Page 39 of Seale the Deal

Sit, I say, more command than request.

Her lips part slightly, and unless I imagined it, her breath catches. She looks at me, her large brown eyes searching, as though she’s weighing whether to argue my demand. Then, without another word, she sets the plate of waffles down.

We go over to the kitchen table, where she lowers herself onto one of the chairs.

I kneel in front of her. This might sting.

More than the needle going in?

Fair point.

A tiny dot of blood still beads near the ball of her foot. I wrap one hand carefully around her ankle, steadying her leg while I swipe the antiseptic wipe gently. She jerks slightly, causing me to almost drop her foot.

Did I hurt you?

She shakes her head. Well, it did sting a little. More ticklish than anything.

I huff out a quiet laugh before pressing the bandage carefully over the spot. Her foot is warm and soft against my palm, which feels like information I absolutely do not need to be noticing. I smooth my thumb once over the bandage to make sure it sticks properly.

Wrenley’s gone quiet. When I glance up, she’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite read.

You should be more careful with your needles, I say.

The words come out sounding more scolding than I intended, and I immediately kick myself.

She lets out a breathy chuckle. Yeah. I’ll, uh… do that.

What are you making? I ask, mostly to stop thinking about the fact that I was just kneeling between her legs five seconds ago.

I found a wool jacket when I was in Vancouver, she says. I’m working on lining it with some leftover fur I had, but recutting already cut fur into the right shape is kind of a nightmare. Then I had to take apart half the jacket because the fit was wrong and— She stops abruptly and looks at me. This is boring.

Not at all, I say immediately.

The corners of her mouth turn up a little.

It kind of reminds me of being at camp. I walk over to the counter and start to plate breakfast for us.

How?

When you’re out on the land, you have to deal with what you’ve got. Get resourceful sometimes.

That’s actually… She laughs quietly. A very outdoorsman way to describe fashion design.

Well, I’m an outdoorsman. I set a plate of food in front of her. Did you always know you wanted to be in fashion? I ask as I grab some food for myself.

Not really, she says. When I was a kid, we didn’t have a lot of money. My mom left when I was young, and my dad worked hard, but buying all the name brands just wasn’t possible. I started learning to sew so I could add little things to my clothes—you know, patches, logos, trim. Stuff that made them look like they came from stores I couldn’t afford. That turned into altering thrifted stuff. Then, designing my own things. I fell in love with the whole process.

I nod, taking a bite of my breakfast while she talks. There’s something different about her like this. She reminds me a bit of myself when I talk about conservation and sustainable hunting. The way she talks about it is calm and factual, but beneath it is a fire.

I think I fell in love with it when I learned how much control it gave me, she says. I couldn’t control my family’s money problems, but I could control how I was perceived in high school. Somewhere along the way, I started to find my style too, as well as a passion for making old pieces of clothing matter again.

Is that what you did in your old job?

Not really, she says. But I was always working toward making pieces that were worth the money people spent on them. To me, the biggest problem in fashion today is that companies are trying to mass-produce clothing, and it causes workers to not have the time to put the clothing together properly. And that’s not even getting into how underpaid and overworked those workers are. Her voice is so passionate, and I find myself hanging on to every word. The result is overflowing landfills and entire countries receiving discarded clothing faster than they can process it. And those of us in the western world believe that clothes are disposable, even though there was a time when we didn’t own a million different shirts and shoes.

She stabs a piece of waffle. Once I learned that, there was just no unknowing it for me. Some people think I’m eccentric because everything I own is either thrifted or made by me, and I limit how many synthetic-based pieces I buy.

As I take a bite of sausage, I think about what she has worn since being here. It’s mostly the same handful of pieces repeated in different ways, but she’s always looked different enough for me to not think much of it.