by Rowan Hanlon
Kael sighed and looked away, muttering to herself, “Fuck.”
Liza turned back to Celeste and continued, “They’re willing to let it go if we put a cover model in one of his designs. But, of course, you don’t want to do that. So, I thought, why not put it on the subscriber’s issue? Problem fixed. Everyone’s happy. Here’s the dress.”
She picked up the board and handed it to Celeste, who began to study it, nodding as she did so. When Liza glanced at her, Kael mouthed “thank you” to her. Liza nodded that she accepted her gratitude and turned back to Celeste who took the board, sat down at her desk and continued to pore over it. After a long minute or so, she looked up at Liza.
“That will be fine. Is that all, Liza?” Celeste asked.
“That’s it,” Liza said and left the room.
Kael started after her but then noticed that Celeste held up one finger for her to wait.
“Uh, uh,” Celeste said.
Kael stopped and turned to her. “What is it?” She had to bite her tongue not to end the sentence with “queen,” too. What is it, queen? She shook her head, trying to get the thought out of it, knowing that if she slipped and actually said that to Celeste, things would go even more pear-shaped than they already were.
“Sit,” she said, motioning at the chairs in front of her desk. “We need to talk.”
Kael stared at her and something deep down in her gut told her to leave. Just leave. Don’t look back. Go. Go home. Tell Nick you just quit, that you couldn’t handle it, that you wanted to just concentrate on the wedding, on your new life with him. Now, Kael, go now.
But Kael didn’t listen to her instincts. Instead she sighed and sat down, facing Celeste. She was ready for it. Just get it over with. She was going to apologize to her, eat a little crow and move forward. That’s all she could do at that point.
She began, “Listen, Celeste, I know that we’ve been not getting along and it’s like we can’t seem to find any common ground. But I am here to tell you that I’ll drop all of this if you will.” She paused and took a breath. “I mean it, too. I will drop it.”
“Drop what, Kael Cafferty?” she asked, not unpleasantly. “If that’s even your real name.”
“Of course, that’s my real name,” Kael said and shook her head in bewilderment. “Why would you say that? Is your real name Celeste Kerr?”
“Of course, it is and I graduated from Brown,” she replied, still in the same tone of voice that was now taking on a little spite. “Where did you graduate from, Kael? Oh, that’s right. You didn’t.”
Kael’s face went pale.
“No, you didn’t graduate from any college and certainly not magna cum laude.” She paused for effect, shook her head slightly, a small, sly smile playing on her lips. “Your credentials are as fake as your platinum blonde hair.”
She can’t help herself, can she? Kael thought as her face began to burn. Always had to get a dig in. That’s the kind of person Celeste was, a very low kind of person. Kael took a deep breath, told herself to stay calm and exhaled—this close to erupting into tears or anger. She didn’t know which way she was going to go yet, though she felt like bursting into tears. But she was close to a meltdown of some sort. However, she knew she had to be strong. She should have known that Celeste was beyond reproach, she should have known that you don’t mess with a person like her and now, because of her ignorance, Celeste was threatening her. Now she had something on her, or so she thought. Now the shit was about to hit the perpetual fan.
Kael stared Celeste dead in the eye and asked, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you threatened me and no one threatens me,” she snipped, the tone of her voice now changing and taking on a harsher tone. “You messed with the wrong person.”
“What are you getting at?” Kael asked.
“Nothing,” Celeste said. “It’s just that everyone has a past but no one seems to know anything about yours, do they? Say, for instance, your blue blood soon-to-be-in-laws. Do they need to know how you didn’t actually graduate college?”
Kael shook her head, refusing to fall for her bluff. “That’s not true, you’re just twisting everything. And I did go to college and I almost graduated, which is what I stated on my resume. Unfortunately for me, I actually audited a class I thought I was taking as a credit, so I ended up being one credit short for graduation. By that time, I was over it, Celeste. And I had a 4.0 GPA. Had I graduated, it would have been magna cum laude. Do the math.”
“Well, that’s close, Kael, but no cigar,” Celeste replied smoothly, the look on her face showing that she was loving the fact that Kael was now shaking in her boots. “You should keep in mind for future reference that while everyone does take liberties, they don’t lie. But I guess you didn’t know that because you hail from Appalachia.”
That did it. Kael was fed up. She glared at her and snapped, “Okay, listen. Yes, I did grow up in East Tennessee but I did not live in a tar-papered shack on the side of a mountain.”
“I bet you had an outhouse, though, didn’t you?” Celeste asked, grinning at her dig.
“Seriously? You are out of your mind. And you’re a bitch. A mean one, at that.” She stood. “I tried to take the higher road with you, Celeste, but there is no higher road with you. No one else sees you for what you truly are but me. And I see plenty. You are a cruel person. I see that. No one else will because they’re all so kowed down by you but I’m not. I am done with this.”
“But I’m not done,” Celeste said. “Let me ask you this. Are you going to wear white for this wedding, too?”
Kael, who was on her way out the door, froze.
“What was his name again? Your first husband? What was his name?”
“Wyatt,” Kael said murmured, turning around. “Why are you doing this?”
“Oh, why not?” she said, almost nonchalantly. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure things out, or to make a call to someone who can, especially when one is so devious, like you are.”
“I am not devious!” Kael exclaimed, exasperated. “I was married once! Okay? He and I were kids, just out of high school and we pulled a dumb stunt. Alright? Our parents had it annulled a few weeks later. Who cares?”
“Oh, your future in-laws might,” Celeste said. “Park Avenue never mixes well with white trash.”
“I am not white trash. How dare you?” she spat. “Besides, they wouldn’t care.”
“No, perhaps not, but it might be enough to cast doubt in their minds about you. What do they view you as? A pet project? An oddity? A charity case?”
“Fuck you,” Kael said, nearly seething.
“No, fuck you. You’re not so innocent. You’re nothing but a little con-artist.”
“I am not a con-artist! Why are you twisting everything?” She stopped talking and shook her head emphatically. “You just got it in for me, don’t you? Why do you have it in for me?”
“Maybe I’ve had enough, Kael.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kael asked, not even attempting to decipher her words.
“It means, I’ve had enough of people like you trying to fuck with me for no good reason. I didn’t have to let you have this job. I could have told Patrick that I was over-staffed. But I allowed you in here and now you’re trying to ruin me? I gave you a fucking chance and all you can do is whine about wanting more? You don’t get more until I tell you that you can have more. Got it?”
“Yeah, got it!” Kael yelled.
“You know what your problem is?” Celeste hissed. “You don’t know your place. Figure it out and get back in it.”
“Oh, I know my place and it isn’t at the bottom,” Kael said and really began to feel true hatred in her heart for Celeste, something she’d never felt for anyone else in her entire life. It was so palpable it almost scared her a little. Even so, she let it fuel her. “And that’s what scares you, isn’t it? That someone might come in here and be better than you?”
Celeste regained her composure and seethed, “Listen, you little hillbilly-know-it-all, you are walking on thin ice. You are allowing your ambition to override your common sense.”
“I didn’t work this hard just to get shut down,” Kael said, refusing to budge once inch.
“Maybe you did,” she replied. “And maybe you didn’t work hard at all. Maybe you just used your boyfriend’s parents to get this job.”
Kael had had enough. She threw her hands up and said, “You are one fucked in the head bitch! I’d rather work at the car wash than here! Take this job and shove it up your fat fucking ass!” She turned to leave, thought of something even better that she could say to really drive a stake through Celeste’s ego and turned back around. “Oh, and while you’re at it, see your dermatologist. You’re getting a little tired around the eyes.”
She pointed to her eyes. Celeste touched the skin around her eyes and looked slightly frightened, then quickly regained control.
Kael saw that rattled her and gained a lot of satisfaction from it. “And I won’t go to Patrick and it’s not because I’m afraid you’re going to tattle on me, either. It’s because I am a better person than you and I’ve actually got a life to look forward to.”
This was a low blow and Kael could see that Celeste felt it. The look on her face was of shock, like someone had just punched her in the gut. But she didn’t double over with it. No. Kale watched as she stood tall and she stood straight and then she snapped back, “Are you going to tell him—your fiancé—about…? What was her name? The baby you gave up? Margot? Margaret?”
Kael was now frozen. Now she felt like someone had punched her in the gut. That was the last rabbit Celeste could pull out of the hat and it was the most important one. She could tell Celeste didn’t feel once ounce of regret about doing it, either. No. That was her power move. That was about the lowest she could have gone and she went there without hesitation. It might give her the upper hand, but then again, at this point, there was nothing to salvage from the wreckage of this battle. No one would win now. There was nothing to win. And now… Now Celeste was talking about her baby. Kael felt like bursting into tears just at the mention of her, but she held it back like a trooper. She felt like Celeste had invaded her privacy, and she had. No one knew about her, her baby, the one she’d given away, the one she thought about every single day, the one who stayed in the back of her mind at all times. The one she had so wanted to take back since the moment she let her go. The one she ached to hold again. She had regretted her decision since the moment she’d made it. She had driven herself almost mad trying to figure out ways to get her baby back. But it was, more or less, impossible. And it was selfish. But no. No, no, and no. Celeste couldn’t do this. Her baby was the only thing that was off limits. She’d never really told anyone about the baby, not even her father. The baby was the one subject she avoided talking about to anyone. And no one knew. She’d kept her secret hidden well and was now about to suffer the shame of doing such a thing.
“Kael?” Celeste said. “What was her name again?”
Her words were barely audible as she mumbled, “Madison. Her name is Madison.”
“Madison! That’s it!”
“This is low, even for you, Celeste.”
Celeste ignored her and jumped on the train of another subject, as if she was determined to make Kael pay as much as possible, “And how did you get your fiancé? Just pop up at places you know he’d be at? Throw him a winning smile and pretend to play hard to get?”
Kael squared her shoulders, feeling her second wind come at her. “You’re going too far.”
“Oh, that’s not true and you know it, Kael,” she said. “You just have a lot to hide, that’s all.”
“You’re twisting everything,” Kael said. “You’re making me seem like a bad person and I am not a bad person. I’ve made mistakes, but so what? Everyone has.”
“That’s the thing about mistakes, Kael, you don’t know they’re mistakes until something comes back to bite you in the ass. If you’d have played it smart and stayed in your place and stayed under the radar you could have gone far. But no, you wanted to jump ahead. You just couldn’t stop yourself.”
“Okay, that’s enough!” Kael said, getting so irate she could have punched Celeste in the face. “You’re off your rocker. And I will get you for this, if it’s the last thing I ever do, I will get you for this.”
She threw her a hellacious look and left the room in a hurry. Celeste jumped up from her desk and ran after her.
Kael was almost to her office when Celeste caught up with her. Kael glanced over her shoulder to see her chasing her and almost exploded with rage. This bitch was nuts! Nuts! She quickened her pace. She had to get out of there and she had to do it quick.
“How about telling your fiancé how you found him?!” Celeste screamed after her. “In the papers?! Is that how you did it?!”
That did it. Kael stopped and whirled around. Celeste came to an abrupt stop right in front of her, almost colliding with her. Just then, a group of staff members stepped off the elevator and stopped short when they saw Kael and Celeste. Other staff members came out of their offices to see what all the commotion was about. Kael and Celeste were so much into their fight, they barely noticed they had an audience. And the audience was loving it. This was a fight that would be talked about for some time to come and they all stood around, along with Liza and Victoria and Celeste’s assistant, Amy, and watched with rapt attention.
Kael hissed, “We met at a party.”
“That you weren’t invited to?” Celeste asked.
Kael was about to explode. “Fuck you, old woman! Now shut up and don’t go any further. You’ve done enough.”
“There’s no going back now.”
“I know what you’re doing,” Kael said, nodding adamantly. “You’re taking something out on me because you are a cowardly bitch. I’ve seen it a thousand times. My mother used to do this to me before she died.” And she had. She would yell and scream at Kael for hours on end, making her life a living hell. Kael forgave her because she was so sick, but she never forgot how low and awful her mother’s words had been, how they cut through her self-esteem and damaged her ego. She chose not to think of these things and now she had to, because of Celeste.
“Oh, and how did she die?” Celeste asked, her voice taking on an unusual chipper tone all of a sudden.
Kael took notice of the change of tone in her voice and stared at her, wondering what the fuck was wrong with her. She was acting, quite literally, like she was crazy. And, maybe, just maybe she was. She had most definitely slipped a gear.
“Huh, Kael?” Celeste asked in the chipper voice. “You have anything to do with that?”
Kael’s mouth dropped before she yelled, “Fuck you! My mother died of lupus! How dare you?”
“Oh, sorry to hear about that,” she said, still in the chipper tone and not like she’d even heard what Kael had said. Like it didn’t dawn on her the gravity of what she was saying and putting out into the world. “Listen, I know all about you because I used to be in your place. I’ve used all the same tricks.”
“They’re not tricks! And I am nothing like you!”
“No, you’re right. You are nothing like me. You’re nothing but a little fraud.”
“At least I can have a baby!” Kael yelled out of nowhere, just to get her to shut up. And it worked. At last! Something worked! Celeste was rendered speechless. Kael was finally able to exhale and be thankful that the fight was now over.
Celeste gasped at her words and there was
a visible shift in her eyes that no one noticed, save for Liza, who gave an audible gasp, which was heard by Kael who ignored it and stood stock, still glaring at Celeste, who was glaring back. They were both breathing heavily and it seemed as though the world had slowed down to a grinding halt. As they stared at each other, the group of staff members became uncomfortable. This wasn’t a show down. This was a call to arms.
However, that didn’t matter to Kael and it didn’t matter because all of her hard work, all of her sacrifice, all of her dreams were dead because of Celeste. And now? Now she had to tell Nick everything she’d avoided for so long. And he’d probably break up with her. The love of her life would be no more. It was over. It was over because of Celeste.
But at least she’d shut the bitch down. Kael gave Celeste one last smirk, turned on her heel and exited, leaving everyone staring after her.
* * * * *
Kael waited on Nick to come home. She sat on their couch nervously wringing her hands together as she waited for his arrival. She was lucky. He was a little early today and when she heard the keys rattle outside the front door, she almost felt relief. But then she realized what she had to do and the knot in her stomach tightened.
Nick entered the loft, saw Kael, then noticed the four suitcases by the door.
“Wow,” he said and threw his keys and the mail on the console. “Well, at least you didn’t leave me a ‘Dear John’ note. I would have hated that.”
“I’ll be brief,” Kael said. “Sit.”
He stared at her and without a word sat down beside her on the couch. He didn’t attempt to take her hand or to question the suitcases, which Kael appreciated. She knew he knew her better than that. He knew when to hold back and allow her to speak. He was good like that.
Kael took a deep breath and said hurriedly, without looking at him, “I was married before. That’s not the worst of it. I had a baby and I gave her up.” She exhaled and waited. And waited. When he didn’t respond, she turned to him. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”