“I don’t have tomorrow. I have three weeks and a Bergdorf buyer who will not hesitate to replace me with whatever twenty-four-year-old designer is trending on Instagram this month.” I unwrap the bánh mì anyway because Rina brought it and Rina is usually right about the things I need, even when I’m committed to refusing them.
I take a bite. It’s perfect. Pickled daikon, cilantro, jalapeño, the bread crisp and warm. I hate that it’s perfect because it means Rina was right and I was hungry and I didn’t even know it, which is becoming a theme—people around me identifying my needs before I can.
Rina sips her coffee and watches me eat with the patient satisfaction of a woman who has completed a mission. Then, casually, the way she delivers all her most significant information: “Saylor quit.”
I stop chewing. “Quit what?”
“The agency. Officially. Called me four days ago, thanked me for everything, and said he was done.”
The bánh mì sits in my mouth, un-chewed. I force myself to swallow even though it hurts. “Wow. Did he say why?”
“He said he had other things he wanted to focus on.” Rina’s expression is carefully neutral. It’s the face she wears in negotiations, the one that says ‘I know more than I’m telling youand I’m waiting for you to figure it out.’ “So that’s three. Forrest, Taio, and now Saylor. My three best guys, gone in six months. All because of love.” She sips her coffee. “I’m starting to take it personally.”
“Saylor is not in love…well, with me. It’s possible he’s in love with someone his own age. Someone who’s not?—”
“Hey. Careful. We’re the same age. Whatever you say about you, you’re saying about me.”
I cringe. “The point is, Saylor didn’t quit because of me.”
The words leave my mouth with the conviction of a woman reading a teleprompter. Rina doesn’t even dignify them with a response. She just looks at me over the rim of her iced coffee with an expression that roughly translates to:sure, Celeste. Whatever helps you sleep at night. Assuming you’re sleeping, which we’ve established you are not.
“He said he’s living in your parents’ house. He moved his mom in? He’s helping you with the custody case? Do these sound like neighborly, platonic favors?”
“It’s not a favor. I’m paying him as a contractor.”
“Yeah, so was I.”
“What are you getting at, my friend?”
Her smile is sly and cocky. “I’m simply saying if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, loves water like a duck…” She raises her eyebrows. “How long do I have to keep going?”
“You have it all wrong. I mean, sometimes we text,” I say, because apparently I’ve decided to defend a position I didn’t take. “He sends me updates on the house. Photos of the progress. What he’s working on, what supplies he needs.” I pause. “He sent me a photo a few nights ago of the kitchen backsplash he’s tiling. Asked me to choose between two patterns. I spent twenty minutes deciding before I texted back, so he called. And yeah, we talked a bit. But it’s all very platonic.”
Except that kiss. Definitely not platonic. Definitely not going to bring that up.
“Talked about what? Backsplash, huh?”
“It’s a significant design decision.”
“This man is building you Barbie’s dream house, Celeste. And I hate to break it to you, but he thinks he’s Ken.”
I set the sandwich down. “That’s not what’s happening.”
“What is happening?”
What’s happening is that every night around ten, after Ada’s gone to bed and the house is quiet, Saylor texts me. It started as logistics—measurements, paint colors, whether I wanted to keep the old dining table or replace it. But somewhere around day three, the texts got longer. He told me Ada had him rearrange the living room furniture because the sofa was facing the wrong direction for afternoon light and she was right, the room looks better now. He told me he found a box of my old Halloween costumes in the attic and that I apparently went as a “fashion designer” three years in a row, which tracks. He told me the neighbor’s daughter, the two-year-old, wandered over while he was fixing the deck railing and sat in the sawdust watching him work for fifteen minutes before her mother came looking for her, and that the little girl called him “hammer bang-bang man,” which he now considers his official title.
He asked me about my day. Not performatively, not as a segue to talking about himself. He asked, and then he listened, and then he responded with something thoughtful, and then we kept going until midnight, and I fell asleep with my phone on my chest and woke up with a message that said:Goodnight, Celeste. The house misses you. So does the backsplash.
So, no, Rina. I’m not getting a lot of sleep. But it’s not for the reason you think.
“Do you know Ada well?” I ask, redirecting.
Rina’s face softens. “Not very well. But enough. Definitely enough to care about what happens to her, Saylor, and their whole situation.” Rina pauses, and the softness shifts into something heavier. “I worry about her. And I worry about Saylor carrying all of it.”
“Carrying all of what?”
Rina sets her coffee down. Studies me for a moment, the way she does when she’s calculating whether a piece of information will help or harm. “How much did Saylor tell you about his mom?”
