“You millennials,” I answer. “Always commenting on Gen Z behavior. Do I detect a hint of bitter jealousy, Ms. Brinley?”
“Absolutely. I’d kill for your birth year. I’m tempted to kiss you just for a taste of youth.”
I’m sure she meant it as a joke, but she’s got my attention. “I’m right here. Try it out.”
Yes, she rolls her eyes. But she also blushes, so I’m calling it a win. “Goodbye, Saylor. I have work to do. See you tomorrow?”
“You got it. Ten o’clock.”
Sipping on the fresh and creamy green smoothie that Celeste is most definitely missing out on, I leave the Rolex on her desk and walk out before she can argue. Down the hallway, past the mannequin in the corner wearing half a dress and looking better in it than most people look in a finished one. Past the workrooms and the garment racks and the woman still arguing about hand feel. Into the lift. Down forty-seven floors.
The lobby. The turnstile. The guards who still don’t look at me.
Manhattan is bright and loud and exactly the same as it was forty minutes ago, and yet I am not the same at all.
I’m walking back toward the subway when I pass a kitschy, boutique coffee shop with a giant decal of the Eiffel tower on the front window. I don’t know if this is where Celeste wanted coffee from, but this place reminds me of her, so I walk in.
The smell of fresh bread, lined with a rich sweetness, makes me want to stop, sit, unwind, and bask. But I’m on a mission. I head straight to the line-less counter and ask for a cortado.
“That all?” the barista in the brown apron asks.
“Yes, but can you have it delivered? Right across the street.”
“To the Celeste building? Sure, we have a group order heading out in about five minutes. So no charge for delivery. Which floor and office?” She holds up a paper cup, wielding a Sharpie in her other hand.
“This needs to go to Celeste Brinley. CEO’s office. Can you also throw in a pistachio muffin? I have to make sure my boss is fed.” I pull out one of the last twenties in my wallet and hand it over.
The barista smiles at me. “Oh, you’re the new assistant? I’m not surprised, the last one was useless. Ms. Brinley is here more often than not, getting her own coffee.”
My chest swells with pride knowing this must be a regular spot for Celeste. It makes me weirdly proud that I already seem to know her better than either of us thinks.
“No, Margot’s still around…for now. I’m a contractor.” I shrug it off. “Keep the change.”
With that, I’m on my way, back to the subway, back to home. But newly equipped with hope and excitement.
Tomorrow. I’m going to see her childhood home. I’m going to strip wallpaper and paint walls and fix whatever needs fixing in the house where Celeste grew up. I’m going to build something. Not for a client. Not for my mum. For the first time in as long asI can remember, I’m building something that I actually want to see finished.
I take the subway home and I don’t check my phone once.
I don’t need to. I know exactly where I’m going.
chapter 10
Celeste
My alarm goes off at six and I am already awake.
Not the productive kind of awake—not the kind where your eyes open and your brain is already three steps ahead, running the day’s agenda like ticker tape. This is the other kind. The kind where your body woke you at four thirty and you’ve been lying here since, staring at the ceiling, cataloging every crack in the plaster like a woman conducting a structural survey of her own disintegration.
The Valencia call is at seven fifteen. Milan office, fabric development team, the final sign-off on the silk organza for the fall collection. I’ve been chasing this particular silk for three months—a weight and luminosity that doesn’t exist yet, that I’ve been describing to increasingly frustrated Italian textile engineers as “moonlight caught in motion.” They think I’m being pedantic. I think they’re being unimaginative…and lazy. We’ve reached an impasse that can only be resolved by me, on camera, in a blazer, with swatches fanned out on my desk at a time when most of Manhattan is still asleep.
I cannot miss this call. This is the call. If I miss it, the fall line stalls, production timelines collapse, and the Bergdorf exclusive I’ve been nurturing for eight months dissolves like sugar in rain. My entire team has been building toward this moment. Margot, in a rare act of competence, actually ironed out the scheduling mishap and I’m expecting my most important partners in my office well before I’m prepared for them.
I sit up.
The room tilts.
Not dramatically—not a movie swoon, not a hand-to-the-forehead collapse. Just a slow, nauseating rotation, like the apartment has been placed on a turntable and someone is adjusting the speed, up and down, mercilessly. My head is pounding. Not a normal headache—the kind that spawns behind your eyes and radiates, turning every source of light into a personal assault. The kind that says: you haven’t slept properly in two weeks, you’ve been surviving on cortados and adrenaline, and your body has decided, without consulting you, that today is the day it collects the debt.
