Big news
Chapter 4
Sophia
When I enter the apartment it's extremely quiet.But I don't really mind it some quiet is exactly what I need after today. My aunts apartment is extremely modern but still cozy.
Late afternoon light spills across the wooden floors in soft golden stripes that move slowly toward the wall as the sun shifts.
Fabric swatches are pinned to one wall in the living room, arranged in gradient rows that probably mean something specific to someone who understands color theory.
Sketches of dresses cover another some finished, some just lines and ideas, some annotated in my aunt's small, precise handwriting.
The entire apartment smells faintly of fabric dye, expensive perfume and something citrusy from the diffuser my aunt always forgets to turn off.
To put it in two words: Creative chaos.
When I entered the kitchen, a small note, catch my eyes
Sophi darling I'm with an important client , food is in the fridge
Love Clara
I smile and walk into my room .That is one of the only things our family has reliably in common, we are artists in one form or another.
My aunt is a designer.
My mother made paintings and sculptures out of things other people threw away, driftwood, broken glass, wire, objects that had been discarded and then, in her hands, became something worth looking at.
And my dad was a joiner. He loved his job so much that he sometimes forgot to eat lunch because he was so focused.
Had been.
My eyes drift to the corner of the room where my moving boxes still sit.
Untouched.
Closed and taped and waiting, the same as they've been since I arrived.
I haven't been able to open them.
Too much of my old life is inside.
Too much that I'm not ready to hold yet. It still feels like a phone call I'm going to receive again.
Like some part of my brain keeps expecting the world to correct itself waiting for the moment when everything snaps back into its previous shape.
One second I am laughing at a sleepover, and the next the world has a completely different geometry, and nothing since has ever quite sat flat. But I push my past away and let myself feel down in my bed finally realizing.The I pull my phone out and hear it buzzes.
Then again
I roll over and squinting at the screen.
I feel the corner of my mouth pull upward and I follow them back with a big smile and pad straight into the kitchen, because right now I need chocolate ice cream,in the way that people need air after being underwater for too long.
My aunt's kitchen is objectively beautiful and objectively pointless, because my aunt does not cook.
I mean she tries to but the results are terrible .
It's black and silver, all clean lines and expensive surfaces, with copper pots hanging from a rack above the island that I am almost certain have never been used for anything other than decoration.
Fashion catalogues and fabric swatches cover most of the counter silk samples in dusty rose and ivory, pages torn from magazines, a finished sketch of something that looks like an evening gown pinned to the corkboard beside the window.
And right in the middle of all of it, arranged across a pile of Vogue Italia like he owns the place is my cat Prince. Profoundly unimpressed by everything that has ever happened or will ever happen in his presence.
"Hey, buddy," I say."Cool," I say. "Good talk."
I find the ice cream in the freezer behind what appears to be a single frozen croissant and take the entire tub to the sofa. I pull a blanket over my legs, open a streaming app at random, and tell myself very firmly that I am going to watch something mindless and not think about today.
I last approximately four minutes.
Then I open my laptop.
I type it into the search bar almost before I've made the conscious decision to. Just curious. I need to understand why everyone at that cafeteria table looked at me the way you look at someone who has just walked into traffic.
Just context. That's all.
Twenty-three results. From this week alone.
I stare at the screen.Unsure if I read the article correctly.
THE CALLOWAY DRAMA IN PARADISE? Sources say trouble brewing in the city's most powerful family.
SON OF BILLIONAIRE Vito CALLOWAY CAUSES SCENE AT CHARITY EVENT — called reporter 'embarrassingly uninformed' in front of 200 guests.
CALLOWAY FAMILY ANNOUNCES surprise PROJECT FOR THEIR 100TH ANNIVERSARY CELEbrATION — exclusive details inside.
LORENZO CALLOWAY SPOTTED AT ILLEGAL STREET RACE ON THE NORTH SIDE — third incident this year.
I don't even notice my ice cream melting.
I just read. One article after another, clicking through pages.The Calloway family is ....I don't even have a word for it.
They look extremely powerful.
And Lorenzo is everywhere. In photographs at galas and charity events, he looks like someone who had been informed of his attendance rather than invited to it his jaw tight, eyes fixed somewhere past the camera he lokks like not even present in the room .
And then there is a photograph from a racing circuit somewhere outside the city: motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm, looking directly at whoever had taken the photo.
So that's why he thought I was a stalker.
isn't paranoia. It is experience. People follow him. People manufacture reasons to be near him, construct coincidences from nothing, show up in places they aren't supposed to be and call it accident.
I think about the bathroom. The way his expression had shifted from cold anger to something older and more tired underneath it. The way he'd looked at me like he already knew the ending before I'd started explaining myself.
But that still doesn't make him not insufferable.
I can't help it and open Instagram.
James's account is exactly what I'd expected .Food, sunsets, fotball pictures and occasional photos of him laugh with people I don't recognize, the warm effortless chaos of someone who moves through life easily and leaves good impressions in his wake.
Maria's is all fashion and color and coffee cups on marble surfaces.Forty thousand followers.
And then Lorenzo's.
I sit with that for a moment longer than I mean to.
Then I close the app before I can talk myself into looking any further.
"Hey, sweetie ... I'm back!"
My aunt's voice suddenly rings through the apartment from the entryway, and I slam the laptop shut so fast I nearly launch it off my knees then I grab the TV remote and have a nature documentary playing before she's made it halfway down the hallway.
"I'm in the living room!" I call.
She appears in the doorway a moment later her arms full of fabric samples, catalogues, and at least three tote bags, her dark blonde hair slightly disheveled from the wind, cheeks flushed with the particular glow she gets when a meeting has gone well.
She had been my mother's older sister.
Some days that is the thing I hold onto most. Some days it is the thing that makes it hardest to be in the same room as her.
"Here, let me..." I get up quickly and take half the bags from her arms.
"Thank you, darling." She stretches her back with a groan. "What a day."
She stops. Looks at me.
"Sweetie, are you alright? You look very pink."
"I'm fine," I say.
"Quite pink," she says again, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead like I am seven years old.
"I did some exercise," I lie.
She studies me for one moment longer. Then seems to accept it.and her smile is back on her lips
"Sit... I have to tell you something."
I sit. She disappears into the kitchen and comes back with two glasses of water, hands one to me, and settles into the armchair across from me.
"Okay," I say. "What happened?"
"Guess who contacted me today," she says, "about a potential collaboration on a new collection."
I cast around for a name. Any name at all. The first one that surfaces from my very tired, very overstimulated brain is the one I'd spent the last hour reading about and I say it mostly as a joke
"The Calloways?"
But the silence that follows is making me feel uncomfortable.
"How," she says slowly, "did you know that?"
I open my mouth in pure shock
"what ? it was a joke Clara ," I slightly panicking.
"I haven't told a single person," she says, sitting forward now, eyes wide. "I just got the call this afternoon. I came straight home. Sophia, how did you know?"
" Clara, I promise, it was completely random"
"Oh no." She stands up. Sits back down. Stands up again. "Oh no, is it already in the press? If it's already out before I've even confirmed..."
"Aunt Clara." I catch both her hands. "It was a joke. A bad one. I swear I didn't know anything. I promise."
She looks at me. I look at her. Prince walks into the room, assesses the situation with complete indifference, and walks back out.
Slowly, her breathing settles.
"You're sure," she says.
"One hundred percent," I say. "I have never in my life made a more meaningless random joke . Please ... tell me what actually happened."
She finally exhales. Presses one hand to her chest. And then despite everything, despite the minor cardiac event we have both just survived she begins to smile.
"Last week," she begins, settling back and tucking her legs beneath her, "I went into the city to source fabric for the new collection. And I got into conversation with a woman outside one of the boutiques."
She pauses. "Very elegant. Very warm.We talked for almost an hour about fabric, design, where fashion was going, what it meant to build something that lasted."
Another pause. "She asked for my card. I gave her one. I didn't think anything of it."
"And?"
"And today she called me."
My aunt presses her hands together. Her eyes are very bright.
"It was Ginevra Calloway, Sophia. She wants a designer from the city for their hundredth anniversary celebration. Something personal, something local, something with..." she pauses on the word, like it still surprises her "soul. She wants me."
I stare at her.
"Clara," I say.
"I know," she says.
"That's..."
"I know."
I get up and hug her.When we pull apart her eyes are wet at the edges.
"Your mother would have screamed," she says softly.
"She would have screamed," I agree, "and then immediately started planning your entire wardrobe for every single meeting."
My aunt laughs. It is wet around the edges, but it is real.
"She really would have," she says.
"Tell me everything," I say, pulling my knees up. "Every detail."
I listen and smile at all the right moments and ask the right questions.
And try very hard not to think about the fact that the Calloways, who are apparently inescapable in this city, have just become inescapable in my home as well.
Of course they have.
"Sophia," she says softly. "This is a dream. A once in a lifetime opportunity."
"I know," I say. "I'm so happy for you."
Even if somewhere underneath that happiness there is a small, quiet anxiety I can't quite name just a feeling like standing at the edge of something and not being able to see the bottom.
"So what happens next?" I ask. "Do you already know what direction you want to go?"
"Not yet." She shakes her head. "Tomorrow I have another meeting at their property. They want to show me past outfits , give me more context about the event, the atmosphere they're envisioning." She sets down her glass. "And stops.
Something shifts in her expression.And then she smiles
"What?" I say.
"Nothing," she says, in exactly the tone of voice that means something.
" Clara. What?"
She sighs. Sets the glass down with great deliberateness. Glances briefly at the ceiling, as though composing herself.
"It's just you know it's a lot. A lot of moving pieces, a lot to coordinate. And Cherry is away and I don't have time to find someone new at this stage, and..."
"Oh no," I say.
Cherry is my aunt's assistant. Right hand, creative partner, the person who keeps everything from descending into beautiful. She has been with her for six years and is currently somewhere in rural Russia visiting family.
Terrible timing
"Please," my aunt says, turning to me with her hands clasped and her eyes wide "I just need someone I trust. "
"I don't know anything about fashion," I say.
"You don't need to know about fashion. You need to know how to write things down, be in a room, and hand me a measuring tape when I ask for it."
"I really don't think..."
"It's just one meeting," she says. "Maybe two."
" Clara..."
She is quiet for a moment.
"I might have to call it off," she says. Perfectly calm. Perfectly neutral. "If I can't manage the logistics, I might just have to tell them I'm not available after all."
I stare at her.
"You would not."I know the game she is playing.
"I might."
"You have been waiting your entire career for something like this."
"Without proper support"
"That is the most transparent guilt trip I have ever witnessed in my life," I say and press my tongue against my teeth.
The real problem , the one I haven't said out loud and am not going to isn't the fashion. It isn't helping my aunt.It is the thought of meeting Lorenzo again. Of walking into his world.
And yet. I agree
"Fine," I say. "I'll help."
She is across the sofa and hugging me before I've finished the sentence.
"You are my absolute favorite niece," she says into my hair.
"I'm your only niece."
"Still counts."
She pulls back, and her eyes are bright and warm and so much like my mother's in this particular moment that I have to look at the wall for a second until the feeling passes.
"After school tomorrow I'll walk you through the full plan," she says, already standing, already moving, the focused energy back in full force.
"I'll call them in the morning and confirm. Oh, there's so much to think about the fabric, silhouette, I need to know the color scheme for the venue, the guest count, the..."
She is talking half to me and half to herself as she gathers her bags from the floor and walks out of the room.
"Goodnight, Aunt Clara," I say.
"Goodnight, sweetie," she says.