7. Karissa
Chapter seven
Karissa
The stylist's name is Celeste, and she looks at me the way I look at a recipe that someone has already ruined.
"You wash your hair every day," she says. It's not a question.
"I work in a bakery."
She makes a sound that I will spend the next forty-five minutes trying to decode.
The studio is in Midtown, three floors above a street I've walked a hundred times without ever noticing this building existed. Noah told me the shoot starts at 10:00. Priya's office texted at 9:00 p.m. last night and moved my call to 8:00 a.m., which I understand now that I've seen the racks.
Everything in it is white. The lighting is the kind that shows every flaw you've ever had and several you didn't know about. There are two racks of clothes against the far wall, each item hanging with an inch of space between it and the next.
Celeste's assistant, a quiet woman named Jin, hands me a robe and points to a partition. I change, come back out, and Celeste circles me once like I'm a problem to be solved.
"She's prettier than the photos," she says to Jin, like I'm not standing right here.
"Thank you?"
"It wasn't a compliment. It means the camera will need different angles."
The first dress is emerald silk. Floor-length. Structured at the top and fluid everywhere else.
I step out from behind the partition and Jin puts her hands over her mouth.
Celeste just nods. "That's the one."
I look at the mirror and don't fully recognize myself. My hair is up. My collarbone is showing. The woman looking back at me has a posture I didn't know I had.
It's not bad. It's just not mine.
"The gala pieces are separate," Celeste says, already flipping through the second rack. "These are for the announcement. We need something that reads well at distance and up close."
"The announcement."
"12:00 p.m. Easton's communications team posts the engagement, the photos go live simultaneously, and by 12:05 p.m. every outlet with a finance or society desk will be running it." She says this without looking up. "You didn't know the timeline."
"I knew there was a timeline."
"There's always a timeline." She pulls out a deep navy wrap dress and holds it against me. "Wear this one. It photographs better than the green for daylight."
I think about asking to see both options side by side. I think about asking what the photos even look like. I think about a lot of things.
I put on the navy dress.
The media coach's name is Derek, and he is enthusiastic in a way that makes me tired on contact.
"The goal is authentic," he says, gesturing at a dry-erase board where he has written the word authentic in large letters. "We want people to believe this is real."
"And how do we do that?"
"By being real."
I stare at him.
"Okay," he says, recalibrating. "Not real.
But present. Eye contact, physical ease, micro-expressions that track positive emotion.
" He clicks a clicker that brings up a slide.
"The biggest tell in staged couples is mismatched attention.
One person is always watching the other person watch the crowd. You want to watch each other."
"Watch each other."
"Like you mean it."
At 10:00, there is a knock at the door. Noah steps in.
He stops when he sees me in the navy dress. It's a fraction of a second. The kind of pause that almost doesn't happen. But it does happen, and I file that away somewhere I haven't named yet.
"You're late," Derek says cheerfully.
"I'm exactly on time." Noah straightens his cuff. "What did I miss?"
"Eye contact and micro-expressions."
"I'll manage." He looks at me again, more deliberate this time. "You look—"
"Don't."
He closes his mouth.
Derek watches us with undisguised delight. "This is great," he says, pulling out his clipboard. "This tension reads well. Just soften it by about forty percent for the cameras."
***
The photos are outside, on a staged walkway in front of a building that Easton Capital owns. The photographer, who introduces himself only as Sven, arranges us once, steps back, and then rearranges us twice more.
"Closer," he says.
We're already close.
"Closer than that."
Noah's hand settles at my waist. Not grabbing. Just there, steady and warm.
His thumb moves once against the fabric. Adjusting. Nothing. I feel it through three layers of navy silk and hold my face still, because Sven is four feet away and the shutter is going and I am being paid for this.
I have to remember this is staging. That this is the job. That I signed a contract with a mutual breach clause.
One of the assistants moves a reflector panel and catches the light wrong, and the glare hits my eyes directly. I wince. Noah shifts his body, just slightly, repositioning himself between me and the angle.
He doesn't say anything about it.
Neither do I.
Sven captures something in that second. I hear the shutter and watch him look at his screen and nod to himself.
Whatever he got, it was real. I don't know what to do with that.
At 11:58 a.m., Noah's communications director Priya hands us both our phones.
"It goes live in two minutes," she says. "Your comments are already restricted. You don't engage with press directly, not today. Any questions come through me."
"What exactly are they posting?" I ask.
"Three photos, a brief statement, and a quote attributed to each of you." She hands me a card. "Yours says: Noah makes me feel like the most important person in the room. We felt it was warm without being overexposed."
I read it again.
"I wouldn't say that."
"I know," Priya says, not unkindly. "But the woman who would is more useful to us right now."
I look at Noah. He's watching me in that way he does, assessing, quiet. Then, unexpectedly, he says, "Pull the quote."
Priya turns to him. "Excuse me?"
"Pull the quote attributed to her. Use mine only. She doesn't speak in the announcement." His eyes haven't left my face. "She didn't have final approval on her own words."
The silence lasts about three seconds.
"We had this drafted and aligned with the—"
"Pull it," he says again. Quiet. Final.
Priya pulls it.
I don't thank him. But something shifts in the space between us that I can't put back where it was.
At 12:03 p.m., my phone starts moving.
By 12:07 p.m., it won't stop.
The notifications come in clusters at first, then constantly. Texts from people I went to school with. A voicemail from my cousin. Seventeen new Instagram follows in the time it takes me to read the first three texts.
I step outside the building and call the bakery.
Marcus picks up on the first ring. "Please tell me you are not engaged to Noah Easton."
"It's complicated."
"Karissa. He was in here last week and you kicked him out of your office area."
"I didn't kick him—"
"You told him the layout critique wasn't in the menu and pointed at the door."
"That was professional communication."
Marcus is quiet for a second. Then: "There are four people in here right now showing each other the photos on their phones. One of them is crying."
"Why is someone crying?"
"She says you look really happy."
I stand on the sidewalk in a dress that isn't mine, holding a phone that hasn't stopped buzzing, and I think about the photo Sven took. The one where Noah shifted to block the light without making it a thing.
My phone buzzes again.
This time it's Theo: bro what the ENTIRE
Then: you could have told me???
Then: also, he seems weird but okay I guess
Then: also, can we get the good cereal now
Four people in my dining room at midday who came in for the photos and not for the croissants. I run the math before I can stop myself. If half of them come back next week, that's most of a supplier payment. If none of them do, I had a busy hour and a story.
Years of building something that runs on people who return, and the thing that finally filled my floor was a navy dress and a man's hand at my waist.
I don't know what to do with that either.
I press my palm against my sternum, where something tight has taken up residence, and I look back through the glass door at Noah inside, talking to Priya, completely composed and completely unreachable.
This is a contract. Six months. Through the spring gala. Twelve events.
The woman in the announcement photo is not entirely me. But she's standing closer to Noah Easton than anyone I know would have predicted, and the hand at her waist isn't staged.
I knew the plan. I signed the contract.
I did not plan for the way he said "pull it" like my words belonged to me.
The door opens. Noah steps out, jacket still perfect, eyes finding me immediately.
"Car's ready," he says.
"Okay."
He looks at my phone, still lighting up. Then back at my face.
"You alright?"
It's the first time he's asked that. Maybe the first time he's asked anyone that and meant the literal question instead of the strategic one.
"I will be," I say.
He nods once, and we walk toward the car. His hand comes up. Not at my waist this time. Not staged positioning for a photographer's eye.
He takes my hand.
And the cameras across the street catch every second of it.