Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
“ G ood luck!” Murial, Cora’s younger sister, squealed over the phone.
“I’m so proud of you!” Meredith, her mother, chimed in next in the background.
Cora looked in the mirror, wishing she had accepted their offer to come to the city and see the show on opening day. Still, she’d had this grand idea that if her mother and sister waited a bit to come down, she’d have all types of accolades and praises for her designs by then and hopefully even have offers for her work to appear in different showrooms and collections. Maybe even have a store that’d want to purchase her fabric design. She had seen it happen to other interns for Madame Dubois, so why not her? She had put her heart and soul into this project.
“I have to get going,” she said, looking herself over one last time in the mirror.
“Go get ’em!” Muriel shouted out.
Cora let out a long exhale. This could be the moment she had been waiting for. Her fairy-tale moment was when a big-name designer would want her talent and offer her a job, or a buyer would recognize her designs and want to buy her stuff. This was the moment she had worked for all through college. The moment she’d worked for free for, coming in each day for Madame Dubois. This was it.
“Let’s do this,” she said, shaking the charm tightly clasped back on her bracelet.
On the car ride there, her anxiety made it difficult to concentrate on the road. Her head spun in so many directions that she couldn’t focus and almost missed the gallery.
She should have been completely focused on the event, but Brandon hadn’t texted or called her back, which, for Brandon, was bad. He never ignored her texts and had always responded promptly, but she couldn’t blame him. How many times in the past twenty-four hours had she blown him off?
Then there was Julian. He also wasn’t answering her phone calls or replying to her text messages. She had gone to his apartment before the show, but no one had answered. She thought about going to his work. She remembered where his office was located in the business district. But she didn’t feel right showing up there. She’d go back to his apartment later. And if she still couldn’t reach him, she’d call his brother, Oliver.
Cora was the first to arrive at the gallery so she could look over the last touches before the opening. At least fifty buyers and friends of Madame Dubois would be in attendance. She ensured everything was in place and walked over to one of the pieces she had designed. As she went to check the labels, which another intern had placed for each fabric sample, she noticed her name missing. She double-checked the label. Her name was nowhere.
She speed-walked to her other piece. For this one, she had even driven to Vermont to pick up the actual materials for her fabric. She grabbed the label. Stardust, her design title, was there, including all of the natural fibers listed and the small piece she’d written describing her process for the design.
“Madame!” she called out as more workers from the gallery arrived.
Madame Dubois, who was talking to some other employees—who got paid—looked at Cora, then continued her conversation, pointing around the room.
Cora picked up her fabric sample and label and took it to Madame Dubois.
“What are you doing?” Madame Dubois asked, starting to grab the fabric from Cora. “That needs to be on display for the buyers.”
If Cora had been thinking, she may have been careful in choosing her words and more delicate in the way she spoke. Maybe she should have asked if there had been a mistake, but instead, she said, “You didn’t give me credit.”
Madame’s hand went straight to her chest in shock. “Excuse me?”
“I worked alone on this piece, and my name isn’t listed.” She handed Madame the label.
Madame smiled as others stopped talking. Then, loud enough for everyone to hear, she said, “We all work together on designs at Madame Dubois. No one person gets recognized.”
Cora pointed at the top of the label. “You do. Your name is on the top.”
“Yes, but we’re all Madame Dubois,” the older woman said, holding out her hands to the crowd.
Cora wanted to walk out right then and there, but her feet didn’t move. What was she doing, spending all this time and effort working for free and not even getting recognition for her work?
When she looked up, Madame Dubois’ assistant stood before her. “Do you mind putting that sample back up?”
Cora did mind, but she did what she was told.
As the gallery opened, she didn’t mingle or talk about the process with the buyers. Instead, she watched Madame Dubois walk around a well-known designer who decorated high-end hotels.
“She’s looking at your sample,” one of Cora’s intern friends said.
Cora looked at Madame Dubois, who was standing with the hotel woman. Both were looking at her Stardust sample.
“I should’ve done my mermaid,” she said to herself. She had wanted to make a print with a tiny mermaid hidden in the design but had discouraged herself from doing so.
Madame Dubois stood close to the woman as she admired the piece. Cora’s piece.
Cora made her way across the room and caught Madame Dubois’ eye. She was about to introduce herself and talk with the designer, but just as Cora reached the two women, Madame Dubois whisked the designer away, cutting Cora off and facing their backs toward her.
Cora was about to follow them when she heard a door slam and heavy footsteps walking across the wooden floors of the gallery. She turned around and saw Julian walking in. In a new suit, hair crisply gelled back, and she could immediately tell, totally intoxicated.
“Cora!” he said, raising his hand.
People around her began to hush their voices, their attention grabbed by the handsome man who didn’t want anyone to know he had a problem.
What was he doing?
“Julian,” she whispered as she walked over to him. He tried to go in for a kiss, but she pulled back. “What are you doing?”
He began to laugh and stumbled back. He was worse than intoxicated—he was stinking drunk.
“You better go,” Cora said, gently steering him away from Madame Dubois and all her paid cronies.
“Where is it?” he asked, grabbing her around the waist and holding her close to him. People around them started looking at her and whispering.
“Julian, what are you doing here?” she asked again, wishing he hadn’t shown up. “You need to leave now.”
“Where are your pieces?” he asked her.
She shook her head, gently pushing him out of the crowd and into the peripheral of the room. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”
His eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. “What do you mean?” he thundered. “I thought you had a piece of fabric in the show.”
He started walking around the room, looking for her piece. She followed behind him, wishing he’d be quieter. “I do.”
“Where?” He looked around the room. “Which one’s yours?”
“Can you be quiet?” she whispered to him.
“Which one?” he said louder this time. He walked toward more samples.
If she didn’t show him soon, he’d go through the whole place to find it. “There.” She pointed to her sample.
Julian walked over to it and pointed to the label. “This is yours?”
She shrugged. “They didn’t give me credit, I guess.”
Without warning, Julian stopped what he was doing and grabbed her arms. “I love you,” he said.
“Stop it.” She shook her head, unwilling to listen to what he said. “I think it’s best if you go now.”
“No, I really do,” he said, but his words came out slow and slurred. “I really love, love you.”
“Julian, go home,” she said, clenching her jaw and holding a fake smile. “Please.”
He stood there swaying, about to say something, when Madame Dubois and the designer walked up.
“If it isn’t Julian Abbott,” the designer said right away, holding her hand for him to take. “I just saw your mother at the tennis club.”
Cora looked at Julian, who straightened his jacket and tie. “Yes, she’s a real social butterfly, that one.”
He grabbed the designer’s hand—the woman Cora had worked for over a year to get into the same room with—and gently shook it as they kissed three times on the cheek. Cora was impressed he could count that high right now. This made Madame Dubois smile wider than Cora had ever seen her boss smile.
“And tell me you’re here to buy some of my fabrics,” Madame Dubois said to him.
He smiled that million-dollar smile and shook his head. “It’s a shame you can’t give credit where credit is deserved.”
Madame Dubois pulled her chin against her neck as if surprised to hear this. “Excuse me?”
Without wasting a second, Cora rushed over to where Julian stood.
“Julian,” she said, praying he would stop talking. “He was just leaving.”
He turned to face her, and that’s when everything fell apart right before her eyes, as if in slow motion. As Julian swung around to see her, so did his arm, which hit Madame Dubois’ drink out of her hand and up into the air before landing all over her. The designer cried out and stepped back into a server, who fell onto a sample table, dropping his plate of hors d’oeuvres all over the floor.
“Oh no!” Cora cried out.
“My handbag!” the designer exclaimed.
Cora grabbed a stack of cocktail napkins and urgently patted her expensive handbag with napkins. Champagne covered the whole bag and her clothes.
“It’s ruined,” the designer cried out.
This made Julian laugh hysterically in front of everyone. “Oopsy-daisy!”
He started to giggle as Madame Dubois’ earlier smile went directly to a frown aimed at Cora. “Maybe take your friend home to bed.”
And she walked away without introducing Cora.
Cora’s stomach dropped. She spun to face Julian, who tried stifling his laugh.
“What are you doing?” she snarled at him, kneeling in her skirt to pick up the appetizers.
When she got up, she saw him pluck a drink off another server’s tray.
“That’s for customers,” she said, taking the drink from his hand. “Leave Julian.”
He smiled. “I want to be here for you.”
He stumbled backward, and Cora didn’t know what to do then. She looked around the showroom. Designers and buyers mingled around the pieces of fabric, talking about how they’d want to use it. Madame Dubois went off to the other end of the room with the hotel designer to look at another set of fabrics.
Cora felt like she might get sick.
Gregory, Madame Dubois’ assistant, came out of nowhere and asked, " Would you mind taking a couple of bags of trash to the dumpster out back when you leave?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Madame Dubois asked you to leave and take him out of here,” Gregory said.
Cora’s heart started beating harder. “She’s asking me to leave?”
Julian’s happy demeanor changed like whiplash, and he pointed his finger at the assistant. “Why don’t you take your trash and shove it up your?—”
“Julian!” she snapped.
Julian swiped another glass of champagne off a tray and walked away as if he hadn’t said anything.
The assistant shot her a look. “Cora, get that guy out of here.”
“I’m so sorry, Gregory,” she said. “I didn’t invite him.”
But she had, she remembered. She had invited the guy who she’d thought she knew. But this Julian, the one who stumbled away absently looking at fabrics without acknowledging he was asked to leave… She didn’t know this Julian.
“Julian,” she said between her teeth. “Go.”
“Not until that stuffy Madame lady gives you the acknowledgment you deserve.” Julian was practically shouting now.
At this point, the whole room’s attention was on him.
Madame Dubois’ face reddened by the second.
“Get out of here, Julian,” Cora snapped. “I want you to leave.”
That got his attention. He looked back at her, his face full of hurt, his eyes watering immediately. “Oh geez, Cora.”
He looked around; people were still mingling but paying attention to the man who had caused a scene.
“I just wanted to apologize…” He stood there swaying back and forth, hardly able to stand.
She turned around, about to return to the show, praying she could fix this when Madame Dubois stood behind her.
“Cora,” she said in her thick French accent. “I think we need to talk.”