Ilearned quickly that a thousand orders didn’t feel like a number. It felt like a physical weight sitting on your chest while you tried to act normal, like you were still just a person in a borrowed apartment with leggings on and hair you didn’t bother to tame. It felt like your inbox multiplying faster than you could blink. It felt like your hands already aching before you’d done a single stitch.
Daniel had everything spread out with the seriousness of someone planning a heist. Piles of garments, rolls of interfacing, stacks of patches in plastic sleeves, spools of thread lined up like soldiers. He’d even drawn a rough map on a scrap of paper of where things should go—cutting station, embellishment station, packing station. I wanted to laugh at him for being dramatic, but the truth was I was grateful. I couldn’t do this without him, and my eyes prickled as I stared at my younger brother. He was somehow looking older, the youth of his face changing, but he still wore the same hopeful expression he wore as a kid.
Noah’s place didn’t look like Noah’s place anymore. We’d shoved his extra chairs into the bedroom, pushed the couch back, and cleared a wide lane from the front door to the window.The big table by the window became mine, because good light mattered and I could see color differences better without straining. Daniel had claimed the folding table like a general, laptop open, spreadsheet up, phone charging next to it.
Then I looked at the orders again, and my stomach dropped. A thousand. A thousand people wanted something I made. A thousand people were expecting me to deliver. The notion of it all was thrilling for about five seconds, and then it was terrifying for the next five hours.
“Okay,” Daniel said, clapping his hands once. “First thing we do is we stop calling these ‘custom jackets’ in our brains. We call them ‘curated builds.’”
“I hate that,” I told him, grabbing a pen and opening my notebook anyway.
“You hate it because it’s correct,” he replied, completely unbothered. “Custom means you design from scratch every time. Curated means you built options that still feel personal. You already did that. You literally already did that.”
He was right, and I hated that too. I’d built the shop with a set of templates because I couldn’t truly do bespoke for every order, even before my designs went viral. People could choose team colors, choose patch packages, choose names and numbers, choose “extra sparkle” like it was a menu item. I’d still finish each one by hand, still make it look intentional, still care. But the process wasn’t the same as designing a brand-new jacket one at a time.
I shoved that thought away and focused on what mattered. There was work to do, and spiraling wouldn’t sew a single stitch.
When Noah had left to take Miles to school, the apartment had gone quieter in a way I wasn’t used to. The fridge hummed, and Daniel moved some things around. It should’ve been peaceful. Instead, the quiet felt like the calm before something huge.
“Realistically,” I asked, staring at the first stack of orders, “how many can I actually do in a day?”
Daniel didn’t sugarcoat it. He didn’t try to make me feel better with fake optimism. He glanced at me and told me the truth like he trusted me to handle it.
“If you were doing everything yourself, start to finish, and still sleeping?” he said. “Five. Maybe eight if they’re simple and you’re a machine. But you’re not doing everything yourself. That’s the whole point of me being here.”
I swallowed, jaw tightening. “Five a day feels humiliating.”
“It’s not humiliating,” he said, voice flat. “It’s reality. You can’t hand-build a thousand intricate items in a week. No one can. Not without help and a system and probably a small army.”
“A small army,” I repeated, glancing around the apartment like one might be hiding behind Noah’s plants.
Daniel picked up his phone, already typing. “Cool. Let’s create one.”
I blinked at him. “Daniel?—”
He held up a finger like I was interrupting a sacred ritual. “Don’t argue with me. Also, I’m calling Theo.”
My stomach twisted instantly. “No.”
“Em,” he said, tone sharpening. “You asked me to help. I’m helping. Theo has resources, he has connections, and if he knows you’re drowning, he’ll show up. You can be stubborn when you have room to breathe. You don’t have room right now. You can’t let this pride get in the way. Your future is determined from this week. You don’t fulfill the orders? Reviews talk. You do? Your exposure would be fucking huge.”
I wanted to tell him to stop. I wanted to grab his phone and throw it into Noah’s sink. I wanted to insist I could do this myself, because that reflex was old and strong and familiar. But the truth was my hands were already sore, and we hadn’t evenstarted. The truth was I was one person, not a factory. The truth was I needed help, and the fact I did made me angry.
Daniel hit call anyway.
He put it on speaker without asking. Of course he did. He sat back in his chair, looking a little too smug.
Theo answered on the third ring. “What’s up Daniel? Everything okay?”
Daniel didn’t ease into it. “Em’s got a thousand orders. Like, a thousand. Viral-level. We’re set up at Noah’s place, and we need help or she’s going to combust.”
The pause made my pulse spike. I held my breath like a child waiting to be scolded. I hated that feeling. I hated that my body still did that around my family, even when I was an adult.
Then Theo said, calm and immediate, “Okay. What do you need?”
I blinked hard. Daniel looked at me like,see?
“I—” My voice caught. I cleared my throat and tried again. “I need hands. I need space. I need materials and organization and someone who can help.”
