference to my sandwich because it’s been long gone for minutes now. I eat faster than he does. It’s embarrassing in a way, but sometimes I can’t slow down and dawdle like he does.

“Fine. Good as always.”

“You sure?” he prods. Just my luck. “You seem rather distracted. I don’t like it when my favorite lunch date is upset.”

Favorite lunch date. Oh, no. The way he says this makes me feel half sick to my stomach. This is him being a decent guy and putting up with me because his dad’s store is right next to mine. And because of our ties to Jane. That’s probably the only reason we’ve become real friends, and I don’t want to endanger that.

I can’t.

So, I jump to my feet.

“Lots of orders to complete is all. Gotta go.”

And escaping like the chickenshit I am, I turn and basically sprint to my shop a couple of blocks down Main, too afraid of seeing his reaction to so much as glance back at him.

Two

Harrison

What in the hell is that all about?

I squint at Trina Donald as she rushes away from the coffee house and back to her shop. She and I have grown close over the past few years. Since my wife’s unexpected death just over three years ago, Trina has been there for me. We’ve been there for each other. Trina had been Jane’s best friend since early in their school years and her death had shattered us both.

It took no time at all for us to rally together to support each other in the shared loss. Though we’d known each other most of our lives, Jane had been the glue that made us friends, but our friendship didn’t die with Jane.

And while we’ve settled into a close friendship, lately Trina’s begun to act peculiarly. Or maybe I should say more peculiar than normal. Not that I don’t enjoy her quirks. Trina has been genuinely unique for as long as I can remember.

She was the only girl who would fashion her own custom clothing designs in high school. She’s always been both extraordinarily talented and dedicated to her individual pursuits. I admired that about her from afar for years, then once I fell for my wife, from much closer.

Trina was never in a clique or one of the mean girls on the cheerleading squad that Jane used to complain to me about. My brother Landon and I came into the ownership of Walcott’s Haberdashery, our father’s store that had been our paternal grandfather’s and our great-grandfather’s before that, passed down from one generation to the next.

But Trina had to start from scratch with the bit of inheritance she received when her mom died a few years back. Her dad had passed when she was twelve, so in spite of having no immediate family as a support system, she struck out on her own to make a name for herself. Jane had encouraged her, but her success was all her. And even though that meant having an uphill climb, she succeeded anyway.

Trina has been amazing me for years.

Which makes her behavior at lunch today all the more concerning.

Still, with my lunch break over, it’s time to return to the haberdashery. I cringe even thinking about that name. It was one thing for the store to be named that back in the day, it’s another now that we’ve been in the twenty-first century for over twenty years. And herein lies the problem that my father simply doesn’t seem to understand. If we don’t make some basic changes to the way we do business, we’re not going to have a business at all.

I mean, we don’t even have a website.

I’ve had this convo with my dad I don’t know how many times, but he keeps standing firm on keeping things how they are. That was fine thirty plus years ago, but now nearly all of our customers are of retirement age or older. No new blood ever comes in here, or if they do, they take one look and back right on out again. We’re full to the gills with the type of garments my grandpa still wears with nothing to offer men younger than sixty-five.

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