acting so confusing lately. One minute he told me that I was beautiful, and the next, he threatened to end my career for something completely out of my hands. He also seemed to have a giant chip on his shoulder about Cai, and I wondered why.
For a second, I thought maybe he was jealous of Cai, but that was obviously not the case since Arlo was madder with me than he was interested. I had heard Cai say something to his friends earlier about a couple of the models dropping out, so I figured that might have been adding to Arlo’s stress, too. But still, it wasn’t like that was my fault, either.
I grabbed my tools and started deconstructing one of the pieces. It wasn’t put together right and wasn’t going to translate well when it was mass-produced. I needed to make some changes to it to make the production faster and more fluent. I started getting mad while I was using the thread-puller to remove the seams. Who did Arlo think he was, coming into my workshop and yelling at me I front of the models who would be wearing my designs, over something that wasn’t my responsibility? He acted like an ass, and it made me mad at both him and at myself for not calling him out on it.
Now, here I was, working all through the night again while he was probably at home in his apartment with a relaxing glass of bourbon. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. I hurried to get the stitching pulled out even faster so I could get all this done in time for the new deadline; that would show him. It would show him that not only was I more capable than he gave me credit for but that I wasn’t intimidated by his raised voice and nasty attitude. I was so mad and trying to work so fast that the thread-puller slid out of my hand and cut a sizeable chunk out of the side of my palm. I howled in pain and turned around to grab a spare piece of cloth, but as I went to reach for it, I accidentally grabbed the dress for Kerynne to wear instead.
“Fuck!” I screamed as the tears started to roll down my cheeks.
“Hensley!” Cai called to me as he ran over to see what the matter was. “What the hell happened to your hand?”
“What are you doing here again?” I asked as I tried to bite back my cries. “Why do you keep showing up after hours? Are you stalking me or something?”
Cai laughed. “You wish,” he said. “No, I left my wallet again around here somewhere. It’s a really bad habit of mine that someday is going to wind up costing me my whole bank account, I’m sure. I need it to go out tonight, so I came back to get it.”
I felt like an idiot for accusing him of being a stalker. I clearly wasn’t thinking straight right now.
“Shit, you’re bleeding all over,” he said. He took off his T-shirt, which suddenly made me feel a bit better just because of the gesture and wrapped it around my hand. “Do you think you need stitches?”
“No, it’s looks worse than it is. I just need to bandage it up.” I started to cry again when I looked at the bloodstains on the dress. There was no way I was going to be able to get those out. I would have to redo the entire section that was damaged now.
“That’s a drag about the dress,” he said as he looked over at it. “Will you be able to fix it?”
“Yeah,” I said, sniffling. “I just really didn’t need another emergency to have to fix right now.”
“Ah yeah, you mean about the changed runway show date. Well, between you and me, I think Arlo was acting like an ass,” Cai said.
That made me laugh a little.
“He didn’t have any right or any reason to take his frustrations over that shit out on you.” Cai was right; he didn’t.
I dug out a first aid kit from one of the workshop cabinets and tried clumsily to get the gauze out.
“Here,” Cai said. “Let me help you.”
“Why is it that you seem to keep coming to my rescue?” I asked him.
“You’re just lucky, I guess,” he winked.
I held my hand out, which still had blood dripping everywhere as he unwrapped his shirt from around it. Cai cut and wrapped the gauze around