The Wrong Buckle

By 2019 we had a small brand, paying distributors and a workshop that no longer depended on one person staying awake. I also had eleven women who had shown me unmistakable interest, and an urgent need to stop treating that as proof that I could avoid choosing anything. I had been clear that I was not dating exclusively. Tess said clarity was useful but did not make an indefinite arrangement suitable for everybody. Rose wanted a shared life with space for her own choices. Joy wanted her travel, her work and honesty about whether I could actually be present when I said I would.

The next mistake began with a buckle. I remembered a successful-looking supplier from my old life, trusted the name too quickly and approved a batch without the checks Rose normally insisted on. On a prototype it looked fine. In a proper repeated-use test it failed early. Some finished bags had already gone to buyers. Replacing the part, contacting customers and remaking stock cost us thirty-five thousand US dollars, including transport and paid rework. We used retained company money; it was a real reduction in that year's earnings. Nobody discovered a secret windfall behind the sewing machine to make my embarrassment free.

Rose was angry. She said she could live with a man making a mistake but would not build a company around a man who thought being from the future made her current judgment optional. I apologized to her and to the team without adding a sentence about what I had meant to happen. We changed the part, offered the recall and improved the testing. Joy filmed the replacement process at our request without pretending there had never been a fault. A customer wrote that it was the first time a brand had contacted him before he knew he needed to complain. I kept that message where I could see it.

Rex sold a competing imported range. He mocked the recall in a buyer conversation and suggested we were too small to be dependable. We did not answer by pretending a larger company could never fail. We showed actual repair times, replacement availability and the money we had already spent fixing our own mistake. Eva was not a participant in this decision; another buyer placed a trial order on ordinary commercial review. The trial sold through. Rex later asked if we would supply an unbranded version to his shop. Rose said we were willing to discuss a good order, but our design would arrive with its own name on it.

I liked seeing him read the terms. I liked it more when a customer walked past his display carrying our smaller day bag, its bright lining visible as she reached for a key. That was the kind of revenge I could build a decade on. We were paid for a thing people chose. The money bought equipment, paid wages and finally bought me a comfortable apartment with a view I did not need to stand on a chair to see. Rose came with a bottle and said she expected the new kitchen to produce something besides an ambitious kettle. Joy arrived later with food, which improved our chances considerably.

That evening became the first honest conversation among the three of us about a future we might choose rather than inherit. Rose and Joy both knew I had been seeing other women. They knew each other and had their own friendship, but neither owed me an arrangement merely because I wanted them both. Rose wanted a committed, acknowledged relationship without pretending Joy was a temporary visitor. Joy wanted the freedom to keep her travel work and the right to change her mind. I wanted both women in my life, and had to say what time, care and honesty I could actually offer rather than listing the feelings I hoped would impress them.

We did not settle it in one glamorous night. There were more conversations, a week in which Rose wanted distance, and a long walk where Joy asked what would happen if jealousy made one of us less reasonable than we liked to sound. We agreed to tell the truth, not promise an absence of difficult feelings. The relationship would be known, nonexclusive among us and open to revision, with no hidden revolving list of other courtships. Work decisions and ownership remained separate. Rose kept her forty percent whether romance was easy or hard. Joy kept her own work, home choices and independent money.

Tess chose an affectionate ending after a final dinner. Maya wanted someone whose everyday life fitted hers more closely. Lea said she was glad she had asked me to the reading and equally glad she knew what I was choosing now. Nora and Ruth stepped away from romance without owing me a promise to remain immediately close. Eva, Kim, Sara and Nia each had their own conversations and their own later lives. I learned that a respectful goodbye could still hurt, and that a fortune did not buy the right to ask someone else to make the hurt disappear for my convenience.

In 2020 travel stopped being the dependable background people had expected. We had orders for ordinary day bags and repair work outside tourism, but sales fell and one proposed expansion was canceled. We paid what we owed, used the reserves and reduced our own distributions. Rose developed a compact work bag. Joy, unable to travel as before, made original films for clients who could actually pay for them. We did not call an empty airport a business victory because I had remembered trouble. The victory was keeping enough of our lives intact to have choices when people could travel and trade again.

One quiet night Rose came from the workshop in a soft shirt, sat beside me and put her feet in my lap. Joy called from her own place, saw the scene on the screen and accused us of conducting an unauthorized comfort trial. Rose said the early results were favorable but the researcher required dinner. We laughed, arranged the next evening together and talked about something other than sales. The private affection between us grew from ordinary time, not a photograph meant to prove that I had won an impressive life. I had returned knowing dates. I was slowly learning how much warmth could fit between them.