29. Elyse
Elyse
I’m vacuuming the first floor of the house when Sylvie shouts over the noise. “Hey! Your phone keeps ringing. It’s Olivia.”
“Oh, shoot.” I cut the vacuum and call her right back. “Hey. Sorry.”
“Hey, girl.” She sounds breathless and less chipper than usual. “How soon can you get to NoLIta? It’s, like, really urgent.”
“Is it a casting call?” I ask, my hand going to my hair automatically. I haven’t washed it this morning, but it’s still sleek from the ballet blowout I gave myself last night.
“No, but it’s an emergency, babe.”
I glance at Sylvie, who raises her eyebrows in a question. I shrug. “I can be there by eleven?” I tell Olivia. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s all good. I just need to see you in person, stat. I’ll text you an address.”
“What was all that?” my sister asks after I hang up, resting her elbows on the table.
“No clue. She just said she needs to see me super urgently.” I hesitate. “Will you be okay?”
“Go, go.” She brushes me away impatiently. “I’ll be fine.”
“Do you need to go to the bathroom before I go?”
“I can get myself there. Just go, and text me and let me know what the hell is going on, okay?”
“Okay,” I agree unwillingly. She’s getting more mobility, more strength, every day. Getting out of bed is still a big challenge, but she can get herself onto and off the toilet now. I kiss her head. “Love you.”
“Love you more.”
I make it into Manhattan as quickly as is humanly possible and head to a coffee shop in NoLIta. It’s on a quiet street just off Broadway and is almost completely white inside. It feels more like Miami than New York.
Olivia is sitting at a corner table with a woman I don’t recognize.
The other woman is sleek and beautiful and severe-looking: all black clothing, dark hair slicked right back, and a strong red lip.
As I approach, her face softens. She smiles at me as if she knows me, and I hastily pull my beanie off, embarrassed that I don’t look more put-together in front of these two fashionistas.
Olivia, as usual, looks immaculate. She’s in a fluffy pink sweater, her honey-colored hair falling in perfect waves. She stands and hugs me.
“Hey, babe. Thank you so much for rushing in. This is my friend Vanessa. Vanessa, meet Elyse.”
“Hey,” I say, leaning forward to shake Vanessa’s hand while trying to smooth the static out of my hair. I bet she’s never had a static moment in her whole sleek life.
She’s still smiling at me, though. Smiling and shaking her head. “You’re adorable.” She turns to Olivia. “She’s even more gorgeous in person.”
“You know it,” Olivia says.
Having people talk about your appearance as if you’re not right there is very normal in the modeling world, but this feels a little strange—mainly because I have no clue who Vanessa is or why I’ve been summoned here. But Olivia points to the free seat across from them.
“Sit. I got you a cappuccino.”
I slide gratefully into my seat. The barista has drawn a beautiful leaf on the foam of my coffee, and it reminds me of our walks around Fairwater. I can barely stand to ruin it.
“So, first up,” Olivia says with a little smile, pulling something up on her phone, “girl. What the actual fuck? You’re dating Sinclair Voss?”
She shoves it in my face, and I gasp. Oh my God. It’s a photo of Sinclair and me from last night. I stare at it in shock. Was that—were we leaving the ballet? Jeez, we look so happy. We’re smiling at each other, and it’s so goofy. But wait—
“You made freaking Page Six,” Olivia says. “You hadn’t seen this?”
“No,” I say, still gaping at the image. “Shit. I had no idea.”
But she’s right. Sinclair and I are the lead freaking article on the Page Six website. My mind is racing. He told me it would happen eventually—he warned me that dating him would lead to a lot of public interest—but we were careful last night, or so I thought. We were super discreet.
“Hey,” Olivia says. “It’s okay, babe. Congratulations! This is a big fucking deal.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess?” I pick up my coffee cup with two hands. I’m a little shaky.
“So,” Olivia says, setting her phone down, “I’m glad you saw it here first. This might be a good time to tell you that Vanessa works with Sinclair.”
“Worked,” Vanessa interjects.
I jerk my gaze to her. Shit. Is she a lawyer or something?
She doesn’t look like a lawyer. She looks like a catwalk model for some edgy, downtown brand like Alexander Wang, but I shouldn’t judge other women by their appearance.
Maybe she’s a fixer? Maybe Sinclair is pissed that we got outed so soon, and he’s sent this woman to deal with me?
“Am I in trouble?” I blurt out.
“No, no,” Olivia says. “But, much as I want to sit here and force you to spill all the tea”—she waves her head around to show much tea she’d like me to spill—“I need to talk to you about something important.”
“Okay.” I take a panicked sip of my coffee, ruining the pretty leaf.
They exchange a look. “The big campaign you were called for a few weeks back,” Olivia says. “For Voss? That was Vanessa’s campaign.”
Oh, shit. I place my cup back in its saucer. “Oh.”
Vanessa leans forward and lays her forearms on the table in an intense way.
With the two of them sitting opposite me, it feels a little like a job interview.
“I need you to know before we go any further,” she says, “that you were my only choice. I knew you were perfect for it, and yours was the only name I carried forward to the final pitch.”
I’m not sure why she’s telling me this, but it’s nice to hear. I recall Olivia telling me that her contact at Voss had liked me a lot, that I got rejected above her pay grade. I guess that must have been Vanessa she was talking about.
“Thank you,” I say. “That’s so kind.”
She shakes her head. “Not kind. True. And, seeing you today, I stand behind my decision even more firmly. But Elyse, I have to ask you—were you dating Sinclair when we called you in?”
I look between the two of them. I’m starting to sweat. Forget job interview—this feels like an interrogation. I rack my brains, trying to recall the timeline of events, before I remember the most important thing.
“I’m not allowed to talk about this,” I say.
Vanessa’s jaw drops in an Are you fucking kidding me? way. “He papered you.”
“Papered?”
“NDA. Jesus, these guys are the fucking worst.”
“Ah.” I press my lips together before I can say more, although I am now remembering that the casting call was the same day as my second Alchemy session with Sinclair. Nothing about that rendezvous could be called dating, but we were definitely “acquainted” with each other.
“Don’t worry,” Vanessa says. “I don’t want to get you into trouble, so I won’t ask you any more questions, but I’d like to tell you a couple things, if that’s okay?
I feel like you should know them.” She taps her long red nails on the tabletop.
“On September 29th, I presented my final pitch for our new skincare line to top management. I can’t tell you anything about the line, because that’s embargoed.
But I can tell you that your boyfriend was in the room.
” She sounds angry when she says the last sentence, and I sit up straighter.
This feels ominous.
Worse than ominous.
“I presented some footage of your High Line shoot with Olivia,” she continues.
“And as soon as Sinclair saw your face, he lost his shit.” She raises her eyebrows to underscore this point, and I start to feel sick.
I shove my hands under the table and squeeze them between my knees for something to do.
“Why would he lose his shit?” I whisper.
“My question exactly. Now, I’m going to tell you what he said, but I want you to know that I don’t believe for a single second that he meant any of it.
In fact, I know for a fact he didn’t.” She takes a deep breath.
“At first, he tried to dismiss you as a candidate out of hand. He said you were”—she holds up a hand and checks her words off on her fingers—“unmemorable. Meh. Nothing special. He said you weren’t worth the money we’d be paying and that we could do better. ”
I swear I flinch at each of those horrible things. They sound so cold. So dismissive. There’s no way Sinclair would say those things about me. A memory hits me: being in Katrin’s office with him after he’d been at the Fall Fashion Gala.
No one I’ve ever met can hold a candle to you.
He called me exquisite.
I think I might cry.
“Like I said, I’m not here to persuade you that he believes that, Elyse.
Quite the opposite. My point is that, from the second he saw your photo, he systematically argued against you.
And when I stood my ground—because you were far and away the perfect face for this campaign—that’s when he got nasty.
He stood up, and he, like, slammed his hand down on the table, and he told me that his opinion trumped mine and demanded I stand down.
He full-on overruled me on a campaign he’d hired me specifically to launch. He went fucking nuclear, basically.”
I’m staring at her in disbelief and horror.
This doesn’t sound like the Sinclair I know, the Sinclair who’s gentle and adoring and worshipful, who tells me how tormented he is when he can’t recall my face.
Still, Vanessa is mad. Steaming mad. And I don’t doubt for a second that she’s telling the truth.
“I don’t understand why he would do that,” I say, looking at Olivia for guidance. She cocks her head and makes a face like I have no clue, but I’m here for you. Under the table, my legs are shaking, and I use my inner thigh muscles to squeeze my hands harder.
“I think that conversation needs to happen between you and Sinclair,” Vanessa says gently. “Especially if you’re serious about him.”
I give her a little nod. It does, and I am.
“Look,” she says, “I’m here for you. As far as I’m concerned, you had that job. It was a done deal, one hundred percent. And I need you to know that the guy you’re sharing a bed with crossed every professional line there was to get you off that campaign.”
She sits back, and we all let that land.
“Maybe he thought it wouldn’t be appropriate?” I ask in a quiet, wobbly voice. “Like, it would be favoritism, or something?”
The two women exchange another look.
“It’s possible,” Vanessa says with a sigh, “except that the Vosses don’t give jack shit about favoritism. But the other thing you should know is that I’ve resigned over this. Your boyfriend and I had a big fight first thing this morning when I showed him that Page Six scoop.”
I release my hands from between my legs so I can clap one to my mouth. “Oh my gosh, that’s awful,” I mumble through my fingers. “I’m so sorry for causing all this fuss.”
“No.” She leans forward again and points a finger right at me. “This is not on you. There’s only one person who’s behaved appallingly, and he is not at this table. Okay?”
I drop my hand. “Okay.”
“I asked him straight out,” she says, “whether he’d admitted to you that he’d unilaterally ruined this opportunity for you, and he couldn’t even look me in the eye.
He knows he’s on the wrong side of this.
And, honestly, it’s not my place to speculate, but I’m too fucking mad not to.
My take is that this guy wants to keep you small.
He likes things just the way they are, where he’s the hitter and you’re some nobody.
And I don’t know about you, but that kind of relationship dynamic doesn’t work for me at all.
It doesn’t work in the office, either, which is why I walked. ”
My eyes start to sting with unshed tears.
She’s making Sinclair out to be some kind of evil monster, when he’s been nothing but kind and adoring to me.
She must have it wrong. She may see some weird side to him at work, but she doesn’t know him as well as I do.
She can’t. Everything she’s saying is speculation.
“I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” she says. “Really, I just wanted to get you up to speed.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “Thank you for being honest.”
“I told Voss in that pitch that you have a once-in-a-generation face, and I stand by it. I have a lot of industry contacts—I was at Bellamy for a decade before he poached me. And I can promise you this: we’re going to get you a campaign that makes the Voss campaign look like fucking catalogue work.
Do you hear me? I’m going to make it my personal mission in life, and not just because I really hate it when men use their power to make women small, but because I believe in you.
Your face excites me more than any face I’ve seen in years. ”
She nods at me like Let that sink in, and I give her a little nod back.
I can’t truly believe she means that, not when I’m all red and blotchy and teary-eyed, but right now, the knowledge that I have someone in my corner feels really good.
Especially since I have no clue what to think about Sinclair.
Vanessa stands in a single elegant movement and gathers up her coat—black, expensive-looking.
“If you need any more proof,” she says, “then I fully expect to be able to give you some in a couple days, when Voss tries to paper me up to the eyeballs.” At my confused frown, she continues.
“I bet your ass he’ll serve me up a big, fat exit NDA to gag me on this topic.
” She winks. “Which is why this little chat had to happen today. Anyway, I’ll make some calls, check out some jobs. I’ll be in touch.”
And with that, she’s gone.
“That was a lot, babe,” Olivia says, reaching for my hand across the table and giving it a squeeze. “How are you feeling?”
“I have no idea,” I tell her. “Like—her telling me that I almost got that job is super validating… but if I believe that, then I have to believe that Sinclair screwed me over, for whatever reason, and…” I shrug. And I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how to handle it.
“Yeah,” she says, scrunching up her face in sympathy.
“It sucks. I hope it was okay to call you in today. I just wanted you to hear it from her, you know? For personal reasons as well as professional. Because you guys are on Page Six. Things are about to get real. So if he doesn’t have your interests at heart, then this is a pretty good time to do something about it. ”