The Invitation

I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes late on Monday, even though I had left my apartment super early. The uptown local train I’d taken had decided to become an express and skipped my stop.

When I entered, Olivia was already seated at a table. She looked so different out of her wedding garb that I almost didn’t recognize her. But she waved and smiled like we were old friends.

I had this wild notion stuck in my head that she didn’t really want to order any perfume, but was luring me here so she could give me a piece of her mind in person—or worse yet, have me arrested. Her inviting smile did a lot to diffuse my paranoia.

“Hi.” I set the box in my arms down on an empty seat and pulled out the chair across from her. “I’m sorry I’m late. My train skipped the stop.”

“No problem.” She reached out and tilted the breadbasket in my direction, showing me it was empty. “As you can see, I kept myself busy. I hadn’t eaten a carb for six months before my wedding. So I’ve spent the last few weeks making up for lost time.” Setting the basket down, she held her hand out to me. “I’m Olivia Rothschild, by the way. Damn it, no, I’m not. I’m Olivia Royce now. I still can’t get used to that.”

I smiled, though I was a nervous wreck. “Stella Bardot.” Figuring the best thing to do was clear the air, I took a deep breath. “Listen, Olivia, I’m so sorry about what I did. I’m usually not the type of person to crash a wedding.”

She tilted her head. “You’re not? That’s a shame. I thought we were going to get along so well. I crashed a prom once.”

My eyes widened. “You did?”

Olivia chuckled. “Yup. And I made out with some girl’s date and came home with a fat lip.”

My shoulders loosened. “Oh my God. You have no idea how relieved I am to know you’re not mad.”

She waved me off. “Nah. Don’t give it another thought. I was pretty impressed with the story you told. Did someone really pee their pants for you?”

I smiled sadly. The memory of the truth was bittersweet now, considering my sister and I no longer spoke. “Actually, it was me who did that, and it was in preschool. My sister is a year younger and had an accident during practice for the Christmas pageant. A boy pointed at her wet backside and made fun of her. I couldn’t let her stand there alone.”

“Nice. My brother’s older. He’s always been ridiculously protective of me. But I’m not sure he would have gone as far as peeing his pants to save my face.” She sipped her drink. “On second thought, he probably would. He would just never admit he’d done it to protect me. He’d say he pissed his pants and I copied him, probably.”

We laughed.

“Hudson filled me in on how you came to be at the wedding. I wasn’t surprised when he told me what Evelyn did to you—taking off in the middle of the night and sticking you with the unpaid rent. She’s always been unreliable. First year of college, we went on spring break together. She met some guy who was ten years older than us and only spoke French. Two days into the trip, I woke up to a note saying she’d left for France to meet the guy’s family because she was in love. She left me in Cancun all by myself. The bitch took my favorite pair of shoes with her.”

“Oh my God. She took my favorite shoes when she moved out, too!”

We laughed again, and Olivia continued. “She also stole something from Lexi, my brother’s ex-wife. The two of them had a falling out and stopped speaking. Then I talked my hard-ass brother into giving her a job, and after a few months, she stopped showing up. He’s never going to let me live that one down. The man can hold a grudge forever.”

“Hudson definitely doesn’t seem as forgiving as you do.”

“That’s putting it mildly. He’s super overprotective. When I was sixteen and had my first boyfriend, Hudson used to sit outside on the steps and wait for me to come home at night. Of course, that meant I got a peck on the cheek instead of a nice goodnight make-out session. I feel bad for Charlie. She probably won’t be allowed to date until she’s forty.”

“Charlie?”

“Hudson’s daughter.”

I nodded. I have no idea why, but I didn’t expect him to have a child. Though of course, I didn’t know much about the man other than he was handsome, smelled divine, knew how to dance, and hadn’t called in the ten days since I’d given him my phone number.

“How old is his daughter?”

“Six going on sixteen.” She laughed. “He’s so screwed.”

The waiter came over to take our order, and I hadn’t even looked at the menu yet. Olivia ordered a pear balsamic salad with chicken. That sounded good, so I did the same.

“So…” She sniffed her wrist. “Tell me how you managed to make me the best perfume I’ve ever smelled in my life. I’m completely obsessed with it.”

I smiled. “Thank you. I took my clues from your wedding. You had gardenias as your centerpieces and in your bouquet, so I used that as my starting point. I overheard one of the women at the table where I was sitting say you were going to Bora Bora on your honeymoon. So I guessed you must like the beach and added some calone, which gives it that hint of sea breeze. And then your dress was traditional, but with a bright red silk belt, so I thought you might have a bit of an edge to you.”

“That’s amazing. Even the bottle was perfect.”

“That design was one I fell in love with, but we won’t actually be selling. It’s imported from Italy, and I couldn’t make it work with my shoestring of a start-up budget.”

“That’s a shame. It’s so pretty.”

“I’m hoping down the road I might be able to add it.”

For the next hour, I explained how Signature Scent worked. I gave Olivia the full demo—she sniffed all twenty of the little samplers and rated them, and then I asked her all of the questions that would eventually be up on the website as part of the ordering process. She asked a ton of questions, seeming very interested in the business side of things. I wrote notes on each of her bridal party members, and she picked out the bottles for each of them.

“So when does Signature Scent officially launch?” she asked as we finished up.

I frowned. “I’m not sure.”

“How come? It seems like you have everything all ready to go.”

“I do—planning wise, anyway. But I ran into some financing issues. It’s a long story, but I had a partner and needed to buy him out. I’d used a good chunk of the business funds we had to purchase inventory, so buying him out drained every penny of what I had left. Though it was fine, because I had a business line of credit large enough that I’d still be able to launch. I’d applied for the loan almost a year earlier, just in case I ran short. But when I went to draw on it the first time, the bank told me I needed to do an annual update to keep the line of credit open. I hadn’t been aware of that. I’d just left my job at Estée Lauder, and when I wrote down that I’d had a change in employment, they yanked my line of credit. If I’d done it a few days earlier, I wouldn’t have had to write that, and I would have been fine.”

“Oh, that sucks.”

I nodded. “It does. And no bank wants to lend to someone who’s unemployed. I applied with the SBA. They’re pretty much my last hope.”

The waiter brought the check. I reached for it, even though I hated to waste a dime these days. It was the absolute least I could do for this kind woman whose wedding I’d crashed.

But Olivia beat me to it. “This lunch is on me. I invited you.”

“I can’t let you do that. I already owe you one meal.”

She waved me off and grabbed her wallet from her purse. Sticking her credit card in the leather check folio, she folded it closed. “Absolutely not. I insist.”

Before I could argue further, she held up her hand and the waiter swooped in and took the bill.

I sighed, feeling like a loser. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Anytime.”

We walked outside together. I was going uptown to run some errands, and she was heading downtown back to work, so we said goodbye. Olivia pulled me in for a hug like we were the old friends I’d said we were at her wedding.

“I’ll have your scents ready next week,” I told her. “I can ship them to you or to each individual person, if you prefer.”

She smiled. “Call me when they’re ready, and we’ll figure something out.”

“Okay. I will.”

A week later, I was up to my eyeballs in cardboard.

“That’s the last of it.” Fisher stacked the last carton on top of an already five-foot-high mountain of boxes. He pulled up his T-shirt and used the bottom to wipe sweat from his forehead. “You better be making stuffed manicotti soon for all this lifting you had me do today.”

“I promise I will. I didn’t realize how much I’d accumulated in that storage unit. I can’t believe there were two-hundred boxes in there.” In my ongoing effort to cut costs, I’d enlisted Fisher to help me relocate everything from my pricey self-storage unit to my apartment. Since I no longer had a roommate, I had the space here.

Fisher reached behind him into the waistband of his shorts. “I almost forgot. I picked up our mail on my last trip in. This package you got is falling apart. It looks like the mailman ripped it when he jammed it in your box to make it fit.”

Everything was damp from his back sweat. My nose wrinkled. “Gross. Put it over there for me, please.”

Fisher tossed the pile on the kitchen table, and the envelopes fanned out. The logo on the corner of one caught my eye. The SBA. I picked it up and examined it.

“Oh my God. This is a small envelope. That’s not a good sign.”

“Who’s it from?”

“The Small Business Administration—I was supposed to get a decision on the loan I applied for in two to three weeks. It’s barely been two.”

“That’s great. They probably loved your business so much, they couldn’t wait to approve you.”

I shook my head. “When you apply for something and you get back a thin envelope, it’s never a good sign. It’s like finding a regular-sized white envelope from the college you applied to in your mailbox instead of the big brown one they send with all your welcome stuff inside. If they were approving me, this would be thick.”

Fisher rolled his eyes. “Most things are done online these days. Stop being so negative and open the damn thing. I bet there’s a login and password for you to go online and sign whatever they need you to sign.”

I blew out a deep breath. “I don’t have a good feeling, Fisher. What am I going to do if they decline me? I’ve applied at three banks already. No one is giving an unemployed person a loan. I was an idiot to quit my job and think I could make a go of this business. They already filled my job at Estée Lauder, and most of the decent jobs for perfume chemists are overseas now. What the hell am I going to do? How am I going to pay my rent?”

Fisher put his hands on my shoulders. “Take a deep breath. You don’t even know what’s in the envelope yet. For all we know, it might be a form letter just thanking you for applying or telling you there’s a delay in processing.”

I was too nervous to open it, so I held the envelope out to my friend. “You do it. I can’t.”

Fisher shook his head, but tore open the envelope. I watched, holding my breath as his eyes scanned the first few lines. The frown that formed at the corners of his lips told me everything I needed to know.

I shut my eyes. “Oh, God…”

“I’m sorry, Stella. They said you don’t have enough time in the business or a strong enough positive cash flow. But how the hell are you supposed to have either of those if they don’t give you the loan to help you get the business up and running?”

I sighed. “I know. That’s basically what all the banks said, too.”

“Can you just start really small and get some experience and apply again?”

I wished it were that easy. “I don’t have the packaging and enough of some of the samples I need to put into the boxes people would use to order.”

Fisher raked a hand through his hair. “Shit. I have about nine grand in the bank I was saving for a rainy day. It’s yours. You don’t even have to pay me back.”

“I love you for offering that, Fisher. I really do. But I can’t take your money.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re my family, and that’s what families do.”

I didn’t want to insult my friend, but nine-thousand dollars wouldn’t be nearly enough to launch. “I’ll figure something out. But thank you for the generous offer. It means the world to me that you would even consider doing that.”

“You know what this calls for?”

“What?”

“Dom. I’m going to go get one of those expensive bottles of champagne we have left from that wedding.”

“This calls for a celebration? Are we celebrating my loan decline, or the fact that my apartment is now a warehouse?”

Fisher kissed my forehead. “We’re celebrating that this is all going to work out. Remember, if you don’t think positive, positive things won’t happen. I’ll be right back.”

While he disappeared to his apartment next door, I looked around. My living room was a total disaster, which felt appropriate right about now since my life matched it. One year ago, I’d been engaged to be married, had a great job making six figures, savings most twenty-seven-year-olds didn’t accumulate until they were forty, and the dream of an exciting new business venture. Now my ex-fiancé was engaged to someone else, I was unemployed and broke, and my new exciting business felt more like a noose around my neck.

I stared down at the loan-denial letter on the table for a minute, then wadded it up into a ball and pitched it toward the kitchen garbage can. Of course, I missed. In a daze, I shuffled through my mail, which was mostly just advertisements, and then decided to open the ripped package that had come. I assumed it was yet more of the product samples I’d ordered before the bank closed my line of credit—product I’d now never be able to afford. But when I opened the box, it wasn’t perfume-ingredient samples. Instead, it was a diary I’d ordered off eBay. I’d actually forgotten all about it since I’d won the auction almost three full months ago. Shipping from overseas could take forever, and this one had come from Italy.

Normally, when a new diary arrived, I could hardly wait to read the first chapter. But this one was just a reminder of two-hundred-and-forty-seven dollars I’d wasted. I set it down on the coffee table in the living room and decided to go wash up before Fisher returned with the champagne.

Ten minutes later, when I emerged from the bathroom, I found my best friend sprawled out on my couch, drinking bubbly and thumbing through the new diary.

“Uh…you know this woman didn’t write in English, right?” Fisher held out a glass of champagne for me.

I took it and plopped down on the chair across from him. “It’s Italian. And it’s a man’s. Which means I overpaid for it and still need to have it translated.”

Men’s diaries always went for a premium on auction sites because they were so rare. Last time I bought a French one, it cost me three-hundred dollars, plus a hundred-and-fifty bucks for a translator.

I sipped the champagne. “It’ll be collecting dust for a while. Splurging for a translation isn’t as high on my priority list as eating next month.”

Fisher shook his head and tossed the beat-up, old diary on the coffee table. “I thought you quit reading them after what happened last year when you got too caught up in it.”

I sighed. “I fell off the wagon.”

“You’re a strange bird, my Stella Bella. You know that?”

“This coming from a man who collects the stickers you peel off bananas on the inside of his coat closet door.”

My cell phone started to ring in my pocket, so I slipped it out and read the name flashing on the screen. “Well, this is appropriate. It’s the woman whose champagne we stole.”

“Tell her to send more.”

I laughed and swiped to answer. “Hello?”

“Hey, Stella. It’s Olivia.”

“Hey, Olivia. Thanks for calling me back. I wanted to let you know I have the perfumes done for your wedding party.”

“I’m so excited to see them. Or smell them. Or see and smell them. Whatever.”

I smiled. “I hope your friends like them.”

“I told a few people about what you do, and they’re all interested in having scents made. Do you know when your website will be up and running yet?”

I frowned. “Not in the foreseeable future, unfortunately.”

“Oh no. What happened?”

“The SBA turned down my loan application. I just received the letter today.”

“Idiots. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about taking on a partner? Someone who comes with a cash infusion in exchange for an interest in the business.”

I’d actually considered that, but no one I knew had much money. “Maybe. I’m going to give it some thought. Tonight I’ll have a few drinks to forget. Tomorrow I’ll start formulating a new game plan.”

“Good. That’s the right attitude.”

“Thank you. So where do you want me to ship your perfumes?”

“I could meet you tomorrow, if you’re free? My maid of honor is leaving in two days to go work in London for a few months. I’m meeting her for dinner tomorrow night. I’d love to give it to her then, if it’s not too much trouble for me to pick them up.”

“No, no problem at all.”

“Okay! I have a meeting in the morning. Is it alright if I text you when that ends to let you know a time? I should be able to come to wherever you are.”

“Sure, that’s fine. Talk to you then.”

After I hung up, Fisher said, “Only you would make friends with the woman whose wedding we crashed.”

I shrugged. “Olivia’s actually really great. I’m going to give her all the perfumes I made for her wedding party as an apology gift, rather than charge her. I figured it’s the least I could do.”

“See if she has any more parties we can crash.” He held up the bottle of champagne before refilling his glass. “We can’t go back to the cheap stuff after this.” He sucked half a glass down and let out an exaggerated aaah. “By the way, I take it you haven’t heard from Prince Charming or you would have said something?”

I frowned. “Nope. When I had lunch with Olivia, she didn’t mention that she knew he’d asked me out. So I didn’t either. Though she did tell me he tended to hold a grudge.”

“His loss.”

I didn’t say so, but it felt like a loss to me, too. Something about Hudson had gotten under my skin, and I’d been excited to go out with him. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d anticipated a call from a man the way I had his. Which was why when he hadn’t followed through, it had weighed on me a bit more than it should have. But, oh well. Ben was…nice.

Over the next two hours, Fisher and I polished off that bottle and a bottle of wine I’d had open in my fridge. At least one thing had gone right this week—I’d managed to get sufficiently loaded as intended. When I yawned, Fisher took the hint.

“Alright, I’ll leave. You don’t have to fake yawn to get rid of me.”

“It wasn’t fake.”

“Sure, it wasn’t.”

He stood and took our glasses and the two empty bottles into the kitchen. When he came back, I was debating sleeping in the comfy chair where I was currently slouched.

Fisher leaned down and kissed my forehead. “I love you. Everything will be better tomorrow.”

Considering I’d probably be waking with a headache, I doubted that. But I hated to be a Debbie Downer. “Thanks again for everything, Fisher. Love you, too.”

He picked up the diary still sitting on the coffee table. “I’m taking this and having it translated for your birthday next month.”

“Uh, I won’t be twenty-eight for a long time. Your birthday is next month. Are you doing what you did last year?”

“Yes, all the treats are for you, because you’re my best gift ever. Plus, making you happy makes me happy, Stella Bella. Just don’t let this diary take over your life.”