Dropping the Ball

26. Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kaitlyn

Micah may have “got this,” but I don’t.

He is on my mind the whole next week, but he’s as good as his word, sending me an email any time there’s progress to show in the warehouse. Beyond that, there’s nothing. No schemes to get me down to the warehouse. Every night I go home to study without a text convincing me I need to go “check” something is a disappointment and a relief.

I only have six weeks to find enough auction items for us to get them processed in time, properly displayed or packaged, and integrated into the flashy video presentation Madison hired a media company to produce. They keep asking me for more material, warning me they need time to film and edit and do whatever other technical wizardry has to happen so it looks as slick as a video package at the Oscars or something. They shouldn’t worry. I have exactly four items so far. They can probably pull it all together in an afternoon.

One of the donations is cool. Angeline Bourque agrees to offer up two seats on the front row of her show during Paris Fashion Week with a VIP experience at her atelier two days later. Those tickets are a nearly impossible coup, but her creative director has been dressing Mom for major events for over ten years. Additionally, her ready-to-wear line is manufactured in Dhaka. She understands the need.

Other than that, Sara Elizabeth isn’t going to have much emcee work to do that night.

I normally visit Harper most days when I leave work, but now I avoid it. Madison always wants to ask about the gala, and I can’t stop by with nothing new to report.

By Friday, I’m desperate. Five weeks to go, and even if our guests are at their most generous, the current auction offerings will bring in a quarter million at best. I google even more articles on how to procure high-value donations, and I get the sense that only one writer researched it and the rest of them are written by AI regurgitating the same information.

I know all this stuff. I know all of it, and I’ve been trying, and it isn’t working. But I spend the morning doing all the brainstorming the article suggests, listing out even more unusual experiences or pieces that guests might open their wallets for, as well as who might be willing to donate them.

After a lunch of a limp spinach salad at my desk, I start emailing and calling.

By midafternoon, I get somewhere.

I’m so surprised, I blink at the phone for a couple of seconds until the voice on the other end says, “Hello? You still there?”

Last month, one of Mom’s friends on the symphony board, Deborah Fisk, was raving about an installation of glass bluebonnets a local artist had done on the grounds of the Blanton Museum of Art. Even I had heard of the glass artist, who shot to fame a few years ago after winning a reality show about glassblowers, then got tapped to do a chandelier in the home of the woman who owns the San Antonio Stingers.

There are eleven known billionaires living in Austin, and Deborah Fisk is one of them, so I called her, and now I’m speechless that she’s agreed to donate a commissioned piece by the artist.

“Hello?” Deborah repeats.

“Hey, yes, sorry, Miss Deborah. That’s so generous of you.” I can’t believe this worked.

“Don’t say thank you yet. Gabriela is hard to book. I can put in a word for you, and I’ll donate a commission worth fifty thousand, but she can pick and choose her projects now. You’ll still have to talk her into saying yes.”

I thank her a dozen more times, and thirty seconds after we hang up, I’m on the phone with the glass artist, who agrees to a meeting the following Tuesday. I take what feels like my first deep breath in days. Of the four major auction items I’ve procured, three have come through face-to-face meetings. This is good.

So good that I stop by to see Harper on my way home because I can actually tell Madison we’ve got a nearly done deal. That’s one more day before I have to worry her with otherwise catastrophic auction shortages.

Saturday morning, I even spend the day studying when I get home from the gym. I only have to refrain from making up an excuse to text Micah five times. I wish it was him every time a text comes in, but it’ll take practice to smother that reflex. If I can avoid seeing him as much as possible until this whole thing is over, then maybe I have a shot.

Gabriela Juarez ruins that shot.

I leave her glass studio in the Arts District after our meeting on Tuesday without a commitment. I didn’t think it would be a slam dunk, but I also didn’t think it would be the reason I’d have to call Micah.

I start my car, hands curled around the wheel, bracing myself to make that call. We’ve only emailed in the last ten days. His emails are professional but friendly, and I try hard to respond that way. It only takes me about an hour of overthinking to send a reply that amounts to “Looks amazing over there. Keep up the good work!” And yes, every reply sounds that forced.

Today, I have no choice but to call him, because I’ve made a deal with Gabriela Juarez, but I can’t deliver on it without Micah’s cooperation.

This is going to require a large dose of calming tea before I do this. I hit the Starbucks drive-thru for a chamomile mint blossom tea and sip enough of it to soothe my nerves before I swallow hard and order my phone to call Micah.

“Kaitlyn? Hey.” The only thing I hear in his voice is surprise.

“Hey, Micah. Would you happen to be at the warehouse today?”

“I’m at the office,” he says. “But Eva has a couple of her guys in there if you need something.”

Sometimes I forget that everyone else has a life outside of this project except for me.

“This is something I’ll need to run past you. For the gala,” I add, so it’s clear this is business.

A beat of silence follows. “I’d like to say I’m intrigued, but if you’re running it past me, it means you need me to incorporate a design change.”

“I wouldn’t go as far as design change,” I hedge.

“Not reassuring.” He’s kept his tone courteous without being overly familiar. I hate it.

“I’m not going to require you to do anything,” I say. “But I want to run a request past you and see if it’s possible.”

“You’re the client.” There’s a hint of dryness. I welcome it, relieved to get a flash of the real Micah. “I’ll be at the site tomorrow after lunch.”

“Great, I’ll text before I swing by.”

We hang up, and watching his name wink out on my dash display when the call ends gives me a melancholy pang. It’s probably due to the weather. It’s been in the sixties for a week, the surest sign that Austin is finally entering fall, weeks after the calendar did.

I’m going to see Micah tomorrow.

I sit with that for a minute or two while I drive. That’s fine. Good, even. Best-case scenario, seeing him after almost two weeks could show me that I’ve been exaggerating that Halloween make out, making it a bigger deal than it was because my brain plays it on a loop like it’s the script of a Disneyland ride running every minute the park is open. Worst-case scenario, I realize I’m not exaggerating at all.

At least it will be a good reminder to keep on keeping on with this boundary.

It’s a worst-case scenario.

I know as soon as I spot Micah’s truck in the parking lot and my stomach flutters.

“You have got to be kidding me.” I park and cut my engine. Butterflies over his truck. But I’m not surprised. Not after I spent an hour last night choosing a “drop by the jobsite to see the architect” outfit. I’m letting this matter more than it should. “Compose yourself, Kaitlyn. You will focus, lead, and delegate.”

I repeat that a few times before I decide I’m grounded enough to get out of the car and go in.

As soon as I do, I pause, taking in the changes. Despite watching this develop through email updates, it’s something else entirely to experience it in person. The knot of worry that has grown tighter inside my chest as we hurtle toward New Year’s loosens for the first time. It’s slight but distinct as it comes out as a faint gasp of awe.

There are no more orange poles. They’re either black or encircled in a column or “stalk” of vertical rebar, round as the trunk of an oak, rising to curve outward at its top. The interior stalks are connected at their tops by iron marigolds four feet in diameter, touching edges welded to each other, several marigolds extending from each stalk to the next stalk in every direction, not linearly but like a honeycomb, almost. Even though Micah and Eva have only covered a fraction of the total venue area so far, the effect is alien and beautiful. It doesn’t seem possible for this to exist inside a commercial warehouse, a space so functional it’s the antithesis of creativity.

Whatever else may happen at this gala, no one will question the venue now. It will be the talk of the town and all over social media.

I don’t even notice the high mechanical whine filling the warehouse until it stops. I glance over to see Micah across the floor, hard hat and safety goggles on, holding a power tool the size of . . . I don’t know anything about power tools. I can’t draw a helpful comparison.

He’s the most dressed down I’ve ever seen him in black joggers and a sage green T-shirt. He lifts a hand in greeting, then rubs his face against his sleeve, like he’s sweating. But the temperature is perfect thanks to the cool weather.

There are two other workers as well, guys around my age, who each give me a nod. Micah pulls the goggles down around his neck but leaves on the hard hat as he hands his tool to the other guy and walks over to meet me.

The guy calls, “Micah?”

“Gimme a second, Ty,” Micah calls back.

It’s so strange to have other workers in here. I haven’t seen anyone on-site besides Micah since the day I met Eva. It feels like having buyers coming through your house while you’re home. Like, sure, they’re allowed to be here, even supposed to be here, but it still feels off.

“Hey,” Micah says, stopping a few feet away so we can speak at a normal volume.

“It’s good to see you.” It’s not what I mean to say, but it is what I mean. Maybe he’ll take it as one of those things people say out of habit and not a confession.

He doesn’t return the sentiment. Instead, he runs a glance over me, but I don’t know how to take it. It’s not a leer. I’m not sure Micah would even know how to leer. It’s not cold or warm, dismissive or . . . anything. It’s like he’s taking inventory. Yes, this is still Kaitlyn.

“Welcome back to the hive,” he says.

“I’m blown away.”

“Thanks.”

That neutrality again. I can’t read his tone. “So the reason I wanted to talk to you—”

He holds up a finger. “Hold on, let me put Ty back to work. It’ll be loud, but we can go up to the booth if that’s okay?” I nod, and he hollers for Ty and gives him a thumbs up.

The loud whine is back. Micah hands me a hard hat from the table beside the door and leads me on the shortest route to the stairs, a diagonal path through the world he’s created. I don’t understand it. He’s only reframed an empty space, but crossing this section of the warehouse floor beneath it feels like a different lifetime from standing on the bare slab it was in September.

We climb up to the supervisor loft, and he shuts the door, muffling the screech of the work below us. “Hit me with it,” he says. “Band-Aid treatment. Tell me how much you’re about to complicate this job.”

“Do you know who Gabriela Juarez is?”

“Glassblower,” he says. “Incredible work.”

“Yeah. This is about her. A donor is willing to put up a custom chandelier commission for the auction if Gabriela agrees to it. A big piece, something you would see in the entry of a corporate building. She said ‘more than a conversation piece, a showstopper.’”

“That’s a generous offer. She could charge a ton for something on that scale.”

“We’ll easily be able to auction it for low six figures,” I say. “The right to commission a piece from her is exactly the kind of thing these gala guests will go to battle for. It’s exclusive, so it will matter more for bragging rights than it will for actual cost.”

“Where do I come in?”

I sigh. “She’s heard Rylan Hurley will be there, and she wants to catch his attention. He builds—”

“Hotels in Vegas,” Micah finishes, a small smile on his lips. “I pay attention to those kinds of projects.”

“Right.” Of course an architect would pay attention to massive luxury buildings. “It would be an amazing get for the auction, but she has a condition.”

Micah closes his eyes long enough for it not to be a blink before he meets mine. “She wants to collaborate?”

I give him that yes-and-no head shake, the one that says Kind of but not really . “Probably not on the scale you’re thinking. She does want some of her work to be incorporated. Something already existing. She had me take pictures of the pieces she’d like us to consider. She doesn’t expect us to take it all, but she’d like us to choose something—or things—substantial enough to make a statement. Whet their appetites, I guess. Or at least Rylan Hurley’s.”

He rubs his hands over his face then sighs. “I get it. Can’t blame her for trying to get her work into his hotels. May I see?”

I hand him my phone. Our fingers brush. Neither of us react, but inside, I feel that spark. It reminds me that resistance is futile but necessary.

He studies each picture for several long seconds. I can’t read his face. After a few minutes, he nods and goes back to one, standing to look out through the booth window. He rubs his finger across his lips several times. I’m very jealous of that finger.

“There’s a possibility here,” he says. “Mind if I text this to myself?”

“Go ahead.”

He does and gives back my phone. “That vase in the picture. How tall is it?”

“About four feet.” I hold my hand chest high.

He nods and chews at his bottom lip. “I have an idea. We’ll need to go to my workshop so I can show you. Is that okay?”

I don’t have time for this. I have no idea where his workshop is. I should ask him to send me a picture or tell him whatever he’s planning is fine. But I want to go to his workshop. This feels like an “inner sanctum” moment.

“Sure. Is it far?”

“No. It’s in my garage. I better drive.”

His garage. In his house?

Better and better, but worse and worse.