Dropping the Ball

7. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

Micah

Kaitlyn Freaking Armstrong.

It finally happened.

I’d realized about a month after she hired me that Madison Locke was Madison Armstrong Locke, and I’d probably cross paths with Kaitlyn again. I’ve known since late spring when Madison announced her pregnancy that I would finish this project with Kaitlyn.

I’ve known for two weeks that I had a meeting coming up with her. I’ve looked forward to it, even.

But that did not prepare me to see her standing in my showroom today, her eyes running over my furniture, assessing it, no hints of her opinion on her face.

I open the door to my truck and toss a folder on the passenger seat, buckling up. It had been exactly like high school in the worst ways. But also in the best one.

Crack a joke that makes her mad? Check.

Play it cool while I get a read on her? Check.

Wish I could sketch her, even as she frowns at me? Check.

But also . . .

Want her to respect my work? Check. And then she does? Check.

She bought Starling.

I’ve debated pulling that table from the showroom to save for my own home, but although I live comfortably, I’m not comfortable enough to walk away from a twelve-thousand-dollar sale. I’d half banked on it being too unconventional for anyone to want it.

Kaitlyn Armstrong wants it. She tried to play it off like she was picking up a card table from Target, but I’d become an expert in reading Kaitlyn during our four years at Hillview, and I’m still fluent. Wonder had flickered across her expression when I’d mentioned starlings.

That’s how well I know her face. Not sure how I feel about being able to read it like no time has passed.

I pull out of the parking lot and head toward home, replaying our showroom interaction in my mind. She still has a classic vibe, but with new details.

Kaitlyn hadn’t been the kind of girl a guy would catcall. She was buttoned-up and serious. Even though Hillview is the most elite private school in Austin, they don’t require uniforms, but that had almost been Kaitlyn’s aesthetic. She’d been a jeans-and-Oxford-shirt kind of girl.

She’s still slender, but with subtle curves. Her hair is shorter, falling to her chin in a sleek, shiny curtain, like varnished beech.

She’d been wearing a thin black turtleneck and slacks. And yet . . . I’ve seen women in little black dresses—very little black dresses—that weren’t as sexy as Kaitlyn had just been, covered almost head to toe.

Her posture is different too, poised but not at all tense. I might not have recognized her if it weren’t for one big tell: the familiar disdain in her eyes.

Pure Kaitlyn, vintage grades nine through twelve. Also vintage: the strong suspicion she tried to make leaving the store into a race.

I’m sorry she feels like I ruined her chance at valedictorian, but the incident she blames me for? I didn’t cause it. In fact, I was the first one to her side to make sure she got help. And as for beating her GPA, it was a fair fight all the way down the line.

Which means even with the disdain, our run-in is a good thing. It’s given me a chance to see for myself that she’s doing well, and maybe I’ll be able to set the record straight as we keep meeting. Maybe I’ll even be able to get us on a different footing. Wish my footing today wasn’t my beat-up Vans and woodshop clothes, but I can’t sweat that now.

I pull into my driveway and park. The garage could hold two cars—if it weren’t my main workspace. I hit the opener and climb out, grabbing the folder I needed and head inside the garage. It’s full but organized, walkable aisles between my workbenches, tools lined up against one wall, odds and ends sorted against the other.

This had been plenty of room when I started upcycling furniture during college, and by the time I graduated four years ago, I was selling things as fast as I could make them. But I could only make things when I had salvage to work with, so I’d put out the word to my boys, and they started bringing me so much scrap that I had to put up sheds in the backyard to hold it.

The garage itself is the workshop. It always smells like woodworking chemicals and sawdust in here, and if I had to describe the scent of happiness, that’s it. The faint acrid odor of the paint stripper might make other people’s noses wrinkle, but for me, it triggers something in my body that tells it to relax.

I set the folder on the table where I do most of my mosaic work and pull out the pictures. They’re from an elderly client, Mrs. Davenport, who prefers giving me reference photos the old-fashioned way—neatly clipped from magazines at the library when the librarians aren’t watching. I’d suggested she could tell me the magazine issue and I could look it up online, no clipping required. She’d reassured me that she only chose issues that were about to expire anyway.

Never mind that she lives in a mansion her departed husband bought forty years ago. Never mind that she has a full-time gardener who also serves as her handyman and the driver of her beautiful old Mercedes. Never mind that she’s commissioned me to make a mosaic water feature for her backyard that will cost her five thousand dollars. Mrs. Davenport still only buys groceries on double-coupon day, stores all her leftovers in old Country Crock tubs, and steals her expensive design ideas from magazines at the public library.

The door leading from the house opens.

“Hey, Ma,” I say as she stands on the threshold. She’s wearing the same sweatpants and Pepsi T-shirt she had on yesterday. “You good?”

Her gaze skitters around the garage before landing on me, and I stifle a sigh. She’ll say she’s fine, but it’s not one of her good days.

“Fine, I’m fine.” Her tone is irritated, like I’m prying. “It’s a mess in here.”

It’s not. Full of stuff, yes. But everything has its place. Even things that might look like junk won’t be for long. But this is a losing argument, and it’s not why she wandered out here.

“Do you need help with something?” I ask.

“No.” It’s sharp. “Can’t I come out here to see you?”

“Of course.” I proceed carefully here, because she will look for every reason to turn this into a fight. “How are your orders going?”

“Why? You want to tell me how much more stuff you’re selling?”

“Nah, I’ll never get as many orders as you do.” She sells wooden peg dolls online, customized for different families or teams. In early fall, she switches to doing nativity characters only, and she’s four times busier than the rest of the year.

“Don’t have a boss, don’t need a boss.” She jabs her thumb at her chest. “I’m an untrained genius. I built a business without all the extra college and training. If I’d gone to college like you, I would be the one making all the money. Don’t forget that. One day, the right set of eyes will see my work, and then you’ll see that I’m the real deal.”

“I know you’re the real deal—” I say but she steps back into the house, shutting the door harder than she needs to.

I rub my head, feeling a tension headache starting. I’ve noticed a couple of other signs that her meds might need adjusting, but a call to Dr. Karumbaya can probably wait until Monday morning.

I pull my phone from my pocket and turn the ringer on before I set it on the workbench. I’ll be tiling the basin of Mrs. Davenport’s water feature, and it’s the kind of work that will absorb me as I ponder the placement of each mosaic piece, making minute tweaks. I doubt Mom will leave the house today, but if she does, I don’t want to miss a call from a neighbor letting me know.

The broken pieces of glass from a corporate office call to me, begging to be rearranged from senseless shards into an Impressionist-style basin for the water to splash into before it’s reclaimed and sent back through the pump to spill over again. And again.

A thump reverberates from inside the house, probably a chair getting knocked over. Again.

And again.