“Morning,” he says, extending his hand. “Greg Prescott. I don’t think we’ve met.”
I shake it. His grip is deliberately too firm, the handshake equivalent of a dog marking its territory. I match the pressure without exceeding it because I’m not interested in whatever contest he thinks this is.
“Saylor Evans.”
“Saylor.” He tastes my name and finds it undercooked. “You’re here to see Celeste, I assume?”
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“I do.” He sips his coffee. Casual. Practiced. The choreography of a man who rehearses even his spontaneous moments. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you. Margot’s an enthusiastic narrator.”
I say nothing. The lift hums between floors. The mirrored walls show me three versions of this moment from three different angles, and in each one Greg is taking up more space than a man holding a coffee needs to.
“I’d prefer if we could be amicable,” I say. “For Celeste’s sake.”
Greg nods. A slow nod to indicate he agrees with the words, while his eyes are constructing something else entirely. The floors tick upward. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four. The silence between us has a texture, like fabric with too much starch. Stiff and deliberate.
The lift reaches forty-six. The doors open. Greg steps out first, then stops. Turns back to me with a smug smile like he’s been waiting to say something he’s been polishing in his head since the fourteenth floor.
“Word of advice?” He adjusts his pocket square with idle precision. “She’s going to get bored of you, Cinderella. I’ve seen this before. Celeste latches onto projects. Buildings, brands, broken things she thinks she can fix. You got pulled from thestreets and put in the palace, but that’s temporary. Enjoy the view while it lasts.” His eyes drop to my boots. “You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with her.”
The doors begin to close. I catch them with my hand.
“Have a good morning, Greg.”
I let the doors shut between us and ascend the final floor toward Celeste’s office with Greg’s words settling into my chest like coins dropped into a deep well. The problem with cruel people is not that they lie. It’s that they aim their cruelty at the exact spot where your own doubt already lives, and then all they have to do is agree with it.
You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with her.
I’ve been telling myself some version of that for weeks. Hearing it from the man who spent twenty years diminishing the woman I’m falling for doesn’t make it true, but it makes it louder. It gives the doubt a voice that isn’t mine, and other people’s voices are always harder to argue with.
Margot’s desk is empty. Either she’s on a coffee run or she’s been reassigned or she’s in the restroom; all three equally likely given what I know about Margot’s professional priorities. I knock on the glass door and Celeste’s voice comes through, clipped and distracted.
“Margot, where the hell have you?—”
“It’s me.”
A pause. The sound of a chair rolling back. The door opens and Celeste is standing there in a black pencil skirt and a white silk blouse, sexy glasses on, hair twisted up with a pencil holding it in place, and even stressed and sleep-deprived and clearly mid-crisis, she looks like the kind of woman men write novels about. Which, given her industry, might actually be the point.
“Saylor.” She says my name differently than Greg did. Like it belongs here. Like the syllables have weight she wants to hold.“What are you doing? I didn’t know you were coming by today. Everything okay?”
“Surprise visit. Wanted to see you.” I step inside. The office is immaculate. Clean lines, white walls, the mannequin she calls Patrice standing by the window wearing a half-finished copper gown that’s either brilliant or a work in progress depending on the hour. Fabric swatches pinned to the corkboard in clusters that probably mean something to her but look like a mess on a wall to me. “How’s the line coming?”
She drops into her chair as if she has been fighting a losing battle against herself. “The line is winning. I had a burst of something last week that felt like a breakthrough, and then it vanished. I keep chasing it and it keeps dissolving, and I’m starting to think the fall collection is going to be eleven inspired pieces and eleven fillers, and Bergdorf will notice the difference even if nobody else does.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Will I? Because right now I’m staring at twenty-two dress forms and feeling absolutely nothing. Do you know how terrifying that is? I might actually have to use the uninspired designs Greg’s girlfriend is trying to stuff down my throat.”
“Well, why do you think you’re so blocked? Are you stressed about the custody case?”
“It’s not that, I’m worried this is the beginning of the end. Feeling nothing about the thing that defines you? It’s like waking up and forgetting your native language. The words are supposed to be there and they’re just…not.” She pulls the pencil from her hair and the whole thing tumbles around her shoulders. She doesn’t notice. “But maybe this is natural selection. I shouldn’t be sitting at the head of the table if I can’t run this company and design these lines. It’s the perfect time to disappear from it all with a baby.”
“You don’t strike me as a person who runs away from hard things,” I tell her.
She scoffs. “You don’t know me as well as you think you do, Saylor.”
“You’re just stressed.”
