Page 16 of Coach
Or maybe it was just that no one had ever asked me to build something so otherworldly and beautiful like this before.
That thought echoed a little too loudly in the quiet of my shop.
Then the door banged open behind me.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, rubbing the knee I knew would bruise from how I’d just leaped into my workbench at the sound. “Do people knock anymore?”
“I did knock,” Stevie’s voice rang out. “Then I heard you muttering like a madman, so I assumed you needed rescuing.”
She marched in with a bag in one hand and a drink in the other, wearing her usual uniform of combat boots, a thrift-store army jacket, and enough rings to start her own currency—rings on fingers, ears, stuck through her nose, and in her lip. She was the only person I knew who wore more metal than a hardware store display rack. She never wore color unless eyeliner counted, and if she’d ever owned a pastel shirt, I’d eat one of my chisels.
Stevie didn’t care what anyone thought of her.
She moved through the world like it was lucky to have her, and if you didn’t agree, she’d tell you to gochoke on your own insecurities—with a smile and a ringed middle finger.
Once, she told a rich client their “exposed beam idea sounded like a high-end prison kitchen” and still closed the sale.
She was like me—kept to herself, didn’t do crowds, and believed in silence as a full sentence. Most people thought we were dating, or had dated, or were about to.
We weren’t.
We never would.
Stevie was family.
She was the one who knew when I hadn’t eaten, or when I’d gone too long without sleep, or when I was pretending I didn’t care about something that was eating me alive.
Stevie didn’t coddle, didn’t hug, didn’t ask twice.
She just showed up.
Most of the time with food.
And her sharp tongue.
And with that look that said, “If you fall apart, I’ll staple you back together and call it rustic charm.”
“I’m working,” I said, still bent over the plans. “Big piece.”
“I can see that. Looks like a haunted jewelry box and Chinese opium dream had a baby.”
“It’s a curio cabinet, fuck you very much.”
In addition to being my best friend, Stevie ran the business side of my shop, keeping the books, handling the paperwork, marketing my services, and selling my finished pieces that weren’t destined for a specific client’s home. I could build almost anything, but without Stevie, my place would be filled with fantastic furniture that no one ever saw or cared about . . . and I’d be eating little more than Ramen noodles like the college dropout I was.
But Stevie was so much more than just my office manager.
She’d seen me through my darkest moments and never said a word about what she’d heard. She was a vault, and I loved her for it. On top of everything, she was almost as weird as me, which scared the hell out of most people but made as much sense as a perfectly fitted dovetail joint to me.
Yeah, that was Stevie, my dovetail.
Come to think of it, she wasn’t just one of my friends; she was my only friend—the only one that mattered, anyway. Friends were like shoes. Why did anyone need more than one pair of shoes? Maybe two, if you counted flip-flops as shoes. Every self-respecting dude owned flip-flops.
“It looks like how I expect my therapist might draw anxiety if she had the art skills of a blind third-grade quadriplegic with a pencil in hismouth,” she said, dropping a bag onto the workbench with a thud. “Which is why you’re going to eat lunch before you pass out and saw off something important, like a foot.”
I straightened, cracking my back in three places, and gave her a flat look. “I’m in great shape.”
“You’re in denial.”
