I rolled my eyes.
“I think I’ll have to pass,” I said. “Um, I’m kind of working on Rory’s dress. I just started cutting and I was going to pin it all together.” I didn’t want to be rude, but Rory was part of my life before Ryder.
“No, that’s fine. I should have said something ahead of time instead of being all spontaneous. I’m not very good at the whole planning thing. But I’m trying to get better.”
“I’m really sorry. That’s really sweet of you.” Ugh, I felt like a bitch.
“How about this. I can hang out and keep you company while you work, and you’ll have incentive to work faster, and then I can maybe take you out to a later dinner?” He didn’t give up that easily. I had to admire that persistence.
I tried not to agree too quickly.
“That might be okay. Come on.” I stepped aside and let him in, wishing he was in front of me so I could watch him walk in those jeans. It had to be a beautiful thing. My jeans were so lucky.
“That’s a nice color,” he said, brushing a scrap of material.
“Thanks. It was Inari’s idea, actually. This is what it’s going to look like,” I said, showing him the final sketch. “It’s for their anniversary,” I added. “But don’t tell your brother or else I’ll use your eyeballs for pincushions.”
He shuddered and stepped away from the table.
“I wouldn’t dare.” He grabbed one of the intern’s stools and sat on it, folding his hands as if he was worried about touching anything.
“How was work?” I asked, feeling weird about having him there sitting and waiting for me.
“Shit. People are disgusting. I’m not meant to work in food service.” I looked at him over my shoulder. He was leaning back on the stool, defying the laws of gravity.
“Well, then you can cross that one off your list. I’ve heard this saying that in order to find out what you do want to do, you start with what you don’t want to do,” I said, starting to cut the fabric. I loved the sound of cutting fabric. I was weird like that.
“Well, I don’t want to work in a restaurant. And I don’t want to be a drug dealer. So that’s two things right there.”
I looked up and smiled at him.
“See? You’re making progress. Was being a drug dealer really even a possibility anyway?”
He tipped forward in the chair.
“Yeah, it was. Before.” He was probably talking about before he’d OD’d. Or at least I assumed. “I mean, I wasn’t a dealer or anything, but I sold things here and there. Most of my friends were dealers and were always trying to get me into it. Something always stopped me, though. Don’t know what.”
I went back to cutting.
“Common sense? Not wanting to go to jail?” I said, keeping my eyes on the fabric. I had to cut it precisely or else the dress wouldn’t look right. And I didn’t buy extra material in case I screwed up. I used to, but I didn’t anymore. Cut once.
“You might have noticed that I don’t exactly have a whole lot of common sense. And that isn’t something you can just figure out. You either have it or you don’t.” He was being too hard on himself. He might not have common sense, but he had street smarts, and that wasn’t something you came by easily. You had to work for that.
“Or maybe you don’t think you do, but you do. Maybe you’re underestimating yourself.” I finished the first piece and set it aside so I could cut the rest.
“Maybe you think I’m much smarter than I actually am.”
I looked up at him. “What? You’re so much more than you give yourself credit for,” I didn’t mean to be all hoorah-life-coach, but it made me mad when he was down on himself. “But if you want to throw yourself a fucking pity party, go ahead. The door is that way,” I said, pointing with my scissors.
He held both his hands up in surrender. “Whoa. Be careful where you’re pointing those things. I yield, I yield.”
That made me laugh. If I was ever going to get this done, I was going to have to focus, so I went back to cutting. Ryder got off his chair and started wandering around, looking at everything. It made me a little uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to tell him to stop. That would prove I was uncomfortable and might make him want to do it more. Hell, it wasn’t like he was going through my underwear drawer. This was just my studio. Nothing shameful or weird here.
“This is nice,” he said, drawing my attention to a dress that Inari was playing with. Every now and then I let her work on her own projects. She wanted to be a designer and was using me to work her way up. I was perfectly happy to let her use me, teach her the business, and how to manage. She’d probably be much better at it than I was and would someday kill it at fashion week. But then I could say I knew her way back when.
“That’s Inari’s. She’s got some really interesting ideas about cuts and colors and patterns. She’s crazy talented.”
He gave me a weird look and moved on to look at some more things.