“Ooo, titty pockets,” Cheryl said, ruminating on the descriptor. “I call it my cheb shelf, but I like that, too.”
Master Bob made a sound of impatience. “Are you going to gawk at your lady friend or come to fight, McKenzie? Or are you scared of being paggered?”
There was a rumble in the crowd as everyone registered the playful insult.
“Get him, Master Tav!” a familiar voice called out. Tav looked over to find Syed and some of the students from his lessons cheering him on.
Portia looked up at him, her eyes bright and the record light on her phone blinking, and he almost forgot he wasn’t a knight. He was just a regular bloke who liked making shiny, pointy objects. A bloke who hated being videoed. But maybe he could put on a show for Portia and the weans just this once.
Tav lowered his mask down and stepped into the circle. He slowly pulled his sword out, whipped it back and forth for effect, then pointed it at his opponent.
“Do your worst, Robert.”
The crowd burst out into raucous applause, happy for the show, and Tav remembered that first time he’d watched an exhibition—how it had changed his life. How it had infused him with a sense of joy, as had his own apprenticeship, when he’d finally decided what he wanted to do with his life.
Portia had been right—he hadn’t been enjoying his work lately. With all the worries about money and the building, he was well on his way to being as dissatisfied with swordmaking and teaching as he had been with his office job. But this? This reminded him of everything he loved about the armory, and how fun his line of work could be.
Bob rushed toward him with a roar and Tav launched himself forward too, kicking up dirt behind him as their swords met with a resounding clang.
“I’ll go easy on you laddie,” Bob whispered as he pressed forward with all his weight against his sword. “Don’t want to embarrass you in front of your woman.”
Tav chuckled. He knew Bob was really asking for him to take it easy, but he wouldn’t be rude enough to point that out.
“Thanks, mate. I owe you one,” Tav said, then pushed Bob back and spun away, twirling the sword above his head in a move that would have left him exposed in a real battle but would impress the hell out of Portia.
This was a marketing opportunity after all—even if the line between selling his product to the crowd and himself to Portia had been hopelessly blurred.
It didn’t matter. After this fight, the exhibition would be over and the illusion would fade. But, like infatuation, it was glorious while it lasted.
Chapter 10
Portia wasn’t fond of coding, but tweaking the website’s template herself had been worth it. It had taken way longer than hiring someone, given all the web searches she’d had to do to supplement her knowledge of coding, but it had been free and was something she could use in the future. There’d been an uptick in business since the exhibition and her GirlsWithGlasses post, but she’d carved out time using the to-do list journal she’d started after bingeing on Hot Mess Helper videos. Caridad called it the “Brain Basura” list, though the technique was anything but garbage. Every morning, Portia took five minutes to “empty the trash” rattling around in her head and “sort” it into “bins” in varying levels of priority: SMELLY BROCCOLI—DISPOSE OF NOW; PRETTY GROSS—CHUCK IT ASAP; STARTING TO SMELL WEIRD; and SNIFF EH. She also jotted down random thoughts but only reviewed them later in the day when her “check the trash” alarm chimed.
The system had helped keep her on track of multiple projects better than anything else she’d tried. She was a little proud of herself, and maybe she wasn’t just getting a big head. Something had shifted in the way Tavish treated her since the exhibition. It was almost like . . . he respected her? And not even grudgingly.
A vibration on the table beside her slowly broke through her focus, and she grabbed the phone while still skimming the HTML code pane.
“Hello?”
“Hi, honey.”
Portia’s stomach executed an elevator free fall at the subtle Southern twang on the other end of the line, an unfortunate automatic reaction that piled shame on top of her anxiety. She should have been happy to hear this voice, and yet . . .
“Hey, Mom. How are you?”
“You know how it is—well, I guess you wouldn’t—busy with work. So busy! Just had a meeting with some investors and now I’m heading over to Brownsville to check out a site that’s for sale. I managed to scoop everyone on this, so I’m hoping to have it wrapped up before anyone tries to edge us out.”
Her mom could be vicious when it came to work, which was a boon in their profession. Reggie’s innate competitiveness had helped her thrive in the family business before pursuing her own dreams, but Portia hated this kind of work, where one mistake or second-guessing yourself could lose the company serious money.
“I’m pretty busy, too, actually.” Portia was embarrassed by the wheedling defensiveness that surged into her tone. It reminded her of when her parents had come home from parent-teacher night comparing Reggie’s honor roll to Portia’s uneven performance, and she’d point out that she’d gotten an A+ in art. “I’m totally redoing the website for the armory. Trying to get it done as quickly as possible because my marketing plan has really been paying off and—”
“That’s nice. Your father talked to you about the position we want to fill, correct?”
A wave of sadness washed through her, leaving anger when it receded. She wished her mother could even pretend to be interested in what she was working on. Feigned interest was a form of politeness Catharine Hobbs excelled at, but she seemed to reserve that talent for other people. Portia would love to know what it felt like to be on the receiving end of that empty cordiality.
“Dad told me you’re looking to fill the position with someone who will stick around for a while.” Portia picked up a pen and started doodling beside the sketches of the various layouts for the website on the pad next to her laptop, then dropped it in frustration. She was a grown woman, even if talking to her mom made her feel like a moody teen.
Her mother sighed. “Well?”
The pressure in that one word was enough to give Portia the bends. One moment she’d been happily immersed in a project she cared about and now she’d been hooked by her mother’s supposed concern and dragged kicking back to the surface of reality.
“I told Dad I would think about it,” she replied.
“If I recall, you didn’t have to think too long about accepting this silly apprenticeship.” Her mother’s voice was coated in disappointment, like poison on the end of a barb that would stay in Portia’s system long after the chastisement was forgotten. “Good to know you care more about some random Scottish people than your own family.”
That tone had always been enough to make Portia burst into tears, and she swallowed against them now. “It’s not like that, Mom.”
She imagined telling her mother about the ADHD tests she’d taken online, all with the same results, but she wouldn’t have been able to stand it if her mother casually dismissed her discovery.
“Oh, I know,” her mother said. “It’s never like that. You do what you want, skip from one thing to another, but being a Jill of all trades, and master of none, can only get you so far. You need a marketable skill and you can’t even take the one we’re handing you?”
Portia closed the laptop, hoping the last changes had saved but not really caring. The site was just another thing she’d mess up eventually, wasn’t it?
“I have to go,” she said. “I have a meeting.”
“Oh, there’s the woe-is-me voice. I’m not trying to be the bad guy, Portia. I just want you to get your life—”
“Talk to you later, Mom.”
Portia sat for a moment after laying her phone down before shaking her head side to side, as if she could knock loose the unhelpful thought patterns her mother had kick-started in her brain.