Dropping the Ball: a Holiday Rom-Com
Dropping the Ball: Chapter 4

I trail after Madison and Micah, annoyed with myself for doing it, like they’re equals and I’m the tagalong. Micah is my age, my former classmate. Why do I feel like a little kid?

He stops at a table for eight and says, “What do you think about this one?”

Madison’s happy gasp is her answer as she trails a finger over its edge, but I take a minute to walk the table’s perimeter as Micah describes it.

“It’s made from a conference table from an office building teardown, but I upgraded the top.”

“What is it?” Madison asks, running her hand over the shiny surface. It’s a creamy tone with a swirling design of amber bits running through it, but the pattern feels controlled and organic all at once, and I’m trying to think of what it reminds me of.

“This is recycled glass tile in resin,” he says. “The tile is from an executive washroom in the same building. I had it in my workshop for a few months until I saw a murmuration of starlings, and then I figured out what to do with it.”

That’s it. All of a sudden, I see it, how each piece of amber glass is like an individual bird in a flock, but as a whole, they’re moving as one in the hypnotic, fluid curves of a murmuration when hundreds, even thousands, of starlings swoop and swirl through the sky.

In a word, it’s gorgeous, and I want it.

But I don’t want it to be from Micah Croft.

“Glorious.” That’s Madison’s word for it. “I didn’t see this last time I was here.”

“I turn over a lot of pieces now that I have the showroom,” he says. “As soon as one sells, I move in the next one.”

I survey the surrounding pieces more carefully. A mid-century style credenza. A rustic farmhouse coffee table. An ultramodern accent cabinet. “You made all of this?”

“Yeah. Started as a side hustle in college and turned into therapy.” He shrugs. “I only work with recovered construction material, which is why the styles differ. I’m not in control of what I’ll be able to salvage. Each piece has to make its own sense, so they’re not cohesive. But when someone has the eye . . .”

He doesn’t have to finish that sentence with the words unlike you. I can hear them as if he yelled them, and I try not to flush.

He’s calling me out for my dig about a “different direction” and “fancy IKEA,” but I’ve learned a survival tactic to fight a blush: turn the embarrassment into anger. That’s one of Dad’s lessons. Never stay on defense.

Except I like to keep my emotions in a specific range, so I default to irritation over anger. Anger is messy, and I am never messy.

I pull one of my hands out of my pockets and tap the tabletop, like I’m checking its soundness, the click of my red fingernail satisfying in the relative quiet of the store. “Not bad for scavenging.”

“Salvaging,” Micah says, like I don’t know the right term.

I chose “scavenge” on purpose. “Right, salvage. Like junk cars people can donate.”

“I don’t think those cars are worth twelve thousand dollars,” Madison says, examining the price tag hanging near her corner.

She knows cost isn’t an issue, and I’m sure that would cover the price of a single chair at my parents’ dining table, but it does tell me that Micah’s pieces are in demand. Not a surprise since I wanted this piece desperately the second I saw it. But he won’t get the satisfaction of knowing it. I steal Micah Croft’s most defining gesture and shrug. “I’ll take it.”

Madison does a shimmy. I think it’s supposed to be a happy dance, but she probably can’t get her midsection in motion without knocking herself over like an unbalanced washing machine. “Good choice, Katie-Kat. I’ll be able to pull together such a pretty dining room around this.”

“I don’t want pretty,” I tell her. The word conjures delicate floral wallpaper and scrolled furniture. “I want—”

“Serene,” she says. “I know. I know you.” Our eyes meet, and a collection of contentment molecules in my chest organizes into a murmuration of its own, because even though it’s taken time, we’ve grown as tight as sisters should be.

“Do you want to look at any other pieces?” Micah asks.

The answer is yes, I want to look at more pieces. Now that I understand how he works, I want to see and study every single piece in this place. I want to guess its inspiration, see if I can figure out how his brain was working when he made it.

Which makes me sound like I’m reviving a high school crush. It was never like that. Except for most of my senior year. But that crush lasted exactly as long as it took to break my nose.

“No time to look right now,” I answer him, a half second after the silence gets awkward. I am Cool Kaitlyn, and I am not excited about his eclectic wonderland.

“Then I’ll have my assistant handle your purchase and schedule delivery for you,” Micah says. He waves down at his casual outfit. “I only stopped in to grab something from the back room, so I need to get back to my workshop.”

Oh no he isn’t. He is not going to one-up me on who ends this interaction. I am ending this interaction, and he’s trying to beat me to it.

“I have somewhere to be too, unfortunately,” I say. “I’ll send my own assistant over to handle this purchase next week.”

“I can’t hold it past Monday night,” he says.

“I’ll let her know. We better get going, Madison.” I turn to walk past my sister, who is trying to hide her confusion.

Micah falls into step beside me. “Sounds good.”

I reach back to snag Madison’s wrist and pull her along, not slowing down even a tiny bit. I will beat Micah out of this store.

“Do you have a website with all your available pieces?” Madison asks, hustling to keep up.

“I do.”

“Great. Katie’s doing a minimalist thing right now, by which I mean she has exactly one room furnished, so I’ll set up operations in her moonscape of a house and look at your stuff online to figure out what else to put in there.”

Micah’s designs moving into my home . . . It gives me that exposed feeling again. I’m shivering in my emotional SKIMS while Madison plots to spend thousands of my dollars on making my house a shrine to Sir Pectoralis Nosebreaker.

I pick up my pace, feeling guilty for forcing Madison to keep up, but I’ll make it up to her. We’ll stop for a half gallon of her new obsession, Blue Bell gooey butter cake ice cream. I don’t want to live in a world where they discontinue it before her pregnancy is over.

When we reach the entrance, I sense Micah veering left, which is the way we need to go, but I guide Madison toward the right.

“Good to see you,” Micah says. “It’s been too long.”

I glance at him over my shoulder, like I’d already forgotten he was there. “Oh, yes. You too. See you around.”

But what I mean is It’s been too soon.

Way, way too soon.

I walk as fast—but casually—as I can in the opposite direction until we round a corner, then I stop. I literally ran into Micah Croft.

“Why are you speedwalking your waddling sister like we’re running from the mob?”

Madi’s breathing is labored—uh, make that a bit heavy—and yes, she’s waddling, but it’s cute. Even pregnant, Madison’s the hotter version of me. Imagine a bombshell blonde—Margot Robbie—glammed up on the cover of Vogue, full lips pouty, blue eyes sparkling. That’s Madison. By contrast, I’m . . . like a serious Elle Fanning. Imagine someone painting Madison as a subdued Victorian-style portrait, the blue of her eyes muted, thinner lips, flatter hair. You’d see it and think, She’s probably pretty when she smiles.

I am. And I do smile. When I have a good reason to.

“You aren’t waddling,” I tell her.

“Liar. Did we just run away from Micah?”

I scoff. “Pfft. No.”

Her eyebrows go up.

“Fine, yes.”

Her face loses some of its laughter. “Are you going to be okay working with him?”

“Of course.” Not. Of course not. “Don’t even worry about it. Let’s go to the car.” I slip my arm through hers to turn us in the right direction.

“Katie-Kat, you’re going to make this weird with him, aren’t you?”

“Oh my gosh. Settle down. I will not make it weird.”

I will. No question about it. It’s never on purpose, and that’s the whole problem.

I’m one percent less nervous on the second day of school. I kind of know what to expect, at least from teachers. I don’t have to force myself to walk onto campus. I might have succeeded in becoming a beige shadow of myself to my classmates, but just in case, after I walk in with Megan and Lulu, I hide in the bathroom again before first period.

I’m first in my seat. The new Croft kid comes in a minute later, still in his ratty Vans and dark hoodie, although this time he’s swapped jeans for basketball shorts. Guess he’s done dressing up. His long legs are thin but muscled beneath tanned skin.

Why do I notice? Stop.

His eyes flicker to mine, but there’s no nod today. I hope he didn’t notice me staring at his shins. He goes to his desk and slouches, hands in his hoodie pocket.

Drake comes in a minute before the bell. He says, “Smile, Kaitlyn,” again, but this time he brushes against me. He’s looking for a reaction. I lean slightly away. I don’t smile.

This is going to become the low point of each morning. Maybe other kids would think hiding to eat their lunch or reviewing book-length class syllabi is the low point, but no. It’s Drake in Chinese class.

The third day, the new kid doesn’t even look at me before he slouches into his chair. How many days in a row can he wear that hoodie? I do catch a faint whiff of Acqua di Gio as he passes because Hillview is more Armani than Axe. Either way, he smells like he cares at least a little.

Drake walks in seconds before the tardy bell and stops beside my desk. “Hey, Kaitlyn.” I look up at him because it’s the least amount of encouragement I can give him. “You should smile more.”

I answer by leaning the other way to pull my class notebook out as the bell rings. I do not smile. This time his friends laugh, and my body goes too hot with a dump of adrenaline, urging me to go hide in the bathroom. I stay put, but this “smile, Kaitlyn” is becoming a thing, and I don’t want it to be a thing.

By Thursday, I’m dreading first period. Not only do I keep catching myself staring at some new detail on that Micah kid every morning when he walks in, I am in the dumbest power struggle ever with Drake. Now that his friends are paying attention, he’s going to step it up. All I have to do to make it stop is smile, even sarcastically.

I sit down. The new kid comes in a minute later in his hoodie and shorts. A thin leather bracelet peeks from under his cuff. Drake shows up right before the final bell again. He pauses to say, “Smile, Kaitlyn.”

I do not. I keep my eyes straight ahead, watching the second hand on the clock, but while Drake stands there waiting for a reaction, I scratch my eyebrow with my middle finger.

Two of Drake’s friends sit ahead of Micah. One snorts and says, “You got cooked, Drake.” The other one makes a kissing sound.

After roughly a century, the bell rings. I let out a quiet breath. I made it.

Except Drake isn’t letting it go today. As Mrs. Meyers—uh, Meyers-laoshi—takes us through our pronunciation drill, Drake leans over and says, “Your outfit is fire.” His friend next to us gives a muffled snort.

Right. My white polo and gray chinos. So fire. I ignore him.

But he keeps up his stupid freshman boy crap. The next time the teacher isn’t looking, he sniffs and says, “Mmm. Is that perfume or your skin?” From the corner of my eye, I catch his friend giving him a fist bump.

Halfway through class, Meyers-laoshi gives us the option of working quietly or alone with a partner to practice the three sentences we’ve learned so far. I choose alone.

Drake uses the cover of the low chatter to lean all the way into my space and say, “You’re so hot.” His friends laugh and bump knuckles.

I hate this. I ask permission to get water and leave to fill my almost-full water bottle. When I get back, I’m in my seat less than a minute when I hear a different voice.

“I like your hair.” It’s low and quiet. I glance back. It’s the new kid.

My hair is the color of . . . nothing. Of dust. Of the grit that blows across West Texas during the winter. Of oatmeal and burlap and old stucco. I don’t do anything with my nothing-colored hair except wear it in a ponytail to keep it neat.

The new guy saying I have good hair is like telling a Kardashian that no one notices the Botox.

So he’s one of them.

Great. Got it.