Their vanity is perfectly assembled—solid as a rock—but one detail is… concerning.
A screwdriver is stabbed into the wood like a crime scene prop.
“Dave told me to shut up,” Roxanne says casually, filing her nails while Tina examines the evidence.
“Dave nearly died,” he mutters.
Tina taps something into her tablet—probably high points for structural integrity, low points for workplace safety.
Then comes the moment the rest of us dread.
Tina stops in front of Lucy and Lars.
Holy hell.
The vanity isn’t just assembled.
It’s improved.
I have no idea how he did it in forty-five minutes, but that giant of a man has carved tiny flowers into the table legs. Lucy looks at him like he’s Thor incarnate, and honestly? Even I feel a flicker of masculine jealousy.
Tina sighs in bliss, stroking the wood like silk.
“National treasure,” she declares.
The temperature drops several degrees when she reaches the Perfect Pair.
Brenda and Steve finished ten minutes ago, swept up every speck of sawdust, and polished the mirror to a sterile shine—but they’re arguing in low, venomous voices about a microscopic scratch. Tina drags a finger across the tabletop, unimpressed by their clinical perfection, and moves on without a single compliment.
It goes even worse for Tiffany.
She’s perched on the only piece she successfully assembled—the stool—while the rest of the vanity lies scattered around her like a pile of defeated hopes. Brent is on the phone with his broker.
Tina doesn’t even slow down. She flicks her hand in a gesture that clearly means:
Zero points.
Absolute disaster.
Silas’s piece of furniture is a sticky, lopsided, glitter-covered modern-art tragedy.
The veterinarian is sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, looking like a man utterly defeated by life.
But when he glances up at the mynah bird with a resigned half-smile, half the women in the room sigh—including Sloane, which I notice with irritation.
I tense as Tina approaches station number eight.
Joe and Sarah.
I want them to fail. Ineedthem to fail.
Sarah is posed like a mannequin on the stool, while Joe stands beside the vanity—sweaty, forcing a smile that never reaches his eyes.
“Here it is!” he announces with far too much enthusiasm.
Tina taps the mirror with one finger.
The whole thing wobbles dangerously.
