Gypsy

Gypsy – (One Year Later)~

With a smile on my face, I bagged the lovely necklace, inserted one of the store’s cards, then handed the bag to the handsome man that was smiling back at me.

“Thank you,” he said. “She’s going to love it.”

“I hope she does,” I replied. “If not, she can always come in and exchange it for something else.”

“Oh, no,” he quickly rushed out. “This is perfect. Again, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you did.”

With my smile still in place, I said, “All in a day’s work.”

“Thanks again.”

I just nodded as he left the shop, the bag in his hand, another happy customer that I hoped would stay happy. That was the focus of all my sales; I wanted people to be happy. Life was hard enough, and people were nasty enough, that happiness was quickly becoming a rare commodity in the world. Everyone wanted to magnify everyone else’s misery to make themselves feel better about their own wretchedness, and it was a vicious cycle that I wanted no part of.

At twenty-six, I wasn’t like everyone else. I hadn’t been raised to believe that you had to get married and have children, or that you had to chase money. I hadn’t been raised to judge people or their situations. I hadn’t been raised to always choose myself over others. I hadn’t been raised to fight and claw my way to the top.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

My parents, Vernon and Amity Banks, had raised me to love life. They had raised me to believe in something bigger than myself, and to always choose good over evil. My father had always been a simple farmer, and my mother had always been his perfect housewife. Now, that wasn’t to say that she was the perfect housewife, because she wasn’t. However, she was the perfect housewife for my father.

The crux of it all, though?

My father had been fortunate enough to have had an inheritance that made his leisure life as a farmer possible. While he worked hard and was dedicated to his craft, he didn’t need the money, so whenever production costs rose, his prices didn’t. He had a handful of people that worked for him, and there were always holiday bonuses, personal days off, etc. Happy with already having more than enough, Vernon Banks gave back and chose happiness whenever he could.

Always happiness.

As for Mom, she tended to everyone around the farm when Dad couldn’t, only she wasn’t really any good at it. Dad had a farmhand whose job was to follow my mother around all day and fix whatever she broke. However, she was just as happy as my father, and theirs was a marriage that should be envied by all. My father loved my mother, and she loved him back just as deeply.

So, free from the pressures of society and free from caring about what other people thought, my parents had raised me with that same kind of unabashed freedom. With no siblings to share in the affection, I’d been raised to expect people to treat me kindly and compassionately, and I’d also been raised to treat people the same way.

Still, it wasn’t always easy, no matter how hard I tried. Kids were relentless when faced with things or people that they didn’t understand, and I’d always been one of those kids that no one had understood or had taken the time to understand. My parents had named me Gypsy Lilac Banks, so that hadn’t helped any, either. It also hadn’t helped that I’d fallen in love with the idea of happiness.

So, after years of enduring the cruelty of other kids, the harshness of teenage love, and the nastiness of unhappy people, I was still me, and I still peddled happiness. I hadn’t let the trials and tribulations of life change the person that I was, and I hoped to keep it that way.

Looking around the shop, I couldn’t help but smile. When I had graduated from high school, college had been an option, but it hadn’t been for me. My parents had allowed me to travel for two years, and they’d been the best years of my life. The experience had been something which had led me to where I was today. Knowing that an industrial job would never be for me, I’d spoken with my dad after my travels, and he had invested in this shop for me. I’d been running it for six years now, and it was my sanctuary. It was a sweet reminder that I wasn’t the only person out there that chose happiness. My shop was a constant reminder that not all people were miserable. I saw hope in the people that came into my store. I saw people looking for something more than what they’d been told to settle for. This shop was about chasing your happiness, no matter who told you that it was impossible.

Life was all about possibilities.

The only problem?

I sucked at math.

Having always been steered towards the artistic side of life, things like math, budgets, and taxes had always escaped me. While I wasn’t at the point where the IRS was ready to shut the doors, I couldn’t keep asking my father to bail me out. Granted, he’d only had to do it once, and he’d been more than happy to do it, but it still hadn’t felt right.

When I’d opened the shop six years ago, I had named it Possibilities, and I had been eager but na?ve. Now, that wasn’t to say that I was stupid, because I wasn’t. In fact, I was far from it. I just lacked the discipline to care about balance sheets and stuff like that. I wasn’t interested in the business side of things, and that wasn’t good for a business owner.

There was also the fact that people liked to judge me on my looks, so it was hard to ask for help sometimes. I was only five-foot-two, so I was petite, but that was the only petite thing about me. I had what my mother always called a voluptuous figure, which just meant that I had huge breasts and thick hips. Normally, that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but when you paired those assets with my blonde hair and blue eyes, a lot of people mistook me for a bimbo. Add in the fact that I owned a health and healing shop that pushed the use of crystals, aura cleansing, and even had a section for tarot cards…well, I was very rarely given credit for any intelligence.

Still, I didn’t let it get me down.

I couldn’t.

Luckily, my best friend, Polo Oatley, was always there to lift me up whenever I started feeling down. Polo was a year older than me at twenty-seven, and with his dark blonde hair and soulful brown eyes, he looked like you could tell him all your darkest secrets without any worry of judgement. Since he was a nutritionist and gym trainer, that was a plus in his line of work. He was also six-foot-one of absolute hotness, so that also helped.

I’d met Polo when I had signed up for a gym membership, and he had killed my dreams of slimming down. Since my breasts and hips were genetic and not fat, he’d been honest about exercise and rice cakes not helping me out. His honesty had been refreshing in a world where people usually cared more about the sale, and we had become best friends after that.

Polo was also the only person that I knew in the city of Sweeney. My parents lived two towns over, and this move had been my attempt at being grown, though it wasn’t working out too well. Yeah, I had ended up paying my father back, but I still felt embarrassed by having had to ask for help in the first place. My world travels were supposed to have made me wiser, but I guess not.

It was also the second week in November, and I knew that I needed to start getting my books in order. I could no longer do my taxes myself and still hope to keep Possibilities open to the public. I had a mess on my hands, and I knew it. I also wished that I cared more than I actually did. I wanted to be in a panic, but I was more scared of turning into a person that cared about money more than people. So what if I gave discounts all the time? So what if I helped a customer that didn’t have enough money? So what if someone accidentally broke something?

“I’m here!”

I looked up to see Rocky weaving her way through the store. “I see that.”

Rocky Leeds was a college student that worked part-time at Possibilities. She was my afternoon help, and that’s when I usually did my best to tackle inventories, payroll, or balance the books. Granted, Rocky was my only employee, but I still wanted to make sure that she got paid correctly for her time at work. She was a perfect addition to Possibilities, and I didn’t want to lose her until I absolutely had to.

Dropping her backpack on the floor behind the counter, she asked, “Do you need me to go grab any dinner before I start my shift?”

I shook my head. “Not unless you’re hungry,” I answered. “I have some leftovers upstairs.”

Also, luckily for me, my father had purchased this entire building for me when I’d told him about opening up my own shop, so I lived upstairs, which was convenient. I was also renting-to-own from my father, though he couldn’t care less. Still, it was one thing to accept help, it was quite another to take advantage of someone else’s blessings.

Rocky’s hazel eyes glittered down at me. “Are you sure? I’m thinking Tina’s.”

“Get me the enchilada dinner, please,” I said, weakening like a limp noodle.

Rocky just laughed, and I really did love the girl.