Loaded, p.1
Loaded, page 1
Loaded
B. E. Baker
Copyright © 2024 by B. E. Baker
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
For Whitney:
Like Easton, you never waver.
Thank you for being my rock, always.
Third act breakup?
PSHAW. Who needs it?
Contents
1. Easton
2. Bea
3. Easton
4. Bea
5. Easton
6. Bea
7. Easton
8. Bea
9. Easton
10. Bea
11. Bea
12. Easton
13. Bea
14. Easton
15. Bea
16. Easton
17. Bea
18. Easton
19. Bea
20. Bea
21. Easton
22. Bea
23. Bea
24. Easton
25. Bea
26. Jake
27. Sample Chapter The Bequest: Abigail
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by B. E. Baker
1
Easton
For years, I’ve been the only person making decisions for Sacrifice Nothing. Every single major decision I made would keep me up at night. After I went public, I actually looked forward to having a board. What could be better than having a whole team of experts in the business world, all of them working with me to make Sacrifice Nothing the best luxury brand in America?
It was a dream, basically.
Or at least, that’s what I thought, because I’m a moron.
“The profits from the Vicenzo Imbruglia line have held strong,” Mr. Jimenez says. “And the men’s watches are also outperforming the projections.”
“The evening jackets have done very well,” Mrs. Yaltzinger says. “But not by as much as the grooming kits.”
“You’re all saying good things,” I say. “So why does it sound like you’re complaining?”
“This company went public six months ago,” Mr. Dressel says. “And you brought us in just after, along with one of the best pots of money from any IPO last year. You did all that so that Sacrifice Nothing could really take off.” He frowns. “And yet, our profits have simply. . .” He shrugs. “Risen a little.”
I blink. “I’m sorry—twenty-five percent in two quarters isn’t meteoric, but it’s a far cry from—”
Mrs. Yaltzinger runs a hand through her hair. “Sure. The market as a whole has declined, and we’ve turned a profit. No one’s upset, but we still think, as we did when we first came in, that we need to launch a women’s line.”
I blink. “Vincenzo doesn’t do women’s shoes.”
Sometimes I wonder why someone who clearly has no interest in fashion is sitting on our board, but Mrs. Yaltzinger is a professor at Harvard Business School, so I suppose that’s something. “If you’d rather, we can start with watches, then, or professional wear. Our concern is that you’ve been ignoring half the population. Think what kind of gains we could have if we were also serving the other half of the professionals and wealthy socialites—”
Now it’s my turn to be annoyed. “How do you think I’ve managed to create six separate lines of products that have all turned consistent profits with relatively minimal expenditures in the last six and a half years?”
“Celebrity support?” Mr. Dressel’s borderline obsessed with celebrity attention, and I’m beginning to think my endorsements are the only reason he joined the board.
“Scarcity?” Mr. Jimenez is the only person on my board without a fancy degree. He has started and subsequently sold six very successful startups in different sectors, so his input is usually just a little different. “That’s what makes your products consistently sell out. People have to pay full price or they won’t get them at all.”
They’re smart people, but they don’t get it, not really. “Have you ever heard of Undercover Billionaire?”
The board blinks. A dozen of them, and no one has any idea what I’m talking about.
“It’s a reality show that started in 2019 with a billionaire named Glenn Stearns. He was dropped into a small town with a hundred bucks, a car, and a tank of gas. He was tasked to turn that into a million-dollar business in under ninety days.”
Mr. Jimenez frowns. Mrs. Yaltzinger arches one eyebrow. Mr. Dressel clears his throat. The others shift in their seats and grunt or scrunch their noses.
Clearly none of them would have taken that gamble.
They’re smart people, but other than Mr. Jimenez, they aren’t entrepreneurs. They don’t create. They’ve been trained to add value.
“This particular man did do it—can you guess how?”
Still, blank stares.
“It was not in any way related to the way he turned his first million when he started out. That had, in fact, taken him quite a bit longer than ninety days, but he had learned something valuable in his years of business.”
Still no one has input. My board is useless.
“What he did was start a barbecue joint that had live music. He knew nothing about barbecue, and that wasn’t even his first venture. He turned the hundred bucks into seed money by selling used tires on the side of the road at first. But once he had startup capital, the barbecue joint is where he went next.” I smile, because I’m about to connect the dots for them. “Why did Glenn Stearns start a barbecue? Because he kept his eyes open while selling used tires and he noticed something about the area. He didn’t develop a product and then market it.” I shake my head. “That’s what almost every business person does, but it’s really a fool’s errand. No, Mr. Stearns identified a need, and once he had done that, he crafted the perfect solution for an existing problem. People there wanted live music, and they needed a good barbecue place. The last one had closed.”
Mrs. Yaltzinger says, “You’re saying that your men’s line does well because you’ve identified needs and are filling them.”
I nod slowly. “Do you know how I started? My first product was designer shoes that were also comfortable. I knew it was possible, because my first pair of designer shoes were so comfortable that I couldn’t bring myself to replace them. In desperation, after the soles wore out, I took them to a cobbler.”
Mr. Dressel’s always the most impatient of the bunch. “We’ve humored the storytelling, but the point is—”
“The cobbler tried to kick me out of his shop.” I lean closer, bracing my hands against the conference table. “He said to throw my shoes away.”
“But you didn’t?” Mrs. Yaltzinger’s getting it, finally.
“I had just graduated from business school,” I say. “I needed an idea, and I was flipping through them, casting off one bad idea after another. I mean, for designer shoes, you’d need a designer, right?” I smile. “My shoes—Vincenzo Imbruglia’s—couldn’t be replaced because after the poor man took his family on vacation, there was an accident in which all of them except for him died. After that, he stopped working. There were no more Vincenzo Imbruglia shoes in the world.”
Their mouths dangle open. Every last one.
“It turned out that the cobbler I’d been arguing with for almost half an hour before he replaced my soles was a broken, depressed shell of Vincenzo Imbruglia. What were the odds that he would turn up in my neighborhood, essentially disguised as a humble cobbler, just trying to make enough to pay his rent?”
The board is at least listening.
“The passion I had for his beautiful, comfortable product convinced him to try again, with my help this time.” I shrug. “I knew there was a need, and that made it a snap to market.”
“You didn’t have the idea to create a designer shoe label in the beginning?” Mr. Jimenez looks floored.
“Nope. I knew that men’s designer shoes, by and large, looked nice but felt like torture devices. When I realized that the person who had unlocked the code to providing both comfort and beauty was right in front of me, I spotted my first latency in the market.”
“When you added jackets?” Mr. Jimenez asks.
“It was the same,” I say. “Most designer coats were ruined by rain. Rain.” I shake my head. “Something so basic, so common, that in New York City, you’re almost doomed to ruin your designer jackets within a month or two. A latency.”
“But surely finding such latencies in the women’s side of things should be even easier,” Mrs. Yaltzinger says.
“Ah, ah.” I shake my head. “You may not have noticed, but I’m a man.”
Mrs. Yaltzinger frowns. “But surely your girlfriend—”
“It might be a boyfriend,” Mr. Jimenez hisses.
I splutter. “I’m not in a relationship, but it would be with a girl if I were.”
“Then you should find her,” Mrs. Yaltzinger says. “She can help you identify latencies.” Her brow furrows.
“I haven’t had time to date,” I say. “I built this business from the ground up.”
“But now you have us,” Mr. Dressel says. “We can, and really should, be picking up some of the slack of management. Let us do our jobs, so you can go do yours.” He tosses his head. “Sniff out the latencies we can find solutions to, and then come back to us so we can actually expand.”
Mrs. Yaltzinger’s face is pinched as she whips out her phone, taps on a few buttons and holds it to her ear. “Yes, Ursula. I’ve got a new client for you. He’d like to start right away, and look for women with silky hair and big, full lips.”
Oh, boy.
Turns out, I’m still a complete halfwit. Having a board is even worse than being stuck with my parents.
2
Bea
Most people hate their job—there’s a reason you’re paid to do it.
I know I’m not special.
And to be fair, when I started waiting tables, I didn’t hate it. My first time working as a waitress was at Dave and Seren’s inn, and it was small enough that there were never many people.
Thanks to Dave and Seren, it never felt like work.
But when I started college to study music, it never occurred to me that even after I graduated, I’d still be waiting tables. I’m working at the nicest place in Scarsdale, but that cuts both ways. My tips are so good that I haven’t been able to quit. No music job I could find would come close to what I make working five nights a week at the Red Horse.
Well, that, and I haven’t actually gotten a job I’d want.
“No, not like that,” Mrs. Stevens says. “Lighter. Springier, like the notes are sassy.”
I still take piano lessons, but it might be out of habit at this point.
I was a music theory major, and I’ve taken piano lessons since I was twelve, so you’d think that by now, I’d be teaching lessons instead. Or maybe I’m still taking lessons because my teacher has my dream job and she lets me help her most weeks.
After another twenty minutes of somewhat rewarding torture, my lesson’s finally over. That’s when the fun part starts. “I thought you might want to take a look at this one.” Mrs. Stevens hands me a sheet of music.
“Who’s it for?”
“The Honda dealership.”
“And?”
“They want it to be fast, upbeat, and staccato.”
I lift my eyebrows. “They said staccato?”
Mrs. Stevens laughs. “Of course not.”
The world around me disappears as the notes on the page begin to play in my head. Her jingle isn’t bad, but it’s soggy in the middle. Right when it should really pop, it sinks. “This line is the one that needs work,” I finally say. “You should bring it up a third, and maybe cut the weird chords here.” I point.
“Like this?” Mrs. Stevens’ fingers fly over the keys.
“More like this.” I sit next to her and she shoves over. As I’m showing her what I meant, I have another idea. It’s a good one.
“Oh, that’s much better.” She plays it twice, and then she tightens it up a bit more, condensing two measures into one to segue better than mine. The bridges are always the trickiest part. Almost an hour later, when I leave, it’s perfect. She lets me sit in on the conference call when she plays it for the client.
To the car dealership, the melody is probably the least exciting part of their commercial, but Mrs. Stevens and I know that we’re making the magic happen. The reason people will remember the commercial, the reason they’ll think of Holdam Honda is because we did our job.
Of course, it’s not really my job. It’s hers.
But still.
One day, hopefully. I have applied for over a dozen jingle jobs in the last year, but they’re hard to land. It’s a job that can be done from home, and it’s a job that most everyone who can play basic musical instruments is qualified to do. But you can work from home, and for an introvert, that sounds magical enough already.
Add in the bonus that you’re able to take the notes I love so much and turn them into a limitless number of new songs that will stick with people, and it sounds like nirvana. Being paid to create music that people will hear, and I can do it in my pajamas in my own home?
Please and thank you.
Unfortunately, with as long as working on that jingle took, I barely have time to shower before my shift. My long hair takes forever to dry, so I always try to blow dry it before heading in. I’m going to wind up with water all down my back, but hopefully my hair will cover the damage itself. Sometimes I wish we had a more flexible dress code, but it’s nice not to stress over what I’m wearing as I pull on the same boring black pants and white button-down shirt that I always wear.
Our uniform could turn a supermodel into a frump, but when you start out at barely five feet tall, and you already have almost nothing in the way of curves, it’s a death knell. When I pass the mirror, it could be a teenage boy staring back.
Not that it matters. When I wait tables, I disappear. It’s actually my favorite thing about the job. Yes, I have to interact with a never-ending stream of people all night long. And yes, the other wait staff and cooks are talking to me constantly, but it’s not the kind of thing that requires thought or effort. It’s, “table five needs this cooked longer.” Or “they need water at table six.” None of them care about me—the diners or the staff—and I like it that way. I’m a tool to them. I show up with a pleasant expression, bring their waters, their mojitos, and their whiskey neat when they ask for them. Their food is hot. Their drinks are cold.
And I get a decent tip.
They promptly forget me, exactly like I want.
There’s actually one guy who literally comes in every single Friday night at eight p.m. He has eaten at Red Horse for more than three years, since a few weeks after I started working at the Westchester, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t even know I’ve been his waiter every single week. He’s a pretty good tipper, so that’s just fine by me.
Actually, I like it that way.
I don’t have hard feelings about being invisible. In fact, it’s the one thing in the world I’ve always been best at. Waiting tables is the kind of job where people noticing you and remembering you is a liability. The less they think about their waiter, the better you’re doing your job. It means their drinks are never empty. Their check is never wrong. And their food is done just right.
The key to that, of course, is making sure the chef and other cooks like me best.
I’m not above bribing, but since I have almost no social life, I’m also available to cover shifts when the restaurant is down a waiter, and that makes them grateful. There’s nothing worse than a bunch of customers who are mad because their food was cold, and that’s what happens when we’re short-staffed on wait crew. The chefs take the blame, but it’s usually our fault.
When I walk through the door, I’m a little shocked when the head line cook points at me. Iggy isn’t usually a pointer. “You—we called a sub for you.”
I blink. “But I’m here—I’m not even late.”
“Our pianist canceled again.”
I suppress my groan and remind myself that this is just another way I can make sure that everyone loves me. On weekends, the fine dining at the Westchester always has live piano music. They usually want someone who can sing, but when the musician cancels, as flaky artists often do, well. Let’s just say that when I offered to pinch hit once, I didn’t realize it might happen once a month.
The tips aren’t awful, and even though I’m asked to play Piano Man far too often, it’s really not that bad.
Usually.
Most of the time the guests who come in are pretty busy with what they’re doing. Usually they want to come in, eat some food, chat with their dinner companion, pay the check, and leave. That’s the ideal, anyway. But sometimes you find people, especially when you play well, who stop eating, who don’t bother chatting, and who just turn around in their seats and stare.
I swear, I can feel their eyes on me.
