Dropping the Ball

27. Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kaitlyn

I follow Micah down the stairs, pause while he lets Eva know that we’re running to his workshop, and then he’s opening his truck door for me. I’m buckled in by the time he settles behind the wheel. His truck is clean, like its “new car smell” days weren’t too long ago. No scuffs in the gray interior.

He starts the engine, shifts, and ignores the backup camera to put his hand on my seat so he can look over his shoulder to reverse.

I didn’t know I had a thing for guys doing this, but it turns out I do. It’s sexy. Which is ridiculous. What is sexy about an arm resting on the back of my seat while he’s looking past me, not at me? Maybe because it opens up his body frame and creates a perfect nook for nestling, like I could curl up beside him and he’d let that arm drop to settle around me instead.

Instead of backing up, Micah pauses, removes his hand from my seat, and puts the truck back in park.

“Do you hate this idea that much?” I ask, when he’s silent. “Maybe I can solve this another way, like turning one of the front offices into a ‘gallery space’ and put several of her pieces out there.”

“It’s not that. It’s . . .” A head shake. “Never mind.”

A few seconds later, we’re on Highway 183, and I wonder how long of a drive we’re in for. Or really, how long this awkward silence is going to be. But barely a minute later, we’re turning into a neighborhood right across from a self-storage facility.

“Welcome to Montopolis,” Micah says, his voice dry. Dry like it gets when he’s pretending something doesn’t matter, like he’s flipping the joke on someone. You think I care that I live in Montopolis? It’s funny that you think I would.

Montopolis is what polite people call “a working-class neighborhood” and most people call “poor.” Probably the poorest in Austin.

We drive down a street with a used tire store and Dollar General on one side, houses surrounded by chain-link fences on the other. The homes are small, smaller than my parents’ pool house, but with generous yards. That would give away their age even if the rundown exteriors of some of the houses didn’t. These were built fifty years ago or more, I would bet.

We turn another corner, and it’s more of the same. Chain-link fences around cottage-sized houses. Some look as if they’ve never been repainted. Most are tidy if plain. A couple have been modernized with trendy dark paint and white trim. After two more blocks, brand new duplexes pop up, tall with angular roof lines. They’re sprinkled among the original homes, a dissonant contrast to the single-level bungalows.

“That’s . . . a choice,” I say, eyeing a duplex that couldn’t look more out of place between the older homes flanking it than if someone plopped a spaceship down in a used parking lot.

“Gentrification,” he mumbles. He leaves it at that.

We turn down one more street, and he slows the truck. This one doesn’t have chain-link fences. Most of the yards aren’t fenced at all, but the two I see are decorative iron and a wood fence laid horizontally. He pulls into a driveway and parks.

The house is gray-green with a black vinyl roof, black shutters and door, and white trim. Everything looks new and fresh. There’s no fence, and the front yard is short grass with some low-maintenance shrubs along the house. Unless there’s a heck of a lot of house hiding behind it, I’d say it’s about the size of our Threadwork suite, maybe a thousand square feet?

“This is my house.” He looks less than thrilled.

It’s a fact of life that my friends who don’t come from money often feel like they have to apologize when they invite me to their apartments or homes. I understand, I think, but I wish they didn’t feel like they needed to. It’s not exactly normal for someone my age to own a home like mine at all, much less buy it outright. I get that.

I give Micah the same nonjudgmental smile I give them. “Did you renovate it? It looks great. I love the color, and the way you made it feel current—”

He winces. “Don’t. This level of cheerfulness from you is spooky.”

I press my lips together and swallow. “Right. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound . . .” Condescending? Fake?

He shakes his head. “It’s not that. I did exactly what I wanted to do with this place, and I like it.” He glances toward the front door, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “My mom is home. She can be a lot.”

He lives with his mom? I didn’t expect that, and I’m not sure what to think about it. Most of the time, it’s a red flag. But red flags shouldn’t matter when it’s someone I’m not dating. “That makes sense. Austin rents are expensive, so saving money is good.”

“Don’t try to relate to the poor people, Kaitlyn.” A smile tugs up one corner of his mouth. “I own this place. I did grow up here, but I bought it three years ago from my uncle.”

“Oh. Sorry for assuming.” I had definitely sounded condescending. Saving money is good . That’s what everyone wants to hear a filthy rich trust fund baby say.

“Only my boys come over.” He drums his fingers a couple more times and looks at me. “They all know about my mom.”

“She can be a lot,” I repeat, realizing he means more than a big personality.

“She has bipolar. She doesn’t manage it well. If she comes out to the garage, let me handle it.”

“Is she having an episode?”

“Do you know much about bipolar?”

“One of my roommates had it. It never caused us any problems, but she had a couple of rough patches.”

He nods. “My mom’s can get extreme. She’s been erratic the last couple of months, but she won’t go see her doctor. When I went for a run this morning, she was already awake. That can be a sign she was up all night. One of her triggers for a manic episode is lack of sleep. Or sometimes it’s a symptom that she’s already in one.”

He scrubs his hand over his face, as if he’s the one who needs sleep. “She won’t do anything to you. But sometimes she gets upset with me. Don’t . . .” Head shake, like he’s not sure what he wants to say. “Let’s see if we can get in and out fairly quickly, and maybe it won’t be an issue.”

He hits the garage opener and we climb out. I follow him inside, down an aisle between two workbenches with pegboard backs. Tools hang from hooks over one bench. Small bins full of everything from screws to drawer handles line the other.

“Sorry it’s crowded,” Micah says. “There used to be plenty of room when I started upcycling furniture during college. I get so many commissions now I had to put in more workbenches plus sheds in the back to handle all the salvage my boys bring me.”

The garage smells like chemicals and sawdust, but I like it. It deepens the sense that this is Micah’s space. “I don’t know anything about woodworking, but I have a feeling that for someone who does, walking in here would feel like a kid going to a toy store.”

He smiles, a small but real one. “Something like that.”

“You said ‘your boys.’ Is that your store staff?”

“Kind of. It’s guys I grew up with around here. We got construction jobs together. Worked them through high school and college when I could. They still do. I started a salvage business, and I subcontract with a few builders and demolition companies. My guys know what to pull from a demo site, and their supervisors don’t care what they haul off. I pay my friends by the truckload. Earns them some extra bucks.”

“You have sheds, plural? All full of stuff waiting to become something else?”

He points to the back door of the garage. “Three sheds. If I can’t find what I need in here, we’ll go out there.”

“Mind if I look around in here while you do your thing?”

He looks over. “That’s fine.”

I want to explore the workbench with the assorted bins. I glance through them, most containing pieces of mirror and ceramic. This must be where Micah does his mosaic work.

The picture of the woman on my wall flashes through my mind, and heat washes over my cheeks. This might be the bench where he made her, picking out the curves and dips of her resting body.

Micah is behind the other pegboard. I can’t see him, but I hear muted clangs and scrapes.

The door leading from the house opens, and a middle-aged woman in jeans stands on the threshold, plucking at her paint-stained Hillview Academy T-shirt.

“Hey, Ma.” Micah keeps his voice neutral.

“It’s a mess in here. Who is this? You shouldn’t have people over when it’s messy.”

“This is my client, Kaitlyn,” Micah says. “Kaitlyn, this is my mom, Tori. Ma, do you need help with something?”

“Can’t I go in my own garage? Is this a business now? Do I need an appointment? Or is this still my house?”

“You can.” Micah’s tone doesn’t change. Still level. “We won’t be out here long. I need to find something and head back to work, but you want me to get us some salads on the way home for dinner?”

Her lip curls. “So you can show off how much money you make? No. I’ll make a damn ham sandwich.”

“That sounds good.” He says it like they’re having a normal conversation. “Will you make me one?”

“Why? So you can eat out here in the garage like a slob?”

“Good point. No sandwich for me.”

“I wasn’t offering you one. I don’t have time for that. Painting. I need to paint. More orders.” She shuts the door hard.

After a moment of silence, I walk around the workbench so I can check on Micah. He’s standing with some thin metal rods in his hand, staring at the wall.

“Micah?”

He looks over. “I better show you the options and get you back to the warehouse.”

“If you need to take care of her right now . . .”

A shadow crosses his eyes. “No. We need to go to one of the sheds.”

My heart hurts for him, but I’m not sure how to make him feel better. “Sounds good. What are we looking for, exactly?”

“Come on.” He leads me into the backyard. It’s enclosed by a wood privacy fence, and the sheds are the only things back here. The lawn is tidy, but like mine, it’s not landscaped. Just plain grass except for a worn dirt path from the sheds to the side gate.

Each of the wooden sheds is about ten by ten, painted a green several shades deeper than the house, with the doors and a few horizontal planks trimmed in black or white. They’re flat-topped, with each door offset from the center, each located at a different point along its shed’s front plane. The overall effect with lines and balance is . . .

“Why do these give me Mondrian vibes?” I ask.

He looks at me like I cracked a difficult code. “Because you’re perceptive.”

“You built these,” I guess.

He works the combination lock on the middle shed. “I reclaimed the wood from teardowns where they put those condos you pointed out.”

“Architect. Sculptor. High-end custom furniture maker. Business mogul. Anything you don’t do, Micah?”

“You forgot Batman.”

“And Batman.”

“Not a mogul though. Small business owner. And I can’t keep up with all of it, so we’ll see what I give up.”

He releases the lock and slides the door aside, reaching in to flip a light. Not a single bare light bulb either. I point to the wire basket enclosing it. “Did you custom-make a cover for a shed light?”

“No.” He smirks. “I sketched it out for one of Eva’s guys, and he did it.”

I follow him into the shed but wait by the door while he heads straight to a corner and comes back with more metal, this time a long silver rod.

“This is a six-foot stud.”

“You think highly of yourself.”

“Interesting you thought I meant me.”

I press my lips together to keep him from winning the smile, and I give him a lazy wave to continue.

“This is twenty-five gauge, which is the cheap stuff, but it’ll make it easier to shape.”

I cock my head. “Into what?”

“I’ll have Eva curve the top three feet into a tube, then wrap these”—he holds up the thinner wires from his workshop—“around it and fuse it to make it look like rebar.”

The wires from the shop look like the metal skewers Joey uses when he and Ava have everyone over to grill. Pineapple and veggie skewers for Ava and meat for the heathens.

“I can picture it. But why do that? Why not use the rebar in the warehouse?”

“Too heavy. I’m thinking we place those vases at either end of the stage and put these inside like stalks. I don’t think they’d damage the glass even if they shifted. All bets are off with actual rebar.”

I squint at the stud, trying to imagine it. “So you’d make a bouquet of rebar for the vases?”

“Yeah. Eva only needs to weld the visible part, so it won’t take too long. Hit it with black paint, and you’ve got glass vases displaying metal plants.”

My eyes widen. “I get it. That will look . . .”

“Good,” he finishes.

“Yes. But are you okay with it?”

“I gave you a solution I can live with, and it features Gabriela Juarez’s work pretty prominently. If she okays it, it’s fine by me.”

I want to throw my arms around him and squeeze him out of sheer relief. And to feel his satisfyingly solid torso. That warm, muscly . . .

“Great,” I say, so brightly that Micah takes a step back. “Sorry, I’m excited by your idea.”

“Then we’ll roll with it. Let me grab what I need, and I’ll meet you at the truck.”

“I can help,” I tell him. “I’m stronger than I look.”

He eyes my shirtdress of Baltic blue poplin, cinched at the waist with a thin gray belt. When his eyes drop to my high-heeled Mary Janes, he shakes his head. “I’m good.”

“You’re underestimating me,” I tell him.

A trace of his smile appears. “I doubt it. Meet me at my truck.”

I shake my head but go, leaning against the door as I wait for him to appear. He comes through the side gate a few minutes later with an armload of studs.

“Want to get the tailgate?”

“Sure, now you need me,” I say, walking around to help. “I’m an old-fashioned girl and believe men should open doors, but I’ll do it this time.”

“There’s a button on the taillight.”

I hit it and lower the tailgate. When it’s loaded and shut, he walks to the passenger side to open the door.

“All right, old-fashioned liar, I’ve got the door for you.”

“Liar? How dare you, sir.”

“You’re as old-fashioned as I am,” he says, shutting the door after me.

I pick up the discussion when he gets in on his side. “I’m old-fashioned in some ways.”

He starts the truck. “Like what? You seem like you would definitely buy your own flowers.”

I smile. “I would if I wanted some.”

“Girl, get those flowers. You don’t need a man,” he says in a vapid sorority girl voice.

“You’re right. Besides flowers, what would I possibly do with a man?”

“You tell me.” His tone is somewhere between teasing and serious.

My smile fades. This was not a smart joke to run with. Nice one, Katie. Just punch the bruise . “Micah—”

“No to whatever you’re about to say. Doesn’t need to be dug up. We’re good.”

Right. Change of subject. “I had no idea you live so close to the warehouse. You grew up here?”

“We moved here in middle school. My uncle bought it and said we could live in it until I was done with school. He didn’t charge us rent.” He shrugs. “He’s bought cars that cost more than our house did at the time, so it wasn’t a big deal to him, although he always made it a big deal to us. Told my mom to handle utilities and bills. Told me to handle the yard. And I’ve been here ever since.”

I want to ask so many follow-up questions. Here in a stuck way? Do you wish you could leave? Why did you buy it? But that’s we’re-starting-a-relationship personal, not coworker personal. “How did you get all the way over to Hillview every day? Your cousin?”

“Rode my bike at 6:30 every morning down to Ponca and locked it up behind a tire store. Caught the Metrobus and rode it an hour to a Starbucks on Northland where I met my cousin. Same thing in reverse after school.”

Hillview hadn’t started until 8:30. “It took you two hours to get to school every morning?” I’m trying and failing not to sound appalled.

“Don’t be dramatic,” he says. “Kayla liked to be early, so it was more like ninety minutes.”

“Micah, that’s—”

“Fine,” he says. “It was fine. It’s why I was tired and moody most days, but I wasn’t going to blow a chance like Hillview. And if it makes you feel any better, I got a lot of studying done on the bus.”

“Did you like growing up here?”

“Mostly.”

His tone doesn’t invite me to dive into that answer. Guess that was still too personal. I glance through the window as we turn out of his street, struck again by the mix of houses from dilapidated to renovated to condos. “Looks like this area is changing. Gentrifying, you said?”

“Slowly.”

I admit defeat. I don’t like being made to talk either, so I’ll keep my questions and observations to myself.

As if sensing I’ve given up, he nods toward a neat white house on the left. “That’s Mrs. Horne, the one who made the cover on the footstool you like. You know Ty at the jobsite? His mom.” He points to another house, red brick with an aluminum screen door. It looks like it hasn’t been updated since before I was born. “My buddy Arturo lives there with his grandma. We have plans to fix up the outside, but he works too many hours. Me too right now.”

“Sorry,” I say. “We’re keeping you busy.”

“Worth it if I make the right connections.”

“For more art commissions?”

“Architecture clients, ideally. Even one or two could end up spreading the word enough to keep me busy.”

“Is that your main focus? Architecture? You said something would have to give.”

His forehead furrows. “Yeah. I’d like to move Arturo into running the salvage side full-time. Maybe bring on an apprentice for the furniture making.”

A stop sign appears, and he obeys it, pointing at another house. “That’s Mrs. Perez. She runs a tailoring business out of her garage. Quincea?eras and formal stuff like that. Once I was over here hanging out with her son, Marco, and I saw Charlotte Cameron leaving after an appointment.”

“Charlotte from Hillview?”

He nods. “She was getting a prom dress fixed or something. When she saw me sitting on the sofa playing Xbox with Marco, she looked at me like . . .”

“Like what?”

He pulls through the intersection. “Let’s go see what Eva thinks about this arts-and-crafts assignment we’re bringing her.”

He doesn’t say anything for the last couple of minutes back to the warehouse, but I’m beginning to understand how much he leaves unsaid in those silences.