Dropping the Ball

31. Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six

Micah

Kaitlyn finishes her story, not looking at me. “Some wounds don’t heal.”

At some point during her story, I drew my legs up too. My wrists rest on my knees, and I rotate one, flexing and curling the fingers. I watch them as I say, “I have a couple of those. I get it.”

“It was bad enough to see the look on his face when I told him I wasn’t valedictorian,” she says. “But he was right. There were Hillview parents who made a point of saying things to him after the ceremony. ‘Beautiful announcements, but I thought Kaitlyn was the valedictorian.’ Thrilled to rub it in his face. I had to stand there and watch him take it, pretending like he wasn’t bothered, forcing himself to make a joke about how ‘calculus got the upper hand at the finish line.’”

“Kaitlyn, you didn’t fail.” I stop flexing my hand to rest it on her knee and give it a gentle squeeze. “I beat you.”

She whips her head to glare at me, but she wants to smile. She almost does. “Because you broke my nose.”

“That pole broke your nose when you walked into it because you were so into me.”

“I hate you.”

I lean my head against the wall and give her knee another light squeeze. “I don’t think you do.” Maybe this would be easier if she did. Maybe I would be less hungry for her. For the smiles I win from her. For the way she lets me in enough to pull me deeper before she shuts me out again.

“Why do you call me Katie sometimes and Kaitlyn other times?” she asks after a couple of minutes.

I open my eyes. “I do?”

She nods.

“Not sure. I do know I will always think of high school you as Kaitlyn. Do you have a preference?”

“I prefer if you refer to me as Ms. Armstrong.”

“Brat.”

“Only when I don’t get what I want.”

I smile. “I don’t think that’s true. I think you just described your sister.”

“The one who gave you forty thousand dollars to do that sculpture? Your benefactor? That brat?”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

She flashes a grin. “You’re not wrong. She can be a brat. But somehow she makes you not mind.”

“Must be a sister thing.” This is the most “difficult” Kaitlyn has ever been, and I still don’t mind being trapped in this elevator with her.

“I’m sorry about my meltdown.” She gestures to our accommodations. “This isn’t your fault.”

“It’s okay. I understand it better now. But for what it’s worth, if you tell your family about the auction, I’ll bet all they see is how hard the job is if you can’t pull it off. Not that you failed.”

“Not the Armstrong MO, but points for assuming healthy family dynamics. Do you want to take a turn? You can have a meltdown if you want.”

“I don’t melt down. Want a confession inst—?”

“Yes.”

“Ha. Don’t get excited. It’s nothing interesting.”

“Confess. I’m tired of sitting outside of my turtle shell by myself.”

I sort of regret opening this door, but she’s right; can’t make her sit in here with only her confession between us. “My confession is that sometimes I’m too comfortable with meltdowns.”

She purses her lips like she’s thinking. “Because of your mom?”

“Yeah. I don’t have bipolar, but in a way, when you’re the kid of someone who has it, you can kind of get . . . addicted to the mania? Maybe addicted isn’t the right word.” I pick at a piece of lint on my joggers. I may have some of this stuff figured out now, but I don’t have much practice explaining it. “More like if that’s what feels normal to you from someone else, you start looking for it. Remember when I mentioned my college girlfriend?”

“The one I hate?”

I shoot her a glance. “You’re very hateful in general today.”

“Not sorry.”

“This one sounds like jealousy.”

“Wishful thinking.”

“Uh huh.” She’s jealous, and I like it. “If you are, don’t be. We were together two years, and it should have ended after six months. She wasn’t bipolar, but definitely a big feelings, big expression of those feelings type. I thought that was how it was supposed to be when you love someone. Huge fights. Drama. Shows the feelings are deep. But my roommate was a psych major, and he made me listen to a podcast about codependency. Turns out thinking something is only real if it’s constant drama is codependent.”

She winces. “I didn’t mean to trigger anything for you. Are you okay?”

“No, that’s not what I was—” I break off with a short laugh. “I was trying to say I’m okay with your big feelings, that’s all.”

She stares at me, her eyes big and soft.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“It’s giving ‘kiss me.’” I became an expert on that look on Halloween.

“I don’t want you to kiss me.” When my glance flicks to the goosebumps on her arms, she folds them.

I pat my lap. “Come here, friend.”

“You’re not listening, Micah.”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. But you’re cold, you’ve got goosebumps, and I can warm you up and not stare at you. Win-win.” I make my legs into a vee. “Come sit here so I can listen without staring at your lips.”

She hesitates before she gives a small shiver and scoots closer. “Only because I’m cold.”

I situate her in front of me, then wrap her in my arms and wait for her to relax.

After a few seconds, the starch goes out of her spine, and she gives me her full weight and a small sniff. “You’re a good jacket.”

“Happy to help.” I answer with a gentle squeeze of my arms. “Speaking of which . . .”

The starch is back. “Is this going to be a lecture on why I need to ask my family?”

I run my thumbs up and down her bare upper arms, hoping it calms her. “No. It’s me telling you I understand why you won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been lucky my whole life that people have always been willing to help me. Maybe they felt for me because of my mom. But the help was always there, and I always took it. I didn’t know what else to do. But not all help is equal.”

“Meaning . . .”

“My uncle and his family, they helped us so much financially. The house, my tuition. I’m grateful. But we don’t have a close relationship, and we never will. He holds it over us all the time. Him. My aunt. My cousins. They don’t want us to pay it back. They want the high they get every time they think about what good people they are for doing it. But they’re not my real family. Real family is different.”

She frowns. “What do you mean, your real family?”

“Chosen family.”

“Your neighborhood?”

“They gave when they had less to give, and stuff that means more than money. Time. Care.”

“That’s how Madison’s friends are. When she and I started working on our relationship, they scooped me up like I’d been there all along.” She nestles against me. “It really means something. To be chosen.”

“If your family is like my uncle, I get why you don’t say anything.” Does she realize she leaned into me when she talked about being chosen? I’m not dumb enough to point it out.

Quiet falls between us, and I listen to the distant noises from the elevator shaft, small ones, like when a house settles at night.

“My neighborhood is part of the reason I couldn’t ask you to prom,” I tell her. “I was broke. But I also babysat for my neighbor, Jeremy, every weekend. His wife left him, and he could earn more if he worked swing shifts, but he had a hard time finding childcare. So I watched his two kids. He paid me what he could afford, but he also taught me a lot of stuff. How to fix stuff in our house. I had to patch a lot of drywall.”

“Your mom?” Her voice is soft.

Her hair brushes my chin when I nod. “He taught me woodworking. Stripping and repainting. One time, I found a nightstand waiting for garbage pickup and refurbished it. Made twenty dollars. My first sale. I went over and gave him half. He shoved it back and said it was a babysitting bonus.”

“I’m imagining borderline emo high school Micah working on that discarded nightstand the way you did schoolwork.”

I smile. “How did I do schoolwork?”

“Patient. Thorough. Meticulous. Had to be the same when you fixed that nightstand.”

“Probably, yeah.”

“I can picture you bringing that money to him. You were a great kid.”

“I was raised by a great neighborhood.”

“Sounds like it.”

The thing about chosen family is they will also choose the people you bring them. “Katie, if Thanksgiving is going to be that stressful, come to ours. A few families on the street get together. It’s low-key. Paper plates. No one asking you for a gala report. You’re welcome at our table, friend.”

I rest my chin on her head and feel her tiny sigh.

“It sounds nice. Our Thanksgiving is fancy. China. Silverware. Linen napkins. Our nice clothes. Stuffy. Armstrong stuff is always high-key. But it will have one thing yours won’t.”

“What’s that?”

“My baby niece.”

“I withdraw my bid.”

“Other than that, I’m dreading it.”

“I can be your wingman.” After her description of the dinner after our class ranks changed, I don’t want her to face down her parents alone. “I’ll back you up if they give you a hard time about the auction.”

Starch again. She straightens, creating a gap that makes my chest cold where she’d been resting.

“I’m not telling them.”

“Are you that scared?”

She moves away, standing to stretch, and doesn’t answer.

“Kaitlyn.”

“I’m not scared of my family.”

“I meant scared of asking them for help.”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“Fine.” It’s not fine, but I know this look. I’ve been locked out. I cross my ankles and choose to stay loose. “What’s worse? Failing or asking for their help?”

“I don’t have the bandwidth to sit and dissect my failures while I’m actively failing with Drake Braverman right now.” She shoves her hands through her hair, and it’s only the second time besides zombie night that I’ve seen it anything less than sleek.

Drake Braverman. I take her in again, noting the details. A dress, a lot different than the suits I see her in for work. It’s so pretty on her. She looks strong—she is strong—but also soft in a way she never dresses around me. I don’t like it.

It’s not my place to not like it, but I can’t help the words that come out of my mouth. “This was all for Drake Braverman? Got it.”

She gives me the look my question deserves—mild disgust that quickly turns to cool distance—and doesn’t bother responding. Just sits in the opposite corner, leans back, and closes her eyes.

I wish she would yell. The silence is harder. But that’s an old impulse. My mom’s silence always scared me more than her angry manic phases. At least when she was yelling, I knew she was still there .

This silence from Kaitlyn, it feels weaponized.

I keep my own silence, forcing myself to focus on all my non-gala work. The add-on unit I’m working on for a Round Rock home. A fireplace mantel I want to build out of tile recovered from the Western restaurant renovation. A chair I need to repair in my dining room.

An hour later, we’re still sitting in silence when Ty’s voice breaks it, calling my name in the distance.

Thirty minutes later, the Austin Fire Department has liberated us, and when we finally make it to our cars, Kaitlyn and I haven’t spoken.

“Bye, Kaitlyn. Sorry about the elevator thing.”

She gives me a single nod and drives away without another word.