chapter 1
Celeste
The sketch isn’t working.
I’ve been staring at this same page for forty-five minutes, my Caran d’Ache pencil hovering over what is supposed to be next season’s statement piece—a structured jacket with asymmetrical lapels that I saw so clearly in my head this morning. Now it looks like a geometry homework assignment gone wrong. This is exactly the kind of drawing that would earn me a concerned note from my Principles of Design instructor.
Celeste, please see me after class.
Sixteen years later, and I can still see Professor Caplan’s handlebar mustache twitching with disappointment every time I close my eyes.
I set down the pencil and push back from my drafting table, rolling my neck until it cracks in three places. Fed up with my creative block, I move to my desk to tackle emails and fully surrender to my administratively bogged-down Thursday afternoon.
My office is ostentatious—I’m aware. Twelve-hundred square feet of corner real estate on the forty-seventh floorof a building that has its own Wikipedia page. Floor-to-ceiling windows showcase Manhattan like a snow globe I can’t shake hard enough. The Hudson glitters in the late-afternoon sun, ferries cutting white lines through gray-blue water, and somewhere down there, eight million people are living lives that don’t involve staring at a blank page wondering where their talent went.
The rest of the space is a carefully curated chaos that took years and obscene amounts of money to perfect. Mannequins stand sentinel in the corners, half-draped with sample fabrics—a champagne silk charmeuse here; an experimental recycled wool blend there. The one nearest my desk wears a partially constructed bodice I abandoned last week when inspiration evaporated mid-stitch. She’s half-naked and judging me intensely. I’ve named her Patrice.
And Patrice hasopinionsabout my work output lately.
A Giacometti sculpture occupies the space near the window—elongated bronze figure, vaguely tortured, extremely expensive. Greg bought it for me on our tenth anniversary. He said it reminded him of me. I’ve never been sure if that was a compliment or a very pointed observation about my bone structure and general emotional state.
I still haven’t decided if I love it or want to shove it right up his ass.
The walls hold my life’s work in frames: original sketches from my first collection, magazine covers, a photo of me and Anna Wintour the very first year I could afford to purchase a table at the Met Gala. There’s a Basquiat print I overpaid for at auction because I’d had two glasses of champagne and something to prove, and a series of black-and-white photographs from my debut show in 2004—models stalking down a runway I built in a warehouse in Brooklyn when Iwas twenty-three and stupid enough to believe that talent was enough.
It was.
For a while.
I pull my gaze from the window and look across the office to the sketch. The lapels really do look terrible. Unbalanced. Like I forgot how proportion works. Maybe I have. Maybe Greg is right, and my brain is starting to?—
No.
I refuse to finish that thought. I’m thirty-eight, not eighty-eight. I’ve got at least three good decades of design left in me if I can justfocus. If I can tune out the board meetings and the investor calls and the subtle way everyone’s started looking at me like I’m a vintage piece they’re not sure will hold value.
My phone buzzes. I ignore it. It’s probably my assistant, Margot, reminding me about the dinner I’m supposed to attend tonight. Some charity thing for…children? Animals? Children who rescue animals? I genuinely cannot remember, which makes me a terrible person, but also, it’s Thursday and I’ve already survived an endless week of overly long meetings that should’ve been one-sentence memos. I had to beg on both knees to renew our contract with our fabrics provider after Greg ruthlessly fired the company for a simple accounting error. Not to mention the condescending lecture I received from Accounting about my “creative materials budget.”
Apparently “unlimited” has limits. Who knew.
I’m drafting email replies, determined to silence as much of the executive chatter as I can, when my office door swings open without so much as a knock.
Greg.
Of course.
My ex-husband strides in like he owns the place—which, technically, he does. Half of it, anyway. His Brioni suit, charcoalgray, hangs slightly askew on his frame, the wrinkles telling stories his calendar wouldn’t dare record. I recognize that particular dishevelment—not the product of boardroom stress, but the hasty redressing after an “extended lunch.”
“We need to talk,” he announces, which is how Greg starts approximately ninety percent of our conversations. The other ten percent begin with “I’ve been thinking,” which is somehow always worse.
I lean back in my chair and fold my arms. “Hello to you too.”
“Sorry.” He holds up both hands in surrender. “Good afternoon, Celeste.” He lifts his eyebrows expectantly, a silent plea to hurry up the niceties after the board begged us to at least pretend to be civil in the office. It’s been over a year since our messy, public divorce. Everyone is over it and ready to move on like it didn’t happen. Everyone except me and Greg, that is.
“Your shirt is untucked.”
He glances down, noticing his sloppiness. Hastily, he tucks the tail of his dress shirt into his belt. “I got re-dressed quickly. I hit the gym over lunch.” He pats his belly that has the slightest curve. He’s inching toward a dad bod—minus the dad part. Not that I ever minded. Greg could be one hundred pounds heavier and I would’ve still loved him like I did when we were sixteen.
“By ‘gym’ do you mean your newest assistant?” I flash him a clipped smile before returning my attention to my sketch across the room.Maybe it’s leather.Would lapels work better in silk?
