Dropping the Ball

29. Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kaitlyn

Only Micah’s truck is in the warehouse parking lot when I pull in, and it gives me a moment of pause. He isn’t trying one of his non-date dates, is he?

I remember how closed off he’d been at his house last week. Definitely not a fake date.

I climb out of my car and walk in. Micah is sitting at the table by the door, sketching something, and he looks up as the door snicks open.

“Hey.” He sets down his pencil and stands. “You look nice.”

I glance down. “I have a meeting. I look more official with my blazer. I left it in the car.” I’d thought it would be warm in the warehouse, but it’s nearly as cool as the early evening air, which is hovering down near sixty.

“Do you want to grab it?”

“It’s okay. I can’t stay long.”

“Right.” His smile doesn’t change. “Let’s go look.”

I set my bag down and reach for a hard hat, negative four million percent thrilled about messing up my hair.

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Since no one is working on anything right now, nothing can fall on you.”

I thunk it back on the table and fall in step with Micah as he walks to the stage zone. Again, there’s a feeling of teleporting to a different place when we cross beneath the marigolds.

“We’re still right on schedule,” Micah says. “The extra time on these studs came out of the planned overage, so we’re also still on budget.”

“That’s great.” It’s inadequate and formal. I want to ask him how he feels about the progress, if it’s matching what he pictured. I’d caught a glimpse of his sketch on the table. It looked architectural. Was he doing work for the firm while he waited for me? Is it hard balancing all this with his work for the firm?

I keep the questions to myself. I need boundaries, and I have a time constraint. I can’t get lost in Micah. A conversation with him, I mean.

He stops and points. “That’s the gist.”

He—or someone—has taken a rectangular cardboard box and cut it down to roughly the height of the Juarez vase. He’s also spraypainted it red like the vase and stuck in the mock rebar to give a sense of the scale and scope.

“Is this piece called ‘Industrial Arts and Crafts’?”

He smiles. “It’s called ‘I worked through my lunch break to figure this out, but it should work.’”

I take a few steps back. “Is that roughly where you see it sitting in relation to the stage?” When he nods, I try to picture the other elements. “It sounded way too basic when you explained your idea. I was trying to figure out how to tell you to try harder on the last-minute favor I begged for without upsetting the talent.”

“The talent.” His hands are in his pockets—he’s in dark gray joggers today—and he rocks a couple of times, like he’s considering this label. It forces me to consider his quads and wonder if I can ban joggers that force me to consider his quads on the jobsite. “The talent’s reaction depends on how you feel now that you’ve seen it.”

“The talent never misses,” I say. “In fact, I’m annoyed that this solution is going to make Gabriela Juarez’s vases look better than they deserve based on her inconveniencing you.”

He comes to stand beside me, facing his cardboard vase. “Awww, Katie. It’s good to know you care. But it’s fine. I respect the hustle, and it was good of her to accept a commission when she isn’t sure who will end up winning it.”

Evergreen and citrus drift toward me. My pulse speeds up, and I need distance.

I walk a few steps away, like I want a different angle on this crappy box. “I care about everything for this gala. I eat, sleep, and breathe this gala. And if a glass artist makes things harder for our sculptor, I care about that too.” There. Perfect tone of exasperation but keeping it light. Keeping it on the event.

“How do you feel about your sculptor making things harder for himself with an idea that would be awesome for the gala?”

I turn to look at him. “Tell me.”

“Better to show you. Up to the loft?”

“I have a meeting soon.” I glance down at my watch.

“A meeting,” he repeats.

“Yeah. Sometimes it’s over desks, sometimes over golf, and sometimes over cocktails. Or so Madi tells me. This is my first time doing a pitch this way, but if alcohol is involved, I like my odds.”

“I need to figure out how to get more golf meetings.”

“Can you explain your idea in ten minutes or less?” That still leaves me a cushion for meeting Drake.

“Yep. Let’s go.”

He turns and heads for the stairs but stops at the foot of them, looking down at my shoes. I feel the path of his glance down my legs like a touch.

“We’re taking the elevator.” He punches the button and the door rumbles open.

My spiked heels have zero desire to argue.

He waves me in. “Ladies first.”

I walk past him, wishing there was a reason to brush against him, glad there’s enough room that I don’t have one. Boundaries.

The elevator is small, though, since it’s only used for loft accessibility, not freight. It’s half the size of a regular elevator and shrinks more when Micah steps in and presses the button to take us up. He’s not even close enough for me to sense his body heat, but he’s still filling every inch of this elevator, his sneaky citrus and evergreen scent tickling my nose.

“So what’s this idea?” I ask.

“Wait a few more seconds, Katie. You can do it. I have faith in you.”

“It’s your ten minutes we’re burning, but fine.”

The elevator bumps to a stop and we cross the landing it shares with the stairs to the loft.

“What am I looking for?” I ask, scanning the warehouse. It’s interesting to see the sculpture from this aerial view, but I could have done that another day.

“Gala means red carpet,” Micah says.

“Right. Already rented.”

“It will come in through there.” He points to the roll-up door closest to the foot entrance for trucks to park during loading and unloading.

“Right. Floral arch?” Twenty thousand red Kashmiri gada, to be exact. It’s a lush variety of marigold, and since it felt only right that we use the beloved Bangladeshi flower, it also made sense to have them made of silk by Bangladeshi workers so they could benefit. We could keep the flowers sustainable by reusing them in future galas.

The plan is to roll up the bay door and build the floral arch for the guests to enter through, all part of the luxe Threadwork Discovery Gala Presented by Armstrong Industries experience.

“I was looking at photos from previous Met Galas, and something kept jumping out at me. The grand staircase. Women choose gowns specifically for the way they will photograph on that staircase. It got me thinking: what if instead of walking straight through the arch, we built a staircase?”

My eyes follow his pointing finger to the bay door. “Why would a single-level event need stairs?”

“Think of it like a bridge. They climb the stairs on one side, walk down the other.”

“I don’t get it. Stairs to nowhere? Explain like I’m five. But also in less than five minutes.” Staircases and red carpets don’t mean much without the auction items, and I need to go land a big one. One that will finally give me some momentum.

“You’re doing a temporary tunnel from the parking lot to the entrance, right?”

“Yes. You can rent anything, including event tunnels.”

“Props to whoever dreamed up that niche. But the point of having guests come through it is to distract them from the reality that they’re walking into a warehouse. They enter from the parking lot, walk twenty yards through this tunnel, and step into Event Land?”

“Basically. There will be soft lighting and flower arrangements all through the tunnel.”

“And everyone waits inside it until it’s their turn to walk out and pose in front of the Threadwork branding, do the step-and-repeat for the press, show off their gowns. Then they walk into Discovery?”

This is not new information. He’s known the plan since the first time Madison walked the space with him. “Micah, I really need to—”

“Anticlimactic.”

I pause, mouth open. Anticlimactic? “Sorry, should we ask each guest to give us a walkout song and make it a production?”

“Deepen the illusion. Make every part of the experience from the second they step into the tent tunnel reinforce the feeling they’re leaving behind the familiar. Like Disneyland. Every ride starts from the second you get in the line. If you’re going on the Jungle Boat, you’re weaving through a dock front.”

I’m starting to get it. “Paint me a word picture about the stairs.”

“The step and repeat will end where the stairs begin. The steps will be long and fairly shallow, and the rise will level out as it passes through the marigold arch. Those are fifteen feet high. If we figure the guests will all be under seven feet tall—”

“Unless Angel Clarke wears heels,” I joke, naming the center for the Dallas WNBA team who will be coming.

He grins. “I stand by my estimate. Even in heels, Angel Clarke wouldn’t hit it. We’d build the stairs to eight feet high. Guests finish the red carpet photos and move to the stairs. Spoiler: also red carpeted.”

“Genius.” My tone is dry.

He gives me a serious nod. “I’ve been saying. At the stairs, the ladies are ready to climb, then they stop halfway up.”

It clicks. “They pose showing the back of the dress.”

“Yeah. It’s a whole production with the Met Gala stairs, but photographers and guests and celebrity blog stalkers are all happy. Then through the arch and down the staircase on this side.”

He traces something in the air with his fingers, maybe the shape of the staircase he imagines. “Then they get to make a dramatic entrance for everyone below to see and admire their dress. Like every movie with a ball. Ever, I think?”

“Is that another hobby genre for you?”

“Only when there’s a zombie crossover.”

“Zombie balls have the top-of-the-stairs moment? I’d watch that.”

“I’d watch it with you.” His eyes drop to my lips like he’s back in the memory of our other zombie movie experience.

Boundaries.

My smile fades. “A grand staircase sounds like a several-grand project. I’m open to the idea, but I’ll need to know more.” I look down at my watch again. If I’m not on the road in the next five minutes, I’ll be late. “Could we meet Monday?”

“Don’t need to. I’ll explain while I walk you out.” He holds open the loft door for me. “This will be a cheap build. Plywood painted black. Red carpet makes it look high-end. Any guesses what the handrails will be made from?” His eyes sparkle as we reach the elevator and he pushes the button.

I step inside. “Rebar.”

He follows me in. “Rebar.”

“It’s on theme,” I say, sending the elevator down.

“With labor and materials, I could get this done for about two thousand.”

“That’s it? Two thousand? That’s—”

A hard jolt knocks me off-balance. I stumble forward, catching myself with my hands against the elevator door.

Micah’s hand flies out to grip my elbow and steady me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” I push back hair that slipped into my face. “You?”

He releases my elbow. “Fine.”

“What happened?”

He crouches to study the elevator panel. I scan the top of the door and the ceiling, not that I’d recognize a problem if I saw it.

“It’s not the electricity,” he says. “These light up when I push them, and the overhead light is on, obviously. Has to be mechanical.”

“Can you fix it?”

He looks over his shoulder. “Can I fix an elevator?”

“It’s not an insane question. You’re good with your—never mind.” I break off when I realize finishing the sentence will only set me up. “Does it have one of those emergency call things?”

“All elevators have them,” he says. “It’s the law.”

“So push it!”

He stands and gives me a look of concern. “You okay? You sound . . .”

“What? Stressed that if we don’t get out of here in the next three minutes, I’ll be late for my meeting?”

“Right. Just call and explain. No one’s going to hold that against you.”

We have the same realization. My dress does not have pockets. My phone is in my purse, which I left on the table when I came in.

“Oh,” he says.

I do not panic. Not ever. I’m not about to start now. “Can I use your phone?”

Micah leans against the wall and crosses his arms over his chest. “As soon as I get it from the table.”

Still not panicking, but I feel a rising urge to scream. “We are stuck in an elevator in an empty warehouse with no way to let anyone know?”

He crouches by the panel again. “I’ll push the emergency call button.”

We wait. Several seconds tick by.

“Should we hear anything?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, only presses the button again.

I count to thirty Mississippi. “Is this a silent thing? Is it triggering an alert somewhere, letting them know to send a SWAT team to get us out?”

“Elevator SWAT,” he repeats. “Not sure that’s a thing.”

The mellow way he says it puts my teeth on edge. The calmer he gets, the higher my frustration climbs. “Can you pry open the doors?”

His laugh dies when he realizes I’m not being funny. “For real?”

“Yes, for real! I’m late.” I try, but my nails are just long enough that I can’t slip my fingertips into the crease where the doors meet. I shift, pressing my chest and face against one of the doors, then brace my feet and sort of . . .

“What are you doing?” Micah asks.

“Getting this thing open.” I push in the opposite direction as hard as I can, trying to slide it by force of will, maybe, but I’m also holding my breath, which explodes in a whoosh when my forearms give up on a feat of strength they weren’t trained for.

“Could you do something?” I snap at Micah while I pull off a shoe then wobble on my bare foot while I yank off the other one.

“I’m thinking.”

“That doesn’t seem to be getting the door open.”

“Your way won’t work either. I know enough about elevators to know that.”

“It works on TV.”

He doesn’t comment.

Frustration is building a head of steam so dense I can’t believe it’s not giving me super strength to yank the doors open. I look at the ceiling. “Can’t we go through there? That’s how people always do it on—”

“TV?” He shakes his head. “If I can get up there, I still won’t be able to pry open the doors, but I guess it’s worth figuring out where we are between the floors.”

It takes two steps for him to cross to the rear corner beneath the panel. I don’t like the frown on his face. He reaches, but he has to go up on his toes to touch. His shirt rides up, exposing his abs, lean and long as he stretches.

I drag my gaze to the ceiling hatch. Nothing happens when he presses, so he works his fingers around the edges.

After a minute, he drops down and points to the center of the hatch. “Locked. That cranny is for a key. Can’t do anything without it.”

“This is stupid.” I have never sounded less calm, cool, or collected, but I don’t care. Why is it so hard to try to do a good thing like make it to a meeting that will give me the momentum I need for this auction? Why do even the things that work out take five extra steps, like Gabriela Juarez’s demands?

Helplessness buzzes under my skin, and I’d rather be standing naked on an anthill. At least I could kick it and walk away.

“Could you move over this way?” I ask.

Micah makes the two steps a saunter. “You want to try?”

I bend down and swoop up my shoes. “No. I want to do this .” I stalk to the corner beneath the hatch (it takes me three steps) and jump, shoe in hand, trying to swat at it. I don’t even get close, which only makes me angrier.

“This escape room sucks!” I yell, throwing my shoe at the hatch as hard as I can. It bounces off with a dull thump and falls to the floor. I have never been so disappointed in a Louboutin, and I don’t care at all that it’s scuffed now.

“What are you—” Micah starts to ask, but I slice him with a death look so fast that he presses his lips together.

“I’m not trying to open it. I’m punishing it.” I throw my other shoe. The heel hits, making a slightly louder noise before it falls. I scoop them back up, ready to chuck them again, when Micah steps in front of me, squatting slightly, arms out in the universal sign for “piggyback ride.”

“If you want to get the point across, you probably need to smack the snot out of it.”

I climb on and he straightens. I take a half-dozen serious whacks before I drop the shoes and press his shoulders.

He lets me down. “Did it help?”

I go sit in the control panel corner. “No. But thanks for the lift.” I rest my head against the wall and close my eyes, listening to the rustle as he sits down too. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“Might have to wait until morning, when the crew comes in.”

My eyes fly open. “What? No. What if I have to . . .” Pee. Just thinking it makes me need to go. “I hydrate. A lot.”

“Uh . . .” He looks blank and scratches his chin. “Think dry thoughts?”

“Pray you don’t see my potty dance.” He makes me want to throw a shoe again. Not at him. But he makes me want to throw a shoe. I try calming breaths.

After a minute he says, “If my mom notices I’m not home in the next hour, she’ll text. Then call. When I don’t answer, she’ll get mad or worried. Probably both. Most likely she’ll walk down to Ty’s house because she knows he’s working on this job with me. Maybe, if she’s upset enough, Ty will volunteer to drive over here to make her feel better. He’ll see our cars, and then our odds are good.”

“How likely is all of that?”

“If I change my routine on my mom, I always let her know. I can count on her to escalate the situation.”

How many times has this played out in different ways in their life? The underlying tiredness as he said “escalate” suggests he’s probably quit counting.

“How is your mom?” I ask.

He only shrugs.

Tell me more , I want to say. But why should he be willing to do that when I made it clear I don’t have time to hear his stories, now or even months from now.

The irony of the situation hits me. I closed a door on Micah so I could focus on work, but all the time I put in over the last two days to prep for this meeting with Drake is wasted because I’m with Micah again.

Being right doesn’t give me a warm, fuzzy feeling. I shiver, the cold of the elevator getting to me.

Micah crawls over to sit beside me. “I wish I had a jacket to give you.”

“It’s okay. Unless you meant to strand us here, in which case your planning could use some work.”

“I’ll make a note.”

“Add something about happening to have chocolate with you next time you incapacitate the elevator.”

“Brilliant. No wonder Madison chose you to replace her.”

The tiny flickers of humor I’d been finding wink out.

“Whoa, what just happened?”

I don’t know what he sees in my face, but I feel bleak. “Madison chose wrong.”

“That doesn’t sound like Madison. She doesn’t miss a step.”

“Madison’s only misstep was believing in me. The rest of them are mine.”

He absorbs that for a moment. “I watched you work for four years in high school. I would have no problem trusting you to handle anything important.”

I snort. “Seems like you and Madison have both forgotten that I choke in the clutch.”

“Is this about your meeting tonight?”

“That’s only the latest in a chain of failures.”

“Tell me.” It’s an invitation.

“I’d rather eat dirt than list all my failures for you.”

“Okay. I like quiet.” He settles against the wall and closes his eyes.

I close mine too.

After about a minute, he whispers, “Are you thinking about pee?”

“DAGNABBIT, Micah.” My eyes fly open.

“I’m just saying, since that and failure are on your mind, and you don’t want to talk about failure . . .”

“I don’t want to talk about anything.”

He nods. I close my eyes again and try to think dry thoughts.

Soon he starts humming, but it’s muted, and he can follow a melody, even if he doesn’t stick with any of them for longer than a verse. “Umbrella” by Rihanna. “Fire and Rain” by an oldies singer. When it turns into “Water Under the Bridge” by Adele, I whip my head to glare at him.

He smiles. “You know how to make it stop.”

“Beat you with my shoe?”

He hums “Riptide.”

“Stop.”

He hums louder.

“Fine, Micah! Fine. Everything for the gala is going perfectly, except for the part I’m in charge of. I’m supposed to lock down all the big auction items that will bring in the cash, and I can’t.”

“I need context. Is this a Kaitlyn Armstrong fail where you are upset with an A-?”

“F, Micah. This is an F. I have tried and tried, and I—” My voice catches. I swallow and force myself to say it. “I can’t.”

“You locked down the Juarez chandelier. That’s impressive.”

I pull my legs up, tuck my dress, and settle my forehead on my knees. “We’ll show a small profit. The entertainment is amazing. Everyone will be blown away by the food and venue. We’ll probably clear enough to cover a year of expanded classes at Marigold. But when it’s time for the auction, everyone is going to realize how bad I whiffed this. Only they won’t know it’s me. They’ll see that Threadwork whiffed it. But my parents will know. And Madison will know. And everyone will pity and judge them for not being able to pull off what the other major organizations around here do, and they’ll have to share the humiliation, even though none of that is their fault.”

“The meeting you’re missing, it would have changed all that?”

I shake my head. “I convinced myself it would. That somehow, this time, I would have the right words when I’ve never had them before.” I hug my legs more tightly to my chest. “Whatever it is that makes people fall all over themselves to say yes to Madison, I don’t have it.”

He rests a hand on my back, below my shoulder blade, well above my waist. It’s not a touch that’s asking for anything. It’s a touch that says I’m here .

“Based on six months of working with Madison, I can tell you exactly what she has that you don’t.”

Just what every girl wants to hear. “Can’t wait.”

“She has no respect for boundaries.”

I consider that for a second before turning my head enough to study him out of one eye.

“Tell me it’s not true,” he says. “That woman will charge in and flatten all objections if she wants something.”

My mouth twitches. “It’s true.”

“There are pluses to Madison trespassing through any marked fence she wants to. And there are pluses to you always being mindful of them. You can compare the differences, but you can’t assign either philosophy a higher value.”

“You can in dollars. Because Madison would have gotten every auction item she needed. She’d be turning people away. Like no, sorry, we can’t accept your offer of a Super Bowl suite catered by Carmen Berzatto. Ask again next year.”

“Maybe the problem is trying to do it her way?”

I shrug. I’ve already explained the problem: not being Madison.

He withdraws his hand. I want it back.

“Walk me through it,” he says. “Tell me what happens when you get a no. How does the meeting go?”

“Most of the time, I can’t even get a meeting. I’m trying to set up calls and appointments with people I know by name or reputation, and Threadwork doesn’t mean anything to them. I can’t even get in the room to explain the mission. Sometimes ‘Armstrong’ means something. Our last name is the only reason I’ve gotten the few donations we have.”

“So you need connections. I kind of thought your family was one of the most connected in Austin.”

“My parents are. And it’s mainly their generation controlling the wallets and making philanthropy decisions.”

“So . . . why not have your parents do the asking?”

“Because it’s not their job. It’s mine.”

“But they would help?”

“Yes, but . . .”

“I don’t get it,” he says. It’s a confession, not an accusation. “It seems simple. What am I missing? There has to be a very good reason you’re not asking them.”

Perceptive. Always perceptive.

“All right, Micah.” I straighten my legs and sit back against the elevator wall. “Let me tell you the rest of the story of graduation.”