Archive of Our Own ^beta

I swear to god, the sizzling of Nate’s Jarlsberg grilled cheese in the pan is music to my ears. Every time I hear it, I get all giddy inside and my taste buds become self-aware—it’s weird.

“I mean, I’m proud of you, but—a fashion magazine? Last I checked, you wanted to be a journalist,” he says.

“I do,” I reply. “But if I can do this job right—and I only have to survive a year—then I can get a job anywhere I want.” As I finish my sentence, I tap him on the shoulder with the tip of the bottle I’m holding, watching him toss the sandwich into the air with his spatula.

“Well,” he continues, plating the food for each of us, “I’d love to see it.” He grins and holds up his sandwich at me. “Cheers?”

I smile back and briefly touch the crusts of our bread together. “Cheers.”

My alarm blares the next morning and I stir awake at the sound. Barely a minute after, my phone rings and I hear her mechanical voice through the speaker.

“Andrea, you need to come into the office right away,” Emily says.

Poor Emily. She’s so obsessed with her job at Runway, I honestly feel bad for her. As it turns out, I’m her replacement because she got promoted, which means she’s the one tasked with training me to fill the shoes that were once hers. She means business and cares way too much, that’s for sure—but I’m making coffee runs and picking up skirts. How hard could all this possibly be?

“Emily? Hey, what—”

“Miranda has decided she wants to do today’s run-through an hour early, so she needs her coffee as soon as possible. Now, get a pen and write this down…”

In my grogginess, I don’t even attempt to struggle for something to write with. I pick up the clock on my bedside table and realize it’s barely seven in the morning. Doesn’t the normal American work day start at nine?

Miranda’s usual at Starbucks is lost on me as I drag my half-asleep ass out of bed and start getting ready. Finally, I arrive at the office with the coffee, the order for which I had to call Emily back to get—and she was not happy about that at all.

“God, finally!” she snaps as I struggle through the office’s glass doors, which she reluctantly holds open for me.

I hurry into Miranda’s office and give her a quick smile that she completely disregards, then drop off the coffee on the desk and hurry back to my chair.

“Alright—so,” Emily begins, striding over to me. “You and I answer the phones, and the phone must be answered every time it rings, you understand? If the calls go to voicemail, Miranda gets very upset.”

She races her slender figure all around the office space, dumping something into the sink in the break room as she talks, and she is wearing probably the most expensive leather jacket I’ve ever seen over a low-cut burgundy blouse. She certainly looks like she works for a famous fashion magazine.

After some more floating around and firing off information that I should probably be writing down, she lands at the front of my desk. She leans forward on the wood with her palms and peers at me as if it would help me absorb her words more effectively, and I can finally get a good look at her face.

Her makeup is flawless. Our eyes meet and goosebumps climb up my arms. I swallow to try and keep my composure, but I can’t pay attention to what she’s saying no matter how hard I try.

My eyes threaten to watch her lips move but an image of Nate flashes through my head and I snap back to reality just as she finishes her sentence.

“...and you never ask Miranda anything. Got it?”

I just nod, hoping I look convincing enough, but then I realize that she probably doesn’t even care all that much.

“Good,” she returns. “Now, I expect the designer will be here any minute, so you’d better be ready.”

******

My first month at Runway is a blur of expensive coats and bags being thrown on my desk every morning, rushing around trying to decipher Miranda’s vague requests, and clacking along in heels that I wouldn’t dare wear anywhere else. But through it all, I’m managing far better than I thought I would.

I wish I could say that I haven’t quit because of my determination to get my career going, but actually, it’s been mostly Emily that’s kept me here—and I have no idea why. Half the time, all she does is yell at me for not moving fast enough or make fun of me for not having a satisfactory sense of fashion, but something about her is still compelling—I just can’t figure out what it is. Could be I’m just jealous of her makeup skills, but my formidable nerves remain, and I doubt they’re coming from her ability to apply perfect liquid liner every single day.

But whatever it is, I’m reading too much into it. Plus, I’ve got Nate—and god knows Emily’s too uptight to know how to make a grilled cheese that’s as amazing as his.

While I’m writing the last of the day’s emails, I decide to try and strike up a conversation. As snooty as she is, I don’t hate talking to her.

“Thank god it’s Friday, right?”

She carries on fixing her cherry lipstick—for what, I have no idea—and doesn’t answer me until she’s finished. She snaps the cap back onto the stick and gives me only an affirming hum in response.

“My dad’s supposed to be flying in from Ohio this weekend, so I’m excited to see him.”

“Uh huh.”

She continues to ignore me, grabbing up her things from her desk space and getting ready to leave.

“Are you doing anything fun this weekend?” I ask her.

“Yes,” she says, grabbing her purse, and strides out through the glass doors. So much for conversation.

As I begin to collect my own belongings, my phone cries out with a call.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Hi, honey! Hey, uh…I’ve got some bad news.”

I tuck the phone between my cheek and shoulder and hang my coat on my arm. “Uh-oh, what’s wrong?”

“Well, I had to cancel my flight, so I can’t make it up there this weekend to see you.”

I furrow my brow. “Why? Is everything okay?”

“It is now,” he tells me. “But your mother and I were out earlier today and she just—fainted out of nowhere.”

I pull open the glass doors and head to the elevator lobby, my eyes wide. “Oh, my god, is she okay?”

“Yes, she’s alright, but…her doctor isn't sure what happened. He’s worried this could mean something really serious, so he told us to go to the ER and have the doctors there monitor her—so I’m gonna stay with her.”

“Are you with her right now? Can I talk to her?”

“Well, she fell asleep so I went home, but I’m going back in the morning.”

“Okay, well…I’m glad she’s alright, but damn.”

“Yeah, it was scary—but she didn’t have any other issues after I brought her in, and they told me she had been sleeping normally so far. I think she’ll be okay.”

“Thank god,” I reply, ducking into a taxi I had flagged down.

“Yeah, but…I’m sorry about our weekend.”

“No, no, it’s completely okay. Stay with Mom, she needs you there. I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, honey. We’ll try again another time.”

I grin. “Sounds good. Tell Mom I said hi and to give me a call when she’s able to!”

“Okay, I will. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, alright?”

“Okay! Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I lean back in my seat in the back of the taxi and take a deep breath. Nate has to work this entire weekend, so I was really looking forward to having my dad’s company. But hey, shit happens.

I fidget with the hinge on my phone for a bit, listening to the soft clack it makes every time it closes, and think back to the interaction Emily and I had earlier. It’s not like I can ask her to do anything—and besides, she’s busy anyway.

Well, that or she just said yes to get me to stop talking to her. Either way, she’d reject me.

And yet, for no reason at all, I find myself dialing her number.

“Hello?” she answers, and I can hear her pausing a TV in the background.

“Hey, Emily!” I say.

“Did Miranda need something? I thought she was in Miami.”

“Oh, no, um, it’s not about work, actually—”

“Then what do you want?”

I take a deep breath. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea, but telling her nevermind will probably only make things worse. “Um, I was wondering—I know you said you had plans, but—”

Fuck it.

“I don’t believe you,” I finish.

She takes so long to respond I have to check to make sure she hasn't hung up on me. “And why is that?” she finally asks.

“Because I think you just told me you did to shut me up so you could leave.”

I feel a grin spread across my face because I can see in my head what her face must look like right now.

“And what if I did?” she says.

“Well, if you did,” I reply, “I think you’d owe me.”

“Owe you?” she scoffs. “I don’t owe you a thing.”

I shrug. “I don’t know—lying isn’t a great thing to do to someone, whether you know them that well or not.”

She heaves a sigh. “Fine,” she says. “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything planned—I just wanted to get out of there so I could go home and relax.”

“Which actually makes a lot of sense, so I’m not mad,” I tell her. “But…I do want you to make it up to me.”

“You just said you’re not even mad.”

“Okay, you’re right—I could have worded that better…look, my dad canceled on me for the weekend and now I have a dinner reservation for two for tomorrow night but I don’t have a plus one. Do you want to go with me?”

“No, I’d rather stay in.”

I hum in thought. “Okay, that's fair, but are you sure? It’s a really nice place and it has great reviews—”

“Andrea, no. Thank you, but no.”

It’s my turn to sigh now, but I’ve got one last thing up my sleeve. “There’ll be wine,” I chime.

Emily falls silent for a moment before she lets out a reluctant breath and says, “Fine, but I want to be home before nine.”

“Sure thing,” I tell her. “I’ll pick you up?”

“I will pick myself up, thank you,” she bites. “Now, goodnight.”

The cab pulls to a stop in front of my building. I tip the driver and head up the elevator, unable to suppress the grin spread across my face.

******

Emily arrives at the restaurant almost immediately after I do, and I catch her exiting a taxi just as I’m about to enter the building. I stroll over to her and she manages a quick smile before she ducks into the back seat again to dig for her things.

“I’m still shocked I convinced you to come,” I tell her.

“I’m here for the wine and because I feel bad for lying to you,” she replies.

A knowing grin spreads across my face. “I thought I told you I wasn’t mad.”

Emily pauses to stare at me for a moment, stopped in her tracks. She escapes from the stunned look and raises her brows at me. “Well, I didn’t believe you,” she mocks, tucking her purse under her arm and shutting the car door.

I chuckle and scrunch my nose slightly, and she presses her lips together in concentration, the look of constant contempt on her face trying its hardest not to waver. We walk into the restaurant together and check in at the host’s podium. A man in a black vest guides us to our table and hands us two menus, and almost as soon as he walks away, another appears wearing a collared shirt and a black apron.

“Good evening, ladies,” he says. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“I’ll have whatever your strongest wine is, please,” Emily says.

The waiter nods and looks at me.

“Ah, I’ll just do a Rosé—thanks.”

“Of course. I’ll be right back.”

“Getting drunk so you don’t have to talk to me?” I ask after he walks away.

“More like because Miranda won’t be barking orders at me all weekend like she normally is.”

“Ah, right. Well, I know why you hate Miranda but I can’t figure out why you hate me.”

Emily scoffs. “Because you have no fashion sense and you don’t care about your job!”

I knit my brows at her. “Yes I do! I’ve been working my ass off!”

“Well, you still have no fashion sense.”

“Wow, thanks. It’s almost like I’m a journalist and not one of the models.”

“An assistant is what you are.”

“So are you,” I tell her. “And I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

Emily sighs, and the waiter returns with our drinks. He asks if we are ready to order, but I tell him we need a few more minutes. Emily’s gaze falls upon my glass and she snorts.

“I forgot you ordered a Rosé,” she says, stifling a laugh.

“Oh, what—you’re judging my drink choice now, too?”

“Actually, no. I just think it’s very you. ”

I raise an eyebrow. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

She shrugs. “Dunno. Just makes sense that you’d order something cutesy like that.”

“Cutesy, huh? Is that what you think of me?” I ask, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. I blink and briefly shake my head to shoo the sensation away.

“Sure, but don’t let it go to your head.”

“Aw, man, and here I was thinking we were making progress.”

For the first time this evening, I see a smile tease and break at the corners of her mouth. Maybe this night can actually go decently.

The waiter returns to take our orders and to refill Emily’s drink. Before the food even gets here, she’s on her third glass, and I realize she really does intend to get at least tipsy by the end of the night. Our food arrives and she stops drinking for a bit, but I can already tell the wine has her on puppet strings.

“So, wait—” I laugh, interrupting the story she has been telling. “Did she throw the dresses out on purpose?”

“No, no, no, no,” Emily replies. “They were in a rubbish bag—it was an accident.”

“Why were they in a bag?”

Emily shrugs and snorts loudly. “No idea. But she got fired violently. ”

“Oh, you mean she’s still alive?”

Emily lets out an obnoxious laugh, dropping her face into her hands. When she raises it again, her mascara is smudged all over her palms. I bite my lip, trying not to grin at her antics because my jaw is sore from smiling the entire evening, while she hastily rubs her hands on her dress—which is black, thankfully—and composes herself only about halfway.

The waiter arrives with a wine bottle in his hand, but I pick up Emily’s glass before he can refill it and smile awkwardly at him. He nods in understanding, and asks if we need anything else.

“Just the check, please,” I say, and he walks away.

Emily slumps back in her chair, studying the nail polish on her fingers. It feels strange, seeing her loose like this, as if I’ve unlocked some secret room within her personality that no one else is allowed to see. She sits up and leans forward with her elbows on the table, picking at the chipping polish like a child. The table is terribly small, so small that if I had leaned forward in the same fashion, our foreheads could touch.

I blink several times. Why on earth am I thinking about that?

The waiter returns with the check and I go to place my card in the tray. Apparently, Emily is still sober enough to realize what is happening, and reaches forward to try to stop me, placing her hand on top of mine. Goosebumps shoot up my arms at her touch, and I quickly pull my hand away.

“We’ll split it,” she says, seeming not to have noticed. I let out the breath I have been holding.

“Are you sure? You’re my guest, after all.”

“No, no—yes, I’m sure,” she replies, and takes an eon to dig, half-drunk, through her purse and find her credit card.

“Okay,” I reply haphazardly, my mind still somewhere else.

When our cards are returned to us, I stand up and grab my purse and coat. Emily stumbles up from her chair, holding onto the table.

“Are you sure that was just wine? I didn’t think you could get this drunk from—woah!”

My arm shoots out in front of me and I catch Emily around her middle just before she loses her balance. The force pulls her backward into me and her back collides with my stomach, but I’m able to keep us upright.

“You alright?” I ask.

She blinks and looks back at me. “Oh—yes, I’m alright. Thank you,” she replies, grinning, and picks up my forearm, which is still holding her up, in her hand to move it out of the way. The goosebumps reappear and I pull it the rest of the way away so she doesn’t feel them, opting instead to link arms with her. I do need to make sure she doesn’t fall, but thank god I wore long sleeves.

I guide us out the door and onto the street, looking around for a taxi. As soon as we get outside, the chill of winter in New York City hits us, and I feel Emily shiver against me. I drop her arm and shake my coat from my shoulders to hand it to her. “Here.”

She stares at it. “Forever 21?”

I roll my eyes. “Fine, freeze to death in your short-sleeved dress that you wore even though it’s February.”

She giggles and I have to fight off the cute aggression. “I’m just kidding—give it,” she replies.

The two of us stand on a corner under a streetlamp, and I feel lost trying to get a cab to notice us when my phone rings.

My heart drops when I read the caller ID: it’s Miranda.

“Hello?” I answer reluctantly.

“My flight has been canceled,” she says.

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know—it’s some absurd weather problem. I need another one.” A loud thunder clap echoes from her end.

“Yes, I’ll get on it right away.”

So much for a relaxing weekend.

Something like six cabs completely ignores us, so I grab Emily again and begin rushing along sidewalks and crosswalks, pushing my way through the droves of people and desperately calling anyone and everyone I know that has a plane, but no one is flying out.

Miranda calls me back halfway through my endeavor. “What is taking so long? My girls have a recital tomorrow morning,” she barks.

“Miranda, I’m trying literally everything, but no one is flying because of the weather.”

She scoffs. “This is ridiculous. It’s just—I don’t know—drizzling. Someone must be flying out. Are you sure you’ve tried everyone we know? What about Irv? He’s got a jet, hasn’t he? Get me home, this is your job!” Click.

“Well, what the hell does she want you to do?” Emily asks, sobering up a bit and getting just as angry as I am now.

“The impossible, just like always,” I retort.

Three more airports and Irv’s pilot, and still no flight. There is nothing I can do.

“You know what? She’s just going to have to deal with it. I’m only so powerful,” I say, and dragging Emily a little less now, I finally get a taxi to pull over and pick us up. Emily recites her address to the driver and I lean back in my seat, trying to come up with a plan.

I call back the airline that Miranda’s flight had originally been booked with and ask if they have anything for tomorrow morning. The receptionist tells me they can have her board at noon.

The twins’ recital is at nine in the morning. Shit.

I try a few more airlines and Irv’s pilot again, but none of them have anything better, so I decide having her miss her daughters’ performance is better than leaving her stranded in another state for two days and book the twelve o’clock flight.

“It’s all they have, Miranda. I’m so sorry,” I say on her third call back.

She sighs. “That’s fine. I suppose there’ll be another recital—hopefully I won’t miss that one.” Her words suggest compliance but her tone is telling me the opposite.

She hangs up on me as the taxi pulls to a stop in front of a large apartment complex. Emily is leaning her head against the window, presumably asleep, but when I nudge her shoulder, she wakes up almost immediately. I follow her out of the back seat and walk her to her door.

“Is it wearing off?” I ask, more to myself than to her.

But she doesn’t respond. Instead, she puts her arms around my neck and hugs me. Yep, still drunk.

“You did your very best, Andrea,” she says, pushing her hair out of her face. “But I am so glad I don’t have your job anymore.”

I grin awkwardly, grabbing her by the hips to push her off of me and turn her to face the door to the building. “Okay—well, drink some water and get some sleep, alright? I don’t know how much of this is getting through to you right now, but thanks for coming to dinner with me. I’ll see you Monday?”

I start to descend the steps when she stops me. “Andrea, wait.”

“Yeah?” I turn back around and she approaches me, putting her hands on my arms.

“Thank you,” she says, smiling.

“Yeah, of course,” I reply, feeling heat rise to my cheeks again. God, what is with that?

She gives me one last approving nod and heads through the door. I return to the cab and the driver drops me off in front of my building. I head upstairs and open the front door to find Nate sitting on the couch watching TV.

“Hey!” he says, pausing the show and striding over to greet me. “You’re home late.”

“You’re home early,” I tease.

“Yeah, we weren’t as busy as usual, so the boss let me go.”

“Hm, must be nice. Miranda expected me to get a flight for her out of Miami tonight even though there’s a hurricane.”

Nate’s eyes widen and he raises his eyebrows. “You’re kidding.”

“I so desperately wish I was.”

“Well, besides that, how was dinner with your dad?”

I swallow, suddenly aware of my eye contact with him. Goosebumps trail up my arms again as I’m reminded of the feeling of Emily’s fingertips.

“It was good,” I tell him. “Yeah—it was really nice to be able to see him.”

He smiles. “That’s good, I’m glad. Well, I’m gonna hit the shower and get ready for bed, so—”

“Yeah, me too.”

I lie awake in the dark, unable to sleep, with Nate snoring peacefully beside me. I replay the moments with Emily in my mind like reruns of a TV show, and I can’t shut them off no matter how hard I try. The feeling of her touch, even through my sleeves, is etched into my skin with no intention of leaving. I remember the pitch black of her dress, the satin ruffles and each and every fold around her narrow waist. I remember everything she said, every story she told me, every complaint about Miranda she entrusted me with, even if she had been sort of drunk the whole time.

But I have Nate, I keep reminding myself. I have Nate, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.

******

On Monday morning, I wake up dreading having to see Miranda. I prepare myself for the worst case scenario, making sure my resume is up to speed should I need to go job hunting again.

When I arrive, however, Miranda barely has a chance to lay eyes on me because Emily grabs my arm as soon as I walk through the door and drags me into the break room.

“Morning,” I begin sarcastically.

“Andrea, I owe you an apology,” she replies immediately.

I blink. “What for?”

She heaves a sigh. “Saturday night, I…” She stares at the floor with her hands folded in front of her. “I was very immature, and I left you to deal with me in that state. If we were better friends, it might have been different, but I’ve barely known you for a month. I shouldn't have done that to you.”

“Huh” is all I give her, allowing her words to sink in. “Well, I appreciate that. But it’s alright—I actually had a lot of fun dragging your drunk ass around,” I reply, smiling.

She swallows, but I can’t tell if it’s from nerves or stifled laughter. She does smile back at me, though. “Ah, well…still.”

“Emily?” Miranda calls from her office.

Both of us sigh at the same time, and I make my way through the double doors to see if I’ve been fired or not.

“Well,” she begins, and she smiles at me but somehow, it makes me feel even worse. “The twins’ recital was wonderful. Everyone loved it—everyone…except me, because, sadly, I was not there.”

I take a deep breath in. “I’m so sorry, Miranda. I promise I did the best I could—”

“Are you sure about that?” she asks, turning around in her chair and grabbing something out of the filing cabinet behind her, as if staking my entire career on one failure is just part of her daily routine.

I have to fight hard against the tears that threaten to escape my waterline, and I’m sure she can probably see my eyes flooding. “I—” The lump in my throat starts to ache, but I will myself with everything I have not to start crying. “I really tried everything I could.”

“Hm.”

Miranda gives me one last look straight from hell and turns her attention down to the folder on her desk. Unable to stand being in her office any longer, I hurry back to my desk, trying to wipe the tears from my eyes without ruining my makeup. I almost sit back down at my desk, but in my distress, instead I make a beeline for the glass doors and head for the elevators.

Miranda expects me to do the impossible, and then when I fail to deliver, she unleashes the dogs on me. I begin to wonder if getting my career started is really worth this.

But I only make it about halfway down the hall before I hear a voice.

“Andrea?” Emily calls from behind me.

I whirl around to find her practically on my heels. “Emily?”

“What’s wrong? What did she—did she sack you? Are you alright?”

More tears escape my eyes but I hastily wipe them away. “I—I don’t know,” I reply. “I don’t know if I care right now.” I let out a half-hearted chuckle.

“Well, she has no right to make you that upset,” Emily says.

I sniffle involuntarily. “You’re sticking up for me? That’s a first,” I joke.

“Don’t make me retract it,” she returns.

“Sorry,” I reply, but I can’t keep myself from smiling at her.

“Well, where are you going? I need to know if I should pee now or not.”

“Pee now—I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

“Okay, good to know,” she says, letting out a quiet laugh through her nostrils.

I nod and begin to make my way toward the elevators again when she speaks one last time.

“Oh—Andy?”

She called me Andy. “Yeah?”

“If you need anything—well, I kind of owe you for Saturday, so—you know.”

“Oh…thanks.”

She nods and hurries off to the bathroom.

I finally get an elevator and take it straight down to where I know that Nigel is no doubt sitting in his office, mapping out some complex designs for Runway’s next featured collection that I would have absolutely no idea what to do with.

Technically, I had met Nigel on the day I interviewed, and he treated me as if I were a lamppost in the corner of the room, briefly asking Emily who I was and leaving it at that—which is why I’ve stopped putting so much stock into first impressions, because as it turns out, Nigel is one of the best people in my life at Runway.

I sidle through the large glass doors to his workshop on the bottom floor and up to his desk where he seems laser-focused on a page of his sketchbook, pencil in hand.

“She hates me, Nigel,” I say, still fighting with my tears.

At the sound of my voice, he looks up at me. “And that’s my problem, why? Oh, that’s right—it’s not my problem.”

“Well, it’s just—I do everything she asks me, a-a-and when I do something right, she doesn’t even care, but if–if I do something wrong? She is vicious, ” I stammer out.

“Andrea, it’s because you’re not trying,” he tells me.

Excuse me?

“What?”

“Haven’t you been listening? ‘A million girls would kill for this job’—does that mean nothing to you?”

“I—”

“I could get another girl to take your spot in two seconds, because where so many girls dream to work, you only deign to work. And one of these days, you’re going to realize just how much bigger all of this is than you are,” he continues, picking up a copy of the magazine from a desk against the wall. “This is not just a magazine, ” he implores, shaking it around. “This is—a shining beacon of hope for, oh, I don’t know, a young boy growing up in Rhode Island with six brothers and lying to his mom, telling her he’s going to soccer practice when really he’s going to sewing class and reading Runway under the covers of his bed each night. Maybe this is just a job to you, but whether you like it or not, this is so much more important of a thing than you could ever imagine it to be, because you live your life in it.”

I swallow more tears, letting his words sink in. A pit of guilt forms in my stomach—I hadn’t exactly meant to take all this for granted, but it turned out to be awfully easy.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t realize.”

“Well, at least you know it now.”

“But what do I do about Miranda? I don’t want her to fire me.”

But Nigel doesn’t need to say a word in response, because my eyes pass over a pile of fabric with a pair of expensive-looking heels sitting atop it, and suddenly, I’m struck with an idea.

“Nigel,” I chime. “Nigel, Nigel, Nigel…”

He looks up at me, but upon seeing the look on my face, immediately replies, “Nope. No. No way—”

But my puppy eyes are irresistible and I know it, because within ten minutes, we’re downstairs in the enormous closet-basement underneath the Elias-Clarke building and Nigel is striding around like a king in his castle, picking out items from the rack for me to add to my wardrobe.

“You are in desperate need of Chanel,” he tells me.

We head over to the dressing rooms and he practically pushes me into a stall, throwing tops and bottoms over the door at me to try on. I walk out to model each outfit, allowing him to critique his work, and by the time we’re done, I’m pretty sure I just got an entire designer wardrobe for free.

I head back upstairs to find Emily at her desk, talking to a tall blonde woman I have seen once or twice around the office but whose name I can’t recall. Both of their heads turn to me as soon as I walk in, and as I pass by, I fixate on the fact that Emily’s eyes are locked on me, scanning my body up and down as if she were checking for discrepancies.

“Are you wearing—?”

“The Chanel boots?” I finish her sentence for her, sitting back down at my desk. “Yeah, I am.”

“You look good,” the blonde woman says.

Emily nudges her harshly and she furrows her brow in defense.

“Thanks,” I say, smiling at her.

“Well, obviously someone helped you. There’s no way you came up with that on your own,” Emily says.

“Oh, well, of course not. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t just make you stare, now, does it?”

Emily takes a deep breath and her nostrils flare. She looks like she wants to be angry but something is keeping her from really feeling it. For the remainder of the day, I can feel her gaze burning into me, but something tells me it’s not from jealousy.

Just before the day is supposed to end, she approaches my desk, holding a thick book with the cover of Runway on it in her arms. She sets it down in front of me rather heavily.

“Andrea, Miranda has told me you’ll be delivering the Book from now on.”

I grin. “Well, then I must have done something right.”

“Yes,” she dismisses. “Now, this is very important, so listen up.”

Wearing a black blouse and, as usual, flawless eyeliner, she leans forward on the desk, letting the tie around her neck hang loosely in front of her chest. It’s too short to reach the surface of the wood, so the tip of it hangs suspended in air right near my fingertips. I imagine grabbing the end of it and pulling her down onto me so I can kiss her.

Wait, what the fuck?

My eyes widen involuntarily and I blink several times, trying desperately to clear my head of the thought, and I realize that whatever she has been explaining has just been completely lost on me.

Emily sighs upon noticing my expression. “You’re gonna make me repeat myself, aren’t you?” I smile awkwardly, and she lets out a breath. “Andy, this is important!”

“I’m sorry! I just—you’re—you’re…” I don’t finish that sentence—I can’t.

“I’m what?” she demands.

My fingertips drift absentmindedly to the tip of the tie. Emily stares down at them, watching them stroke the fabric, unable to stop. Her shoulders buckle ever so slightly, and her face falls forward an inch or so.

She swallows, glancing down at my hand, then up at my eyes, and back again, over and over. “Andy—”

“I like this outfit, it’s cute,” I say without thinking about it.

She blinks. “Thank you?”

Doe eyes force their way into my expression as I look up at her and I can’t suppress them. I can feel the speed of my breaths increasing and have to fight hard to keep them under control. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and no one is left on this floor but the two of us.

Emily glances over either of her shoulders, and as soon as she comes back to face me, all sense of reason left within me is discarded. I clench the end of her tie in my fist and yank her toward me, catching her lips with my own. They’re so soft. I can taste her lipstick and feel it mixing with mine.

She doesn’t push me off her for a good three or four seconds, but when she does, I have to catch myself with my feet to keep my chair from rolling away across the plastic mat underneath me.

My breathing refuses to slow down and I lick my lips unintentionally. I can’t even compose myself enough to apologize, so I just stare at her in disbelief of myself.

She remains attached to the front end of my desk at the very edge of the surface by her fingertips, as if she had intended to back all the way away but something kept her from it. Our eyes remain locked, and neither of us move for a short while.

I watch her breathing, lungs heaving with the same untameable fervor that mine do, and she keeps glancing ever so slightly downward at my parted lips.

“God dammit,” she whispers, and in less than a second, strides around behind the desk to where I sit. She cups my chin with her fingers and thumb and kisses me again, and this time I know it’s on purpose. I feel her tongue slide in against my teeth and my legs automatically push me to stand up. My hands dart upward to wrap around her neck at the same time as her hands find a spot on my hips to rest, and before I know it, my back makes swift contact with the wall of the breakroom.

I memorize everything about the feeling of her touch and her body instantly, as if it were something I had felt a hundred times before. Every time I feel her cheeks against my arms, every one of her fingertips under my shirt, every break that we take to come up for air only to be submerged in each other again is imprinted on me like a hand pressed into wet cement.

She’s under my skin now. She’s made her mark on me like a brand. I’d belong to her in a heartbeat if she asked me to. A part of me feels as if I already do.

A break arrives that’s peculiarly long compared to the others. Her breaths echo against my face. Her hand rests on the small of my back, my arms across her shoulders. Her nose brushes against mine, and I crack a wide grin. And then of course my mind has to wander.

My eyes widen and I pull away from her slightly.

She looks concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“I–I–I’m so sorry, I—” I stammer. “I have a boyfriend—”

“H–What?”

I swallow. “Oh my god—” I back away enough now to frantically look at my watch, impulsively clapping a hand to my forehead that pushes my bangs up and out of place. “It’s nine-thirty—I’m supposed to—I have to deliver the Book—”

I frantically head for my desk to grab my things, but Emily stops me almost instantly. “Andy, what—you have—you have a boyfriend?”

“I do!” I reply, raising my voice by accident. “Oh, god, and I just—”

Emily has an expression of pure worry on her face. “Andy, I had no idea—”

“No, no, it’s not your fault— shit, I’m going to be late and Miranda’s going to kill me—I’m so sorry—”

Against my better judgment, I hurry to pick up my things, Emily watching me from behind, and make a beeline for the doors.

“Wa—Andy, wait!”

Everything is blurry, but I can’t tell if I can’t see because I feel dizzy or because there are tears in my eyes—or both. I rush to Miranda’s place on pure adrenaline and leave the Book on any old table. I have my hand on the doorknob when I hear a voice from behind me.

“Andrea?”

I turn around and my skin prickles. Miranda is standing in the hallway in her pajamas, brow furrowed in confusion.

“You’re late,” she says.

My heart drops into my stomach. It takes everything in me to compose myself, but I’m sure that I still look very obviously upset.

“Sorry, uh—there was traffic.”

“At ten o’clock at night?”

I shrug. “It’s New York.”

“I suppose. Well, don’t let it happen again.”

“I won’t, I promise,” I say, having no idea whether I’ll actually be able to fulfill that. “Have a good night, Miranda.”

And I cannot bear to stand in front of her any longer, so I turn around and walk out.

As soon as I get through the door, I drop down onto a metal bench under a streetlamp outside. Tears fill my eyes, but instead of fighting them, I let them fall. I can’t go home—at least not right now, but New York City isn’t exactly the safest place at ten o’clock at night. For a small moment, I sit still in my sobs, listening to the traffic that never dies down even in the middle of the night.

My solitude is interrupted by the blaring of my ringtone. It’s Nate. I can’t bring myself to answer it, so I let it go to voicemail.

After another moment, it goes off again. I’m sure that it’s Nate again, but I look to see Emily’s name instead. As if it’s second nature, I answer the call.

God, you’ll answer Emily but you won’t pick up for your own boyfriend?

I shake my head, and I would have hung up had it not been for the sound of her voice.

“Andy? Oh, thank god—I was—I thought you might not answer.”

“Hey, Em.”

“I—I’m so sorry about that,” she begins. “I should have known better—”

“It’s okay, it’s not your fault…I delivered the Book.”

“Oh, good.”

“Miranda was upset with me for being late but I think she could see I was—well, for some reason, she wasn’t as mean as she usually is.”

“She was probably just too tired to care—I’m sure we’ll be getting the heat for it on Monday again.”

“Probably.” I both love and hate how natural the conversation feels, especially given what happened.

“So—about earlier—”

“You know what, I think we should talk about that in person.”

Emily takes a brief moment before responding. “I think we should talk about it right now.”

Suddenly a thought strikes me. But then another says, Drop the shovel, Andy.

But I must love digging my own grave. “Where are you right now?” I ask.

“At home, why?”

“Then I’ll come to you, and we can talk about it.”

“You want to come over to my apartment?”

“ Please, we’ve done worse, haven’t we?”

I hear her inhale sharply and a smirk teases the corner of my mouth. How I love to make her nervous.

“Fine.”

“Great! See you soon.” God, what am I doing?

I flag down a taxi and give him the address, and in fifteen minutes I find myself knocking at her door. She answers it in her pajamas, and upon seeing that my eyes are still red and puffy, her expression softens just a little.

I step inside the apartment, which is a tiny studio. There is junk and clothes and boxes and piles of stuff everywhere, but I’m not one to judge. She likely brings home a lot of shit from Runway that she doesn’t need.

“So what’s the boyfriend’s name, then?”

I sigh, feeling that lump in my throat again. “Nate,” I answer. I feel like I have no right to even use his name right now. “I don’t want to go home because then I have to face him, and I already lied to him once.”

“Don’t you think he’s going to worry about you?”

“Whether I turn up within the next hour or tomorrow morning, he’s already going to freak out because I didn’t answer my phone when he called me.”

“You didn’t answer—Andrea!” She puts her hands on her hips and I have to fight the urge to smile.

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Well, you answered me.”

“That makes it worse.”

Emily sighs and drops down onto her sofa. Automatically, I sit down next to her. I remember how it took Nate and I two months into dating to start going to each other’s apartments.

“I don’t want to go home.”

“You have to.”

“The hell I do.”

She looks over at me as if she knows I have some scheme up my sleeve. “You’re going to ask me to stay here, aren’t you?”

I smile sheepishly. “If you’ll have me.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, I don’t have a guest bed, so you’ll have to sleep on the sofa.”

“Em,” I croon.

“Oh, what? ”

“Do you remember what happened about an hour ago?”

Her cheeks turn red instantly. Of course she remembers.

“Do you really think sharing a bed is that crazy, then?”

She covers her face with her hands. “Andrea, you are the worst person I’ve ever met.”

Well, maybe she’s got me there. It doesn’t mean I have any intention of stopping.

“If that’s true, then why’d you kiss me?”

“If you keep this up, I’ll never do it again.”

I feel my heartbeat pick up the pace and my face turns warm. I bring my legs up and cross them in my seat as if I were sitting on the floor, and turn to face Emily directly. She eyes me skeptically. “What now?”

“Nothing.”

“You look expectant.”

“No. Just staring.”

“What for?”

I slouch my posture and grin excitedly. Somewhere in my stomach, I feel giddy. “You’re so pretty,” I tell her.

“Oh,” she responds, rolling her eyes. “This flattery will not work on me.”

“It’s not! I really mean it. How come you always think I have some ulterior motive, huh?”

“I don’t know. You just strike me as a schemer.”

“Well, I do want to kiss you again.”

She breaks her eye contact with me, but I lean forward to try and meet her gaze.

“What about Nate?” she asks.

“Can’t I figure that out later?”

“I don’t even like you.”

I laugh loudly, but I’m cut off immediately by fingertips on my chin. A second later, Emily’s lips combine with mine and I begin to sink into her again.

“You’re kissing me again,” I tell her during a break, but she just rolls her eyes and pulls me right back in.

The next morning, I wake up in a queen-sized bed that does not belong to me. When I become conscious enough, my clothes are nowhere to be found and my nose is almost buried in a mane of red hair. And I remember everything.

Guilt floods my entire body and I lay as still as possible, trying not to have an anxiety attack. I become aware of my body against hers, my stomach oscillating in and out against the bare skin of her back, my arms under hers, keeping her in a tight hold from behind as if trying to stop her from falling off of something very tall. I will myself to slowly get up from the bed and get dressed, but it’s no use—my mind has wrapped itself completely around her warmth and her skin and will not allow me to move.

I lay there, my lips brushing against her shoulder blade, and I rack my brain as hard as I can to come up with what I will have to tell Nate when I inevitably have to leave this heaven and face my reality.

For every point of skin-to-skin contact I share with her, it’s like the spot has a golden glow, borne by some magic I cannot explain. I’m fighting a losing battle against the desire to plant soft kisses all over her body, and so I place a few on her upper back and neck. I reach up to pull her hair back off the side of her neck and behind her ear, and she stirs. Her fingers find mine and she shifts onto her back, turning her head toward me, her eyes fluttering open slowly.

She raises her eyebrows as soon as she sees me, but then her eyes suggest recollection. “Oh,” she breathes. “Bloody hell…”

“Morning,” I say, unable to keep myself from grinning widely.

She looks at me with a kind of soft defeat in her eyes, and her gaze flickers over my lips for a brief second. After a long beat, she finally just snorts with laughter.

“What?” I say, involuntarily joining in.

“I don’t know—was that real? Are you real?” she says, placing her hand on my cheek.

“Yes, very.”

“Oh my god,” she says, facepalming but letting her smile break through. “I don’t even like you!”

I laugh loudly. “You sure about that?”

“What time is it?” she asks, sitting up. She makes no effort to cover herself, so I have to try my best not to stare.

I turn over to the bedside table and pick up my cell phone. It’s nearly nine, but my screen shows that I have five missed calls from Nate.

“Oh, shit,” I groan, and sit up with her to dial his number. Pulling my shirt over my head, I clear my throat so I don’t sound like I just woke up, and hear him answer.

“Hey, baby! I’m so sorry I missed your calls, um—I had forgotten to turn my ringer back on when I left work.”

“God, you’re bad at lying,” Emily teases quietly, but I wave my hand around to motion for her to shut up. She stifles a laugh, pulling on a pair of sweatpants.

“Jesus Christ, Andy, you had me out of my mind with worry! You never came home—I thought something really bad happened to you.”

I sigh. “I’m so sorry, Nate. I swear to God I would have answered you if I—if I had been able to.” Well, at least it’s not another lie.

He pauses briefly. “I’m just glad you’re okay,” he says. “But where the hell did you stay?”

“Oh! Uh…I was, uh—I was actually out with—with a co-worker of mine, Emily, and it was late and I couldn’t get a taxi, so she offered for me to…crash on her couch.”

Emily stares at me, wide-eyed.

“He has no gaydar,” I mouth, and she rolls her eyes.

“You’re still a bad liar,” she returns.

“Oh. That was nice of her,” Nate replies slowly.

“Yeah! Yeah, we—yeah, it was. Um—so she wants to get brunch, and, uh, we’re about to leave, so—I’ll see you when I get home?”

He pauses again. “Sure,” he says. “Just answer me when I call you, please, okay?”

“I promise I will,” I reply. “I’m turning my sound back on as we speak.”

“Alright,” he chuckles. “Love you.”

Shit. “Love you too!” I say hastily. Oh god, I hope that didn’t sound as reluctant as it was.

I look ahead of me to see Emily at the bathroom sink, brushing her teeth and pulling down a t-shirt over herself. I hope to god she didn’t hear me.

I stand up to join her, leaning on the counter with my palms, and press my shoulder up against her.

“I’m not getting food with you,” she says through her toothpaste.

“Yeah, I know. I just said that to buy me some time while I try to figure out what to do.”

Emily spits into the basin and rinses her mouth. “About what?” she asks, drying her hands.

“About Nate!”

“Oh…I’m—probably not really the one to give you advice…”

“I understand, but I just…I don’t know. He doesn’t deserve for me to be doing this to him. I kind of wish I could have it both ways, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, I don’t think.”

I push myself up to sit on the marble surface. Emily turns around to face the wall behind us, resting her back and palms against the counter. She looks at me and sighs. “If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn’t fault you for choosing him—he was here first, after all.”

“Would you be upset if I did?” I ask, staring down at my hands in my lap.

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“...Yes.”

She swallows. “Yeah, I would. But I wouldn’t be upset with you. ”

I turn my gaze to meet hers. “I don’t want to lose either of you.”

“You wouldn’t lose me.”

“Yes I would.” The response escapes my lips so fluently, so naturally, I almost wonder if I should retract it. But I know what I want .

“Andy, we’ve barely known each other a month,” she adds, pushing off the counter to stride past me.

But I reach out and grab her wrist, and she whirls around to face me again. “I feel like I’ve known you for a lifetime,” I tell her.

She stares up at me, standing between my thighs, her mind devoid of any response she can give. She swallows her nerves but shakes her wrist from my grip and takes my hand in hers. I reach up with my free arm and tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear. My hand lingers there, settling to rest on her face, and as I stroke her cheekbone with my thumb, her smile breaks through.

“God, everything about you just makes me— unravel, ” Emily says, briefly diverting her gaze to the floor. “I hate it,” she adds, chuckling softly.

I smile and lean forward, tipping her chin up with my fingertips and she lets me kiss her. She slides her hands up my thighs and rests them on either side of my waist, underneath my shirt, and I pull her in closer by her shoulders. The feeling of her tongue reminds me of last night and a soft, muffled moan escapes my lungs. When she breaks away, she lingers for a moment, and I feel her warm breath against my lips. The tip of her nose brushes against mine and I swear I feel a spark of electricity when it does. And god forbid she take her hands off me.

I lick my lips, pining for more of the way she tastes, but instead she pulls me down from my seat on top of the bathroom counter and kisses me right above the bridge of my nose. She plants the mark of her lips on my cheeks, my jawline, my neck and collarbone, and my breathing accelerates.

“Em?”

She hums once between her kisses to let me know she’s listening.

“I think—uh—”

Jesus, I literally can’t breathe right now.

I swallow. “You know, if you accidentally give me a hickey, I’ll kill you.”

“Oh, shit—you’re right,” she replies, and stops, burying her nose against my neck.

I wait for my lungs to return to their regular speed, and reach out to hug her around the waist. I rest my head on her shoulder, swaying gently with her.

“I’m going to have to leave at some point because of what I told Nate,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“I wonder if I should just get it over with now.”

“Andy, you act like you’re never going to see me again.”

We break apart and both descend into laughter. “Ugh—okay, fine. You’re right—I see you pretty much every day. I don’t know what I’m so worried about,” I say.

“It’s okay, I—I don’t really want you to leave right now, either.”

“God, this happened fast.”

“What did?”

“We did. I mean, a month isn’t that long.”

Emily shrugs. “Sometimes that just happens.”

I snort, and without really thinking about it, respond, “You say that like we’re together or something.”

She raises her eyebrows and blinks, but her confidence remains. “I don’t know. Are we?”

My cheeks turn red and I scoff. “I don’t know either— What about Nate? ” I deepen my voice as if to mock the phrase.

“Well, it would certainly be on-brand,” she laughs.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Emily waves her hand dismissively. “It’s a lesbian thing—you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t understand, huh? Well, I’ll tell you what I do understand—” I step forward and snake my hands under her wrists, pulling her in again by her waist. “I may not be a lesbian but I can tell you who was not in charge last night—”

“Alright, alright,” she cuts me off, her entire face red. “I will not let you deflect this onto me.”

I heave a sigh. “I don’t know what’s going on with us,” I say. “But I can tell you that it’s—“

Am I really about to say this out loud?

“It’s better than anything Nate and I have ever had in our two years together—in every way, not just the se—yeah, I’m not gonna finish that—”

“ Oh. ”

I stare at the floor, as if I’ve just admitted something embarrassing—well, I kind of have. But I bring myself to look her in the eyes again and grab both her hands. “I’m sorry,” I say, “I have no idea what I’m trying to say.”

“Well, just know that it’s your call.”

“Yeah. I know,” I reply.

But I guess she doesn’t believe me because she squeezes my hands to keep my wavering attention on her. “I’m serious, Andy. Whatever you want.”

I swallow, the lump in my throat throbbing again. I nod, looking for the words, but eventually, all I can say is “Thank you.” After a beat, I continue, “Okay, I think I need to get the whole leaving part over with, so um—”

She nods and stands on her toes to place a kiss on my forehead.

“Don’t make me change my mind,” I say.

“Sorry,” she replies, smiling sheepishly.

She walks me to the front door, making sure I’m fully dressed and have all my things. I tell her goodbye and head downstairs to flag down a taxi. When I arrive back at Nate and I’s apartment, he’s talking to a friend of his on the phone.

“Oh, hey, can I call you back? Andy’s home,” he says, and barely a moment later, he hangs up. My heart drops to my stomach.

“Hey.”

“Hey! How was brunch?”

“It was good,” I reply, smiling.

Nate strides up behind me and wraps his arms around my waist. His touch is so rigid compared to Emily’s, almost as if it were foreign, as if I hadn’t felt it hundreds of times before. I place my hands over his but only because it helps me fight the urge to wriggle out of his grasp.

And I hate feeling like this, but I fear I love Emily so much more.

******

Dreading going into work is a feeling I’ve become accustomed to by now, even if I know Emily will be there. Usually, however, the dread comes from knowing I’ll be given at least ten impossible or near-impossible tasks by Miranda, and while I would literally take any other job if this wasn’t so important for my career, at least it’s predictable.

Except when it isn’t.

As soon as I walk into the office this morning, Emily grabs me by the wrist and goosebumps race up my arms again. She guides me into the break room with her hand on the small of my back, but she looks upset.

“Hi—”

“You were late delivering the Book last week,” she begins.

“I was. Miranda wasn’t as mad as usual, though.”

“Well, she is now!”

“What?”

Emily looks briefly to either of her sides at the tiled wall, as if the prismarine color would be any help. When her eyes land back on me, she still wears an expression that is both angry and anxious.

“I didn’t think she cared that much,” I say.

“Andy, this is Miranda we’re talking about! You should know that by now!”

“Well, you know as well as I do why I was late.”

Emily pauses. “You kissed me first,” she says, lowering her voice.

“Yeah, but you kept it going,” I return.

“Well, either way, she’s upset, and I’m not the one who screwed up.”

I blink. “Yes you are—we both screwed up!”

“But you still started it!”

“So? You chose to kiss me again—”

“Andrea?” Miranda calls from her office.

I heave a sigh. Emily nods her head to the side to signal for me to go, and I glare at the audacity of it. “You and I aren’t done talking about this,” I tell her, and march off into Miranda’s office.

She grills me as usual, but it’s nothing I haven’t heard before. I’m unable to absorb her words right now because all I can think about is the argument with Emily. A pit in my stomach eats away at me from the inside, telling me I was too harsh, telling me I need to apologize as soon as Miranda is done with me. But then I remember her reluctance to take responsibility for Friday night, and suddenly all those feelings clear away.

She’ll realize she’s wrong and apologize, I tell myself. She’s better than that.

“Andrea, are you listening to me?”

At once, I snap out of it and return to reality. “Yes, of course.”

She gives me a quick up-and-down scan, as if she doesn’t believe me. “Good—this is important. The Benefit is in three days and I need to make sure you’re fully prepped on the guest list.”

I blink. “I thought only the first assistant went to the Benefit party?”

“Oh, sure, when I’ve got her full attention,” Miranda replies. “But lately, something’s off about her—she’s distracted. You’ll come and help Emily.”

“Uh—okay, sure. Wh—what do I need to know—”

“She’ll tell you. That’s all.”

I nod and give a polite smile as I leave the office and drag myself over to Emily’s desk. She looks up at me expectantly.

“Miranda’s making me come to the Benefit,” I tell her.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she sighs, massaging her temples, and turns around to dig in the drawers of the filing cabinets behind her. She pulls two black folders from the recesses and lays them open on the table.

“Em, I need to talk to you about earlier—”

“You have to learn all of these in three days, so start memorizing.”

“What?”

She rolls her eyes, placing her hands on either side of the laminated pages. “This is the guest list. It’s up to, apparently, you and I now to memorize all of these so that they all think Miranda knows who they are when they greet her.”

“I have to learn all these by Friday?”

“And these,” she corrects, signaling to the second folder. “I’ve been studying for weeks, so I suggest you get cracking.”

I breathe deeply and pick up the folders, taking them back to my desk and sitting back down heavily in my chair. So much for going home early tonight.

For the next three days, Emily makes it a point to give me the cold shoulder. I have no idea why, but I assume the Book incident must have upset her much more than I initially realized and that she just needs time. Maybe she knows Miranda is onto her.

In any case, the night of the Benefit arrives, and I’m able to successfully get myself ready and out the door before Nate gets home from work. Avoiding him has certainly helped me push my guilt away, and he has yet to really notice it. But I can feel my own downfall hanging over my head whether I want to admit it or not, ready to drop onto me with the weight of a boulder and crush me completely.

But I have no time to think about that—I’ve got too many names of rich people filling my head at the moment.

Miranda’s limousine chauffeurs me to the party, and I feel like a celebrity as I’m drowned in camera flashes from eager paparazzi on either side of the red carpet. As I ascend the steps to find Miranda, I spot Emily scurrying past a group of men in suits. I hastily climb the stairs, trying my best not to trip on my dress, and finally get to see her up close.

I have to catch my breath when I do. Her gown is midnight black and looks like it has armor, coated in decorative rhinestones all over its chest and spaghetti straps. A belt cinches her at the waist, also covered with sapphire gems, and I may not know much about fashion, but even I can tell you that the necklace she’s wearing ties the whole thing together. And I can’t keep my gaze from lingering on her collarbone.

“Emily,” I say.

She turns around to look at me, scanning my outfit with her eyes. “Andrea.”

“You look incredible.”

I reach out toward her briefly, but my arms fall back at my sides before the motion is complete. Her hands remain folded in front of her, not even flinching at my accidental gesture, but I know she saw the whole thing.

“Come on,” she says. “Miranda’s waiting for us at the doors.”

We find her in a black gown similar to mine, but much more elegant, and giving myself one last mental review of my flashcards, the three of us step through the enormous doors to join the crowd.

I enter what is likely the largest building I have ever set foot in. The ceilings are stories high and I feel like I’m inside some kind of palace. The marble floors are littered with the dress shoes of men in fancy suits and high heels of women in expensive gowns, and nearly everyone has a drink in their hand.

Each of the guests from the lists begin to approach Miranda at once, and Emily is so on top of her game with the names that I hardly have to do much of anything. But across the room, we all spot a tall, blonde man in a sleek black suit walking toward us, arm-in-arm with an equally blonde woman wearing a forest green gown.

“That is, um…” Emily blinks several times, shaking her head. “Uh…” She gestures in front of her, in disbelief of her memory’s failure. “God, I just had it—what is his name—”

But he’s getting closer, and the names of the couple pop straight into my head as soon as I can make out more of their facial features. I lean in toward Miranda’s ear and say, “That’s Ambassador Franklin, and with him is the woman he left his wife for, Rebecca.”

I back away hastily and Miranda puts on a robotic smile. “Ambassador,” she says. “Rebecca. So great to see you both.”

While Miranda talks with the Ambassador, Emily takes a step toward me and links her pinky finger with mine, keeping her gaze focused ahead, ready for when the next guest arrives, but she does not drop my hand for several minutes.

“Thank you,” she whispers, and I give her my best smile.

But as the night begins to wrap up, I can still see her becoming increasingly agitated. I plead for some idea of what is going through her head to reveal itself to me so I can help her, but nothing does. Eventually, she claims that she needs the restroom, and so I watch her go. But when she doesn’t come back for almost twenty minutes, I decide to go check on her.

I pull open the heavy wooden door to the ladies’ room. “Em?”

I expect to hear an answer from a stall, but instead, I find her just standing against the wall with her arms folded in front of her. She looks up at me and her eyes are red and puffy whether she likes it or not.

“Oh, no—” I try to comfort her but she disallows me.

“I’m fine,” she insists.

“You don’t look fine.”

“Well, I wasn’t—a minute ago, but I am now.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know!” she cries. “Damnit, Andrea…”

Fearing I’ve done something wrong but not entirely sure, I rack my brain trying to figure out how to respond. Eventually, I just ask, “What do you need from me?”

She sighs. “Nothing you’re capable of doing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she replies, shaking her head in defeat. “Because I need you to get out of my head.”

I knit my brows in concentration.

“It’s like you’ve—wedged your way in there and stopped my gears turning,” she continues. “It’s awful.”

“I—I’m sorry—?”

“No, no, no, see, that’s what I don’t understand because it’s not a bad thing.”

I pause, chewing on her words. “I’m sorry, Em, but I just don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”

She sighs and rolls her eyes, pushing off the tile. She takes one large step toward me, grabs me by the shoulders, and presses my back against the wall with her kiss. She tastes like vanilla.

“You got it now?” she asks me, hands on my waist.

“I think so,” I say, catching my breath through my smile. “But I’m pretty sure there’s more to this than just physical attraction.”

“Well, duh,” she replies. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.”

I giggle at her, touching my forehead to hers, when the door to the bathroom opens. Within a fraction of a second, Emily pushes herself away from me and drags me by the wrist into the nearest stall.

Miranda’s voice echoes against the tile. “Emily? Andrea?”

I’m just about to call out in response when Emily claps a hand over my mouth. She puts a finger to her lips, visibly stifling a laugh. I smile involuntarily against her palm.

Miranda lets out a frustrated huff and I hear the sound of her heels clack against the floor on her way out of the bathroom.

“Oh, my god, we are so fired—”

“No, we’re not! She’s already been introduced to everyone, so she doesn’t need us anymore.”

“I hope you’re right about that—you already forgot the Ambassador’s name—”

“Oh, my god, you’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Nope,” I reply, grinning. “But really? Is that the only reason Miranda brings her assistants here? To help her be fake?”

“Pretty much—which is why I think you and I should ditch this place and go find something else to do,” she says slowly, rubbing my arms.

“You’re sure Miranda won’t be upset with us?”

“Andy, I’ve done this a hundred times. She won’t care where we are.”

And so naturally, we leave the bathroom and sneak out a back door, headed down a street in a part of New York City that I have never seen in my life, at nearly ten o’clock at night. Love makes you stupid.

I’m sure we look completely insane showing up to a trashy food truck in ball gowns, but we don’t care—the tacos are fucking incredible. And though the temptation is there, neither of us order drinks. Emily and I share a taxi, but she is dropped off first. I walk her to her door, keeping a protective hand on the small of her back as we ascend the steps. I kiss her knuckles and tell her goodbye, then reluctantly carry myself back to the cab. When I finally arrive home, it’s after midnight.

I open the door to the apartment to find Nate sitting on our couch, but he doesn’t shut the TV off and stand up to greet me like he always does. Instead, he just sits there, eyes glued to the screen, as if I had not even been home.

“Hey, baby,” I say.

“You’re back,” he replies flatly.

“Yeah, I am. I know it’s late—the Benefit party ran super long.”

“I’m sure it did.”

Something’s wrong. “You okay?” I ask. “Did something happen at work?”

“Yeah, I had a great time celebrating my birthday with Lily, Doug, and the guys from the kitchen,” he says.

Oh, shit.

The lump in my throat catches fire again and I feel my stomach churn. Tonight was Nate’s birthday and I completely forgot about him.

I inhale sharply, my eyes glistening. “Oh, my god, Nate, I’m so sorry—”

“It’s alright,” he cuts me off. “I’m tired from all the excitement, so I’m just going to head to bed.”

“Nate, please, I—”

“Andy, stop.”

I feel like vomiting. My fingers start to tremble. He doesn’t deserve this.

“Nate, I fucked up.”

“Yeah, no shit—”

“No, I really did. I really fucked up.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I—”

I don’t want to tell him anything. I want nothing more than to just curl into a ball and go to sleep on the couch, right here in this fancy black dress. But I have to face the music.

A tear races down my cheek, but I wipe it away. “I think you should break up with me.”

He knits his brows, jerking his head backward in confusion. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I kissed Emily.”

“What—Emily? Like, your coworker, Emily?”

I nod, swallowing whatever tears I can.

“Wh—what’d you do that for?”

My legs feel weak and I let myself fall into a chair at the kitchen table. I stare at the floor, eyes shut. I feel completely helpless.

“You cheated on me,” he says, as if the realization would hit him harder if he said it aloud.

I have nothing to say to him. An apology will never be enough, but there’s nothing I can do to fix this or make it up to him without lying to both of us.

“Why?” he asks.

I can’t bring myself to answer just yet.

“I—I just want to know why,” he repeats, his voice breaking.

“I wish I could explain her to you,” I say, “but I can’t even explain her to myself.”

He shakes his head, fighting his own tears now. “Okay, then—that’s what I’ll do, Andy. I’ll break up with you.”

Without another word, he makes a beeline for the door and leaves the apartment.

I settle down on the couch but don’t get a single minute of sleep. I spend my tears until I have none left. In the morning, I call in sick to work. Nate doesn’t come home. And Emily calls me on her lunch break.

“Andy?”

“Hi.”

“Are you alright?”

“No.”

She pauses. “What’s wrong?”

“I told Nate.”

Another pause. “About—about us?”

“Uh huh.”

“Wh—What? Why?”

“I just couldn’t do that to him anymore.”

“Oh,” she replies softly. “Well, what did he say?”

“I asked him to break up with me, so he did. Then he left and now I have no idea where he is.”

“Have you tried calling him?”

“There’s no way he’ll answer me.”

“God, I’m so sorry, Andy.”

It’s my turn to pause now. “I’m a horrible person, Em.”

“If you were a horrible person, you would have just kept lying to him.”

“Ugh,” I groan, somehow cracking a grin. “Stop being smart.”

She chuckles. “You sound terrible. Are you sick?”

“Probably getting there,” I say, and now that she mentions it, I do sound like I have a stuffy nose.

“Listen, whatever you need, just let me know, okay? I’m here for you.”

My tears threaten to come back. “Thank you,” I reply through my snot.

For a few moments, we stay silent. I can hear the clattering of the downstairs kitchen in the background of her end.

“Em?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I might be in love with you.”

“ Woah. ”

“Sorry,” I add quickly.

“No, no, it’s alright. But do you mean that or are you just in a state of high emotion right now?”

“Both. But I did just ruin my relationship for you.”

“Do you feel like we should talk about this in person when I don’t have to be back to work in five minutes? Because I do.”

I laugh. “Yes, absolutely.”

“Okay. I’ll call you when I get off?”

“Okay.”

If by call me, she meant show up on my doorstep with junk food and movies, then she was right on schedule. I do wish she had at least given me a heads-up, though, because I know I looked like shit when I answered the door.

But she doesn’t seem to mind, because within fifteen minutes, I find myself propped up against her like she’s my own personal pillow, with a box of take-out lo mein noodles in my hands, watching The Breakfast Club, as if nothing is wrong.

But everything is wrong. I can’t go two minutes without letting my mind wander about where Nate is, about what I have done to him, hoping desperately that he’s alright.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, getting up to grab the remote and pausing the TV. “I literally can’t focus on anything right now.”

“Talk to me,” Emily says.

I drop heavily back down onto the couch next to her. Tears threaten to breach my waterline. “I’ve never broken someone’s heart like that before. I really hurt him, Em.”

“Did you love him?”

“Once upon a time, I did.”

“But I mean did you love him when you told him what was happening?”

I take a deep breath, almost biting my tongue, but I don’t. “No. Not romantically,” I answer. I stare at the floor in shame.

“Andrea.”

I look up at her.

“You’re not a horrible person.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not. Do you think it would have been better for you to stay with him, to keep saying ‘I love you too’ without really meaning it?”

“Well, no.”

“You told him the truth, Andy. That takes an immense amount of courage.”

I stare at her.

“Lying makes you a coward. But you put a stop to it. You set him free, Andy. You said it yourself—he didn’t deserve to be with someone who didn’t love him.”

“But I know exactly why I stopped loving him.”

“Yeah? Why?”

I pick up her hand and intertwine my fingers in hers. “Because I found something better.”

She looks at me incredulously, but I know she means no harm.

“I worry that’s not a good enough reason, though.”

“I won’t lie to you—there’s certainly better ones,” she replies, and my heart drops. “But that doesn’t make it wrong.”

I lay my head on her shoulder. “I hate having a bad relationship with him. Honestly, if I had never met you, I would have stayed with him purely because I liked him as a person—even if it became mostly platonic in the end. But now he hates me.”

“You don’t know that.”

“What other option is there?”

“Give him time. If he feels the same way about you that you feel about him, he’ll be happy for you.”

“I want to believe that so badly right now.”

“Well, it’s only a possibility—I’m not magic.”

“You sure about that?” I croon, turning my face toward hers.

“Shut up,” she returns, but her ears are red.

Her words echo in my head and I’m able to finish the movie with her. While the credits play, I sit cross-legged in my sweatpants and sort through the pile of DVDs she brought to find what to watch next.

“Andy.”

“Hm?”

“So what did you mean earlier today when I was on the phone with you?”

I look up and my cheeks go red, fighting a grin. I know exactly what she’s talking about. “I’m sorry if that made you uncomfortable.”

“It didn’t.”

I set the movies in my lap. “Oh, well, that’s good.”

“Did—” She pauses abruptly and swallows. “Did you mean it?”

I fidget with my own fingers. “Yeah, I did.”

She shifts her sitting position; before, she looked confident with her legs crossed and her arm resting on the back of the sofa, but now, she makes herself look smaller, tucking in her elbows and leaning forward slightly.

I look over at her, and realize that I might be one of the only people in the world who has ever seen her like this. Her fiery hair is tied into a messy bun. She is wearing no makeup whatsoever, and she has probably had the t-shirt she is wearing since she was in middle school. Her sweatpants are pale green and baggy, and her socks are old, but she looks warm and comfortable and soft. She brings her knees to her chest and folds her arms around them, turning her head to the side to stare back at me, and it hits me like a tidal wave, how clear and how natural it is.

“I love you,” I tell her, and it rolls off my tongue.

“I love you, too,” she replies, as if this has happened hundreds of times before.

“Is it too early to say that?” I ask.

“I’d argue it’s right on time,” she answers.

I pause, letting out a wheeze. “Did we really just do that?”

She smiles at me, laughing also. “Yes, I think we did.”

“God, this is insane.”

“Try not to think about it too much—I’m out of sage advice.”

I laugh even harder after she says that. It probably wasn’t that funny, but you tend to laugh anyway if someone you love is telling the joke.

Someone you love. Someone I love—that’s Emily.

I reach for her hand and pull her toward me. I stretch out my legs and she lays on her back between them, using my stomach as her pillow, and she refuses to let go of my hands.

“Do you want to pick another movie?” I ask her.

“Well, we’re done eating, so not really. I just brought them because I knew you were upset and thought you might want to binge or something.”

“I am upset, but much less now. But I got literally no sleep last night, so I’m honestly just tired.”

“Do you want me to go, then?”

“No, stay,” I reply instantly. “Well, unless you have somewhere to be.”

“I don’t.”

******

A week has passed since Nate and I broke up, and he hasn’t returned a single one of my calls. Because my mind forces me to assume the worst, I know that he’s not dead because I’ve already asked my friends, Lily and Doug, but I have no idea where he is or what he is doing. And I can’t imagine what he must have told them about what happened.

Miranda’s chauffeur drops me off in front of her house and I walk inside to deliver the Book, my mind somewhere else. But as soon as I open the door and step inside, I hear Miranda call my name. I follow the sound of her voice to find her sitting in her office, thumbing through an old issue of Runway. I approach the front of the desk and hand her the Book.

“The Paris trip is the largest event of the year, as I’m sure you’re aware,” she begins. “I need the best possible team with me—that no longer includes Emily.”

I raise my eyebrows at her and I feel uneasy. “What do you mean? Doesn’t she always go to Paris with you?”

“When she is performing at her very best, yes, she does. But lately, I’ve noticed her slipping—and you improving.” I swear she speaks like a Disney villain sometimes.

“Oh, no, Miranda, I can’t—I can’t do that to her, she’d be crushed.” She would also probably hate me, and I’m not even sure I would be mad at her for it. And if there’s one thing I know I’m not doing, it’s getting dumped twice in one month.

“Then I’ll assume you’re not serious about your future—at Runway, or any other publication.”

Jesus—I guess the devil wears Prada.

I bite my lip, a part of me in disbelief that I am actually considering betraying Emily for my own gain. Put like that, it does sound horrible, but is that really what I’m doing?

Maybe she would understand, I mean, there’s always next year, right?

“I am serious, Miranda. I promise,” I say.

She cares about my future as much as her own.

“If you need me on your team for Paris, I’d be happy to join you.”

I’ll find a way to make it up to her.

Miranda looks up from the Book and smiles at me, which I hate. “Wonderful. Our flight leaves in a few weeks.”

I turn on my heels, running justification after justification through my head, but just before I’m out of the office, Miranda stops me one last time.

“Oh, and Andrea?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t forget to break the news to Emily.”

Yep, she’s the devil. “Sure thing.”

Of course, she doesn’t have a remote control on me, even if sometimes it feels like she does, so I procrastinate for as long as I can. On Wednesday, I walk into the office and Emily’s desk is empty. I’m just about to call her when Miranda peeks around the corner.

“Have you told Emily yet?” she asks.

“Not yet, but I—”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Andrea, she’s not a child—she can handle it.”

As much as I hate to admit it, Miranda’s right. I have to get it over with. I pick up the phone on my desk and dial her number.

“Andy? Hi,” she shouts over the morning traffic.

“Hey, Em, where are you?”

“Oh—Miranda needed some scarves from Hermès so I went and picked them up for her.”

“Really? That sounds like a ‘me’ errand.”

“Yeah, I thought so too—no offense—but anyway, they weren’t supposed to open until ten but I called the owner and she opened the shop early for me.”

“Oh, that’s good. Well, hey, when you get in, I have something I need to talk to you about?”

“Yeah? Is it an in-person thing?”

“Yeah, uh—I think—I think that would be best—”

“Okay, well—agh! God, there’s so many people and I’m going to be late—I’ll be there as soon—”

But I hear a loud, plastic thud and the sounds of people clamoring and yelling. I assume she must have just dropped her phone—New York City isn’t exactly the kind of place that’s easily walkable at eight in the morning.

“Em?”

No answer.

“Emily? Are you there?”

I hear another thud, and the call drops. I call back but I get no answer.

“Oh, while you’re talking to her, find out—” Miranda pokes her head out again, but stops when she sees my distress. “Where’s Emily? I thought you were just talking to her.”

“I don’t know. I just heard a loud noise and the call dropped out of nowhere.”

Miranda massages her temples, mumbling something about incompetence as she returns to her desk. I wait until I know she can’t see me and roll my eyes. I try her a couple more times, but she doesn’t answer, and now I can’t stop my leg from bouncing nervously under the desk.

But fifth time’s the charm—just as I’m about to ask Miranda who her emergency contact is, the phone is answered.

“Emily?” I ask.

“Hello, ma’am,” A man’s voice floats through the other end. “Who is this?”

“Uh, my name is Andrea Sachs. Do–do you know where my—where an Emily Charlton is?”

“Yes, she just got into the emergency room about twenty minutes ago.”

“What?! What happened?”

“The woman who brought her in said she was hurt by a taxi cab while crossing the street.”

“Wh—I—Is she okay?”

“Yes, she’s completely fine, just asleep. The doctor got to take a look at her and said that only one of her legs was seriously harmed.”

“Okay—which hospital are you at?”

He gives me the address and I scribble it down on a sticky note. Thanking him, I hang up and rush out the glass doors without telling Miranda where I’m going. I might get fired for that, but I don’t care—right now, Emily is more important.

Thankfully, it isn’t far from the Elias-Clarke building, so I’m able to walk there. In ten minutes, I arrive and introduce myself at the front.

“What is your relationship to the patient?” the secretary asks.

“Uh—”

At first, I wonder why she’s even asking me this, but I guess it’s probably for security reasons. But then I realize I have no idea what the answer is.

“I’m just a friend of hers—we work together.” I’ve told worse lies to people.

“Alright. She’s in room three.”

I head through the industrial doors and find the designated “room”—it’s actually nothing more than a bed sectioned off by some depressing yellow curtains, but there she is, lying with her leg propped up in a cast, looking like she’s just been hit by a car—oh.

“Em?” I peek my head through the curtain.

“Andy?”

“Hi,” I say, smiling. “Holy shit, dude.”

“Right? I mean, what’s the point of a crosswalk if the cars are just going to drive through it while there’s people using it?”

I step up to her bedside and kiss the cheek that doesn’t have a bandage on it, pulling up a chair underneath me. “How are you?”

She looks at me incredulously, and I flash an embarrassed smile.

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m not dead,” she replies. “But Paris is going to be a pain in the arse on crutches.”

A weight drops into my stomach, but by the time her leg starts to get better, the trip will be here, and I’d rather not drop this news on her the day before I leave.

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

A nurse enters the area with a tray of food for her. She immediately spots and picks up the roll eagerly, and I’ve never seen her go for something with so many carbs that quickly.

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, what about it?”

“I—” I swallow, preparing for the worst. “Miranda asked me to go, and I said yes.”

Her face lights up. “You’re coming with us?”

“Not exactly, um—well, she basically told me that I’d be going in place of you if I did.”

She furrows her brow. “Okay?”

“And I said yes.”

“ What? ” she bites.

“I—”

“What the hell, Andrea?”

I open my mouth to say something back, but words fail me. What the hell is it with me and kicking the people I love while they’re already down?

“I–I swear, I can call you as soon as I get there, and I’ll take tons of pictures—”

“No, that’s just going to make me feel worse.”

I let out a defeated breath. “I’m sorry. She threatened to fire me—I wanted to say no, but I didn’t know how.”

She puts the half-eaten roll down on her tray and leans back on her pillows. “Whatever. It’s not like I can go, anyway,” she says, gesturing to her leg.

I stare down at my fingers in my lap, unsure of what to say. “I’ll take you there myself after your leg is healed.”

“But all of everything I’ve been looking forward to for the whole year will be over by then!”

“I could—”

“Andy, stop—just stop it. Just forget it, alright? Go to Paris, have fun, get all the clothes. I don’t care.”

“Yes y—”

“No, I don’t.”

Before I can think of a response, my phone blares. It’s Miranda.

I roll my eyes and answer it. “Hello?”

“Andrea, where are you? You just left without saying anything.”

“Sorry. I went to visit Emily—she’s in the emergency room.”

“Oh. Did you tell her about Paris yet? I don’t want to have to do it myself.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Good. Well, get back soon. That’s all.”

“Of course.”

Emily stares at me and I can see a hundred different emotions behind her eyes. Suddenly, everything between us is awkward, and when every other day I’m with her, it feels as if we have known each other our whole lives, this is the worst, most ominous state of being in the world.

“Just go,” she finally says, breaking the silence. “Miranda’s going to fire you if you don’t head back now, and then neither of us will get to go.”

I nod and take her advice. I want to give her a goodbye kiss, but she’d probably just refuse me, and so I head toward the door. But before I leave, I have to at least say one thing, even if it doesn't matter.

“I’m sorry.”

She says nothing back, and so I walk out.

The morning of the flight arrives faster than I would have liked, but I find myself climbing the ramp behind Miranda all the same. On the plane, I dig through my carry-on bag for something to shut my brain up, but nothing works. I think about what Emily must be feeling right now—besides pain in her leg. I’ve barely spoken to her since the first day I went to visit her in the hospital—I tried to go back several times, but each time, she turned me away, and so eventually, I stopped because I couldn’t take it anymore. A week before today, she came back into the office on crutches, but every time I tried to talk to her, she just avoided me unless she absolutely had to interact with me.

This is hell.

I unzip the front pocket of my backpack and pull out a small camera. If Emily refuses the pictures I take for her, I suppose I can just keep them for myself—it’s not every day I have the opportunity to go on a corporate-paid trip to Paris, France. I make sure the battery is charged for when we land because I plan on taking as many photos as my little storage card can handle. Nothing is boring in Paris, not even the airport.

But until the plane lands, she won’t get out of my head. Usually, that’s a good thing, but all I can think about right now is what I’ll do to make it up to her—and what I might have to learn to live with if I can’t. I lean back in my seat and put my headphones on, trying to drown out my thoughts with music, but after switching albums four or five times, I decide it’s no use, and I let myself sink only deeper into my daydreams and nightmares.

The PA system announcing that we are landing soon jolts me awake, and I wonder how long I have been asleep. I’m slightly grateful that I have something to distract myself with now, and as we go through baggage claim and settle into the rental limousine that I had booked for us, I make sure to snap photos of anything and everything that looks interesting enough. Then, of course, I wonder about how Emily might react if I showed them to her, whether I thought she would get excited or yawn and say that she’s already seen everything there a hundred times. But there’s always the possibility that every trip to Paris is different, and thus there are new sights to see each time Miranda and her team travel here. Although, now, I can’t decide if the photos would make her feel better because she got to see all she missed, or worse because of how they serve as a reminder that she missed it all.

But before I can figure out an answer, we arrive at the hotel. Or at least, what I assume is the hotel, because it looks like yet another palace I don’t belong in. The architecture is easily sixteenth century, with all its towering spires and outer brick pieces that look like they were modeled after spike traps. Hundreds of windows scale the cathedral-like outer walls and something about it reminds me of my old student union building. But the lobby is remodeled and modern, with gray and white tiled floors and circular, white lights lining the old pillars holding the place up, all the way up to its incredibly high ceiling. I wonder if it was once an old church of some kind, or maybe a government building, now claimed by and refurbished to fit the rush of tourism and commerce that floods western society. I’ve probably taken ten or fifteen pictures just of these two areas.

And it’s not until this trip that I learn that hotel suites can be as big and as grand as apartments if you have the money for them, because while Miranda and I are meant to share a room, that room has two bedrooms, a large bathroom, and a living room. Had it not been for the absence of a kitchen, she and I would have been proper roommates for the week. I walk into the room like I have never seen it before, even though I know for a fact I’m the one who organized much of the trip, including booking hotels and transportation. But my life is such a haze these days that my failure to recognize this place doesn’t even surprise me.

It’s late in the evening when we check in, so both Miranda and I decide to turn in as soon as we finish unpacking—or rather, as soon as I finish unpacking both my own suitcase and hers.

My thoughts about Emily are formidable and they keep me awake for several hours. I’m hyper-aware of the emptiness of my bed. I’ve lost her while I still have her. I love her but I scarred her for my own benefit and barely even thought about it. I know that I love her, but I still chose to hurt her. If I know that I love her, then why did I choose to hurt her?

And we wonder why love is such a bitch to try and explain.

For three mornings in a row, I follow Miranda around like a small child, constantly holding a pencil and paper in my hands, drenched in camera flashes and blocked by foam microphone heads everywhere I go. She parts the sea of eager paparazzi as they make room for her to walk down some ten or fifteen red carpets in total, and she seems to be the only celebrity in the world that can get an asshole with a huge camera to back off just by piercing them with her eyes. In between the chaos, I do manage to get a healthy amount of pictures, but deep down, I’m still a writer. I don’t care about fashion—I can respect it, sure, but I can’t force myself to be interested in it.

That’s Emily. Emily should be here, not me.

On the evening of our fourth day in Paris, Nigel calls me and asks me to come to his room as soon as I’m free. I knock on his ornately-decorated door and he answers it, beckoning me inside with a bottle of champagne in his hand.

My eyes fall on it and light up—I’m certainly in need of a drink, if nothing else. “Oh, what are we celebrating?”

“Friendship,” he replies, a bit sarcastically.

“Yeah, you’re full of shit,” I laugh. “Seriously, what’s the occasion?”

“We are toasting to the dream job,” he says. “The one that a million girls wanted.”

“Which I got months ago,” I remind him.
He raises an eyebrow at me. “I’m not talking about you.”

I grin, watching him unwrap the gold seal on the bottle. “Massimo Corteleoni,” he continues, “is investing in James Holt, and taking his company global—so bags, shoes, fragrances, you know. And James”—he sets the bottle down and walks over to a wastebasket in the corner to throw the wrapper away—“needs a partner.”

“And?” I smile eagerly.

“And that partner…would be me.”

The smile grows so wide my jaw begins to hurt. “Oh my god—Nigel, that’s amazing!”

“I know, I know!” he exclaims, turning to stare out the window. “For the first time in eighteen years, I’m going to be able to call the shots in my own life!” He turns back around and hands me the champagne bottle. “You do the honors.”

“Are you sure?” I ask. “It’s your moment, not mine.”

“Yes, because if I spill alcohol on my Versace, I’m going to be very upset.”

“Okay,” I laugh, and pick up the corkscrew from the table beside us. I stick it into the top of the bottle and pop it open, trying not to spill any of the champagne that bubbles out. I pour each of us a glass as Nigel asks, “So what’s been going on with you? How are you liking Paris so far?”

“Ah.” I take my first sip. “Well, the city is absolutely mesmerizing. But…I can assure you I’m not doing half as good as you are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…” Nigel has got to be the last person in the world to be homophobic, right? “Emily and I are kind of…a thing.” I end my words with a sigh.

“ Really? I don’t think I would have guessed you were gay.”

“I’m bisexual.”

“Ah, well, that was my second guess,” he says, and I chuckle, feeling a bit relieved. “So why Emily? You two are a bit opposite.”

“Yeah,” I reply. “Apparently, once you get to know her, she’s really fun to hang out with.”

“That’s all? Just to ‘hang out’ with?” he teases.

“Oh, no, see, she made the mistake of leaning a little too close to me once when she was trying to explain how to deliver the Book and it was all over for her.”

He nearly spits out his drink laughing. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I saw that opportunity and I went for it.”

“Well, it’s a good thing it worked out,” he says.

“Yeah,” I reply, but then my mind returns to the present, and my spirits darken. “Truth is, she’s pissed at me right now for going on this trip in place of her. I’m worried she’s upset enough to call it quits with me, and—I don’t know, I feel like this is ‘strike three,’ and that somehow, this job has been the reason for all these strikes.”

“Sounds like you have a choice to make,” he tells me, pointing at me briefly with the rim of his glass.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s either Runway or your girlfriend.”

“I choose her,” I answer instantly. “I would choose her every time, until the end of time.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

“Nigel, there’s no way this is that easy.”

“Are you sure? You’ve been here for several months now. That would certainly look very good on your résumé.”

“Not as good as a year, though.”

He sips his champagne. “Andy, can I tell you a secret about this place?”

“Please do.”

“There’s only ever been one girl—at least in the years that I’ve been at Runway, which are many—that has survived under Miranda for more than a year.”

“Who’s that?”

“I think you know.”

I raise my eyebrows. “You mean Emily?”

“Bingo—and she’s not going anywhere near your line of work.”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that the ‘one year rule’ is a myth. Now, I wouldn’t go applying if you only had a month or two, but Miranda’s harsh treatment of her assistants is not necessarily a secret. To have worked for her for as long as you have is impressive, which means you have a hell of a chance against any competitors.”

“Huh.”

Well, that means I can safely quit my job at Runway. I can safely quit my job at Runway.

But we’re supposed to be in Paris for three more days. By the time we get home, even if I quit the next day, I’ll be too late for Emily. How the hell am I going to do this?

******

My phone rings as I’m leaving Nigel’s room. “Andrea, where are you?” Miranda asks.

“Nigel wanted to see me,” I tell her. “But I’m headed back right now.”

“Good.” Click.

I walk through our door to find Miranda sitting makeup-less on the fancy loveseat in a gray bathrobe. I can’t figure out exactly why, but something about seeing her like this is a little jarring. She glances up at me briefly and then waves her hand to beckon me forward. “We need to go over the seating…uh, chart—for the luncheon tomorrow,” she says.

“Okay.” I set down my bag and dig through it, feeling her gaze burn the side of my face, rushing me. I finally pull out a gray folder and hand it to her.

She opens it, examines the pages for a moment, and says, “Okay, first of all, we need to move Snoop Dogg to my table.”

“Oh, your table is full.”

She glances up at me for only a second. “Stephen isn’t coming.”

“Oh,” I reply, surprised. “Okay. So does that mean I don’t need to go and pick up Stephen from the airport tomorrow?”

“Well,” she sighs. “If you speak to him and he decides to rethink the divorce, then go right ahead.”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. I know exactly how she feels.

“And then when we get back to New York, we need to contact, um…Leslie—to see what she can do to minimize the press…on all this,” she continues before I can say anything.

Unsure how to respond, I scribble those notes down, racking my brain for something comforting to say that I know won’t offend her.

“I can just imagine what they’re going to write about me,” she says. She seems to have forgotten that I’m here. “Another divorce splashed across page six—‘The Dragon Lady, career-obsessed…Snow Queen drives away another Mr. Priestly,’ I—” She waves her hand dismissively. “I don’t even care what anybody writes about me anymore.”

Upon looking closer at her face, I can see the red around her eyes from crying. Miranda Priestly cries?

“I’m so sorry, Miranda,” I finally say. “If you’d like, I can cancel your evening.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Why would we do that?”

I nod quietly, figuring she might want the distraction.

“What we really need to figure out,” she continues, “is where to put Donatella because she’s not speaking to anyone.”

Back to regular business, I guess. I quickly scribble that down in my notes and look back up at her as she closes the gray folder. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

She nods rapidly, handing the folder to me. “Your job.”

I nod as well and pack my bag again.

“That’s all.”

The next afternoon, the chauffeur arrives to take us to yet another event, and I think about the night before. I have never seen Miranda in a state so disheveled and defeated as that—usually, she’s the one making me feel disheveled and defeated. But the image of her sitting there, weakened in her bathrobe, I have taken a picture of in my head, like some kind of unforgettable exhibit I saw at a museum. I guess, in a way, it is.

And her divorce. I have no idea what husband Stephen was, but from the way she described him, it seemed that he was not the first nor the second, perhaps not even the third. Three divorces? I could barely handle the thought that Emily might leave me.

“How are you, Miranda?” I ask as I climb into the car.
“Fine,” she says.

“I’m sorry again about everything that’s happening.”

She looks over at me with a look of contempt, though it’s not as intense as it usually is. “Yes, well…it’s in the past, isn’t it?”

I swallow. “Of course.”

“Andrea.”

“Yes?”

She smiles at me this time. “You know, I see a great deal of myself in you,” she says. “You can see beyond what people want, and what they need, and you’re able to choose for yourself.”

I furrow my brow. “I don’t think I’m like that.” I’ve been mentally raving about how I’ve hurt Emily this whole trip! “I couldn’t—I couldn’t go through something like that and then just get back to business like nothing has happened.”

She lets out an amused hum. “Maybe not right now. But if you want this life, there are obstacles like that that you’ll have to learn to deal with. You get knocked down, you get right back up.”

If you want this life. “ But I don’t want this life.”

I know what I want—it’s waiting for me in sweatpants with a stack of DVDs and trashy Chinese takeout.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Andrea, everybody wants this,” she replies, nearly cutting me off mid-sentence. “Everybody wants to be us.”

“No,” I shoot back, a bit more aggressively than I mean to. “I never want to be like you.”

I feel the heat of my words bubbling in my chest. “You take your power for granted. You run your assistants to death, to the point where they starve themselves just for you to betray them in the end. And you don’t even feel remorse for it.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if my ears were red right now. “You’ll do anything and hurt anyone you have to so you don’t have to give all this up. You say that everybody wants this, but they don’t want it nearly as badly as you yearn to keep your hold on it.”

She says nothing to me, only staring at me in disbelief, and her words from the night before echo in my head: “ career-obsessed Snow Queen drives away another Mr. Priestly.” My heart sinks as the car pulls to a stop. A million what-ifs race through my mind, all of them wearing Emily’s face. The chauffeur pulls Miranda’s door open and she steps out, immediately engulfed in paparazzi once again. He walks over to my side to let me out as well, but after I thank him, I just stare, rooted to my spot, at Miranda as she ascends the red-carpeted steps, having already put my little monologue behind her.

She moves in slow motion, giving quick, one-word answers to shut up eager reporters and regal waves to those behind queue ropes waiting excitedly.

But I feel as if I know her secret. She has all the praise and approval in the world from complete strangers, but nothing truly real. And she chooses the opinions of those strangers and her status in the fashion world over love, over happiness, over everything.

I would not give up Emily if it meant I would become the most talented and famous writer in the world.

I look back and forth between the red carpet and the street, choosing my path. Almost impulsively, I step in the opposite direction of the building and within less than a minute, find myself rushing back to the hotel, heels hanging by their ankle straps from my fingers. Miranda rings my phone, but as soon as I see the caller ID, I toss the device into a fountain on my left as I pass it by. It was a company phone, anyway.

I finally reach the hotel, which is not terribly far, thankfully. I take the elevator up and hastily dart around the room, grabbing my things and packing them back into my suitcases. All the clothes I have obtained from the trip barely fit into my bags, but I manage to make it work. After triple checking that I have everything, I head back downstairs and straight past the front desk to find something like a cab to take me to the airport. Thankfully, a driver spots me on the corner outside the building.

“ Où aller, madame ? ” he asks me as I climb into the back seat. (Where to, ma’am?)

“Oh!” I am so preoccupied with getting home to Emily that I’ve forgotten I’m in France. “ L'aéroport Charles de Gaulle, s'il vous plaît. ” (The Charles de Gaulle airport, please.)

Thank god I took so many French courses in college.

“ Excusez-moi, ” I ask the woman standing at the terminal’s front desk. “ Quand est ton prochain vol pour New York ? ” (Excuse me, when is your next flight to New York?)

She clacks loudly away on her keyboard, pulling something up on the monitor in front of her. “ Nous en avons un à quatre heures aujourd'hui. ” (We have one at four o’clock today.)

“ Parfaite, ” I reply. (Perfect.)

I dig through my purse and find my credit card, then race through baggage claim and security to wait at my gate. Now I just have to survive for an hour and a half without Miranda or any of the rest of the team finding me.

I grab my personal phone and pick Emily’s number from my list of contacts. I’m not expecting her to answer me, but maybe she’ll wonder why I’m calling her when I’m supposed to be distracted with Paris. Also, I haven’t spoken to her since I called her to tell her our flight here landed safely.

But I hear her through the speaker and a wave of relief washes over me. “Hello?” she says.

“Emily! Hi.”

“What do you want, Andy?”

“I’m coming back,” I say.

A beat. “What? You guys aren’t supposed to be back until Monday night.”

“I know— I’m coming back, just me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Look,” I say, “my closet, as I’m sure you can imagine, is tiny, and all these clothes I’ve gotten from the fashion events here barely fit in my suitcase. I had to pay extra because my bags were so heavy.”

“Okay?”

“Well, I was wondering if you would take them off my hands. I mean, you and I both know I don’t need them.”

She pauses again. “I, uh…well, yes, I–I suppose I could take them from you,” she says, and I can hear her trying her very best to stay composed. “I’ll have to get them taken in, I mean, they’ll drown me, but—yes.”

“Oh, that’s great! You know, I really appreciate it.”

“Of course,” she half-croaks.

“I’ll see you soon.”

******

My flight gets in late that night and I retrieve my bags. I leave the airport, and almost give the taxi driver my apartment’s address when I remember the clothes. I figure I might as well drop them off while I have them packed up, so I give him Emily’s address instead.

I knock on her door and she comes to answer it in her pajamas. Her eyes scan up and down the Valentino on my body, looking both confused and a little mesmerized that this all hadn’t been some elaborate prank. She allows my suitcases and I inside, watching me as I lay them down on the floor and begin to unpack. She sits down on the floor, legs outstretched in front of her, and I can see her getting more excited with every piece that I pull from the cloth depths. She takes each item from my hands one by one and lays them out, organizing by categories that I can’t figure out and scurrying back and forth from her closet to the living room as quickly as the brace on her leg will let her, carrying a fresh batch of hangers each time.

Eventually, she starts unpacking them all herself, and I sit back on the couch, watching her work, only because I know she won’t let me help at this point. I can see her true love for fashion coursing through her veins, evident in every micro-expression her face makes and eager gasp that escapes her lungs. And of course watching her focus is the most adorable thing ever.

“Hey, Em, listen,” I say, standing up and holding onto her arm to snap her out of her trance. “I’m done with Runway.”

Her expression softens as soon as she hears those words. “You’re leaving?” she asks, her voice low.

“Yes—I’m a journalist, not an assistant. So that’s what I’m going to do. That’s what I came to New York to do.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m very surprised. I could tell your goal from day one was to eventually quit—without you having to tell me. But I thought you had to stay for a year?”

I notice instantly that the comfort we always have between us is back, as if nothing had ever gone wrong. “Even if I did, it wouldn’t matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Emily,” I say, dropping her arm. I talk with my hands. “Runway, Miranda—it’s fucking up everything between us.”

“Well, that’s the job—it fucks up everything in general.”

“No, that’s not what I mean—that stupid flight fiasco that almost got me fired and ruined our dinner night, and that time I was late delivering the Book and Miranda got upset with me, and then she made me come to the Benefit because she didn’t think you were up to the task by yourself—”

“I wasn’t.”

“Doesn’t matter. That— hag that calls herself our boss—”

“ Woah, my god, Andy—”

I scoff. “Well, am I wrong?”

“No, of course not.”

I sigh. “The flight, the book, Paris—all of it is because Miranda has had me under her fucking thumb the entire time.”

“That’s not your fault.”

“It is. I was a coward and I let her scare me. I let her scare me so badly, it caused me to hurt the one person I love more than anything else in the world.” I reach forward and put my hands on either side of her face. “Emily, I’m so sorry.”

Tears glisten in her pretty eyes and she puts her arms around my neck as I move mine to wrap around her waist. “Andrea, this is not your fault,” she says into my shoulder. “I shouldn’t have been so hard on you about Paris, I just—” She stops and looks up at me briefly before moving to rest her forehead on my collarbone. “I’m in a high state of stress all the time because of Miranda, and Paris is the one time out of the year where it’s actually truly bearable. And then when I learned that it wasn’t happening for me this year, I couldn’t believe it—but it’s, like…I was literally in the hospital with a broken leg the whole time! I couldn’t even go to work, so it didn’t even matter!” She ends her sentence with a soggy laugh.

I run my fingers through her hair absentmindedly. “Even if you weren’t, I shouldn’t have done that to you. That’s why I came home early.”

“How did you do it? Quit, I mean,” she asks suddenly.

“I…I just walked away. From the car, from Miranda. She tried to call me, but I tossed the phone into a fountain and walked back to the hotel.”

“Just like that?”

“Yeah. Just like that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to put in your two weeks?”

“Come on, you know I’m never going back there.”

She chuckles. “I’m not either.”

I blink. “Oh no, Em, please don’t do that just ‘cause of me—”

“Andrea,” she says, “what good is it, really, for me to stay under Miranda’s dictatorship just so I can sit around and bookkeep?”

“I thought you loved your job.”

“Not as much as I let on. I want to be a designer, and I’ve learned the hard way that I’m not going to get anywhere if I stay at Runway for the rest of my life.”

“So you’re quitting too?”

She sighs. “Someday I will, someday soon. But I need to find something to do in place of it, first.”

I nod in understanding, but then I remember my camera. “Hey, not to change the subject, but I have something else for you, too.” I pull the device from an inside pocket of my coat and place it into her hands, sitting us down onto the couch. “I know you said you didn’t want pictures because you thought it’d make you feel worse, but…well, I didn’t believe you.”

She picks up the camera suspiciously and begins to scroll through the pictures, and I watch a grin spread across her face. She leans her head on my shoulder. “Thank you.”

“You were with us in spirit—seriously, you were the only thing I thought about the entire time I was there.”

She chuckles quietly. “Really?”

“Yes! I couldn’t even enjoy my trip because of you!”

“I hate you,” she laughs.

I kiss the top of her head and she immediately turns around to pull me down by the collar of my shirt onto her lips. That’s what I get, I guess.

I stir awake the next morning under her sheets and roll over to face her. I plant a kiss between her eyebrows and she opens her eyes slowly.

“Forgive me?” I ask.

She nods drowsily.

After spending a few more hours of the morning at Emily’s place, I finally head back to my own apartment to unpack my suitcases the rest of the way. As I’m stowing away the last of my heels on a high shelf, my phone rings.

It’s Nate.

I blink, running a thousand possible reasons why he might be calling through my head, and answer it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Andy.”

“Nate, hey—uh, what’s up?”

“I’m calling you back,” he says.

The last time I tried to call him was the day before I left for Paris. “Uh, okay, I mean that was, like, five days ago, but I was gonna, you know, try you again later today, um—what–what did you need?”

“Well,” he sighs, “I was wondering if you wanted to talk.”

“I do,” I say. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve been calling you once every few days, hoping you’d answer because I feel absolutely horrible about what I did.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, that—well, look, when’s the next time you’re free?”

“I’m free right now.”

“You are?”

“Yeah, I’m just unpacking.”

“Unpacking?”

“Yeah, I went to Paris with Miranda, but I’m back a few days early because I—well, I quit.”

“You’re kidding!” he says. “Finally!”

I laugh. “Yeah, it just…wasn’t worth it, you know?”

“Well, I could have told you that.”

“You did,” I reply, “many times.”

“See, and I was right.”

“Hm, you keep up this attitude and I might just hang up on you.”

“Okay, don’t hang up, I’m sorry. Do you want to get lunch?”

“Sure.”

I change into something a little nicer but still casual and head downstairs. My cab pulls to a stop in front of Nate and I’s old favorite corner café, and when I walk inside, I find him seated at a table already. I stroll over to him and smile, pulling out a chair across from him.

“So, what’d you bring me here for?” I ask.

“I’m not angry anymore,” he answers. “So I figured I would finally answer the phone.”

I heave a sigh. “Nate, I’m so sorry. I know I won’t ever be able to say that enough times, so it probably doesn’t mean much, but…I just want to say that I know I have no excuse for what I did, and I don’t expect you to accept my apology, either.”

“Do you at least know why you did it, now?”

I mull it over in my head. I do know why I did it, but I’m afraid explaining it to him would only ruin the progress we’ve made. “I did it because I wasn’t thinking. Well, I was thinking, but I was only thinking about myself,” I reply. “But I decided…that it was better to confess than to lie to you, and make you stay with someone you didn’t deserve.”

“Someone I didn’t deserve?”

Shit. “I think the move was a big change, and—I don’t know—it just felt like we were being…pulled apart. It wasn’t necessarily that I didn’t love you, but I felt like we stopped knowing each other. And I should have communicated, but instead, I let my emotions completely take over, and I hurt you. I feel awful.”

“I…” He taps his fingers nervously on the table. “I kind of felt that way too—after we moved.”

“You did?”

He nods. “And then you landed that job, and it felt like you had completely changed.”

“I did,” I said. “I kept making bad decision after bad decision…I let her drive me insane.”

“Miranda?”

I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah.” Look, there’s only so much I can explain to my ex-boyfriend about the details of my relationship with the woman I literally left him for, okay?

“Well, I flew up to Boston while we were apart,” he says, “interviewed at The Oak Room.”

“And?”

He rocks his head slightly. “And you’re looking at their new sous chef.”

“Really? That’s great!”

“Yeah, I’m moving up there in a couple weeks,” he replies through a smile.

“I’m so happy for you—seriously.”

“Thank you. So, okay, I have to ask you just because I’m curious: what happened with Emily?”

“We’re still together,” I reply slowly, and I watch him as he chews on my words.

“Does she make you happy?”

An involuntary smile breaks through as soon as I hear those words. “Yes, very.”

“Good, ‘cause then we’d have a problem.”

“I think you might be an angel,” I say suddenly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Because how the hell else are you about to forgive me for something like this?”
“Oh, I forgive you, but I won’t forget it,” he replies.

I smile in understanding. “Ah.”

The rest of the afternoon feels like home, like a weight has been lifted from my chest as I enjoy the freedom of conversation with him. He tells me about what he did while we were separated, and I gush about Paris to him. I have almost forgotten how much I miss hanging out with him, miss seeing his smile and hearing his laugh. A part of me wonders why we even dated—he’s much more enjoyable like this.

We stay out for an hour or two, and it likely would have been longer had he not had to go to work for an evening shift. I return home and get ready for bed, this time feeling light and airy, almost carefree, at least compared to my nights in Paris. But I think the real prize is that my mind isn’t weighed down with worry, and tonight, I can finally sleep properly for the first time in weeks.

******

I step up to the heavy door and push it open, revealing possibly one of the largest office spaces I’ve ever seen. This is one of the smaller newspapers?

I give the man at the front desk my name and he hurries away. He returns with another man, presumably the one who will be interviewing me, and hands me off to him. I shake his hand and introduce myself, and he gives me an extremely brief tour of the place before guiding me into his office and sitting us down.

Everything goes smoothly, but his last question sticks out to me.

“Why Runway? You were there for less than a year.”

My experience working for Miranda replays in my head like each significant moment has its own filing card. “Learned a lot,” I say. “In the end, though, I…think I kind of realized that it wasn’t for me.”

“Well, we called over there for reference. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything back, but then I received a fax from Miranda Priestly herself, saying that out of all the assistants she’s ever hired, you were the most disappointing,” he says, “…and if I don’t hire you, I am an idiot.”

Sounds like Miranda, alright.

“You must have done something right,” he adds.

If yelling reminders of all her faults at her before walking out without even putting in two weeks’ notice means I did something right, then Miranda Priestly is officially the strangest employer I have ever had.

Maybe she knew she needed the reality check. Maybe it’s just business. All I know is that I walk out of that office space, offered on the spot a job I finally know how and want to do. When I call Emily to break the news to her, she gets so excited she hangs up on me to make dinner reservations for us.

I sit across from her, telling her about the company and what I’ll be doing there, lost in the flow of the conversation. Her laugh echoes in my ears. I study her makeup, perfect as always. She launches into some fashion talk and I have no idea what she’s going on about, but I just love watching her get excited. I bask in all the things I adore about her, drunk on her pretty face, and daydream about all we can do with this freedom.