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Brooke took a cautious sip of her coffee, then set it down and moved to the other work tables where a structured rust-colored dress was under construction.
“One of the suppliers sent the wrong fabric,” Brooke said. She lifted a pin out of a plastic container on the table and inserted it into the waist of the dress. “It says ‘mohair’ right on the order. It’s not my fault they sent cashmere.”
“I take it David wasn’t understanding?”
She huffed a laugh. “Lesson number one — it’s always the assistant’s fault. Always.”
“I’m sorry,” Ruby said. She’d been witness to one of David’s tantrums backstage at Fashion Week the year before.
It had not been pretty.
“It’s fine,” Brooke said, sliding pins into the fabric so fast Ruby had to stop watching. If she’d been the one doing it, her hands would have been a bloody mess, but it was all second nature to Brooke. “I’m going to ask for a raise when I hit my one-year anniversary next month.”
“You definitely should.”
Brooke was criminally underpaid for her talent, but everyone starting out in the fashion world was underpaid. It was a fiercely competitive business full of temperamental creatives who believed an underpaid job in their company was a gift.
And they weren’t entirely wrong. The right connections and experience could catapult someone like Brooke to a position at Gucci or Chanel, at Balenciaga or Tom Ford.
“So what’s up?” Brooke said, tearing her eyes away from the dress to look at Ruby. “You sounded upset.”
Ruby laughed. “Itextedyou.”
“You don’t think I know when you’re upset via text?” She furrowed her brow. “Wait, can you not tell whenI’mupset via text?”
Ruby laughed. “No, I can. I just forget you can do it too.”
It was part of the secret language of siblings.
“So? What’s up?” Brooke asked.
“Promise you won’t be judgy.”
“I am not judgy!” Brooke protested. “If either of us are judgy, it’s you.”
“Hey!” Ruby said, frowning.
“Sorry. It’s just…”
“What?” Ruby asked, wondering how they’d gotten so off topic.
“Well,” Brooke said, like she was breaking bad news, “it’s the stick up your ass.”
Ruby laughed. “Fuck off! I do not have a stick up my ass!”
“I’m not saying I don’t get it. I’m just saying you can be… wound a little tight. I’m sure it’s not news to you.”
“I have a lot of responsibility,” Ruby said.
Brooke placed the pin in her hand, then walked over to scoot next to Ruby on the other table. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Ruby took a drink of her coffee. “Don’t be sorry. I’m just saying, I have to keep things stable for Olivia.”
She felt the weight of it as she said it. When she’d been married to Adam, she’d walked the tightrope of his anger 24/7, trying to keep things orderly and dependable for Olivia, making every decision based on what would be best for her daughter.
She still walked the tightrope of Adam’s anger, but as a single parent, she also made a thousand decisions a day. Some of them were small, like whether to push Olivia to eat her broccoli. Others were big, like how much to tell Olivia about why Ruby and Adam were divorced.
And then there was the minutiae: the laundry and the meal planning, the cleaning and the TV monitoring, the schoolwork (why did kindergartners have homework for fuck’s sake?) and the transition from Adam’s place to hers and back again.
