5. Nora
CHAPTER 5
NORA
I’m not defeated the next day.
I might have lost the battle, but not the war. And there’s no denying that West showing up saved me from a date that had turned sour almost as soon as I sat down. He started by telling me about his tech job, about cryptocurrencies and how much he could bench, before slipping into conversation about how his ex was a model, too.
I hadn’t gotten that impression from our chat. Then again, I’d only matched with him a few days prior, and what I need is practice in person. Not texting.
It’s easy to be nice in texts. It’s harder to be authentic in person.
Zeina and I have tried to trace where my issues started in our sessions.
When my friends and classmates were bubbly and excited about boys, and I was too, until I tried it and found their wants and needs like a cage that closed around me. It was like a dance that took too much energy and drowned out my own burgeoning feelings of excitement for a boy.
When I was sixteen, I was at a party in Paris. My friend’s older brother was cute, and we’d been talking all night about nothing and everything. Mostly teenage bluster and a few fumbling jokes.
He took my hand and pulled me into his room on the second floor, and I ended up on his couch, watching him put on some music.
He locked the door behind us.
He wasn’t a bad kid. Only a year older than me. We kissed for a long time, wet and warm and sort of nice, even though he tasted like whiskey. But when I pulled back with a giggle, his eyes were hot with desire.
He looked at me like I held the entire world in my hands. I could make or break his night.
If I made the wrong move, I would disappoint him. And disappointing people felt like dying. With parents like mine, it was the most terrible thing that could happen to me as a kid, and the fear reared its ugly head again.
Any excitement or desire I felt died right then. Withered behind the expectations and the pressure and the words that couldn’t, wouldn’t, form on my tongue. How about we wait? How about we go slower? How about …
He went to the bathroom, and I snuck out through his window onto the terrace. Left the party entirely and called a taxi to take me home. Then I snuck back into the apartment in the 16th arrondissement that I shared with my mother and fell asleep with a pounding heart.
I said no a lot after that.
No, no, no. No thank you. No, please. Thanks but no thanks. When I tried dating at twenty, and the guy was lovely on a first date, but then texted just two days after to ask if I wanted to come to his place for dinner. I was still trying to decide whether I liked him, and he already wanted me in his apartment.
At twenty-one, when my model friend’s nerdy brother asked me out, and I thought it was time to try again. We were on our second perfectly nice date in London when he surprised me by kissing me wetly against a brick wall outside my apartment. Then he asked me with shining eyes if he could come inside.
I sputtered something about an early morning and ran off.
And finally, at twenty-three, just last year, when I searched for therapy online and found Zeina’s practice. Opened up to her in a two-hour session about how much of a failure I was, only for her to hand me a tissue with a kind smile and say “let’s do this again next week.”
Because paying to feel all the emotions you usually suppress is a fantastic pastime. Very fun.
It took two more sessions for her to issue her verdict, and it fell over me like a scythe. You only see relationships as taking from you. You bend, because you’ve been taught that if you don’t, a relationship will break. It won’t.
You can say yes and then change your mind.
You can say no and not have it kill you. Or them.
You can negotiate boundaries and compromise.
Apparently she has more belief in me than I do, because I feel like I can’t. I don’t do arguments, or conflicts, or disappointments.
Like my mother calling the next day and spending almost thirty minutes venting to me about the frustrations she’s having with my brother. I try to softly end the conversation four times before she finally asks me how I’m doing. We say goodbye when I’ve already left my apartment, two guards in tow.
Madison again, and a curly-haired, ruddy-cheeked guy named Sam. He’s tall and has a puppy-like quality to him. Like he’s a bit gangly and his paws are too big.
They follow me as I walk to the place that’ll be my workspace for the next few months. I’m renting one of over a dozen worktables in an atelier near my apartment. I need all the time I can get to work on my collection.
Only twelve designers can compete in the Fashion Showcase. I was selected after submitting my designs anonymously online, and now I have less than two months to perfect and put together the final collection.
The judges will be industry leaders, and they’ll rank us without knowing who we are. Not our names, ethnicities, backgrounds, age or gender.
I’ve never wanted anything more than I want to be there.
Several new designers have been discovered that way, and I’m going to be one of them. Based on the power of my designs. Not on my last name or because of my connection to my brother.
Not that Rafe’s particularly supportive. He said good job when I got into fashion school, but only in the way you are with a child who has a dream.
When I applied for the Fashion Showcase, I did it without telling him. And when I got accepted and told him I was moving to New York, he called it my little pet project. He assumes that, sooner or later, I’ll come back to the family business, work in an office every day, and look at numbers the way he does.
That’s not going to be me. I just haven’t told him that yet, because again, conflict. Boundaries.
Just as I haven’t told my agent or my mom that I’m done modeling. It’s what I’ve done since I was fifteen, when my mother took me to the first audition and told me it would make her so happy if I booked it.
Since then, I’ve been in campaign after campaign for Maison Valmont. The company my father started, that my brother now runs, which owns most of the world’s largest luxury brands. I’ve been in campaigns for all of them. Brilliant, my mother says about her own idea, that one of the Montclairs should be photographed for Montclair-owned brands.
But I want to feel fabric between my hands and a sketchpad beneath my fingers. I want to work for no one but myself.
When I’m designing, I don’t care about anyone else. I care about the garment and the woman who’s going to wear it.
It’s sacred.
When I arrive at the shared atelier, I nod hello to a few designers hanging out in the lounge. There’s a woman in a bright green dress behind a reception desk, and I give her a smile.
“Hi. I’m Eléanore,” I say, extending a hand.
“I know.” She smiles broadly back at me. “Diana. It’s a pleasure. You’re at table number twelve. Let me show you.” She stands and strides away. “It’s right by the big, beautiful windows.”
“Oh, that’s amazing. Lots of natural light.” I hitch my giant fabric bag up on my shoulder and follow her. She glances past me at Sam and Madison, but they stay outside the workspace. Sam seems to be doing his very best to look interested in a poster for a thrift sale pop-up.
I follow Diana into the buzzing room. The sounds of several sewing machines echo. “We got a delivery for you this morning,” she says over her shoulder. “I popped it in some water and set it on your workstation.”
“A delivery?” My steps slow, and then I see it. The giant, over-the-top bouquet that’s standing on the otherwise empty countertop.
“Isn’t it gorgeous? We’ve all been eyeing it.” She gives me a wink. “A boyfriend?”
I feel faint. “Yeah,” I say. “Something like that.”
“Well, I’ll leave you to get settled in.”
My smile stays on, and I nod at her as she returns to the desk. A few of the other designers give me curious looks. I return them all with a smile and walk slowly, foot by foot, toward the workstation like the flowers might bite.
There’s a card attached.
I won’t touch it. I can’t touch it. After the first three letters in Paris, I stopped opening them. Just sent them all to my brother’s security team. But it’s half-opened, and I can see the words clear as day.
New York is nice, isn’t it?
It’s not signed. They never are, but I know who sent it. How did he know I’m starting work today? That I’d be here ?
I look at the beautiful sewing machine at my desk. The people around me, who I’ve been so excited to meet. To get to know. To be accepted by.
I close my eyes for a few long breaths, and then I call in Sam and Madison. I want to ask them not to involve West, but I know that’s futile. Everything I do these days, it seems, has to involve other people.
He’s going to see me as even more of a nuisance than he already does. I hate being an inconvenience. Hate bothering other people.
I feel like screaming.
I settle for wrapping my arms around myself and stubbornly fighting back tears. My brother is convinced the stalker is someone I went on a few dates with in December. The letters started up shortly after, and then the texts, and the anonymous DMs. The occasional picture.
And now the stalker has followed me to New York?
I hoist up my big bag of fabrics and say no thank you when Sam offers to carry it for me. He already has the bouquet in a large plastic bag tucked under his arm, while Madison is reporting on the phone.
I walk in front of them back to the apartment, choking back the tears. The last thing I want is for either of them to see. They’ll probably report that to West too. I bet everything I do now is reported to West.
I already have a stalker. It’s funny, how little I treasured my freedom before it was taken from me. Now I’m constantly monitored.
I’m barely through the door of my apartment when my phone rings. I answer, and in French, my brother asks, “Are you okay?”
“Yes. It was just flowers and a note.” I take a deep breath. “I’m just a bit shaken. I thought…”
“I know. I hoped too. West is on his way.” Rafe’s voice is tight. “This asshole knows where you work and probably where you live. I don’t know how the fuck he figured it out so fast, but I want that changed.”
“Changed? I just got here.” I close my eyes against the sadness. I thought I was done with the fear. “And I like where I live, and where?—”
“West’s place is a fortress,” Rafe says.
“You want me to move in with West?”
“Yes, and it’s not up for debate.” We’re not that far apart in age, but over the last few years, it’s felt like a chasm. He had to fight to gain control of Maison Valmont after our dad died. He’s finally in the CEO position, but the board is making him work to keep it. “Nora, please,” he says, switching to English. Having one Swiss parent and one American has made our conversations a constant negotiation between the two languages. “Mom is worried too. We’re all worried. This isn’t forever. My guys will work with West’s, and we’ll find this asshole.”
He’s said that for the last several months. But the special investigators he’s hired haven’t found anything yet. Everything is inconclusive.
It’s the worry in his voice that convinces me. As much as I hate being a pushover, I hear myself agree. “Okay. But for a short period of time, right? And only if West agrees to it. I need some time to pack up my stuff.”
“He will,” Rafe says. “Stay by West’s side tonight. I don’t want you out of his or the guards’ sights.” Then he hangs up, the line going quiet on the other end.
My stomach knots. He will agree? So they haven’t spoken about it yet?
West is already annoyed at having to “rescue” me from innocent situations. He’s overbearing and annoyingly handsome, and he doesn’t like me. And now I have to live with him?
We’re going to kill each other.