It isn’t pants, or a suit jacket, and I’m not starting from scratch. So that might be why I’m completely confident. Like, locked-in, three-cups-of-coffee confident. Mei makes a quiet noise, like she’s been wounded. “Does the jacket fully close?” she finally asks.
“Yes. If it looks awful, I’ll button it up. It just has to be a bit of white behind the lapels.”
“Fuck. Okay. If you screw this—” She stops. I’m already unearthing my own button-downs, grabbing my clothing steamer and emergency sewing kit. “It’s going to look good.”
Mei’s switch-up stops me in my tracks. I worry my lip with my teeth, smiling.
“You aren’t getting sentimental on me, are you?” I ask, echoing her from what feels like years ago.
She huffs out an indignant laugh. “Send me pictures immediately.”
I’d called Faust at one a.m. He’d messaged me when he’d landed in the city, though I didn’t get back to him until I was done with the shirt. No distractions. His voice had been thick and sleepy when he’d picked up, but he’d picked up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me. Can I courier something to your hotel?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t ask what, or why. And I think that’s when it happened for me. The first shift that I was totally aware of, and completely understood.
I could fall in love with this man if I’m not careful.
But I’d needed to sleep, was already shaky from adrenaline, and that was a thought for later. “Will you wear it for me tonight?” I’d asked. “Please.”
A long, slow second. “Mm.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Yes. Where are you?”
“Sleeping.”
His breath swirled over the line. “Okay. You okay?”
My fingers were covered in Band-Aids from accidental needle pricks. Clouds of white threads covered the floor of my room. I had to be at his hotel by ten a.m. to meet with his hair stylist. “I haven’t felt this good in a really long time.”
I’d slept some, mostly didn’t need to. Levitated through Faust’s beauty treatments and hair grooming, watching from the other side of his penthouse suite like a Cheshire cat. I’d forgotten what this was like—making something, then seeing it on a body. When he’d put on the shirt that I’d spent all night stitching together, it had gone from three vintage cotton button-downs into alook. The scraggly, unfinished seams I’d lined with silk salvaged from an old blouse. The covered buttons I’d stolen from the Miu Mius.
I wasn’t going to tell him it was my design. But then the stylists had stepped out of the room to discuss colognes, and it was just Faust and me, and he was in the suit—a vision of black fabric and white flowers and my shirt—and he’d said, “Did you make this?”
Don’t lie, I’d thought. And nodded. “Just the shirt.”
The stylist had left his hair wavy and textured, a few longer pieces tucked back. It made him look softer than hard, gelled-back hair would, a touch of humanity against the dramatic black and white. So when he’d smiled, like I’d done something amazing, like he was proud of me, I let myself steal a single touch behind his million-dollar hair.
He’d leaned in, eyes shutting.
“It’s perfect.” His voice had been low. Just for my ears.
“Not too much?”
“No. Never.”
That had been hours ago.
In the limo, Faust drums his fingers on his knee, both of us ignoring the complimentary champagne tucked in the door behind him. Every once in a while, he looks at his phone or glances my way; occasionally, he checks in with the handler that Stark-Benzin sent along with us, a perfectly nice woman named Alice. “You’re going to do great!” she reassures him. “They don’t let any press inside thegala, or even phones, so you really just need to make it up the steps, into the museum, and then you’re in the clear!”
Faust’s eyes meet mine again. There’s a shred of accusation there.You did this to me, his eyes say.
