Dropping the Ball: a Holiday Rom-Com

Dropping the Ball: Chapter 3



I struggle to find my composure as I stand here in front of Micah Croft. No luck, so I fake it by offering him a smile.

Had Madison sneezed when we walked out of her house today? I learned about a Bengali superstition in Bangladesh this summer that sneezing when someone walks out of the house brings bad luck. Running into Micah, unprepared, is the worst luck I’ve had in ages.

“Hello, Micah.” I can’t fake my emotions, but I’m a pro at hiding them. I’m sure my face shows about as much life as my bare walls do. Curse those bare walls and this moment they’ve led me to.

“You know each other.” Madison acts like I’ve just won a jackpot, not run into a former classmate after several years.

“Micah was the valedictorian of my class,” I say. “We go way back.”

Madison’s eyes widen for a split second. She’d been out of the house for three years by the time I graduated, but even she had heard my furious rants about having to settle for salutatorian at the last minute. She keeps her smile in place. “I didn’t realize you went to Hillview, Micah.”

She’s saying this for me, letting me know that she’s aware of the situation—now.

“High school doesn’t usually come up when people are looking to hire an architect.” Micah’s tone is relaxed. Of course it’s relaxed. It’s always relaxed. It was one of the most irritating things about him. The most irritating was that gleam in his light brown eyes, like he was laughing at me but I didn’t know why, and it’s happening now. Again.

“Guess not. So lucky we ran into you today,” Madison says. “You would have met next week anyway, but now we’ve got a jump on introductions.”

Did Micah know I was involved with Threadwork when Madison hired him? Would knowing he’d eventually work with me have made him more or less likely to take the job?

“Yeah, lucky,” Micah repeats. The trace of humor in his tone makes me realize that I have been standing here barely two feet from his muscles, almost frozen, for at least a full minute.

Crap, it’s high school all over again.

I take a step back so fast that the heel of my boot catches on the edge of the jute rug we’re standing on and I stumble. I probably would have landed on my butt except Micah grabs my elbow and holds me until I’m steady.

High school. All. Over. Again.

“You good?” he says, and even though his expression is concerned, I have no doubt there’s another laugh lurking in there.

“I’m great.” I smooth my hands down the tweed of my slacks and force my mind to focus. I’m an adult now. With an important job. And nothing to prove. And he’s standing here in jeans and a beat-up-looking gray T-shirt. In fact, I am Micah’s client, which means for right now I’m essentially his boss.

This helps me locate my spine, which I straighten the tiniest bit, as if it will close the height gap between us. I’m five feet six, but even in three-inch heels, Micah towers over me. I hate noticing all these things when I don’t want to. How he’s filled into that height, shoulders and chest broad, jeans skimming over muscled thighs. Dark hair tidier now, but still on the verge of being too long. He’s Jacob Elordi minus three inches and make his jaw normal. His reedy emo teen self might have appealed to adolescent tortured poets, but his grown self?

His grown self is so much worse. Not reedy. Not emo. Very, very grown.

Boss, I remind myself. I can handle this.

“You’re an architect,” I say. “I didn’t know that’s what you were interested in.”

“You didn’t know much about me at all.” He says it without any bite.

Madison’s eyes dart between us. She can read a room better than anyone I know, but there’s more history here than she realizes, so I need to steer the conversation.

“My sister suggested we come check out Remix for some interior work I need done.” I glance around his showroom. Even though it’s a galling sort of irony that Madison thinks Micah Croft’s aesthetic would fit me best, I’m satisfied to see she’s wrong. It’s a smaller showroom, but it’s still filled with conflicting styles, a hodgepodge of pieces a more generous person might call “eclectic.”

Design Row is basically an upscale mall except they call the spaces “showrooms,” and it’s only for home interiors. The showroom next door is nothing but kitchen faucets, and the showroom across from Remix Aesthetic is all ceiling fans.

“Is it hard to compete with Only Fans over there?” Madison asks.

I refrain from rolling my eyes. Sure, I thought the joke, but of course she has no problem making it.

Micah laughs, a low, rich rumble, and the hairs at the nape of my neck stand up.

I can’t believe my body is having unauthorized reactions to him after all this time. I have got to get out of here. “You have some interesting work, but I need a different direction. It was good to see you.”

I turn to leave, but Madison snags my wrist and gives it a gentle tug. “Since we’ve lucked into running into the owner himself, why don’t you show us some of your favorite pieces? I’m thinking statement pieces, like a dining table to start. Once we have that, I can pick colors and accents to complement it.”

“Always a good move.” Micah fixes me with a thoughtful look.

I want to twitch. Scratch suddenly itchy spots. Shift from foot to foot. Instead, I slide my hands into my pockets like the spotlight of his light brown eyes isn’t pinning me in place.

As if he’s reached a conclusion, he gives a brief nod and switches his gaze to Madison. “Scandinavian, natural textures, muted tones?”

Madison’s eyes dart from his to mine to his again, a small smile curving her lips. “Got it in one,” she says in a tone of approval.

What? No. No approval. I do not approve of my sister and my high school archnemesis summing up my style in a single guess. I do not approve of Micah’s tone when he says “muted.” It feels like an insult.

I curl my hands into fists in my pockets where they can’t see me do it. “I’d prefer something besides fancy IKEA.”

Micah smiles. “I offer literally the opposite of disposable furniture. Why don’t we go take a look?”

Without waiting for an answer, he turns and heads toward the other side of the showroom while Madison mouths, Be nice.

Easy for her to say. Her past did not just come back to haunt her.


Freshman Year

In which Micah appears . . .

I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s the first day of school on the campus I’ve attended for three years. But that was the middle school. Today I start at the upper school. It’s on a completely different part of the grounds, and since many kids don’t start at Hillview until high school, there will be at least one new face for every face I know.

One more step puts me officially on the upper school grounds, other students streaming past me from the parking lot and into the school like that last step—first step?—isn’t a big deal.

How many of them will know about the scandal surrounding our family? How many of my classmates will rush to tell the ones who don’t know?

A flash of purple catches my eye as Madison—finally done touching up her makeup in the car—passes me. She’s wearing metallic leggings and a black corset top, crappy quality that I know she hates. When she came downstairs to drive us to school, Mom said, “This is not who we are.”

Madison had shrugged. “It was made in one of our factories. It’s exactly who we are.”

The outfit is a protest, and Mom doesn’t say anything else because we both know the next line out of Madison’s mouth if Mom keeps pushing. You’re lucky I’m going to school at all. She tried to drop out of Hillview for public school over the summer to make a point that she wasn’t going to take our parents’ “dirty” money. They had to threaten to pull the Armstrong endowment that funded scholarship students at Hillview to make her stay.

It’s been like this since the factory collapse last year. If she and Dad aren’t in a shouting match about it, her silent treatments are just as deafening.

As she disappears into the building, I glance down at myself to make sure I’ve done everything I can to deflect the attention Madison goes looking for. Khakis. Polo shirt. Hair in a ponytail. Nothing to see here.

I head straight into the bathroom and find a stall to hide in. As soon as I lock the door, my bestie chat lights up.

MEGAN

Grrrrls. We have cute new boyzzzzz.

LULU

I’ve seen 3

MEGAN

Where are you Kaitlyn

I’m supposed to meet them by the lockers we were assigned last week during upper school orientation, but walking the halls right now feels like volunteering for a public shaming, and I can’t.

Stomachache. See you at lunch.

MEGAN

First day nerves. Sorry about Chinese!

That’s my first class. The hardest language ever, but Dad thinks it’ll be good for me to learn it so I can communicate with our Chinese suppliers when I start working for the company. Lulu was going to take it with me, but she can’t because she’s Chinese and already fluent in Mandarin, so the school said no. Bad enough I have to take it by myself, but having it first period? Not how I want to start my first day of high school: in a subject I don’t know except for what I tried to practice on Duolingo this summer.

I stay in the stall until the bell rings, and then I slip out, eyes on the ground, and head to class.

The teacher asks our names and seats us alphabetically. I slide into mine and watch the other kids file in. I watch the new kids especially, most of them coming in with smiles, some real, some hiding nerves. Except one kid. One kid who comes in wearing a hoodie and jeans despite the late summer heat. And Vans fraying at the toe. Strong “I don’t care about impressing you” energy. Is it real or an act?

He tells the teacher his name is Micah Croft. Ah. He’s probably related to that Croft girl in Madison’s class. Their family owns a NASCAR team or something. He gives me a tiny nod as he walks down the row next to me to his desk, and for a split second . . .

The universe glitches.

Meeting his eyes creates the tiniest friction, enough for my brain to capture and imprint his face. Thin with high cheekbones, dark hair, light brown eyes in a thick fringe of eyelashes, and his mouth? It doesn’t look like it smiles much.

I drop my gaze without returning the nod. I’m not stepping out of my safety bubble until I’m very sure who I’m dealing with.

As if starting with Chinese by myself on the first day isn’t bad enough, Drake Braverman walks in.

I slouch, hoping there’s a new kid coming between A-r-m and B-r-a, but the teacher points him to the seat behind me.

“It’s Chinese, not death row,” Drake says as he passes me. “Smile, Kaitlyn.”

I do not smile.

I survive the day. If people are gossiping about me, they keep it low-key.

Only a hundred seventy-nine days to go.


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