by Shen, L. J.
“Make it white. I’m redecorating.” I played along.
“Bull, meet shit. I wasn’t born yesterday.” Julian’s beady eyes danced in their sockets. “You’re lying. You’re not together, but Chase is now working his way back into your good graces, and the naive little girl that you are—you are falling for it.”
I swallowed down my pride—and anger—keeping my smile intact. A part of me had pondered the same thing. Whether Chase had suddenly begun to kiss me and take interest in me just because he needed to keep me close. I knew very well that he wanted us to be fake-real-dating. With all the perks of a couple, but without the commitment and feelings.
“I really don’t appreciate what you are insinuating,” I heard myself say in my bubbly, customer-oriented, can’t-we-all-just-get-along voice. “Chase and I have been together for almost a year. I understand in light of what Clementine said, you are a little suspicious, but you are being unnecessarily crude right now.”
“Oh, Maddie,” Julian sighed melodramatically in the same tone he’d say, Oh, you little idiot. “We both know you two weren’t together the entire time.”
“We do?” I perked up, going for sarcasm. Chase’s body quivered with an unrestrained chuckle next to me.
“Unless he cheated on you with at least three women. Chase here is not very good at keeping his private business . . . well, private. And I do like to pay him surprise visits, just to check on my baby bro.” He winked at Chase.
I felt physically sick, even though Julian’s information came as no surprise to me. I knew Chase had hooked up with women after we’d broken up. Sven had flat-out told me so. And yet feeling his arm draped on me and knowing it to be true made me want to curl into a ball of misery and self-loathing.
“All is forgiven and forgotten,” I said breezily, swallowing down the bile in my throat. I hated Chase so much in that moment I wanted to stab him with a sketching pencil. I felt like Eliza Hamilton. Smiling to the world to save face while her brilliantly devastating husband owned up to his affairs.
“Is that so?” Julian arched a cynical brow.
“People make mistakes all the time,” I gritted out.
“Yes. Your husband-to-be seems to be living proof of that. And now he is faithful, I’m guessing?”
“More than your wife ever will be.” Chase shrugged.
“Watch it.” Julian lifted a warning finger.
“Seen enough.” Chase sucked his teeth, a taunting grin playing on his face. “And cut the brotherly bullshit. Our relationship died the day Dad announced me as the future CEO. Just remember, Julian, in war, there are winners and losers. Historically speaking, the winners don’t take mercy on those who tried to dethrone them.”
My eyes ping-ponged between the two men. I was trapped in the unfurling of a family calamity. Finally, I stepped between them, a referee of sorts.
“Okay, that’s enough. Chase, give him the quarterly . . . growth . . . whatever.” I gestured impatiently with my hand to the folder on his desk. Chase took the paper he’d been reading earlier and held it out to Julian. “Julian, please give us some privacy, and do knock next time. Thank you.”
I physically closed the door behind Julian to speed up the process. Being around them together was exhausting. I turned to Chase. “About what we discussed. To continue this until . . .”
Your father dies. I couldn’t complete the sentence. We both looked away. I thought about Mom. Specifically, about one of her letters, where she said there was beauty in everything. Even in losing someone. I’d been so mad when I’d read it that I’d taken a lighter to it and started burning it before chickening out. To this day, it was the only letter in less than pristine condition. It was blackened around the edges, marshmallow-like. “I’m sorry, Chase, but I can’t do this. I would if I could, but I don’t want to get hurt. And this”—I motioned between us—“it’s already killing me, and it’s not even real.”
I shook my head, escaping his office before he had the chance to convince me otherwise. To lure me into his devil’s den, which was full of dark, gorgeous things I wanted to explore.
I tripped back to the elevators, my feet moving on their own accord. I glanced at Chase’s office, ignoring the blur of faces staring at me curiously from all corners of the room. The blinds were still drawn.
When I got back to the studio, an email from Nina awaited me. It was sent to my Gmail, as opposed to my company email, where it could be seen by HR in one of their random checks.
Maddie,
You’ve received flowers from some loser who thanked you for sending her a wedding dress after an article about her making herself a wedding dress out of toilet paper (WTF?).
They’re by your drawing board, right next to a picture of her in your dress. The dress looks hideous. So does the bride. Please stop hoarding flowers in the office. Some of us actually suffer from allergies.
—Nina
I was tempted to write something back to her. Something vicious and offensive. Then decided I didn’t want Sven to know there was trouble between me and the pretty intern. Instead, I collected my things, watered my flowers, grabbed the Polaroid of the bride I’d sent the dress to, and then slunk back home to lick my wounds.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MADDIE
There were two delivery guys waiting at my building door. They were holding a huge cardboard box, yelling directions at each other, rolled cigarettes sticking from the side of their mouths. I squinted, rushing toward them. “Can I help you?”
“We sure hope so, ma’am,” the sweatier one of the two grumbled.
“Bed frame delivery for Goldbloom?” The second guy, a pimply kid of nineteen, blew a dreadlock out of his face, dropping the rollie on the ground in the process. I felt my eyes widening.
No, he didn’t.
“Yes, that’s me. A bed frame?”
They nodded. “Don’t look so surprised. You paid extra for rush delivery.”
I fought a giddy smile. “Is it white?”
The teenager bristled. “Whiter than my knuckles, ma’am. Can we come in?”
I let them through. I resisted the urge to text Chase, even if just to say thank you, not trusting myself not to cave to his advances. Truth was, I couldn’t afford to help him anymore. I was beginning to not hate him, and that was a luxury I couldn’t afford, because Chase was still Chase.
The man who’d cheated on me.
The man who’d brought countless women to his bed after we’d broken up.
The devil in the dapper suit, who wore his smile like a weapon.
After the delivery guys left—promptly tipped and sent away with cans of Diet Coke—Ethan arrived. He showed up earlier than we’d arranged, carrying Mexican food. (“Can you believe China Palace closed early? Nothing is going as planned today!”) We sat down at my coffee table, which also served as my dining table, seeing as my apartment was the size of a shoebox. Daisy was pestering us for scraps, shoving her nose into the food containers and whimpering. I focused on eating the broken chips only (for solidarity purposes), my mind still reeling from those two kisses with Chase. I knew what I had to do and dreaded the poor timing, especially on the day Ethan and I were supposed to sleep with each other. I put my taco down, turning to Ethan on the couch. We were watching the local news, after the record player had broken down on us, completely ruining the already tarnished mood. Ethan was eating with gusto, engrossed in a news piece about a new footpath gate in Brooklyn that was too noisy for the residents living around it.
“So I have to tell you something.” I cleared my throat. He looked up, pieces of cheese and shredded lettuce peeking from his mouth. God, I really didn’t want to do this.
“I saw Chase today. Not voluntarily. His sister invited me for lunch, and he showed up. One thing led to another, and we kissed. I’m really sorry, Ethan. I’ve been feeling shitty about it all day.”
I was referring to the second kiss. The one with my full consent. The one that had felt like our souls were dancing togeth
er, that could have led to more than just a kiss.
Ethan put his taco down, reluctantly turning his attention from an elderly woman on TV complaining about the loud gate under her apartment building to me. “You kissed him in front of his sister?” he asked, confused.
What?
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes, on the lips, a peck, I suppose. He initiated it. Then I went to his office to confront him about it, and we kissed again.” Pause. “A real kiss.”
“Let me get this straight.” He frowned. “You went to yell at him about kissing you, then let him kiss you again?”
Admittedly, I wasn’t explaining it really well. Not that there was a way to explain the insanity that was Chase and me together.
“I know it’s weird. I can’t even explain how it happened. One moment I was yelling my lungs out at him, and the next . . .”
He was shutting me up with a bone-melting kiss.
“What does he want from you?” Ethan scowled, dropping his taco on his paper plate. He wasn’t so happy about my fake engagement anymore. Maybe because parts of it were beginning to feel real. “He can’t seem to let you go, but he sure as hell did a fine job scaring you off when he had you.”
I’m sorry, how is Natalie doing? I was tempted to ask. He wasn’t really in a position to give me crap.
“He wants us to continue pretending until his dad passes away.” I blinked at the shabby flowery rug under my coffee table. It was full of crumbles from the crunchy tacos. Daisy was nowhere in sight to clean them up, so my guess was she was trying to piss into Ethan’s shoes, as she did with every person who entered her fort and wasn’t me. I’d had the good sense to place his shoes inside a plastic bag on the stand by the door.
“And put your life on hold?” Ethan scowled. “How very considerate of him.”
“I said no.”
“Of course you said no!” Ethan threw his hands in the air, then paused. “Wait, why did you say no?”
Why had I, really? Who knew? Because I was scared. Because it had seemed like the right thing to do. Shout-out to the people who understood the ins and outs of their decisions. I wasn’t one of them. I mainly went out on a limb and tried to follow my logic and whatever I thought Dr. Phil would say about my situation.
“Because of you.”
I mean, it was half the truth. Well . . . maybe a quarter. The main reason was I knew Chase was more than capable of breaking my heart again.
Ethan scratched his smooth jaw. “I don’t like him.”
“Me either.” Another lie.
“Then I don’t see the problem.” He picked up his taco again. “The fake engagement is over; you are officially back on the market. So what if you kissed? I . . .” He stopped himself at the last minute. “I did things, too, while we were each seeing other people. That’s why we’ve decided to wait until now before we take things to the next level.” He arched his brows meaningfully. “Welcome to the next level, Maddie.”
“I’m not ready for the next level yet.” I tore the already shredded lettuce between my fingers meticulously, not meeting his eyes.
“We don’t have to today.”
I shook my head, closing my eyes.
“Or tomorrow, even,” he began to bargain.
“I don’t know if it’s a good idea, period. That kiss happened for a reason. Maybe I’m not completely over Chase. I thought I was when I signed up for SeriousSinglesOnly. I truly did. But now I’m not so sure.”
“You just said you refused him because of me,” Ethan pointed out.
“Yes, because I want someone like you,” I agreed. “I just don’t know if I’m ready to move on.”
Our silence was punctuated by the robotic voice of the news anchor on TV, who moved to another item, about a nineteen-year-old criminal who carved his name onto his girlfriend’s face. His name was Constantine Lewis. I bet if Chase were watching it right now, he’d say he hoped to hell he’d at least had the good manners to carve Stan for short.
I was predicting what Chase would say or think. How he’d react. I thought about him every waking moment. What he was doing, thinking, eating. Who he was seeing. I was definitely not over him.
“I’m really sorry, Ethan. I’m horrified that I put you through this. For what it’s worth, you’re absolutely perfect.”
“You’re giving me the it’s-not-you-it’s-me cliché.” He clutched the left side of his shirt, but his voice lacked venom. “Ouch.”
“It pains me more than it does you.” I smiled tiredly.
“But you want to get over him. It’s half the journey.”
I said nothing, because it was the truth.
“Can I at least have a say in this? I’m the wronged party here, supposedly.”
I chuckled. “That’s fair.”
“I’d like to think about it. About whether I want to forgive you for doing the unforgivable and kissing your billionaire, hotshot, not-ugly ex-boyfriend.”
I full-blown cackled now. “Are you reserving the right to dump me?”
“Nicely,” Ethan corrected. “And yes. I’m not sure I’m ready to give up on this, whatever it is. I appreciate your fair warning I might get hurt, but I might still want to give it a shot. Deal?” He offered me his hand. I took it, shaking it with a stupid smile. It was the nicest thing that had happened to me today.
“Deal.”
We fell into comfortable silence, eating the rest of our meal, until we heard a thin sound of liquid coming from the door, followed by a puppy growl.
“Daisy!” I jumped from the couch, but it was too late. My chocolate-colored Aussiedoodle was already standing by the door, tattered plastic bag in her mouth, peeing straight into Ethan’s shoes.
I spent the next three days screening Chase’s calls. Even though Ethan reserved the right to change his mind about us, I hadn’t heard from him since our Mexican-food night. I was mildly relieved by this turn of events. It was one less thing to worry about. I did send Ethan an apologetic, lengthy text message before Layla told me to stop being more saintly than the pope. “The man dicked someone else the day he wined and dined you. You were obviously not that committed to one another.”
Three days post the nuclear kisses and sort-of breakup from my nonboyfriend, Ethan, and I was beginning to breathe again. Shallow, tentative breaths of someone who knew it wasn’t over yet.
Ronan was still sick.
Chase was a man who always got what he wanted.
As for me? I was slowly learning to stand up for myself.
I threw myself into work and finished three sketches for the Mother of the Bride collection. I made one of the sketches in honor of Mom, drawing the model with the same orange turban she’d worn when she’d been going through chemo. She had the same smiling hazel eyes as Mom and the same full lips and freckles. The dress was floral and big and lacy. Something Mom would’ve worn for my wedding. When Sven saw the final designs, I could see the confusion in his face. It wasn’t common practice to put details into the face of a model in a sketch. Then the penny dropped, and he reached to squeeze my shoulder, exhaling. “She’d have loved it.”
“You think?” I asked quietly.
“I know.”
I prayed my next assignment wasn’t going to be mother related. I missed my mom more than ever, wishing she were here to help me sort the Chase/Ethan mess. So when Sven approached me after I finished the Mother of the Bride collection, I was already holding my breath.
“Maddie, I need your attention.” Sven snapped his fingers, swaggering his way to my corner of the studio. I fluffed my white and pink lilies, eyeing him curiously. He stopped a few feet from me, thrusting a stack of papers into my hands. “Your assignment.”
I swiveled on my stool fully, crossing my legs and holding my pencil between my teeth like it was a cigarette. I opened the file he’d handed to me. It was a thin one, and when I flipped through it, I noticed it was because it didn’t have all the things they usually gave us in a packet: mock-ups of the general fashion line, bulle
t points of what needed to be done, etc.
“It’s been a long time coming, but you’ve worked the hardest for years, and I think you deserve this chance,” Sven said as I read the words on the assignment packet again and again.
The Wedding Dress to End All Wedding Dresses: Croquis’s Flagship Wedding Gown
My fingers trembled around the document, and my heartbeat pulsated in my neck.
“We are launching our fall collection at the New York Fashion Week in a couple months. Traditionally, the opening item is the Dream Wedding Dress. As you know, it is the most prestigious spot in the runway show. Usually reserved for our heavy-hitting designers. It’s the dress all the Vera Wang, Valentino, and Oscar de la Renta folks are going to be looking at. The one the front-row celebrities will be ordering for their weddings. The cherry on the cake. You’re going to design it.”
I knew all of this. This was a huge deal. The person who’d designed it last year had moved up and now worked for Carolina Herrera. Rather than answering him with words, I chose the moment to ungracefully fall apart. Literally, I fell down on my ass from my chair, I was so stunned. I tried to keep my happy tears at bay, but it was hard, because I’d never thought I’d be able to secure something so prestigious so early into my career.
“Get a handle on gravity, Maddie,” Sven muttered, offering me his hand, hoisting me back up to my feet. “When Layla told me you were going to fall on your ass, I didn’t know she was being literal.”
“Layla knows I got the assignment?” I gasped, covering my mouth with both hands. But of course she did. God, these two really annoyed me. “Sven, you won’t regret it, I promise.”
“Stop it. I chose you to be my star designer this year. More specifically, your designs didn’t bore me to death. I want you to go really wild and off the wall with this one. You’ve shown that you can take instructions well, but now I want to see the mad hatter in you. The artist.”
“You got it.” I did my best not to jump up and down, laughing through my unstoppable happy tears, which I was no longer able to hold back. I usually reserved my tears for good news and Disney movies.