Page 10 of Checking from Behind

I shoved my phone in my bag, gave Cooper a quick scratch behind the ears, and headed out the door. The leather portfolio went on the passenger seat, where I opened it to check for damage. Two of the three were fine. The third had a coffee stain across the bottom right corner, right where the hardwood sample swatch was mounted. I looked at it and then decided I would have to work around it.

The drive to the client's brownstone in Back Bay took twenty minutes through Boston traffic. I spent every minute trying to push the coffee shop incident out of my mind so I could focus on the presentation I had worked on for weeks. Mr. Andersen was a tech executive in his mid-fifties. He had recently divorced and wanted to update the brownstone he'd gotten in the settlement. It was a beautiful property. Four floors that all needed redoing with the original crown molding, and a kitchen that needed gutting, and he had a budget that could support the work. This was a project that could lead to word-of-mouth referrals in Back Bay.

I needed this job. My business was growing the way new businesses grow in expensive cities: slowly. When I'd moved here, I had enough savings to cover my home and business expenses for a little over a year, but now that cushion was getting thinner with every passing month. I had three active projects: a kitchen renovation in Cambridge, a nursery redesign for a couple in Somerville, and a small commercial refresh for a boutique hotel in the South End. They were small projects, but the money from them helped build my bank account back up. I had almost finished two of them though, and that would mean no more income. What I needed was a marquee project, something that established Winters Design as more than a one-woman operation working out of her living room.

This brownstone could be that project, and with the projected income from it, I'd be able to advertise.

I parked on a side street, checked my teeth in the rearview mirror, paid for parking, and walked into the building with my portfolio under my arm, my shoulders back and my head held high.

The meeting started well. Mr. Andersen was tall and trim with silver hair and the sort of calm confidence that came from decades of success. He shook my hand firmly, offered me sparkling water from a glass bottle, and led me through the brownstone while I took mental notes. The bones of the brownstone were gorgeous: twelve-foot ceilings, walnut floors, plaster detailing that modern builders couldn't replicate. The kitchen was the weak point. The cabinets were outdated, and the layout fought the natural flow of the space, with appliances that belonged in the previous decade. The living areas needed updating, as did the main bath. All solvable, and exciting, if I were being honest. This was the kind of project I'd dreamed about in design school.

We settled at his dining room table, and I took a moment to set up my portfolio. I walked him through my design philosophy: listen first, design second. I shared with him that understanding how a client would use the space was important, something I needed before I could propose how that space should change. I had told him all of that before in our first meeting, then I showed him the mood boards, angling the portfolio to keep the coffee-stained corner facing me.

He leaned in and looked nodding every so often as I went over things. Then he asked me questions about the reclaimed oak I'd sourced for the built-in bookshelves he'd wanted put in the study, and that was when I stumbled.

I knew I'd lost him.

My mind was back in the coffee shop. The look on the man's face, guilty, yes, but also annoyed, like my existence was an inconvenience. The way he'd held out napkins like that was going to fix my coffee-stained silk blouse.

"Miss Winters?"

I blinked. Mr. Andersen was looking at me, his hands folded on the table, his head tilted at an angle that said he'd asked me a question and was waiting for my answer.

"Sorry," I said. The word came out too fast. "Could you repeat the question?"

"Could you source the reclaimed wood for the built-in bookshelves from local suppliers instead to reduce lead time."

"Yes, I have a relationship with a reclaimed wood dealer in Vermont who I prefer to use but I also have another in western Massachusetts."

"What would the lead time be on the one in western Massachusetts?"

My brain had switched off. I ignored his question and showed him wood grain options again, only realizing once I'd finished that I'd already gone over those with him.

I could see the shift in his expression move from interested to polite, which in the client world was a death sentence. Even though I wanted to crawl into a hole I spent the rest of the meeting trying to recover ground I'd already lost. I talked too fast, cramming information into sentences. I skipped an important detail in the budget breakdown, the contingency line item that showed him I'd planned for surprises, which was one of the strongest parts of my proposal. When he asked about my client revision process, I offered a generic response: "I believe in collaboration." I should have given the specific, confident answer I had prepared, detailing my three-stage revision process that includes milestone check-ins and 3D renderings at each phase before starting any work to prevent unforeseen issues.

By the time I packed up my portfolio, I already knew.

"I'll be in touch," Mr. Andersen said at the door, and his handshake was looser than it had been when I'd arrived. I knew he'd already decided, and it wasn't me.

I sat in my car in the parking lot for five minutes, hands on the steering wheel, staring ahead at the dashboard. My chest was tight and my throat felt thick, but I refused to let the tears come. I was furious. Not at Mr. Andersen, not even at the man who'd spilled coffee on me, but at myself. I'd let an accident with a stranger throw me off my game so badly that I'd blown a meeting I'd spent weeks preparing for.

This was the one thing I couldn't afford, and it had nothing to do with the blouse or the lost client. It was the pattern. Letting other people's behavior rattle me so deeply that I lost my footing. The same way a loud voice could still send me sideways. The way a man's frustration, even a stranger's, could reach inside my chest and squeeze.

I'd spent close to three years with a man who'd trained me to be rattled. Who'd perfected the art of throwing me off balance right before something important: a client dinner, a phone call with my parents, a job interview. He did it so I'd stumble and then he'd point at the stumble as proof that I needed him. "See? You can't handle these things on your own, Lillah. That's why you need me."

The memory ran through my mind so fast I couldn't stop it.

Brett. Six foot one, broad shoulders, sandy hair he kept short because the league had forced him to, with a smile that made you trust him and eyes that made you sorry you had. He was a reliever for a minor league team affiliated with the Rangers. He wasn't a star player but was good enough to have a contract and a salary, with an ego that took up so much space there was barely any room for anyone else. He lived as if he were already in the majors and talked as if he were already famous, and he treated me as if I were lucky to be standing next to him.

We'd met at a charity event in Dallas when I was twenty-five. He'd been charming. Funny. Attentive in a way that felt real until it wasn't. The kind of attention that makes you feel seen. The first six months together were wonderful, so good that you stop looking for cracks because the surface is so smooth you can't imagine there's anything underneath.

But there were, and when those cracks appeared, I should have walked away.

It started with comments. Small comments, slipping into conversations as if they were inconsequential, as though he were being helpful. 'Are you sure you want to wear that?' said while looking at a dress I loved. 'Interior design is cute, but it's not really a career, is it?' said at a dinner with his teammates, while all of them laughed. 'You'd be prettier if you smiled more.' He said it while I was reading and focused on something other than him.

Each one landed like a paper cut. Barely noticeable in the moment. Easy to dismiss and easy to explain away. But after hearing them often enough, every one of them stung. Each conversation we had became a minefield of comments, and that was when I started being mindful of the things I said before he could correct me. I'd choose outfits he wouldn't critique, stayed quiet at team dinners, and smiled more.

Eventually his comments became instructions. He'd tell me what to wear to his games, who I could talk to at team events, and who I should avoid. Before long he told me how to behave when his teammates' wives were around, saying I should be friendly but not too friendly, present but not the center of attention. He wanted me to be visible, but silent. An accessory in the room of his life, something he could point to and say, that's mine without ever asking.