Schooled

by Piper Lawson

  Browsing through the merchandise at one store while I was waiting for their manager, already envisioning the possibility of another strikeout, an idea hit me.

  I pulled out my phone. Had the number even made it into my contact list?

  It had, and a minute later I was dialing.

  “Hello?” A man’s voice on the other end, answering after two rings.

  “Blake! It’s Lex—Alexis Caine. We met at the fall fashion show in San Diego. I’m not sure if you remember me.” Suddenly this seemed like a reckless idea. But it was worth a shot if it could help us in any way. Pride was not something new entrepreneurs had the luxury of enjoying.

  “Alexis. Of course. How are you?”

  “Great. Listen, I told you we were launching a new business. Can I get your advice on a couple of things?”

  “No prob. How’s tomorrow?”

  We setup a time to meet and the next day I was sitting across from Blake on a street-side café. He looked every bit the designer at rest, wearing denim and a fedora.

  “Hi gorgeous.” He kissed both my cheeks and I sat down across from him. “I was hoping you’d call.”

  “Well, that’s sweet of you to say. But I’m not sure you wanted me to call about this.”

  He shook his hand like he was brushing off my words. “Nonsense. It was meant to be. I just happened to have a fitting cancelled today. How can I help?”

  I explained our plans to launch and our uphill battle getting into stores. He nodded sympathetically.

  “First, let’s make sure you’re ready. Show me what you have.” I pulled Ava’s portfolio out of my bag.

  Blake paged through it while I fidgeted. Finally he nodded approvingly and looked up at me. “This is good work. It’s young and fresh.

  “Listen, retailers are tough. Breaking in the first time is especially hard because there’s a lot of overhead involved in adding a new designer. It’s a lot cheaper for a store to pick you up after a couple of great seasons when it’s lower risk. Why don’t I take you to a couple of my vendors?”

  I gratefully agreed. He took out his phone and started dialing. By the time my coffee was done, we had three meetings lined up for the next weekend.

  ---

  “Guess what: Vintage loved the pieces you sent over. They’re going to call you to talk rack space next week.” Blake’s voice crackled over the line.

  “That’s amazing! But I can barely hear you—where are you?” I asked. I had setup an impromptu workspace in my library study room, though admittedly I spent less time studying and more time booking meetings, calling manufacturers, and sending budget quotes back and forth with Lisa.

  “Where LA residents spend three-quarters of their time. Traffic. Just going under an overpass, it should be clear soon.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening.”

  “You deserve it, babe. Talk soon.”

  Finally it felt like things were moving. And in Blake, we’d stumbled across another smart and generous supporter. Unlike Kirsten, who was the business brains, Blake knew who liked what, and seemed able to say the right thing to make his point. We’d also bonded over a shared love of those teeny vanilla bean scones Starbucks makes. It was our ritual when we went to see boutiques that I provided the coffee and carbs—an infinitely modest price to pay for his backing, contacts, and expertise.

  Kirsten and I were having monthly check-ins to talk about the launch. By late March Ava and I already had a name, a logo, and were legally established as a partnership under the name Travesty Designs.

  Ava was looking after the fabric sourcing and identifying some New York boutiques to which we wanted to pitch. Blake and I had already secured six in LA, and at this point anything more was gravy.

  At the end of this month’s call with Kirsten she agreed everything was in order. All the items on the checklist I’d circulated in advance of our meeting were ticked or brought forward.

  The one thing that still loomed was the website. In all honesty, I’d been putting it off, but it was on the list for next week. Any further delays would hurt the rest of our work.

  Then Kirsten changed topics. “Alexis,” she started thoughtfully, her styled brows drawn together. She looked perfect even through Skype. Her blond bob was shining and set off by her knit camel-colored top. A gold knot that had probably come from Tiffany’s hung at her throat. “May I give you some advice?”

  “Of course. You know how much I value your perspective. On anything.” It was true, though I didn’t know where this was going.

  “The job is important. Building your business, your brand, is important. Most people I have to remind to focus. But with you I might have been wrong. When you pursue something so single-mindedly—when it’s your life—it can get in the way of other things.

  “You’ve already learned how to work hard, and you’re the kind of person who will persevere until they succeed. You’re a bulldog, Alexis, in the best possible way. But there are other things to learn too. You won’t wake up in two decades and wish you’d spent more time at work.”

  My gaze had fallen across the floor as I listened to her words. I didn’t know where this had come from. Had she noticed me distracted? Upset? I’d been so careful not to let any of the fallout influence how I presented myself professionally.

  My next words were carefully chosen. “This is my life. I want it more than anything else in the world. If I haven’t seemed excited about it lately, it could just be the stress of working through the final details.”

  “Mhmm. And how much time do you spend with other people? Ones that have nothing to do with business,” she added before I could jump in. “Who else is important in your life?”

  I thought about it for a moment. The list was short, but that was the way things had to be.

  “What I’m saying is this: don’t forget to enjoy life. As loathe as we in the fashion industry are to admit it, clothes aren’t what make life beautiful. People make life beautiful.”

  “Maybe,” I said, the words spilling out before I could stop them. “But they also make it messy.” My eyes went back to hers on the computer. “What about when people you care about get in the way of your dreams?”

  “Then you have to decide if they’re worth it.”

  “Which, the people or the dreams?”

  She smiled. “Both.”

  We clicked off a few minutes later. I sat in my task chair, spinning myself around slowly like I hadn’t done in years. The trick was to do it fast enough that you didn’t have to keep pushing off, but slow enough that you didn’t make yourself dizzy.

  What if Kirsten was right? In the past two months activities with the label had been taking off like a rocket. But two months being away from Dylan seemed to make things worse, not better. I kept telling myself things were fine, using Travesty to keep myself busy. When I found time to admit it, part of me felt a bit broken, a bit less. And I seemed to be compensating, rather than fixing it.

  Chapter 34

  The next week I dove into the website, retrieving all my sketches, quotes, and notes before calling up the developers. Some guy named Tony who was probably my age pulled up his files as I sat on the other end of the line.

  “So can we do this scope of work on budget in six weeks?”

  Tony paused again and when he spoke, I heard mild confusion in his tone. “I think so. Listen, we’re not in the business of cutting ourselves out, but it looks pretty good to me. Remind me what you’re looking to change?”

  I popped open a window and put in our web address, something I hadn’t done since we bought the domain name last fall. Instead of a blank page staring back at me, I found something else entirely.

  “Travesty” was written across the screen in black script, along with an edgy graphic treatment for the menu across the top.

  My head was suddenly spinning. “Uh, Tony, I’ll call you back,” I said, clicking off distractedly.

  It wasn’t a blank page. It was a website. Our website, in fact. The one I’d
outlined in the business plan. How the hell had this happened?

  “Ava!” I hollered over my shoulder. I heard her feet on the floor rather than saw her enter, as I was completely transfixed by what was on my screen.

  She peered over my shoulder and gaped. “This is freaking amazing! Did you do this?”

  I shook my head no, confused anew. “You didn’t?”

  “Hell no.”

  My fingers continued to click through the navigation, page after page shining out at me from the glossy screen. The “About” section said we were based out of New York and California. There was a strip of pictures of me and Ava, like the kind you took in a photo booth at the mall, running diagonally down the page, but the way it was styled and matched with the web page made it look chic. Ava and I had taken them last year and she had the copies.

  Not Kirsten.

  Realization dawned on Ava’s face as she took in the photos, her mind clearly working through the same logic. “These photos were on my bulletin board at home. The only people who could’ve seen them were my parents, and they wouldn’t know what to do with a website if it hit them in the face.

  “Or …”

  Dylan. Our minds landed on it at the same time.

  What? He’d made me—us—a website? I guess he’d gone through my notes often enough when we had been hanging out to know what we had planned. Come to think of it, he might have even offered suggestion on a few points.

  But more importantly, why? And when?

  Chunks of the website text were still unfinished, as would be expected. But most of the heavy lifting to setup the theme and navigation had been done, and done beautifully.

  I didn’t want to think about how much it had cost him. But I knew that as much as the site was helpful it was also symbolic. He wanted me to know that he supported me. Supported us.

  I scrolled all the way to the bottom, where the developer’s name resided in tiny print. Next to it was a message: Merry Christmas, Lex. If I hadn’t already been sitting, I probably would’ve collapsed as the energy whooshed out of me. He’d done this more than three months ago. And hadn’t told me.

  Ava’s eyes widened. “Dayum,” she said, flopping ungracefully and un-Ava-like into a chair. “He can be a bossy asshole sometimes, but you’ve got to admit this is a pretty epic gift.

  “Lex, you OK?” She grabbed the arms of my task chair and swiveled me away from my computer screen to face her.

  I was all ready to insist that it had just been a long week, that this had been unexpected, and I was simply overwhelmed. To my horror, tears began welling up behind my eyes. Spilled over onto my cheeks.

  Ava’s eyes widened and her voice softened as she moved closer. “Hey! Lex, talk to me.”

  “I don’t even know—” I said through sniffles.

  “It’s OK, I’ll wait.” She paused, being quiet for a long moment. Possibly the longest I’d ever seen her silent, but I wasn’t in the mood to remark on it. “Is this about the website or Dylan?”

  I looked at her and the tears started spilling over my face again, the second time this year.

  Ava’s face blurred but I heard her sigh. When she spoke, the words were clear. “I know I probably haven’t been the easiest to talk to about this. But I kind of figured there was something bigger going on when you showed me that site.” She paused like she was trying to collect her own thoughts. “If you do want to talk, I promise I’ll listen, and I won’t judge.”

  She was trying hard to be open. And knowing Ava, she wasn’t going to let this go until I started talking. So I started at the beginning.

  I told her about the party. About running into Dylan, how he’d come upstairs to check on me. I danced around some of the details that related to her family and Dylan’s secrets, because they weren’t mine to tell.

  When I got to the end she sat quietly for a minute. “I didn’t know you guys had gotten so close.”

  “It’s stupid, I know. I never saw it coming and wasn’t looking for it. But he was just there and I guess I expected to be able to brush him off. He completely snuck up on me, Ava. At the worst possible time, when I didn’t want anything or anyone.”

  “Does he call you on your bullshit?” She asked wryly.

  I thought back to the numerous times we’d argued about things. “Oh yeah.”

  “And does he make you smile?”

  “More than anything.”

  “And do you love him?”

  Even though I’d asked myself the same thing a million times, I took a deep breath in before answering. It whooshed out a second later. “I kind of think I do.”

  “Well, then, that’s all there is to it. You know, Lex, for all your time with Jake, I never thought he was it for you.”

  I was struggling to keep up with her. “Why not?”

  “You guys were good together, but you never fought. You never pushed each other. You never seemed that serious about each other. And even when you broke up, I never saw you as upset as I did this year since you and Dylan fell out.”

  She thought for a moment. “For all the shit Dylan’s pulled over the years, he usually comes through when it counts. Though the whole ‘wooing by website’ is a new one on me.”

  We sat in silence for a few moments. “It can’t be that simple, can it? Feeling this way makes the rest of the problems disappear?”

  “It might not make the rest disappear, but maybe it makes it worth fighting for?”

  “But what about what he did to us? I mean, does a website just cancel out everything he said to your parents?”

  “I don’t know, Lex,” Ava said gently. Then she bit her lip. “But I talked to Mom and Dad when I got back from New York, and apparently at the start of Christmas break Dylan told them he’d overstepped. That they should let me do what I want. Apparently his exact words were ‘if anyone can make a living selling overpriced skirts, it’s those two.’ So for what it’s worth, it sounds like something shifted for him. I’d be willing to bet that was you.”

  Dylan-knows-best had actually admitted he was wrong? Had practically intervened for us? Huh.

  “I know I have no right to say this, but I think he really cared about you, Lex.” She was serious. “He must’ve. Whatever you said to him in New York, it affected him big time. I don’t know if you can come back from that, but maybe you can. If that’s what you want.”

  The thoughts were running a mile a minute through my brain. Dylan had been out to sabotage us. But for how long? And he’d done it to protect his family. Then there was the website … which he hadn’t even tried to use to get me back. What did that even mean?

  “You’re awfully quiet, Lex. You know quiet scares me.”

  I took a breath. “I’m just a little floored. You’re right, it does change things. At least for me. But I was pretty hard on him, Ava. If only you’d heard me.” Our conversation came back in my mind, the accusations and shortness. Even thinking of it made me cringe. “I don’t know if I can take back what I said.”

  “It kind of sounds like a face-to-face conversation, doesn’t it? But you could call him. Just to let him know you’re thinking about him, maybe see if you can talk?”

  After Ava left, giving me a big hug on the way out, I paced for probably an hour. Glared at my cell on the desk for another several minutes, like it was going to reveal the answers for me. Finally I grabbed it and sat down in the corner of my room, legs tucked under me.

  I hit Dylan’s number on my phone, still on speed dial, and held my breath. I wasn’t even sure what I would say.

  Turns out it didn’t matter. The phone rang four times then went to voicemail. I listened to his voice, which somehow lifted and crushed my heart at the same time, then hung up.

  Yep, I was that girl.

  Chapter 35

  After sleeping on it, I was more convinced than ever that everything had changed with the website and Ava’s revelation. And the more I thought about Kirsten’s advice the more empowered I felt. Even before launching, we had done ev
erything we could for the label and the pieces were coming together. A new fear had entered my mind: what if we were successful? Did I want to have a fashion empire completely alone, especially when there was someone nearby who could make everything seem better?

  Now I had a plan.

  I worked up what I was going to say. Practiced it. But it didn’t matter if I was just saying it to myself.

  So next I tried texting.

  Hi. Are you around?

  Lamest text ever.

  After the first hour I stopped waiting for a reply. After the first day, my fear of not knowing what to say when he texted back was overcome by a sadness thinking he just wouldn’t text back.

  The next day Ava tried him. “He’s not responding to me either.” She offered. It was part comfort, part apology.

  “Tell you what. Let’s spend the rest of spring break at my parents’.” I knew she meant on the off chance Dylan would stop by.

  I gratefully agreed.

  When we entered the house, Christine greeted us. “Hi girls. This is a nice surprise.”

  Ava didn’t waste time. “Mom, is Dylan here?”

  Christine looked between me and Ava for a moment. “No, honey. He’d been waitlisted for an Engineers Without Borders trip over spring break. It came through last minute. He’ll be back Sunday night. I’m surprised he didn’t tell you.”

  Wasn’t a huge mystery as to why he hadn’t.

  “I’m going to go take my bag to my room. You coming?” Ava asked me.

  “Actually, Lex, can you help me with something in the kitchen first?” Christine asked. I shrugged, nodded.

  I followed her to where she was putting the finishing touches on a quiche. “Put some tea on?” she asked. I complied, moving easily around the familiar space.

  Christine didn’t look up from where she was adding cheese to the top of her creation. “I know it’s not my place, but I heard about you and Dylan. At least, I heard there was a falling out.” I tried to keep moving but inside I was frozen, hanging on her words. How had she known?