It’s four in the afternoon and the convention center is buzzing. People flow in and out of the tiny houses and in the far corners, experts give talks and advice on building houses from scratch. Suppliers’ stands are set up around the venue, so nobody raised an eyebrow when I put up my own desk next to our tiny house’s door. In a moment of genius, I made it to the IKEA last night and got a pile of things for my own makeshift stand today. During the night I slapped together a website for Tic Tack Tiny with the basic information and an email address. I managed to make some business cards and a flyer with some clean branding and my plethora of photos. I even got it all printed in time at a twenty-four-hour printer in the city.
None of it is perfect, but it’s something, and people have been signing up for our mailing list, taking flyers, accosting me with questions, and inquiring about prices and deals all day. The one person I need next to me to help out is Raiden.
I’ve been running on adrenaline, but now I’m about to keel over. Nothing prepared me for the crowd’s enthusiasm and simple love for our tiny house. The one person who needs to see this and who everybody’s been asking for, is Raiden.
Some of the industry people who’ve seen Raiden’s woodwork and storage ideas have had so many compliments and wanted to see him to congratulate him on the winning design.
We might have been disqualified, but by the vibes I get from the crowd, our tiny house is by far the favorite. People have been taking photos like mad, and I hope they’re posting them where Raiden can see them. I wonder if he’s caught on to the crowd’s enthusiasm yet, but so far there’s been no word from him. He pretends to dislike social media, but he checks in on our Instagram on the sly all the time. This is the only way to show him how Tic Tack Tiny could take off.
Might be that I’m hoping for too much and that I messed this up beyond repair. For all I know he’s deleted the app from his phone and won’t see the only photo I posted this morning: that of our makeshift stand. There’s still Sunday and the auction at midday on Labor Day; if he hasn’t caught on by then, I’ll call it quits and make my plans to move on. For now, I’m calling it a day. The convention doors are open until five, but I’m drooping over the desk. This is not how I want people to remember the sole representative of Tic Tack Tiny.
I gather what’s left of my flyers and business cards and make a quiet escape. Last night, I got a room at a cheap motel close to the convention center, and I’ve never been so grateful for a mere three minutes’ drive to my bed; it’s even shorter than from the barn to the boathouse. When I get to the motel, the only thing I have energy for before I crash is a shower.
Inevitably I wake up at four the next morning, hungry and somewhat disoriented as to where I am. I reach for my phone on the nightstand‚ blinking at the sharp light. Three missed calls from Raiden.
My heart jumps into my throat and I sit up, hugging my legs close. He’s caught on, but I’m not sure if what I’ve done is enough for him to forgive me, never mind going back to what we were two days ago. I check for messages, but he’s left none.
The bed is empty and I’m alone in a strange place; I’ve never been this lonely before. My anchor is gone, and I’m adrift.
38
RAIDEN
As Hunter’s truck disappears up the road, his final words ringing in my ears, I go in search of my phone. I find it in my truck, where it had dropped between my seat and the armrest, the battery dead. Back in the boathouse, I wait impatiently for it to charge enough that I can turn it on and see if Georgiana contacted me.
I scroll through my calls and messages. There’s no word from her, and in dismay, I sit back on the sofa, wondering how I managed to mess this up so completely. I am crazy for her; there’s no other way of describing how deep she’s crawled into my heart. Ripping her out like I did has left a gaping hole in my chest.
I open Instagram to see if by any chance she’s posted more photos or if she chose to abort the Tiny House Convention too. There is one new photo of our tiny house at the convention center with a desk in front of it. In the caption, she’s typed: Ready for business!
Our followers have jumped to almost fifty thousand people. My thumb trembles as I swipe to where we’re tagged. There are thousands of posts from convention visitors, all tagging @tictacktiny. In many of them, Georgiana stands at a desk in front of our tiny house, talking to people, hands explaining, pointing out something on a piece of paper, smiling. She looks drained but engaged with whoever she speaks to and so…happy.
As I go through the posts, I notice there are flyers and a stack of business cards on her desk. I drill down into the comments and see we have our own hashtag—#tictacktiny—and it has over four thousand posts already.
The deeper I dig, the cooler the chill that spreads over my skin. While I’ve jumped ship, Georgiana has just got on with it and…when did she do all of this? The past few weeks have been crazy busy—despite all the planning, six weeks was an insane timeframe—but she’s got business cards and flyers and by the looks of it, a website. I know this girl is magic, but how and when did she conjure this up? She never told me about any of this.
I brace myself for some groveling and press dial. After a few rings, it goes over to voicemail. I try again, and still she doesn’t answer. When by eight that night she still doesn’t answer her phone, there’s only one thing left for me to do—go hunt her down in Boston.
A shower isn’t going to cure me from the after-effects of my binge drinking; I’m still over the legal limit. I decide to sit it out until the next morning. I manage a few hours of solid sleep, but at four I’m in my truck, heading east.
Sunday mornings in Boston are slow, and I go to my apartment since the convention doesn’t open till ten. I clean up and make sure the place is spotless—I don’t know where my girl’s been spending the night, but if I can get her to forgive me, I hope she’ll be spending tonight here. There’s no more reason for pretense and if she’s as crazy about me as Hunter says she is, she won’t mind.
I grab breakfast en route and head for the convention center, getting there before ten and entering through the staff entrance with the badge I got on Friday. The place is vibey; vendors are all set up and getting ready for a busy day. I stroll by the other tiny houses, burning now to go inside and see how they’ve done the interiors. When I get to ours, I stall a few meters from Georgiana. My heart is in my throat and all I want is to pull her close and breathe in her scent, feel her body molded next to mine, have her arms circle around me in a deep hug to signal that we’re okay.
As if she can feel me staring at her, she looks up. Our gazes connect over the distance and my heart goes wild in my chest, pounding, begging.
“My calls, you didn’t return them,” I say as I walk up to her.
She looks down at her desk, which is tucked neatly between us, the perfect cold distance.
“I didn’t see you called until this morning and then…well, I had stuff to do.” She sits down and pulls out a desk drawer, takes out her purse and drops her phone into it.
“You’ve been busy.” I pick up a flyer and study it, reading the words, one by one. It’s stylish but has an element of quaint cute to it that’s so with the times and perfect. I look at her. Here is a whole side to Georgiana Wess that I haven’t tapped into or explored yet. A creative side that has been reined in the past six weeks as she did everything per my design and direction apart from our shopping spree in Burlington. “When did you do this?”
“Friday night.”
“How?”
“I’m a designer. I do stuff like this.”