1. Sophia
— ? —
Sophia
Being married to the CEO of Whitmore Maison meant everyone assumed I had opinions about it.
Interviewers wanted to know how I “balanced” my creative role with being Alexander’s wife, as though those were two sides of a scale I was constantly adjusting.
Socialites at galas asked if it was difficult working with my husband, their voices dripping with the implication that I’d somehow slept my way into my own talent.
My mother called every Sunday to ask if we were thinking about children yet, because apparently designing a flagship collection that would define the next decade of the house wasn’t enough to keep me busy.
What no one asked was whether I was happy. Maybe they assumed they already knew the answer. Maybe I’d assumed it too, for a long time.
It was a Thursday in late October, and I was sitting in my office on the fourth floor of the Maison, surrounded by rejection.
Fourteen variations of the centerpiece earrings for Lumière éternelle, and not one of them was right.
Too heavy, too delicate. Too expected, too strange.
I’d been staring at them for three hours, and they were starting to look like the same earring wearing fourteen different disguises, none of them convincing.
My phone buzzed. A calendar notification: Dinner with A, 7 p.m., Le Sénéchal.
I stared at the reminder for a long moment.
We’d made this reservation two months ago, back when the launch had felt comfortably distant and Alexander had promised that October would be calmer.
October was not calmer. October was a rolling disaster of supplier delays and marketing pivots and phone calls that stretched past midnight.
But he’d promised. He’d put it in his calendar himself, which meant Camille hadn’t scheduled over it, which meant it was actually going to happen.
I allowed myself a small, cautious hope.
My phone buzzed again. A text this time, from the man himself.
Running 30 min late. Don’t kill me.
I typed back: Reservation is at 7. They won’t hold it.
I’ll call them. Order wine. I’ll be there.
Part of me wanted to believe him. I’d believed him six weeks ago when he’d promised we’d take a weekend in Nice.
I’d believed him three weeks ago when he’d promised we’d at least have Sunday brunch.
And again last Tuesday, when he’d promised to be home by nine and walked in at midnight, still on the phone, mouthing “sorry” at me like it was a greeting.
The problem with Alexander’s promises wasn’t that he made them carelessly.
It was that he meant every single one. He genuinely believed, each time, that this meeting would end on schedule, that this crisis would resolve itself, that the calendar would somehow bend to accommodate both his ambitions and his marriage.
His optimism was relentless and entirely disconnected from evidence.
I saved my work, closed my laptop, and went home to change.
Our apartment was on the top floor of a building in the 6th arrondissement, with windows that overlooked the rooftops of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Alexander had bought it before we were married, back when he was still the heir and not the CEO, and I’d spent our first year together slowly making it feel like mine too.
My books on the shelves. My sketches framed on the walls.
The ugly green armchair I’d found at a flea market in Montmartre that he pretended to hate but always sat in when he thought I wasn’t looking.
I showered, put on the black dress I’d been saving, and did my makeup with more care than I’d taken in weeks.
By 6:45 I was still doing an impression of a woman who believed in dinner reservations.
By 7:15 I was sitting alone at a corner table at Le Sénéchal, nursing a glass of wine that was rapidly becoming my best friend.
The waiter came by twice to ask if I was ready to order. I smiled and said my husband was running late, and tried not to notice the flicker of pity in his expression. By the third visit I ordered an appetizer just to give my hands a job.
At 7:52, Alexander walked through the door.
He looked exhausted. That was the first thing I noticed.
The shadows under his eyes were darker than they’d been this morning, and his tie was loosened the way it only got when he’d been in back-to-back meetings without a break.
But he smiled when he saw me, a real smile, and crossed the restaurant in four long strides to kiss me hello.
“You remembered dinner,” I said against his mouth.
“I forgot every other meeting to make sure I did.” He sat down across from me and reached for the wine list, then noticed my glass was nearly empty. “How long have you been waiting?”
“Not long.”
“Sophia.”
“About an hour.”
He winced. “The call with the Asian distributors ran over. They had concerns about the timeline, and then legal got involved, and then suddenly I was arbitrating a debate about shipping insurance that I genuinely didn’t know I cared about until tonight.”
“Shipping insurance. Sounds thrilling.”
“It was the opposite of thrilling. It was aggressively, performatively boring. I think they were testing me.” He flagged down the waiter and ordered a bottle from the expensive end of the list, then turned back to me with the full force of his attention. “I’m here now. Tell me about your day.”
I wanted to be angry with him. I’d been angry with him for the past hour, alone at this table, rehearsing all the things I was going to say when he finally showed up.
But he was looking at me like I was the only person in the room, like the shipping insurance debate and the distributor concerns and the fourteen-hour workday had all evaporated the moment he sat down, and it was hard to stay angry at someone who looked at you like that.
This was the problem. This had always been the problem.
“I made fourteen versions of the same earring today,” I said. “None of them are right.”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“If I knew that, they’d be right.”
He laughed, and for a moment I remembered why I’d fallen in love with him.
Not the wealth or the name or the impossible cheekbones, though none of those had hurt.
The laugh. The way it transformed his face from composed to human, from CEO to the man who’d once sat beside me in a conference room and told me my design instincts were too aggressive, like it was a compliment.
“Walk me through it,” he said. “The earring problem.”
“You don’t want to hear about earring problems. You’ve had a day.”
“I’ve had a day of shipping insurance. I desperately want to hear about earring problems.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Lumière éternelle. The centerpiece earrings. You’ve been working on them for three months. What’s not clicking?”
So I told him. I told him about the weight distribution issues and the way the light wasn’t catching the way I’d envisioned and the fourteen variations that all amounted to compromises.
He listened the way he used to listen, back when we were first together, asking questions that made me think instead of just nodding along.
By the time our entrées arrived I’d sketched three alternative designs on a napkin and he’d pointed out a flaw in two of them that I hadn’t noticed.
“You’re good at this,” I said, surprised and a little annoyed. “You should do it more often.”
“I used to.” His voice was quieter. “I miss it, actually. The design work. The problem-solving that isn’t about money or egos or shipping insurance.”
“So come back to it.”
“When the launch is over.” He didn’t look up from his phone.
“You said that about the rebrand. And the Hong Kong trip. And the whole mess last winter.”
“This is different.”
“You know that’s not the same thing.” I heard the edge in my own voice and tried to soften it. “I’m not trying to start a fight. I just miss you. I miss working with you, not around you.”
He reached across the table and took my hand. His fingers were warm and familiar, and I hated how much I still wanted him to touch me, even when I was frustrated enough to scream.
“Three more weeks,” he said. “The launch happens, the collection debuts, and then I’m taking a month off. A real month, not a ‘checking emails from the beach’ month. We’ll go somewhere warm and drink too much wine and I won’t think about shipping insurance once.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
I wanted to believe him. I’d wanted to believe him every time he’d made this promise, in various forms, over the past two years.
The calendar was always about to clear. The pressure was always about to lift.
The temporary sacrifice was always about to end.
And somehow the end kept moving, week by week, month by month, until I couldn’t remember what normal felt like anymore.
But he was here. He’d forgotten every other meeting to be here. That had to count in his favor.
We finished dinner and walked home through streets that smelled like rain and bread and the particular autumn sweetness of Paris in late October.
He held my hand and told me about the distributor meeting, making it funny this time, exaggerating the most tedious parts until I was laughing despite myself.
By the time we reached our building I’d almost forgotten how long I’d waited at that table.
Almost.
“I’m going to work for a bit,” I said when we got inside. “The earring thing is still bothering me.”
“It’s nearly ten.”
“I know. I won’t be long.”
He kissed my forehead. “Don’t stay up too late. You need sleep.”
“Says the man who was still on calls at midnight last Tuesday.”
“That’s different. I’m powered by spite and caffeine. You’re powered by actual human rest.”