He sets the tablet on my worktable—on top of a swatch, which I clock and file undermore reasons to despise this man—and crosses his arms. “The fall line is eleven pieces behind. Production is asking questions. The Bergdorf team called my office because they couldn’t reach yours. And I’ve been hearing from multiple people that you’ve been, let’s call it,distracted.”
“Multiple people?”Bullshit.He means Margot who guards personal details about as effectively as a puppy guards its own tail.
Something flickers across his face—the briefest tell, a twitch at the corner of his mouth that confirms what I’ve suspected for months. Greg has been feeding Margot attention—coffees, compliments, the odd birthday gift—and in return, Margot has been feeding Greg my schedule, my mood, my whereabouts. Not maliciously. Margot doesn’t have the strategic capacity for malice. She’s simply a woman who responds to kindness with information, which makes her the worst possible person to sit outside my office and the best possible asset for an ex-husband who wants to keep tabs.
“I have sources,” Greg says vaguely.
“You have my assistant, who you’ve been plying with lattes and compliments like she’s a parking meter. Don’t insult my intelligence.”
“The point stands. You’re behind on the line. You’re burning time on this custody circus?—”
“Careful.”
“—and frankly, Celeste, the board is going to start asking questions if the spring designs don’t materialize. You can’t run a company and play house with some manwhore while trying to claim a baby that isn’t yours. I mean, what are you going to do with a newborn at your age?”
The room goes very still.
I ignore the manwhore comment. His snide comments about my age are old news.But a baby that isn’t mine?It’s time to roll up my sleeves.
Rina sets down her coffee. I can feel her tensing—not visibly, not in any way Greg would notice, but in the way a woman tenses when she’s preparing to either intervene or bear witness, and she’s giving me the first right to choose which.
A newborn at my age?Fuck you, Greg.
I look at him. Really look at him. He’s wearing the particular arrogance of a man who inherited half a company through fake charm and wit. He desecrated our marriage because women lacking a fully developed prefrontal cortex make him horny. And now he walks into my studio, my space, the room where I create the only thing in my life that has never disappointed me, and tells me I’m distracted? Once again, tells me I’m too old to deserve my life?
“Greg.” My voice is level. Controlled. The boardroom voice, the one that means someone has severely miscalculated. “I’m going to say this once, so I’d encourage you to listen with both ears. This company exists because I designed it. Every stitch, every collection, every relationship with every buyer and every mill and every magazine—that’s my work. My name. My reputation. You are here because a divorce settlement gave you equity in something you didn’t build and couldn’t replicate.”
Greg rolls his wrist, trying to dismiss my rant. “Celeste?—”
“If we go public like you so direly want, and a board of directors sits down to evaluate who is essential to the continued success of this brand, I want you to think very carefully about which one of us they’d consider expendable. Because it’s not the woman whose name is on the building.” I rise, pick up his tablet from my swatch, and hold it out to him. “And if you ever refer to someone I care about as a manwhore again, or suggest that the baby my best friend entrusted to me isn’t mine, I will make that board conversation happen sooner than either of us would like. Are we crystal-fucking-clear about whose house you’re in right now?”
Greg takes the tablet. His jaw is tight. His eyes are hard. But he takes it, which means he heard me, and he turns and walks out of the studio without another word. The door closes behindhim with a controlled click that somehow sounds louder than a slam.
Silence.
Then Rina, from her stool, both arms extended well above her head like Mario frozen mid-jump, says, “Hell yes. That was a long time coming. Oh my God. I did good things in life which is why karma rewarded me by allowing my presence during the most lethal, epic tell-off of all time.”
I exhale. The breath comes from somewhere deep—not relief exactly, but release. The feeling of having finally said a thing that’s been composting in my chest for months, maybe years.
“He called Saylor a manwhore. It set me off.” Partial truth. Partial lie. He doesn’t get to badmouth my friend in front of me, but it feels good to know Greg’s intimidated by Saylor. He should be. The way Saylor enters a room and can make a woman swoon—it’s very intimidating. For all of us.
“I heard.”
“Do you think that’s what everyone thinks? That I’m a sad old spinster that has resorted to a love life filled with escort-fueled vignettes?”
“Oh stop that. Greg doesn’t know what to do with a man who’s actually good to you. It short-circuits him. So he diminishes.” Rina joins me on the couch, sitting close enough to nudge my knee with hers. “You know, Sean used to do the same thing. Anytime I succeeded at something, he’d find the smallest possible way to make it about luck instead of skill. When I got tenure at Columbia, well it wasn’t Harvard, right? It was always ‘Right place, right time.’ ‘The market was favorable.’ Never ‘you’re brilliant and I’m proud of you.’ Because a well-read woman is always intimidating to a coward. But a talented, intelligent woman? She is revered by a real man. And the Gregs and Seans of the world will never be real men. They’ll just be loud ones.”
I sit with that. I sit with the echo of Whitney saying the same thing in different words on a sidewalk outside a fondue restaurant—he’s reminding you that you’ve expired.I sit with the image of Saylor in my foyer, paint on his forearm, looking at me like I was the most extraordinary thing he’d ever seen, and not once—not even once—making me feel like I was too much, or too old, or too anything.
“Can I ask you something?” Rina says.
“You’re going to anyway.”
“Fair.” She smiles. “I was thinking of booking a spa weekend. Just us. Get out of the city, decompress, drink wine, complain about men, the whole thing. I found this place in Connecticut—hot springs, no cell service, the works. What do you think? This weekend?”
The offer is generous. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would have said yes to three weeks ago, before the funeral, before Saylor, before a nursery withyou are so lovedpainted on the wall. Three weeks ago, I would have packed a bag and disappeared into eucalyptus steam and silence and called it self-care.
But the woman sitting in this studio right now is not that woman. Or maybe she is, but she wants something different.
