32. Megyn
CHAPTER 32
MEGYN
I headed into the coffee shop and went straight to the back and knocked on June’s office door. She opened it a second later and smiled softly out at me. “Hi, Megyn. You want your last paycheck?”
It was only a formality. I had already quit and was indeed here for that sole reason—so far as June knew, anyway. I said, “Yes, please,” not wanting to be rude.
June nodded and opened her door wider. “Come in while I find it. All this clutter.”
I entered the office, feeling wary even though I knew I had done nothing wrong. There wasn’t any clutter to speak of and I saw my paycheck lying in the center of her desk, waiting for me.
June shut the door behind me. She paused to touch the browning leaf of one of her office plants and sighed. “Poor little thing just doesn’t get enough sunlight now. It reminds me of you, in a way.”
I looked at the plant and then down at myself. “I don’t see the resemblance.”
She shook her head. “You never got enough sunlight here at Effervesce.”
I blushed and avoided her eyes.
June shook her head again and went over to her desk, picking up my check. “I saw you on the news this morning.”
“I think everyone in the whole city must have.” I accepted the check June handed to me and tucked it away into my pocket; not having to stare at the amount of money and immediately start parsing it out was liberating. “I got stared at the whole way here. Even dogs seemed especially interested in me.”
June chuckled. “Maybe there’s another reason people stared at you.”
I checked to make sure I had put on pants before leaving the house.
Seeing me, June laughed again and put her hand on my shoulder. “Megyn, you weren’t getting any sun before but now you are a sun. You’re glowing. Happiness comes off you in waves. Even if someone had no idea who you are, they’ll look at you and wonder what it is that has you so lit up.”
I blushed more, heat climbing up the back of my neck, reaching my ears.
“I’m actually glad you’re quitting,” my manager said, and then hugged me for the first time in all the time I had known her. “Now you can go off and be who you’re meant to be.”
“I hope so,” I whispered.
“Oh, I know so.” June waved her hand at me. “Go on. Go be fantastic. Just don’t forget to drop by everyone once in a while and say hi. My office door is always open to you.”
“Thank you,” I murmured. On a whim, I hugged her back.
June patted my back and squeezed me. Her phone started to ring and she pulled away with a smile. “Thank you, for being a very good worker.”
I waved goodbye as she answered her phone and then shut her door. I made my way back up to the front of the shop and walked over to Suzie, the counter separating us.
Suzie looked up at me with bruised, hurt eyes.
So, you saw the interview, too.
“Can I talk to you real quick?” I asked.
Suzie glanced over her shoulder and then shrugged. “Whatever. I guess I can take my break now.”
I led her outside to my car and popped the trunk. She stood back, clearly trying to be impassive.
I pulled out her finished apron and held it out to her.
Her eyes lit up and she snatched it, shaking it to unfold it. “Holy shit.”
“Do you like it?” I asked, feeling a little anxious.
Suzie didn’t answer right away. She pulled the strap over her neck and then tied the ends behind herself. The apron fit perfectly. She laughed. “This is fucking amazing. If I hadn’t paid for it, I wouldn’t know it wasn’t the original.”
Suzie suddenly stopped. “Speaking of pay,” she said, echoing my thoughts, and grabbed her wallet out from her pocket. She handed me a crisp $50.
I tried to push the bill back to her. “I don’t have anything to make change.”
“I don’t want change. I want you to keep it. This is amazing.” Suzie spread her arms and stared down at her apron admiringly. “If I’d known you were this good, I’d have been buying from you for ages.”
A warm flush went through me. “Thank you.”
“Maybe I’ll have to visit you at your shop.”
“Maybe.” I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to talk about anything even remotely related to the interview. “Well, I’m glad you like it. I have to go to a meeting now.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I bet you do.” Suzie dropped her arms, a heavy weight descending in the air around her. “I guess you’ll be doing a lot of stuff like that now you’re with Carter.”
I winced, recalling the kissing and the exchange of I-love-yous that we’d done on camera. I hadn’t watched to see what parts of the interview aired on Channel 13, but that part had clearly been included. “I’m sorry, Suzie.”
“No, you’re not.” Suzie gave a little sad smile. “And that’s okay. I guess Carter and I weren’t meant to be. And he seems really happy with you. I guess that’s all I ever wanted, for him to be happy—though I really hoped it would be with me.”
I didn’t really know what I could say to that.
“Well, anyway.” Suzie cleared her throat. “Thanks again for the apron. And good luck. Just know if you and Carter don’t work out, I’ve got dibs on him.”
I laughed, because that was much more like the old Suzie. “Okay. I’ll let him know.”
“See you around.”
“You will, don’t worry. I’ll stop by for coffee sometimes.”
Suzie left, taking her apron inside.
I got in my car and drove home in a hurry, my heart jammed in my throat. Every minute that passed had my heart beating even faster. I’d spent too much time at the coffee shop and now I feared I might be late.
Sure enough, when I pulled up in front of my house, a van had already parked on my driveway.
I parked on the street and jumped out to meet an older man halfway across my diminutive, brown lawn. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” I blurted out.
“Hey, it ain’t nothin’. I just got here a minute ago.” He grinned, flashing a chipped tooth. “Why don’t we go inside and we can get down to business?”
“Of course.”
I led him into the house. Earlier, workers had cleared out most of my belongings, taking what I wanted to Carter’s house and sending the rest to the dump. Now, except for a last few pieces of furniture and some appliances, the house was as barren as it must have been on the day my parents moved in.
The man with me was a contractor. He brought out a blueprint of the house’s layout. “Why don’t we take a walk around so I can get familiar with the place?”
“Okay,” I agreed.
I thought it would take maybe about five minutes, that he just wanted to make sure each room matched what was on the blueprint. I couldn’t have been more wrong. He spent an hour measuring and remeasuring, tapping on walls, checking for studs, analyzing how the house fit together. He didn’t say much to me except to ask me to hold his measuring tape to this or that spot, and to tell me what parts of the house would absolutely need to be fixed up.
Returning to the living room, we sat on the floor. He shoved me his blueprint, with his notes scribbled all over it. “I don’t know what it is you’ve got in mind for the place. We’ll get to that. I just know you want to make it a store. Here’s my recommendations for the layout. We can knock out this wall separating the living room and dining room area. That will really open up the space. And the walls between the bedrooms can go, too. Can’t do much with the hallway without really getting messy.”
I started getting excited. “That’s exactly what I want. I want this big main, front area to be the shop floor. Maybe over along where the sink is can be the register counter. And the smaller area back where the bedrooms are can be storage and the craft corner.”
“Sure. We can do that. But if you want, we can turn the two bedrooms into a bigger craft corner, for your lessons, and have the smaller one for storage. We can connect it to the craft corner and the hallway with doors here and here.”
Tears sprang into my eyes. I was only looking at a crumpled piece of paper with scribbles all over it, but it was so perfect.
The contractor held his hanky out to me, monogrammed with the initial R.
I took it and wiped at my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You’re making your dream store. You’re allowed to get emotional.” He chuckled and patted my shoulder gently.
“Thank you.” I sniffled.
He patted me again. “Here’s what we’ll do from here. I’ll make out a modified blueprint of what the place will look like with the walls taken out and send it to you. Then we can focus on what will go where. You’re meeting with an interior designer, right?”
I checked the time on my phone, and was amazed even through my dismay. “In only a few minutes!”
“Mr. Bryant will set us up to have our own meetings. I’ll get everything in place according to your design needs and everything will go from there.” He stood up and reached down to help me. “There might be a lot of back and forth for a bit here, but that’s normal. It’s just to ensure we’re all on the same page.”
“I understand.” I handed him his hanky and shook his hand. “Thank you.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
I walked the contractor to the door. The interior designer was coming up to the door right at that very moment, so they swapped places.
Again, I sat on the floor with a professional. He was much taller than me, slim as a telephone pole and with huge oversized glasses that appeared to be trying to swallow his face.
He didn’t look like someone I could trust with designing my dream store, but Carter had hired him, so I decided to give him a chance.
The designer said, “So, a sewing store. Puh-lease tell me we’re going to do something more exciting than setting up shelves.”
I laughed and smiled. “I think we’re going to get along.”
He clasped his hands together and beamed. “I’m overjoyed. Tell me some of your ideas.”
“And you’ll let me know what’s possible?”
“Dear, everything is possible. I just want to do some brainstorming with you.”
Excitement bubbled inside me and I leaned forward, my hands on my knees. This was where I could really turn the house into the vision in my head. Only so much could be done to the overall structure of the house, but I could fill it with anything I wanted.
“I don’t want just rows of shelves. I don’t want this to be a boring place that looks like an old lady runs it. I want color and creativity. I want everything possible to look like it’s been crafted.”
“Ooh,” he said appreciatively.
I smiled more. “Maybe the register counter could look like a bin? Or a sewing box! I want flower windows and paper airplane models from the ceiling, and carpeting that looks like unrolled spools of thread. Knitted curtains. Button seats. Shelves that look like actual shelves, like hobby boxes or cubbies.”
“Hold on there,” the designer said, laughing. “I wasn’t expecting so much all at once. I have to find a pen and write all this down.”
I smiled, envisioning how my store would look when it was all done. It would be a long process full of lots of hard work, but it would be so worth it in the end.