“I’ll have to see what I can do,” I say to Jude. “See what’s feasible for the business.”
“I don’t need an answer right now, but by the end of the year would be cool,” Jude says smoothly, and Kimber cocks her head when she hears his voice. “Gives us time to work on the branding I want.”
“Yeah,” I reply, taking the mug she hands me, “I’ll let you know.”
The call hangs up, and I watch Kim looking at the mess around the room. My house is clean and neat, everything having a place. But here it’s all business, and unfortunately, my business is a disaster when it comes to the office space.
She shoots me a look. “Do you clean in here?”
I lift my lips into a half grin, taking a sip of the coffee she brought before I respond. It’s perfect. “I pick up. Organization isn’t really my thing, but I’m making dildos at the moment.”
She snorts, choking on her coffee, and coughs a few times as she tries to collect herself. “That’s not something you hear every day.”
“Kim,” I say, grinning when her eyes meet mine, “you realize most of the stuff I supply the store with I handmake?”
She nods, looking around. Anything that involves batteries is outside my wheelhouse, and too time consuming to hand craft so I order those in bulk and customize as needed. Dildos and butt plugs are easy to cast, and so are the nipple clamps she’s now eyeing.
“So my necklace,” she says carefully, fingering the ornate design, “You didn’t make it?”
“The watch was already set up and connected to the tracker,” I explain. “I just incorporated it into the jewelry, but the initial operating system isn’t something I made. I just customized it.”
She nods, looking around. “The lingerie?”
“I design it and usually sew the prototypes,” I continue, nodding to the mannequin. There’s a lot of purple and black fabric pinned there at the moment that’s going to be hacked up. “Once I approve of it and it’s okayed, I send it out to a seamstress that has a small team who bulk sews them for me. That’s why I only restock those quarterly.”
Kim’s eyes go round, and she keeps looking at things. We don’t specifically talk about finances and income, and so far we’ve just coexisted well enough without worrying about bills, but I think she’s starting to see how much money I have to play with because of this business. “And… the jewelry?”
“All the jewels are genuine unless otherwise listed,” I reply, leading her across the room. There’s another door that leads to my repair suite, and since it’s all in-house, I only have so many tools readily at my disposal. “I can set the necklaces and rings to make custom sets. I’ll resize the rings too. This is whatI initially started doing and it helped build up my business. I’ve always had a fun time designing things. But doing things like this is more inventive than basic jewelry or sewing clothes.”
Kim nods along, still looking around. “You have a bit of everything. But oh my god you need a better system. Don’t you have a catalogue of everything online to help yourself?”
I shrug. “Sure. But it’s not updated.”
Groaning, she holds out her hand. “Give it to me. You’re worse than Bobby was.”
Leading her back across the basement I find the tablet I use for inventory, and her eyebrow twitches as she takes it and checks what I’m doing. “You organize like a man.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
She casts her eyes critically around the basement again. “Yes. Give me an hour and I can resituate this for you. How do you do this much business while also not understanding what the hell you have?”
“It’s worked so far.”
Kim pauses, turning to push over a pile. I would complain, expect it shows a whole stack of fabric I’ve been looking for. “Hey! I meant to send that off!”
“This,” she says, shaking her head. “This is why organizing like a man can be bad. Do you want me to help with this? I can put organizers in here and you’ll probably find stuff you lost during the summer.”
I move the fabric pile, eyeing her. “I don’t want you to feel like you are working for me.”
“Eh, it’s not work. I like organizing. It’s soothing.” She pivots around the room, looking at everything. “You’ll probably be a little less grumpy if you aren’t spending all your time looking for things.”
I scoff. “I’m not grumpy.”
“Mhmm.” She pauses, moving towards my work bench. “What’s this?”
Following her gaze, I cringe and walk over with her, not catching the notebook before she picks it up. “It’s nothing.”
She ignores me, setting the tablet by her coffee before she starts flipping through the sketchbook pages. There’s tons of designs in there, and not everything is clothing. Some of it is sketches of jewelry, the design drawn on a figure then written out to indicate the setting and size of the different stones.
