Page 6 of Designed for Disaster

I stopped the jigsaw and laid it down, making sure the blade was facing away from me. “Oh god, what did you break this time?”

“Nothing!” Stacy cried, mock offended. “Why do you always assume I broke something?”

“Because the last time you started a sentence like that, your kitchen table was in pieces, and you needed me to fix it.”

Stacy put her hands on her hips. “I told you I was trying something new for a show.”

“I don’t see how the table legs were necessary for your costumes.”

“I swear I haven’t broken anything. What are you working on?” Stacy asked as she drew near.

“The coffee table I told you about. Remember? The commissioned piece for that TV exec.”

“Ooh, the one with the pretty glass inlay?”

“Yep.”

“Ah, yes,” Stacy said. “Now the holes make sense. I thought you’d let the jigsaw get away from you.”

I snorted. “I’m still waiting for the glass.” Backorders were the bane of my existence. I shoved my safety glasses up to the top of my head, displacing my bangs.

Stacy whipped her phone out. “Hold it right there.” She snapped a picture of me. Or actually, a series of pictures.

I wrinkled my nose and held my hand up, blocking her shot. “No, c’mon. What are you doing?”

“Costume inspo. For my next show.”

I frowned. “I thought your next show was that depressingWar and Peaceknockoff.”

“That’s mynextnext one,” she corrected me. “Next up is the ‘futuristic-tech-meets-steampunk’ one.”

“Uh-huh.” Though her day job was at a temp agency, Stacy had big dreams of being a Broadway costume designer, and she was paying her dues and building her résumé by designing for every crappy way-the-hell-off-Broadway production she could find.

She looked down at her phone, then flipped it around to show me. “You always look sexy in your safety glasses. Let me make you a Tinder profile already. I bet I could drum up a handsome woodworker. Someone who’s handy, in more ways than one. You know. The type who can use his ‘power tool’ to work you over just right.”

I doubled over laughing. “That was so terrible.”

Stacy waved her hands across her invisible canvas. “I’m trying to paint a picture here of the sexy carpenter I foresee for you.”

“Well, you can keep him,” I said. “I have no time to entertain whatever guy you drum up.” Not when I was about to be job hunting again. “Plus, I don’t know if I’d get on with someone so similar.” Been there, done that. And it’d ended very badly. I’d lost an amazing job, my boyfriend, and my living situation all in one go. “You know, opposites attract and all that.”

Stacy sighed. “You’re probably right. I’ll keep the sexy carpenter for me and find you someone else. Maybe a man who really loves coffee so he won’t mind hanging out at the café while you work.”

“He won’t see me at The Blend. Not after today,” I muttered. “I got fired.”

“No, wait! What? I loved that place. I got so much free coffee.”

“Let’s just say there’s a man in this city I’d very much like to take a power tool to,” I muttered. “And not in a fun sort of way.” I wondered how Mr. Table Tyrant would fare against my jigsaw. I’d like to poke a couple holes into some vital things.

“Oh god,” Stacy said, plopping down on the stool at my small desk. “Customer from hell?”

“You would not believe this guy,” I said. “I mean, I hear those customer horror stories all the time, I just never thought I’d experience one in person.”

“What did he do?”

“I could hear him on the phone being a major jerk to his dad, first of all. It all went downhill from there.” As I recounted the series of events, Stacy’s jaw dropped further and further.

“That’s awful!”

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