Chapter 1 #3
“We don’t expire. We don’t lose our value because some arbitrary number ticks over on a calendar.
” I meet his eyes, and I hope he sees the steel there.
The years of swallowed pride and bitten tongues and tolerating his bullshit because I loved him once, because I believed in what we built together.
“My biggest launches are ahead of me, not behind me. And if you can’t see that, it says more about your vision than mine. ”
Greg opens his mouth to respond, but we’re interrupted by a soft knock at the glass door.
A young woman peers in—blonde, wide-eyed in that way people are when they’re new and still believe in things. She’s wearing a messenger bag across her chest and holding a clipboard like a shield.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” she says, glancing between us like she can feel the tension but can’t identify it. “But I have a certified delivery for Celeste Prescott.”
“Brinley. Celeste Brinley now,” I correct, which earns me my third eyeroll from Greg. He’s going to need Motrin from the sheer ache of overworking his eyeballs.
“I’m from Valcott and Finch. The front office sent me up. They said they messaged you. This legal document requires a signature.”
I peer out of my office to see Margot has still not returned from her coffee run. Her desk—and by proxy, my office—remains unguarded.
“Come in.” I wave her in, noticing Greg’s gaze slide over her. Slowly. Appreciatively. Taking inventory of her youth, her freshness, her lack of wrinkles and cynicism. I want to throw Patrice at his head.
“Hello,” he says and is met with a curt, dismissive nod that makes me want to buy her a coffee and scone. The girl approaches my desk, holding out the clipboard.
“Ms. Brinley, I just need a signature here. Blue or black ink is acceptable.” She pulls two pens from her messenger bag, offering me an onyx option or an admiral blue. I choose the latter.
I scrawl my signature without really looking. “Thank you, deary.” Oh, fresh hell. Did I just say “deary?” I meant it as cutesy, not cringey. I’ll just go fetch my bifocals and retreat to my rocking chair now.
But she smiles so warmly at me anyway. Perhaps the way she smiles at her own grandmother. Fuck. “And then this is for you.”
She trades me a thin tan envelope for the clipboard.
It’s intimidatingly thin. The kind that screams a very to-the-point legal issue without enough explanation.
Great. What now? Another supplier lawsuit?
A trademark dispute? Maybe someone’s finally suing us for that time the runway collapsed at Fashion Week.
In my defense, the structural engineer said it would hold.
It did not hold.
“Do you have any idea what this is…?”
She shakes her head. “Confidential of course. My job is just to make sure you received it.”
I nod along, waiting for the shoe to drop. Celeste Brinley, you’ve just been served!
“Thank you for the delivery. There’s usually a lunch spread on the main floor during this time. You are more than welcome to help yourself as a guest of ours today.”
“I saw it on the way in. There’s warm brie.” She pumps her brows at me, and for some reason I immediately like her. “But I can’t do soft cheese right now.” She splays a hand over her belly. “I’m about fourteen weeks along.”
The news of her pregnancy hits me like it always does—a physical sensation, as if someone has reached into my ribcage and gently squeezed. Not from jealousy. Not exactly. More like the feeling of pressing on a bruise you’d forgotten was there.
“Congratulations…I’m sorry, what is your name?” I ask.
“Raven.”
“Congratulations, Raven. That’s wonderful. Are you having a comfortable pregnancy so far?”
Greg shoots me a look before his eyes flicker to Raven’s belly, then away, his interest visibly cooling like a burner switched from high to off.
“Sort of. Actually, no. I’m sick a lot. Everyone keeps telling me to suck on peppermint and ginger, but nothing works. I’d do anything for a little relief from the nausea.”
“Vicks,” I answer instinctively. “VapoRub. Just carry a small pot around and take a whiff when you need it. Resets the senses apparently. My friend is a senior editor at The Belly. She wrote an article about menthol or peppermint for nausea.” I roll my wrist. “She told me a lot of women tried it and said it helped.”
It’s the most water-downed version of the story, but I’m not going to tell a total stranger that me and my best friend of twenty years had a massive falling out two years ago and haven’t spoken since.
It’s time to call. It’s well past time to call.
One of us has to break the ice and considering the fact that I was the asshat in our last fight, it should be me.
“I read The Belly. What’s her name?” Raven asks, with a peculiar interest that strikes me as unusual. “Your friend?”
“Whitney Trace. Although she writes under her pen name—Wren Tracie, if you want to look up the article. Ever heard of her?”
To my shock, Raven’s face crumples for just a moment before she composes herself. “No. Sorry.” Her voice wavers as tears well up and spill over, tracking silent paths down her cheeks even as she maintains a trembling smile.
“Are you okay?” I make a movement like I’m about to get up from my seat and comfort her, but perhaps that’s too forward. “Do you want to sit down?”
Raven sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her sleeve.
“Hormones. I’m fine. I’m like this all the time lately.
” She points to a few CAD sketches I have framed and mounted to the wall.
“You’re very talented. And nice. I’m really glad I got to meet you.
Both of you.” She briefly glances at Greg in acknowledgment before practically floating out of the room, clipboard tucked under her arm.
I wait until the door clicks shut before speaking.
“You’re a pig.”
Greg raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I lean back in my chair. “I saw you checking her out. That girl is young enough to be your daughter. She probably has student loans and a Pinterest board full of future career goals.”
“Jealous doesn’t suit you, Celeste.” His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t take the bait. “I have another meeting. We’ll continue this later. I want to circle back to the expansion plans.”
“Can’t wait.”
He leaves without another word, and I’m alone again with Patrice and the Giacometti and the weight of everything incredible I’ve built by sacrificing everything I ever wanted.
I look at the envelope in my hands. I’d almost forgotten about it.
Valcott & Finch. I know that firm—estate planning, trusts, wills, the kind of law that deals in death and money and the complicated intersection of both. Maybe someone left the company something. A former investor. A dead designer whose archive we’re being offered.
I tear it open, expecting legalese and formality. Instead, I pull out two loose documents.
The first is a letter, brief and professional, requesting my presence at a reading of a last will and testament. I have been named as a beneficiary and my attendance is required at my earliest convenience. Standard legal language, nothing alarming.
It’s the second document that stops my heart.
A funeral announcement. Heavy cream cardstock with an elegant black border. The kind of announcement you send for someone important, someone loved, someone whose absence will be felt like a missing limb.
The photograph in the center shows a woman with wild, curly red hair and a smile that takes up half her face. She’s laughing at something off-camera, caught in a moment of pure, unguarded joy.
Whitney.
My best friend.
Was my best friend.
Before.
The words swim in front of me. Beloved daughter, friend, and dreamer. Gone too soon. Memorial service…
I can’t read the rest. My hands are shaking. When did they start shaking?
Whitney is dead?
Whitney can’t be dead.
Whit is gone?
This can’t be real.
I would’ve known. We haven’t spoken in almost two years. Not since that stupid birthday dinner. That ridiculous fight. The day I chose between the two most important people in my life…and I chose wrong.
“You’re disappearing, Celeste. Every year, a little more of you vanishes into that marriage, into that man who doesn’t cherish or respect you, and I can’t watch it anymore. I love you too much to watch you become someone you’re not.”
I told her she didn’t understand. That marriage was complicated. That Greg had his flaws but so did everyone. That she couldn’t possibly judge my choices when she’d never had to make them.
She said: “I’m not judging you. I’m mourning you. You’re already gone.”
I stopped returning her calls after that. Changed the subject when mutual friends brought her up. Told myself I’d reach out eventually, when the dust settled.
I should’ve called right away, but I was too angry.
I should’ve called when Greg left me, but I was too ashamed.
I should’ve called the minute the ink was dry on my divorce papers, but I was too busy—determined to piece my life back together.
And now, I’ll never get to…
How did this happen? What the hell? I’ll never get to tell her…I’m…that I…
The room tilts. I try to stand, to get to the window that actually opens, to get air, to breathe, but my stilettos catch on something—the rug, my own feet, or my own fucking denial—and suddenly I’m falling, sideways, the world going diagonal in a way that doesn’t make sense.
Strong hands catch me.
Greg.
He must have come back. Must have heard something, or forgotten something, or just had impeccable timing for once in his miserable life.
“Celeste? Celeste, what—”
He sees the announcement in my hand. The photograph. The name.
“Oh, dear God.” His voice changes. Softens. His tone becomes something I almost recognize from a long time ago. “Oh, Celeste. Honey, no. I’m so sorry.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I let him. I hate that I let him. I hate that he’s here, that he’s the one holding me, that after everything he’s done and everything he is, he’s still the person standing in my office when my world collapses.
The sob that tears out of me doesn’t sound human. It’s raw and ugly and animal, the kind of sound you make when something fundamental breaks inside you. I’m crying into the shoulder of a man I despise, clutching his terrible rumpled suit, shaking so hard I can feel my teeth rattling.
Whitney is dead.
Whitney is dead, and I never called.
Whitney is dead, and the last thing I said to her was I’ll never forgive you.
Whitney is dead, and I will never get to tell her that she was right about everything. About Greg. About me. About the slow, invisible way I lost myself and became everything I never wanted to be.
Greg holds me tighter. His hand rubs circles on my back, and it’s such a familiar gesture, so ingrained from over a decade of marriage, that my body responds without my permission. I lean in, seeking comfort from the last person on Earth I should need.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m so sorry, Celeste.”
He means it. I can tell. Despite everything—the affairs, the cruelty, the way he’s spent the last year trying to push me out of my own life—he knows what Whitney meant to me.
He was there for all of it. The late-night phone calls.
The girls’ trips. The twenty years of friendship that survived distance and careers and life changes and everything… except him.
She was trying to save me.
And I chose him instead.
“I need—” My voice breaks. I try again. “I need you to go.”
“Celeste—”
“Please.” I pull back, just far enough to see his face.
My mascara is probably running. My eyes are probably swollen.
I probably look like exactly what I am: an almost thirty-nine-year-old woman who just discovered that regret is a painful, physical thing.
A weight on your chest that smashes and reshapes your heart like Play-Doh.
“Please, Greg. I need to be alone right now.”
Or more accurately, out of respect for this woman who I loved with my whole heart, I need to not be with Greg right now.
He hesitates. For a moment, I see something in his expression—concern, maybe. Or guilt. Or just the awkwardness of a man who doesn’t know what to say at a moment he’s expected to be nothing short of eloquent.
“Okay,” he says finally. “But if you need anything—”
“I know where to find you.”
He nods and squeezes my shoulder once.
The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I’m alone.
Just me and Patrice and the Giacometti and the funeral announcement still clutched in my shaking hand. The photograph of Whitney smiling up at me, head slightly cocked, like she’s waiting for me to speak.
I slide down the side of my desk until I’m sitting on the floor, legs splayed in front of me like a child’s, designer dress be damned. The tears won’t stop. I’m not sure I want them to. I want to drain every last drop so I don’t have to hold the acid of remorse in my body.
Tears of guttural guilt and regret.
Twenty years.
Twenty years of friendship.
Twenty years of laughter and secrets and holding each other through awful parents, breakups, and job losses, and the kind of ordinary disasters that define a life.
Gone. Because I was too proud to admit she was right.
Because I was too scared to leave. Because I kept telling myself later, later, I’ll fix it later.
There is no later.
There’s just this. An office full of expensive things that suddenly mean nothing. A funeral I’ll have to attend alone. A best friend I’ll never get to apologize to.
And somewhere in that envelope, a will that named me as a beneficiary.
What could Whitney possibly have left me?
Was she angry? Or did she miss me too?
I sit on the floor of my ridiculous office, surrounded by the life I built on compromises and silence, and I cry until there’s nothing left.
Patrice watches from her corner.
For once, she’s silent. At a loss for judgment. All that’s left is pity.