CHAPTER THIRTEEN
STACY
IT STARTS TO RAIN THAT evening.
At first, it was sunny, then threatening clouds, and now the downpour. Everywhere is gray, the ground muddy. It’s terrible that a such a promising start could end up here.
The teapot whistles in my upstairs apartment while I’m sitting restlessly in a chair. I’m out of sorts and don’t know why. Until I realize that I’ve spent every waking minute of the past two weeks down in my shop, slaving over those designs for Expendable Chic.
It’s strange. The absence of that work, now that Hampton is no longer interested bothers me. It’s not that I miss the project itself — the tireless, thankless sketching for a boss I was sure would disapprove and ultimately did. It’s more that my time is too empty. I have nothing to do that feels worth doing. Nothing to occupy my mind and hands. I’ve gone from full-press, to get the sketches ready in time, to nothing. No slowing. Just this immediate stop.
I pour boiling water over my herbal teabag.
Then, only realizing what I’m doing until I’m doing it, I walk downstairs.
To the shop.
The lights are off, but the one I’ve left on outside glows through the window. Williamsville sleeps when it’s dark, so I go to the door and flip the switch. Then, since I’m already there, I open the door and peek outside. The street, dark as it is, looks like a moor. Like a thatched-roof village from three centuries ago.
I close the door, then stand with my back to it. It’s hard to stand straight. I feel heavy. Dragging. Like I’m carrying a burden, yet I’m not sure what it is.
I trudge to my drafting room and turn on the light.
I gaze out the window in here, which sees only darkness and runnels of undulating water on the glass. The sound is a lullaby. I want to lie atop my table and let the raindrops kiss me into sleep.
But I sit instead, and I take a pencil. I want to work on the sketches even if Hampton doesn’t want them. As much as I fought this project, I ended up proud of my work. Hampton almost made me feel bad, but with him gone and the moment behind me, I can see my true feelings.
I loved those clothes. From Expendable Chic’s standpoint, they raised the bar. From mine, technically, they lower it. Either way, they were foundation pieces. Designs to evolve and come to love. I can add all the care they need. Inexpensive doesn’t have to mean cheap.
But I can’t work. Can’t do anything with the pencil in my hand. Because hate them or not, Hampton took my sketches. He probably didn’t even realize it, but he stormed out with them in his fist. I didn’t even get paid. I threw my money away, just to make a point that couldn’t be made.
I wonder if I should bill him.
I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
I wonder why I’d want to.
I wonder why I feel as empty over the absence of the shadow boss as I do over the absence of the work.
For two weeks, I’ve wondered how I’d handle meeting him again. Who is this man? I know what the paparazzi shows — his beautiful face, his beach body, the way pop culture desires him as its handsome darling. But I met two sides of the man himself. One side, I loathe. The other?
Well, that’s the mystery.
It’s hard to believe the Hampton I glimpsed at the hospital is the same ass who argued in my shop today.
I feel that heaviness again. That weight in my heart.
There’s a small sound. A tinkling, as of chimes.
I must have left the front door unlocked when I peeked at the rain. Now, well after dinnertime, someone has decided to walk in. Someone clueless, considering that the only light on in the entire place is the one back here.
I walk out and see a silhouette. I flip on the light, and there’s Hampton, a collapsed umbrella at his side, dripping on my mat. He’s holding something in his other hand, like a rag.
“Mr. Brooks?”
“Hampton.”
“What are you doing here? I thought you’d gone?”
“I didn’t pay you. You tore up the check.”
“It’s fine. I don’t need—”
“I insist.”
His voice is quieter than before. Disarming. The light in here isn’t enough. I can’t read his face, and something stills my feet from walking closer.
“But you didn’t like them.”
“You were paid on spec. The money is yours regardless.” His hand dips into his pocket. He must have already written the check because he sets a folded piece of paper about that size on the waiting nook end table.
“Besides,” he says. “I got to thinking.”
Something is wrong. Strange. I wonder if he’s been drinking. We parted hours ago, and now it looks like he’s just been hanging around town. In the rain. He flew here in a private jet, so it’s not like his plane’s been delayed.
When he left, I was furious with him. But then the rain came with the emptiness. It seems to have come to him, too, though I wouldn’t know why. I can’t be mad, even though I’d like to be. I hate Hampton Brooks. He’s arrogant, stubborn, and won’t see common sense. But before me now, it’s almost like something has broken.
“Hampton? Why are you still in town?”
“I told you. I had other business.”
“For this long?”
“I was making a purchase. It took some time.”
“Just shopping in the rain, huh?” I try to smile. It feels wooden.
The shadows are still too deep. A knife’s edge of black, thrown by my light against his nose, seems to bisect his face. There’s no sound, save my breath and the tapping rain.
“I was ready to leave when I saw this.” He opens the rag in his hand. Inside is something else — something about the size of a laptop computer. I wait with a feeling of curious foreboding to see what it is. But it’s apparently not the laptop-thing he’s referring to, because he sets that aside, near my check. It’s the rag he wants to show me.
But it’s not a rag. It’s a T-shirt. A faded orange T-shirt, with whatever was on the front long ago worn away.
I come closer. After the first step, it’s easier.
I reach him. I touch the fabric. It’s got a few raindrops on it, but he’s managed to keep it mostly dry.
“A shirt?”
“A lucky shirt,” Hampton says.
I take it from him — slowly, carefully, like handling an infant. I turn the shirt around, running my fingers across the smooth, heavy weave, noting how intact it seems for something apparently old, feeling there must be more here that I’m missing. Hampton watches me the entire time. His expression suggests that he trusts me and that he wouldn’t let anyone touch this priceless object if he didn’t.
“It’s not exactly your usual look,” I say.
“I sleep in it. Every night that it’s clean.”
“You’re showing me your pajamas? Why?”
It’s like he doesn’t hear me. “It used to be just a normal shirt, part of my regular rotation. Then for a while, I got into a routine where I’d work two hours each morning on all the crazy ideas in my head, cutting it out from my jobs, from college, from whatever. I somehow got into the habit of wearing that shirt while I worked, more and more. It’s weird. I can look back and say that all I have today was built while wearing that shirt.”
I hand the shirt back. It’s as if it’s become heavier, or wants its owner. I extend it reverently, and he takes it in kind.
“I always travel with it,” Hampton explains. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I feel like it always brings me luck. When I have a big deal coming, I’ll hold it for a while, as if it gives some of its luck to take with me.” He looks briefly down, then back up, now not quite meeting my eyes. “I’ve never told anyone this,” he adds. “I know it’s crazy.”
“It’s not crazy.”
“After my other business was done today when I was on the plane and getting ready to leave, I realized I still had your sketches. So I opened my bag to put them inside, and this lucky shirt was right there on the top. Just looking at me.”
“That part is a little crazy.”
Hampton looks up with a wan, tired smile. “Maybe it’s because I’ve had a long day, or maybe it’s because I’m not used to someone pushing me as hard as you did this afternoon—”
“About that …”
“—but when I saw the shirt, something hit me like a brick to the head. I got to thinking how much power I’ve given to this thing. How much this one, stupid shirt means to me. And it’s a garment. An article of clothing.”
“Mr. Brooks …”
“Hampton. I can’t stomach you calling me Mr. Brooks.”
It’s a curious thing to say. I’d swear he emphasized you.
He reaches for the laptop. I realize it’s a case of some kind — something rigid, tough, and possibly even waterproof. He unsnaps it at one end. My sketches are inside, wrinkled, but carefully pressed flat.
“It’s right, what you said,” he tells me.
“What’s right?”
“I never wanted to make clothes that were cheap. I wanted them to be affordable. But you make decisions based on what seems to work. The company’s name wasn’t originally ‘Expendable.’ Funny enough — and I only realize the irony now — the first name was Enduring Chic. But the sound was wrong. It didn’t resonate with the market. For a thousand reasons, that was the wrong thing to call the company. But what you said today about the company’s values …” He touches the sketches. “Well, I got to looking at these. Just sat there on the plane — my lucky shirt in my lap, poring over wrinkled papers. My pilot kept asking if I was ready to leave and I’d say not yet. After the second time he asked, the pilot sent the flight attendant to ask in a different way, like I might not realize it was the same request. They probably wondered what was wrong with me. Still might. I got out of the plane and said I didn’t need a car to take me where I was going. I’m looking to buy here, you know. It only made sense, I figured, to check my possible investment one more time.”
“You want to move to Williamsville?” But that’s a dumb question to ask of a billionaire. “I mean, buy a place here?”
“Yes.”
I can only imagine what kind of home he’d be able to afford.
“A huge place, I’m sure.”
“Huge, yes.”
The rain falls outside.
Head down, Hampton keeps speaking. “But I just looked at the shops. When it started to rain, I bought an umbrella. And a case for the sketches.” He looks up. “They’re very good.”
This isn’t quite professional flattery. I can’t pin down the change.
“I knew you were right,” he continues. “What I couldn’t figure out was, if you were right — about the brand, the values, and this new clothing line you’re proposing — then why did it piss me off so much? But after I saw my lucky shirt, I knew. It’s because I do appreciate things that are well made. Things that endure, and leave their mark. This shirt is over ten years old. I got it in high school. Not a stitch out of place.” He shakes the thing, gently. “Someone did me that favor. Someone put enough craftsmanship into this shirt for me to keep it all this time. And yet I’ve never even tried to do the same.”
“The line I have in mind, in those sketches, is—”
“Full of care, I’m sure,” he finishes for me. “Can I be honest?”
“Sure.”
“I didn’t like you from the start, Stacy Grace.”
That’s not what I was expecting. I don’t know how to respond. His quiet story lulled me off-guard, and I can’t retrieve my anger fast enough to retaliate.
“I’ve found you to be righteous, self-important, and condescending. I don’t like the way you look at what I wear, how I live, and the way I conduct business with your nose in the air. I don’t like the fact that you think you’re better than me.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” he corrects. But then he reaches out, puts his hand on mine. Quieter, he says, “The reason I got so pissed off was that after I left you this afternoon, I started seeing myself through your eyes. Your sketches couldn’t help but judge my existing lines because they were better in such specific ways. The sketches said, ‘Hey, asshole, look how much less you could be screwing your customers if you just cared enough to change a few small things here and there.’”
I can’t fight back. I’m dizzy. He’s either accusing himself or me, but his tone is a lullaby. His hand on mine is distracting. I can’t tell what to think. To feel.
“I just wanted to show you what I could do,” I say, weakly.
We’ve somehow moved closer. Too close. Our bodies are almost touching. Our faces are inches apart. I can smell his skin. Feel his heat.
“I think you can make us better,” Hampton says, “as long as I’m willing to accept that we’re not perfect already.”
Another inch. His exhale brushes my lips. My neck prickles, my eyes want to close. My head tips sideways, opposite his. I remember that moment in the peach grove, waking to Hampton above me.
Am I supposed to kiss you?
“It seemed like you fired me,” is all I can think to say.
Hampton’s hand moves up, so I can see it in my peripheral vision as our eyes stay locked. The hand pauses, as if unsure. Then his fingers brush through my hair. When I don’t stop it, the hand grows bolder.
The palm cups my cheek. Slides down my neck, to the shoulder, to the hollow. “I didn’t mean to fire you.”
“So …” It’s hard to talk with his hand on me, moving down my arm, giving me gooseflesh. It’s hard to form words as my breath deepens, as I lean into him, as he leans into me. “… are you saying you want me back?”
“Yes. That’s what I’m saying.”
All of me is tingling. I can barely feel my feet, unstable on the ground. “What are you saying?” I ask, knowing how I must sound.
“That I want you,” he answers.
His other hand, on the other side of my face. His gaze. His heat. My body, beginning to burn.
He doesn’t say the final word.
We lean in, and our lips meet instead.