Work Text:
2006
Emily Charlton sits on the living room sofa of her tiny one-bedroom apartment, looking pensive and feeling unmoored.
It's been one week since Andrea – Andy, she self-corrects – couriered the bevy of clothing items she obtained in Paris to Roy, Miranda's reliable and consistent driver. And Roy, bless him, hoofed up Emily's third-floor walk-up, arms swaddled in bags, boxes, and garment carriers from every major label and couture house. Balenciaga. McQueen. Lanvin. Chanel. Miu Miu. Dior. Valentino.
Those items, the Balenciaga robot leggings, the Lanvin mini-dress, and of course the Alexander McQueen pants, now hang from her closet. Taunting her. Reminding her.
Although she very much appreciates the gesture of the clothing, she can't help but fight that familiar itchy feeling deep in the pit of her stomach. She should have been in Paris to witness those shows first-hand. She should have been able to pick the looks she wanted, and sit at the atelier for any necessary alterations. No matter. It is what it is. Emily is still first-assistant, she's on her way to getting a promotion. Everything is as it should be.
And yet, that feeling. It won't go away.
That itchy feeling, a combination of yearning and envy, has a name, of course: Andy.
In the few weeks since Andy left Runway, Emily has had to add another feeling to her oeuvre: homesickness. But this time, it isn't for a city or her family, it's for a person. She misses Andy.
But it's more than that. She misses what could have been. She misses what they never had a chance to act on, to develop.
She puts on those robot leggings, far too special to be worn around the house, and yet, the only type of armor that feels appropriate for what she is going to do.
Emily stares at her phone, sitting perpendicular on the coffee table. A week has passed. Seven days. Common etiquette says that a phone call within a week is still within reason. But if she waits another day or two, she'll just look rude. She might as well not call at all.
That's it. Enough. Emily shakes her head, sits up straight, and decides she's just going to do it. She's going to call Andrea – Andy – and thank her for the clothes. She might make an overture about getting together for dinner (lunch is impossible, working for Miranda). She might be brave enough to express how she really feels.
She grabs her phone off the coffee table, snaps it open and scrolls through her contact list, hovering over the "A." Before she can overthink it anymore, she uses her thumb to select the name and presses the call button.
A ring. Another ring. Another.
With each passing second, Emily's nerves grow. Finally, she's met by the chirpy and slightly nasally voice she's come to associate with Andy Sachs. It's a voice she won't admit to a single soul that she's missed.
"Hi, you've reached Andy. I'm not available right now, but if you leave a message, I'll call you back."
Her phone continues to bleat, now in a robotic voice:
"At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press pound for more options. BEEP."
It's now or never. Emily sucks in her breath, attempts to sound calm, breezy, casual.
"Andy. Hello. It's Emily. Charlton. I just wanted to call and properly thank you for the clothes. They aren't all pieces that I would have chosen – and I have had to make alterations on some of the dresses – but I am appreciative of the gesture.
"You haven't missed anything at Runway. Your replacement is even more clueless than you were, if you can believe it. I really didn't think that was possible, but now I have thrice as much work as I had to do before."
She pauses. She's still trying to decide how much she wants to say.
"I look up from my desk a dozen times a day, and I don't see your face. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't seem right. You're supposed to be the face I see sitting across from me.
"I often wonder what things would be like, you and I, if we had met differently. Obviously, you would have had to have learned to style yourself first. And yet, I can't help but wonder if we both happened to be at Balthazar late at night, after work. Waiting at the bar for a table, making conversation, deciding to share the two-top that became available.
"Would we be friends? Would you like me? I think I would like you. I think I would like getting to know you. I think that I would like you to get to know me."
She stops. She takes a breath. She knows she's running out of time, that this voicemail message is about to become full. It's now or never.
"What if we did that? What if we met at Balthazar or Pastis, I'm not particular, and I won't be eating anyway. What if we met, no Miranda. No Runway. No chef boyfriends or New York Magazine writers. Just us. Could we do it? You have my number. I'm sure my schedule remains much more difficult to reconcile than yours, but I could be persuaded to find time for you. I might even like to."
She finishes speaking. Her fingers hover over the end call button, but a spring of anxiety ripples through her chest. She presses the # key instead.
The robotic voice is back.
"To listen to your message, press one. To erase and re-record, press two. To discard this message, press three. To deliver this message now, simply hang up."
She pauses. She looks around her living room. The tightness in her chest is still there. That itchy feeling is only worse. Her eyes feel brittle and on the verge of tears, her voice is closed.
She presses two. The beep bleats out of the speaker of her phone, but this time she doesn't speak. She just sits in silence. She hits the end call button.
She goes back to staring down at those leggings, trying not to imagine them on a body an inch taller than her own. She takes them off and folds them neatly into her wardrobe. She readies herself for bed and tries to put the last half hour out of her mind.
She holds out hope, that maybe, just maybe, Andy will see that she called and call her back. That she will have another chance to summon the courage to express her feelings.
When a call never comes, she's disappointed, but not surprised. It was wishful thinking. She half-considers sending a thank-you note, but too much time has passed. It would feel weird.
And anyway, she has her own ambitions to chase. She may have missed going to Paris Fashion Week this fall, but the February shows are just around the corner and Paris and Milan await.
A few months later, she learns via Facebook (that dreadful website those annoying assistants from Harvard keep talking about – why can't Americans use Bebo like everyone in the UK?) that Andy has moved to Europe to pursue some of her loftier goals of journalism.
She tries calling once more anyway, just in case. But the number is disconnected. She wears the Lanvin, the McQueen, the Chanel, out and about. Some of the items she donates, others (the McQueen), she keeps for her daughter.
But no matter how many apartment moves, clandestine girlfriends, narcissistic first-husbands, astonishingly smarmy billionaire patrons, or haute couture dresses she collects, Emily can never find it in herself to get rid of those Balenciaga robot leggings.
2026
Tucked into the corner of a table next to the window of an Upper East Side bistro, Emily Charlton waits. She attempts to look nonchalant. Orderly. Confident in her new hair, her new style, her new life.
Andy Sachs walks into the restaurant, shoulders back, walking with confidence. She looks good. With cuffed jeans, sensible boots, vintage jacket, paired with a beautiful scarf. Emily can't lie. Andy has really grown into her own over the last two decades.
Emily stays seated, but is the first to say a congenial, "hello."
"Cool hair," Andy replies, before sitting down.
"Thank you," Emily replies, before taking a breath. She might as well get into it. "Well, I screwed up. Rather royally."
Andy's response is immediate. "It's OK," she says, and her face shows that she means it. "Really?" Emily replies, slightly incredulous.
Andy nods and shakes her head, "Everyone screws up."
Taking a deep breath again, Emily barrels on. "Well, I'm obviously very happy to hear that, although slightly shocked that you'd compromise your 'much-vaunted values' for me…"
Andy interrupts her with easy laughter, throwing her hands up as she says, "well, you know sometimes you gotta!" "How are things at Coach?" she asks in a way far kinder than Emily feels that she deserves.
She steels herself as she answers the question. The humiliation of leaving Dior is still there, but it isn't a total disaster. She's not at Michael Kors or Tory Burch, for Christ's sake.
"I mean honestly, fine, great. It's fine. It's fine," she replies, to herself more than Andy. "Those other people were so mean about my French! I got a bit sick of it."
And it's true. The snobbery at Dior could be quite exhausting.
Emily grabs a menu off the table and pretends to look at it, purposefully averting Andy's eyes. She clears her throat. It's now or never. Twenty years ago, she was too afraid to make this confession, but now? After losing Dior, Runway (again), and even that dreadful Benji, what does she have to lose?
"Did you know that I called you?" she says.
Andy blinks. She looks at Emily with confusion (is she slow?). "Yeah, I do… that's why we're sitting here," she says as if it were obvious.
Emily continues to look down at the menu, pretending to read it, even though she doesn't need to. "No, I mean after you left Runway the first time, I," she hesitates, then decides to be resolute, "called you."
Andy looks at her, slightly taken aback, confused. "You called me?"
"I called you," Emily says again, her voice is stronger now. Direct.
A look of recognition passes over Andy's face, as if a memory is suddenly passing through her mind. "You…? Oh yeah! I remember, I got a pocket dial from you."
That's it. Emily has tried to be coy, but now she's just going to have to be as direct as possible. "Bloody hell," she murmurs to herself, before steeling herself for the build-up years in the making. For the conversation she's wanted to have since the moment she saw Andy enter the Dior flagship store alongside Nigel and Miranda.
"No, I wanted us to be," she gulps here. This is hard. "I thought that we could be pals."
And it's true. Granted, her definition of "pals" might have had more of the "gal" persuasion than just friendship, but it is true. Despite deleting that hideously overwrought message, she had hoped Andy would see her missed call, hear the silent voicemail message, and call her back.
Andy seems to recognize this. Her voice becomes soft as she coos out an aggravating, "nooo," as if also realizing her own mistake from all those years ago. That it wasn't just a pocket-dial. It was a real call and rather than take the risk to return the call, Andy let it drop.
Sensing the change in sentimentality, Emily immediately tries to downplay the gravity of this revelation. "No, don't make that face! This is not a big deal."
(But it is. It is a big deal. It always was. That's what has always made this so hard.)
Andy is still visibly touched, still trying to reconcile Emily's intentions from her own interpretations, trying not to ask herself a million questions or 'what ifs.' Instead she opts for more honesty. "But you wanted to be friends?" she asks gingerly, more a statement than a question.
Emily blusters. "Yes, but it's too late now, isn't it." Because that's the terrible thing about life. Being brave often happens after it's too late.
Andy looks at her. "Why?" she asks, enchanted, smiling, a look of awe in her eyes.
Emily is flabbergasted by the response. "Because I'm 'persona non grata' that's why," she says, as if it weren't obvious.
Andy's response is instant and welcoming. "Not to me you're not." She pauses before settling in to say something she's wanted to say to Emily since the betrayal in Milan.
"And can I just say, you're gonna get your shot to be whatever it is that you do want to be."
Emily sighs. "I don't know about that. You know Benji broke up with me?" She rolls her eyes. She remains aggravated by the man even after being dumped.
She continues, "it's going to be so hard to find that kind of patron again." And it will. There aren't a lot of billionaires out there, even if they do require irrigating ear hair and shaving backs and chests.
Andy just stares at her, eyes gleaming, voice resolute as she says, "You don't need him, or a fashion house, or a patron or anything. You don't need...YOU are iconic."
She says it with so much conviction, so much meaning, and dare Emily want to accept it, love.
For once, she decides not to steel her emotions, responding honestly. "Well that is a lovely compliment."
And it is. It is perhaps the loveliest compliment she has had in quite some time. And from a person she has both envied and yearned for twenty years. Emily may never have managed to get Miranda's approval or respect. But she has Andy's. And that makes her heart burst in a very different kind of way.
"So," Andy says, palm facing up, extended towards Emily's at the table. "Friends?"
This is entirely too sentimental and Emily Charlton is far too British for this, so she demurs, plays it off. "I don't want to hold your hand, but yes. Friends."
In her heart of hearts, Emily does want to hold Andy's hand. But not like this. Not in this place. Not at this moment. But she does want to hold her hand.
The two share a smile. The moment is charged. And then it's gone. Andy decides to cut in with some humor, asking a question that has been on her mind for months, "OK. What is wrong with my eyebrows."
God. Where does Emily even start. Well, she supposes she starts with politeness.
"Look, it's not, it's not fatal." She decides in that moment that she will fix this imperfection that has been bothering her for eons. "I'm going to take you somewhere and it's going to be a transformation."
And she will. And then Andy Sachs will be even more earth-shatteringly beautiful than she already is. But with proper brows and sculpted arches that accentuate her eyes.
Andy laughs, resigned, just as a waiter passes by with a basket of fries, placing them in the middle of the table. Andy looks surprised and looks to correct the waiter at the same time Emily is thanking him.
"We didn't order…" she starts before Emily cuts her off. "No, they are. I ordered them. Don't carb shame me. It's just a little appy."
And on that note, she grabs a fry from the basket. This is one of the first times she can recall doing this in years. It's fitting that she's doing it with Andy.
As if to underscore her point, Emily continues, "don't you know that shared carbs have no calories?"
Andy, plucking a fry from the basket herself, smiles. "You know what, I think I do."
As they say their farewells outside of the restaurant, Emily kisses Andy's cheek, just next to her lips. Slightly touching the edges. It could be played off as friendly or it could be seen as what it is. An invitation to something more.
Andy stops. She grabs Emily's face with her hands and presses her lips firmly to hers. No ambiguity. No hesitation. Emily kisses her back, chastely, slowly. Succinctly. With purpose and intention. It's fast and it's over. But the two share a smile that lingers.
They don't have to make any declarations now. This doesn't need to be any more than it was. There will be a next time. They are, after all, "pals."