by Melissa Ford
“Only nine thousand, two hundred and eighty hours? I’ll never make it. You have no clue how much people complained over those seven hundred and twenty hours.”
“Called you a workaholic?” Noah asks, stirring the dregs of his hot chocolate.
“Implied that I was neglecting everything for work, that I must love my career more than my child,” I tick off on my fingers. “And my atelier designer implied that I care more about my home life than I do about succeeding. I can’t win.”
“But what do you want?” Noah asks.
“In an ideal world, my own design house. But did you ask me here because you’re having a hard day, or because you think I am?”
“Let’s just say,” Noah tells me, raising his eyebrows, “that I’ve been through this before. Bar Mitzvah letdown, remember? Maybe I was worried about you on the plane this morning because I know what the day after feels like. Plus I’m living it right now, too. Misery loves company, or something like that.”
“Well, thank you,” I say politely.
Noah leans his cheek against the palm of his hand, making me feel as if I’m the only person in the entire world. I feel my pulse quicken, and I look down at the table embarrassed.
“Do you want to walk?” he asks, bussing our empty cups into the bin near the counter.
“I should go pick up Beckett,” I murmur.
“Then let me walk you to the subway. I’m going to stay down here and meet someone for dinner.”
We fall in step beside one another, moving like water around the tourists who clog the sidewalks, gaping at the designer stores. My eyes flick at Tiffany’s as we pass, and a half a block later, Noah grabs my hand and drags me into a cramped bookstore. “It’s not McNally Jackson, but I’m sure they’ll have it,” he says.
“Have what?” I ask.
He drags me back into literature, running his finger over the spines of the books as he searches for something. He finally yanks out a thin novella and turns the cover toward me. It’s a slim, woman’s hand with manicured red nails, holding a pencil. Breakfast at Tiffany’s is written against an artfully torn black and red background.
I thumb through the first few pages, which are nothing like the iconic opening of Audrey Hepburn stepping out of the taxicab in that long black gown and sunglasses, sipping a cup of coffee and eating a Danish while she peers into the shop windows of Tiffany’s. “It’s the perfect book if you have the blues. You can always reason that at least your life is better than Holly’s,” Noah explains.
“Isn’t that schadenfreude?” I ask.
“The best kind.” He brings it to the cash register and pays for it, handing it back to me on our way out of the store.
“Thank you for meeting me today,” I tell him. “I’m sorry about my mean reds.”
“Your mean reds are more like snarky pinks.”
“Still, it was nice to hang out with someone who gets it. Most people I know don’t really get . . . this world. The creative world.”
“Happy to be of service,” he says. We turn the corner and pause next to the subway stairs. “I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he says, leaning his hip against the green railing, “that I started writing a new book. Remember how I told you that time at the pizza place that I was waiting for inspiration to strike, something entirely fictional? Well, I found it.”
“What’s it about?” I ask.
He laughs and shrugs. “I’m not ready to talk about it yet; artistic process. But I’ll tell you the first line. Actually, it’s the first line I thought up but it’s more like the last line of the book: ‘there are no happily ever afters.’ The night the story came to me, I stayed up writing the end, and then the next night I started at the beginning. The main character in the book is a woman, new to Manhattan, trying to break into the fashion world. So maybe not entirely fictional, but at least it’s not my life.”
The skin around his eyes crinkles when he smiles, and I involuntarily smile back, thinking of myself immortalized inside a book, even if no one else knows that it’s me. Sort of like my Emmy outfits except that books are forever.
“I was thinking, you should keep going, too. Designing for designing’s sake. You’re not the type of person who can stop creating, who can be satisfied having one hurrah. You got a taste of the design world, and I think you need to keep going.”
“I would love to keep going, but I don’t even know where to begin. I need help to really get this started,” I tell him. “Access to celebrities who will wear my designs, and people to hire me so I can pay for the materials.”
“That’s easy. Access to celebrities—I can do that. I have more celebrities than I know what to do with. I find them under the sofa cushions and in old coat pockets. Plus, I can wear my suit all over Manhattan, telling people it’s an original Arianna Quinn.”
“Forget celebrities,” I laugh. “Apparently all I need is Noah Reiser.”
“I’ll be a walking billboard,” he promises. “Give me a little bit of time. I’ll drum up some people for you. In the meantime, keep drawing.”
“Yes, sir,” I tell him. I lean over and give him a quick hug. “Thank you for everything today. The book, the help, the perspective.”
“Well,” Noah says, straightening up. “I told you that you were liked. I have to get going to dinner, but I’ll talk to you soon.”
I try not to watch him walk away as I take the steps two at a time, rushing to get back to my neighborhood to meet Martina and Beckett. I stand on the crowded train, swaying with the movement. In my head, I peel apart the letters comprising “like,” jumbling them into random piles until the word means nothing.
I PROP MY sketchpad against my knees, drawing in bed while Ethan half watches an alien movie. The screen keeps exploding with intergalactic laser fire as the humans keep popping onto alien planets, fighting the leathery-looking aliens, and then returning to their spaceship where it seems their only other activity is having sex with their human cohorts in aerospace pods or arguing in the spaceship corridors.
I’m putting the finishing touches on a thigh-high belted double-layered cocktail dress with a gathered sleeveless silk bodice when Ethan tears his eyes away from the alien carnage on the television screen to glance at me.
“What are you doing?”
“Drawing. Designing.”
“I thought you were finished with that,” Ethan says.
I glance over at him, but he’s gone back to watching the space captain seduce one of the lower-ranking spaceship cadets. “What do you mean finished with that?”
“I don’t know. Fashion Week is over. The Emmy dresses are made, right?”
I flip the page in my sketchpad and start over, reworking the drape on the bodice and changing the neckline to be a modified bateau. The next time I speak to Noah, I’ll tell him my idea to start with Chloë Sevigny. She’s already an icon in the fashion world and not only models but has designed clothes herself. People ask her about what she’s wearing when she does an interview. And she has that timeless look that fits my vintage, old-Hollywood style. With her hair in a loose updo, she could make this cocktail dress come to life.
“So now I’m on to the next idea. It’s not as if I’m one and done. The whole point to doing all that extra work was to launch my career.”
“Can’t you take off a little bit of time? I thought you’d rest for a few weeks, let our lives go back to normal.”
“Drawing in bed while you watch television isn’t normal?” I question.
He rolls over to face me, lightly stroking my upper thigh underneath the blanket. “The drawing part is normal. But you have that look on your face. That determined Arianna look that tells me that you’re thinking big thoughts.”
I smile to myself and set down the sketchpad on the floor, squishing down my pillow as I slide into his arms. “I am think
ing big thoughts. Noah from the Nightly told me that he’d help connect me with some celebrities who would wear my creations. It could really do a lot to get my name out there.”
“Where’s the fire?” Ethan asks, kissing me softly between words. “I haven’t seen you put down that sketchpad all day. Weren’t you designing a similar dress while you heated up Beckett’s fish sticks?”
So he does actually pay attention to my drawings. I squirm happily, rolling onto my back while he climbs atop me. “The fire is that Noah is offering me help now. I don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. It may not be there if I take months slowly amassing my drawing portfolio.”
Ethan doesn’t answer, instead sliding his hand gently down my cheek as he brushes aside my hair. These are the moments when I know that we can make this work, that we can create a life together. That tucked inside all the frantic running around and long work hours are these quiet moments, just the two of us, where we can recharge and find one another again. It has been a long time since we’ve made love. Had sex—sure, a quickie here and there during the last two months, one time in the shower together while Beckett napped and other times before I collapsed from exhaustion after a grueling day at the loft. But this, the long, leisurely unwrapping of a gift, the soft sliding down of my silky tank top strings, his tongue exploring the space behind my ear, sucking my lobe until I moan with pleasure. It has been a long time since this.
He takes his time bringing me to orgasm, teasing me, holding me on the brink of release and then finally allowing me to stumble into it. I let out a series of soft noises, trying to muffle my pleasure by pressing my mouth into his shoulder. He finishes soon after me and shudders to a stop, rolling off me so his hips are casually resting over mine.
“I’ve missed that,” I sigh.
“Let’s do it again,” Ethan suggests. I swat at his shoulder.
“I’m not young like you. I’m an old woman. You’re dating a cougar.”
“Growl,” Ethan responds. “You sure don’t act like an old woman when you’re turned on.”
I turn my head to look at him, tracing the outline of his lips with the tip of my finger. He kisses my index finger and then bites at it, catching me gently with his teeth and giving one deep suck before releasing. “Hey, Ari, forget this Noah guy. You don’t need him or his celebrities. You can just design for you. Wear your clothes yourself. Don’t disappear on me again.”
“I don’t want to be forty or fifty years old and still in the same place, still a finisher. I want to be creative, change my life.”
“But don’t you see that it’s the business side of things that’s really eating all of your time? You’re barely designing; most of it is just the rat race of the creative world. Do you really like that side of things? All the stress of trying to get ahead? I mean, what about Beckett? What about me?”
“I want it all,” I tell him. “I want the design house and you and Beckett. Don’t make me choose.”
“Ari, I would never make you choose,” Ethan admonishes, quickly sitting up to make sure I’m understanding just how serious he is. I sit up too, dragging the edge of the blanket over my breasts, suddenly shy to be sitting there so naked and exposed. “I want you to be successful, too. I want you to have the design house. I just don’t want to lose you to the design house in the process of building it. And ever since the Emmys, I’ve seen this intensity on your face, this singular focus. I just want you to do this on your time line. Not someone else’s. You don’t need this Noah guy; you can take this slow.”
He’s wrong; and maybe this is why his photography is currently only displayed in our living room. He’s okay with that, but I will never be satisfied with being the only one wearing my clothes. I’ve done that the last few years; worn the dresses I’ve made around New York. I met Noah in a pair of pants I finished. And it hasn’t been enough; it hasn’t satiated me nor has it kicked off my career. I wish I could be happy like Ethan; it would certainly be easier than trying to break into the fashion world. But I know that I’m missing whatever satisfaction gene Ethan holds that allows him to blissfully float through life, content to take photographs that only he sees.
“Come on,” Ethan cajoles, and he slowly starts me back up, kissing my neck, tugging the blanket from my body. We make love a second time, but it’s different. This time my mind is a million miles away.
Chapter Thirteen
TWO WEEKS LATER, I have an original Shoshana Shalom hanging in my apartment. Lisbeth’s friend, Judd, a tall guy with whitish-blond hair and paint-stained work boots, drops it off after dinner one night. He looks like a filled-out version of Billy Idol circa 1982, which is fitting since I have “White Wedding” playing in my head as he hooks the dress bag over the door.
As much as I’m bitter that Rachel didn’t ask me to make her dress, I have to admit that altering a Shoshana Shalom is a close second. I take an afternoon just to examine the seams, jotting down notes on how the dress comes together. The material is to-die-for, like wearing a dream. Even the grosgrain sash slides through my fingers like water. I incorporate the cut of the back into a dress I’m designing, finally finding the counterbalance to the front’s plunge.
While I’m waiting for Rachel to come over so I can make adjustments, I open an email I’ve already reread five times, trying to decide how I can possibly make Noah’s invitation work. The Nightly has a pre-Thanksgiving dinner before they head out on break. He suggested I come because a few actresses who are friends of the show will be there too: Zooey Deschanel, Ellen Page, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams. Any of them would be a perfect model for my designs since all have an old-school beauty coupled with a bit of quirkiness about them. Noah tells me that showing up at the dinner would be a way to casually network, especially if I wear something fantastic that he can use as a conversation opener.
But all my problems are tied to that big, white dress hanging in my living room. The dinner is right before Rachel’s wedding, and I’m certain that she’s going to say that she needs me for something. Just thinking about that makes the bitterness rise in my throat, but what can I do? I’ve always been “helpful Arianna” in our relationship. Need a hem fixed? I’m there with a needle. Need me to be a human hair scrunchy while you vomit from too many martinis at your birthday dinner? My hands are yours. Arianna to the rescue.
I can’t blame Rachel for thinking of me like that because I created the situation, starting with always running over to her dorm room to help her out with a paper or listen to her dissect a relationship. I never put my foot down and said, “Sorry, can’t come to the rescue today. Have my own shit I need to deal with.” Mostly because I never felt as if I had my own shit I needed to deal with.
The thing is that I used to like running to the rescue, being needed, especially before I had Beckett. But now he fulfills that part of me, taking up all of my energy. I need to stop dropping everything, putting Rachel before myself, but is this Nightly meal right before her wedding the best place to start?
When Rachel arrives, I attempt to squeeze every last drop of resentment out of my body while I unzip the bag. It’s not Rachel’s fault that the timing between her wedding and this networking opportunity sucks, and I don’t want to dump any of this on her and mar her special day. Plus, it’s easy to focus on the dress: no matter how many times I look at it, it takes my breath away. I’ve never given much thought to designing wedding dresses, but looking at Rachel’s dress with my best friend flips on the innate, animalistic tendency of thirty-something women to visualize their wedding day, and my brain is suddenly cataloging the various characteristics of an imaginary gown, building my perfect wedding dress in my head.
Oh my God, I am imagining myself in a wedding dress.
It wouldn’t be floor-length. It wouldn’t be stuffy at all. A white, paillette-covered slinky dress, cowl necked to show off my shoulders and ending above the knee.
But it’s not just the dress. I am suddenly visualizing where I would hold the wedding, and when. It would be early summer at the Lafayette Club in Minnetonka Beach, my veil blowing in the breeze, the guests facing the lake, which would serve as a backdrop for the ceremony. My dress would pop in the wide expanse of bluish green. Ethan would be standing at the end of the aisle with a rabbi and a minister . . . or maybe just a justice of the peace for simplicity’s sake. And freakin’ Pachelbel’s Canon would be piped in from hidden speakers.
It’s not too late; it would make Ethan’s whole year if I told him that I’m okay with getting married. It’s just a ceremony, just a piece of paper. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen beyond feeling trapped, suffocated, and compromised?
No, wait, I’m Arianna Quinn. And I don’t want to get married. Unless some subconscious part of me does want to tell someone until death do we part. I’ve always said that I don’t want to get married, but do I really mean it, through all layers of my being, into my bone and blood and cells? Or is there a different future wished for, some dormant message in my DNA begging me to forget about everything that can go wrong and just leap without fear into the unknowns of marriage?
This is the first time in my life when I’ve actually been in a position to make a choice, when I’ve been with a person who wants to spend the rest of his life with me. Is marriage as terrible as I’ve always made it out to be? Should I stick to my convictions when . . . I don’t have to?
I realize as I examine the dress that my hands are sweating—not pinpricks of moisture, but they’re completely damp and clammy, as if I’m lucidly dreaming inside a nightmare. I am terrified that I’m going to destroy an original Shoshana Shalom with my sweat-drenched, anxiety-shaking hands. At the same time, my mouth feels so dry, it’s as if all the moisture in my throat has traveled out the palms of my hands. Rachel is waiting for some reaction—I work in fashion! We’re looking at a dress!—so I choke out a very honest, “It’s gorgeous,” and then make up some stuff about how it’s classic Shoshana.
