27. Natalie
27
NATALIE
W hen anxiety strikes, keep busy. That’s my MO, anyway. If my anxiety is a maelstrom inside me this morning then I’m a whirling dervish, whizzing around the studio like a cartoon character inside one of those tiny cyclones that keeps them spinning. Keeps them productive.
My ridiculous orgasm should have helped. God knows, the concussion-slash-bliss lasted as Adam cleaned me up and put me in a fluffy robe so I’d be covered up while I wove all that ribbon back into my corset, loosely enough that I could step into it.
It endured as he escorted me outside and bundled me into a black cab which he insisted on paying for up front as he instructed the cabbie to take me all the way home.
It endured as he leaned into the cab almost shyly before pressing a kiss to my cheek.
And it even endured through the shower I took when I got home—a brief one, because my tiny, grotty bathroom in my tiny, grotty flat is fucking freezing.
But this morning, I’m in the weirdest mood. It doesn’t help that all my worries from yesterday have come rushing back in, more taunting and insidious than ever. It’s as if that hour in that room with Adam was a stopper that plugged the dam momentarily, and once that stopper was removed, the deluge was waiting to do its worst.
It also doesn’t help that I feel really odd about what happened last night. It’s part shame—the kind of guilty, how the fuck could I have done that shame my girlfriends have complained about countless times after drunken one-night-stands, the kind my forced sobriety has mostly protected me from. I have no idea what I was thinking, what possessed me to go along with it, what gave me the courage to say the stuff I said.
I told him to come on my boobs, for God’s sake!
It’s part vulnerability, too. I feel fragile and exposed and a bit shaky. It seems Adam Wright is getting all my most vulnerable moments, the sexy and the not so sexy.
But I’m self-aware enough to know what it isn’t: regret. Because every time I allow myself to think about what went down in that room, I get this delicious, fluttery clenching low in my stomach. It was so ridiculously hot I could never, ever regret it.
It’s possible the memory of Adam looking at me with hooded, hungry eyes from between my legs is branded on my brain forever. And the visual of him jerking himself off more aggressively than seemed possible or advisable while looking positively feral will live rent-free in my head for the rest of my days. Dear God, it was so damn big, that thing. So angry.
I made him lose his self-control, and he was a beast, and it was bloody fabulous. All of which makes it pretty difficult to regret.
‘So we now know the Loch Ness Monster is an actual thing,’ Evan muses. He’s been obsessing over the final version of a paper pattern for a bias-cut evening dress all morning. Once he’s happy with it, Carrie will digitise it and send it to the grading agency to be reproduced across the spectrum of women’s sizes. Actual Haute Couture brands tend to make each pattern from scratch, but as a demi-couture, we re-use our most iconic patterns and definitely the “blocks” off which they’re based.
He’s also been obsessing over Adam’s penis all morning, which is as irritating as it is unhelpful… and as unsurprising. He was intrigued by the nighttime boner situation, so it stands to reason that Adam having unleashed the full force of it on me last night has made him unbearable.
‘Mmm-hmm,’ I say absently, my eyes glued to the browser window showing our bank balance. It’s horrifying. Beyond horrifying. I need to pay one of our French mills tomorrow before they’ll release the three hundred metres of excruciatingly expensive custom jacquard we ordered, but paying it will mean there aren’t enough funds for payroll next week unless we have a bonanza weekend on our website, which I doubt.
Sales have been slow. It’s that horrific time of year where an unseasonably mild October meant no one was buying new season collections that month, and November is always a write-off because everyone waits for Black Friday to buy anything at all. The world and his wife will discount then, and we won’t, both because mid-season discounting doesn’t reflect well on our brand and because it trains customers not to shop at full price. Inevitably, though, that means we’ll see none of the wallet share from the biggest shopping weekend of the year.
So here we are, with my entire life savings sitting in unsold inventory, and a hideous cash flow model that always, always works against us, and insufficient funds to pay my amazing, hardworking team, and it’s all enough to make the anxiety that’s been coursing through me all of yesterday (well, most of yesterday) and this morning turn to fully fledged panic, a panic that twists my stomach like two hands might wring out a wet dishcloth.
‘I don’t get why you’re being so blasé,’ Evan says now, and and I press my lips together before answering, because what I want to shout at him isn’t appropriate or cool. He may be one of my best friends, but he’s also my employee. I’m the business owner, and our finances are my problem, no one else’s. Neither Evan nor Carrie nor anyone else can ever know how close they come to not being paid every single month.
They can never know how fortuitous it is for them—and for me—that my Alchemy pay cheque hits my personal account the day before Gossamer’s pay day is due each month. And they can definitely never know how often I have to top up Gossamer’s bank account with my own Alchemy salary. Or that Alchemy is pretty much paying my bills on its own, because my original plan to pay myself a small salary from the business is categorically not an option right now.
It will be, at some point, but there are always so many bills to pay, so many parties clamouring for their funds—mills and factories and the landlord for this studio, obviously. It’s a never-ending tunnel of keeping the panic to a manageable level while I spin plates and run to stand still and try very, very hard to keep the following from myself and from everyone else: that this dream of running a beautiful fashion brand has become more of a nightmare, and that I can’t see the dimmest, tiniest speck of light at the end of that tunnel. Not any more.
But I won’t say any of that to my lovely Evan, who works so fucking hard and is so fucking loyal to me, despite the fact that he could easily get snapped up by a bigger brand. He claims he’s here for the autonomy a small brand gives him, but I know better.
Nor will I say any of it to myself. I may have no idea what lies ahead for us, but spiralling over that fact prevents me from doing what I need to do: keep my head down and focus every day on living to fight another day. Another week. To make another payroll.
So I plaster on a smile for my dear friend and I tear my eyes from the horrible sight on my screen. ‘Definitely not blasé,’ I manage. ‘Not with my track record. Just trying to get through the to-do list.’
I force myself to banter with him for a few more minutes, because God knows he doesn’t deserve to have a miserable cow for a boss. But when the doorbell rings downstairs and he ambles off to answer it, I let my eyes drift closed. The tears are there. They’re so close that my lash line is damp. My entire face aches from holding it in. There’s a well of pressure building behind my face, and it’s all I can do not to let it release.
I try taking slow, even breaths in and out. Maybe I can trick my body into regulating itself. Maybe I can breathe away that bank balance. That invoice from the mill that’s blinking at me on my screen. They’re waiting for me to send them a payment confirmation before they’ll release the fabric, and I really need DHL to pick it up by tomorrow. If they don’t, we’ll lose our slot at the factory.
But I’m so fucking exhausted, and I know my antics last night—delicious though they were—didn’t help. It’s hard enough holding down a late-night job when I’m a morning person, but it’s far harder when I’m getting naked in my place of work afterwards and crawling into bed at one in the morning. Even without ill-advised sexy times, I’m burning the candle at both ends, and the candle is feeling pretty useless. Exhaustion is making me less resilient when I need every ounce of resilience I can muster in this business.
A tear rolls out of my tear duct and down the side of my nose, and I dab it carefully with a tissue so as not to mess up my perfect makeup. Maybe I’ll go treat myself to a fancy coffee that I can’t afford. The caffeine hit will be worth the investment. Sure, it’ll make me even more jittery, but I’ll also be more productive, and that can’t be a bad thing. If only I could find the energy to get up from my chair.
It turns out I don’t need energy to get up. I simply require a big fat shock. Because when I jerk my head up at the two sets of heavy footsteps clomping up the narrow staircase that leads to the front door and see Adam Wright standing in my studio, I’m out of that chair like a rocket.