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“No, they will be dressed in black suits. Nothing to distract from your designs, but if you have accessories or parts of your designs that need to be adjusted, I wanted to give you time to do so.”
Time? She must mean the less than twenty hours we have till showtime now.
Seeing no more questions, she claps her hands, smiling serenely. “Excellent. A good designer must be able to adapt and be flexible.”
She delivers the mentor-sounding advice with a kind tone, but as she turns to leave, she looks at me and her expression morphs into something more feral. She knows she’s getting to me by having Simon walk with the other models. In fact, I wonder if she’s doing it intentionally to bother me. Surely not? That seems excessively paranoid, but why else would she give me that gleeful grin?
When the door closes behind her, I look around and find the others just as shell-shocked as I am. Wide-eyed, open-mouthed, on the verge of a freakout times five.
“Sixty seconds, that’s all we get to freak the fuck out, and then, it’s back to work. Deal?” Molly suggests.
I don’t think any of us consider not agreeing. Instead, we all take a deep breath and then at once, we break out...
“Oh, my God! What the hell is she thinking?”
“I’ll show you flexible... by hanging you from your toes.”
“No, no, no, no, no.”
“Baka, baka, baka, baka, baka!”
Beatrice mumbles a whole lotta French that I don’t understand.
There’s more, each of us ranting and rambling in mixes of languages and sounds that express our frustrations, fears, and freakouts.
“Time!” Molly calls out. Breathless, we all stop, but inside, I’m still somewhere between ‘try me, bitch’ and ‘how do I want to change my collection with this new information?’
The door opens again, and we all shout, “No!”
But this time, it is our dinner delivery. Thankfully, because I could really go for some feeling-stuffing right about now, so I hope it’s something good.
“Dinner and then back to work?” I propose. Wordlessly, we pick up our plates, and instead of sitting at the small table we’ve eaten at many times now, we lower to the floor to the makeshift picnic area we set up earlier when Molly laid out our plans for this last night as the Fab Five Sisterhood.
The pillows and spread fabric are comfy and cozy, and mycroque monsieuris warm and filling. But mostly, I enjoy the conversation with the women who have become friends. We don’t discuss what we have left to do tonight or what tomorrow is going to bring. Instead, we discuss what’s waiting for us at home.
Yori can’t wait to see her daughter, who’s only three and adorably proud of her mother for being a ‘fashion icon’. Their nightly FaceTime calls have made the little girl a familiar face to all of us, and when I’m home, I’m going to miss the bedtime songs in Japanese that Yori sings to put her to sleep. Katarina says she’s going home to visit friends and family. Molly isn’t sure where she’s headed next, saying she’ll spin a globe, close her eyes, and point to see where fate takes her. The very idea stresses me out. Beatrice shrugs, saying there’s no one at home waiting for her and that she’ll likely return to her job at a high-end department store by day and designer by night.
Then they look at me, but I don’t know.
My plan all along was to return to New York and Nora, using the experience from the contest to grow my own voice and designs. But Simon makes things much more complicated. He can’t leave Paris and House Corbin to come to New York with me, and if I don’t win the competition—which is wholly unlikely, given that Jacqueline selects the winner—I don’t have a way to stay in France. I need to design and make a living, and without the contest, I can’t afford a place to live, don’t have a job, and don’t even have a work permit to allow me to stay.
“Go home to NYC, I guess. Nora’s waiting on me to help with her next collection, and with the baby shower,” I answer, giving one possible outcome. A month ago, that would’ve sounded awesome, but now, it’s missing one big factor—Simon.
We chat a little longer before returning to our work, then go quiet as we get closer and closer to the finish line.
* * *
Palms sweaty? Check.
Knees weak? Check.
Arms heavy? Check.
Seems Eminem was right. I thought I was ready, or as ready as I could be. But I’m missing one key thing. And it’s not Mom’s spaghetti.
“Where the hell is Jeanette?” I hiss for the millionth time in the past hour. I look around the backstage area, hoping she will have magically appeared in the single second since I last scanned the entire room.
I still don’t see her, but I do see Simon. He’s across the room, wearing black boots and slacks with no shirt. His abs are chiseled, his shoulders broad, and he’s smiling as he talks to a group of models, both male and female. They’re all also in various stages of undress, standing around and chatting like their nudity is completely normal. I guess to them, it is.
