I finished the first piece of my collection four days after Josh and Jules’s housewarming.
It hung on the back of my door in a spill of silk and sinuous lines, its golden color a stark contrast to the dark wood background.
It wasn’t perfect, and the fabric was expensive, which meant I needed a better wholesale option if I wanted to scale up production, but it was done. The first tangible evidence my dreams weren’t just dreams and that I was finally taking concrete steps toward making them reality.
A complete draft, no matter how imperfect, was still better than no draft at all.
And this was my own pattern, own design. This wasn’t just a quick Simplicity Pattern dress I’d made over Christmas break one year. This was mine.
Too much planning is a form of procrastination. Lilah’s words from our coffee date echoed in my head as I ran my hand over the dress’s bodice. The smooth glide of it against my skin sent a thrill darting through my blood. If you want a brand, you need a product. Create a great product, then worry about everything else.
The “everything else” encompassed pricing, sourcing, outreach to retail buyers, and a thousand other details that overwhelmed me every time I looked at my to-do list, but I had a product and a plan.
Everything else will flow from there.
A strange emotion welled in my throat, so unfamiliar it took me a minute to identify it: pride.
I hadn’t felt it when I hit a million followers or when I woke up the next day to a flood of brand collab offers. But now, standing in front of a dress that’d taken me a day to sew and a lifetime to create, the warm glow of pride crested over me.
My entire life, I’d created for other people. My blog posts were for my audience, my photos were for my followers, my grades had been for my parents, and my ideas had been for D.C. Style when I worked there.
This was the first time in a long time that I’d done something for me, and honestly? It felt damn good.
Weightlessness expanded in my chest and pulled a huge smile out of me. I didn’t even care that my monthly family dinner was that night. Nothing could bring me down—
My phone lit up with an incoming call from Natalia.
…except for a conversation with my sister.
My smile dimmed, but enough giddiness remained that my voice came out chirpier than usual when I picked up.
“Hey, Nat.”
“This is a reminder that Mom and Dad are expecting you to bring your boyfriend tonight.” Natalia dispensed with the niceties. “Remind him to come prepared with an accomplishment to share.”
Yes, guests were expected to share their accomplishments at an Alonso family dinner. How else would my family judge whether they were worthy of another invite?
“Christian can’t make it.” I put Natalia on speakerphone so I could finish getting ready. I’d lost track of time ogling my dress, and I was due at my parents’ house in an hour. “He wants to be there, but he got sick last minute. Fever, chills, the whole thing.”
It was scary how easily the lie spilled from my tongue.
It clattered to the ground with a soft plink, joining the dozens of other untruths I’d uttered over the past few months.
“Really.” Natalia’s tone went flat with suspicion. “How convenient.”
I twisted my hair into a bun, hoping she couldn’t hear the rapid pitter-patter of my heart. “It’s unfortunate, but sickness doesn’t conform to our personal schedules.”
More lies. I could make a killing as a car salesperson if my clothing line didn’t pan out.
Guilt speared my chest, but I held fast. There was no way in hell I’d subject even my worst enemy to dinner with the Alonsos. Plus, I required a clear mind and all my faculties to deal with my parents, and if there was one thing Christian was good at, it was clouding my judgment.
“Mom and Dad won’t be happy,” Natalia warned. “They were looking forward to meeting your boyfriend.”
More like they were looking forward to grilling him. Jarvis and Mika Alonso had a strict list of requirements they expected from a future son-in-law, and while Christian ticked off almost every box—wealthy, well-educated, cultured—the interrogation process would be torture.
“You post about him so much. It must be serious.”
My sister was so obvious about her fishing I would’ve laughed had I not been sick with nerves.
“We’re taking things day by day.” I dusted blush on my cheeks. “I’m sure Mom and Dad will understand. Besides, you know how Mom is with germs. She wouldn’t want a sick guest at dinner—”
“Actually, I’m feeling much better.”
I spun around, my pulse skyrocketing at the sight of Christian leaning against the wooden frame, his suit jacket off and one hand in his pocket. A stray lock of dark hair fell in his eye, begging me to brush it back.
“I was out of commission yesterday, but I’m good as new today.” He addressed Natalia over speakerphone, but his eyes didn’t leave mine. “So Stella, darling, I’ll be able to accompany you to dinner after all.”
This wasn’t happening.
Christian would overhear us the one time I put Natalia on speaker.
Someone in the high heavens must hate me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have skipped church so much since I moved out of my family’s house.
What are you doing? I mouthed, hoping my glare conveyed the full extent of my displeasure.
His only response was a smirk that made me reconsider my stance on non-violence.
Thou shalt do no harm…unless your fake boyfriend was trying to crash a dinner with your overbearing family.
Then again, dinner should be punishment enough. One meal with the Alonsos would send even the mighty Christian Harper running for the hills.
“Oh!” Rare surprise coasted through Natalia’s voice before she recovered. “That’s good to hear.” The edges of her words softened now that she knew someone else was in the room. “We’ll see you in an hour, then.”
“Yes, you will. Looking forward to it,” Christian drawled.
I hung up before I voiced the aggravation bubbling in my veins. “What was that?”
Cool, calm, collected. Cool, calm—
“That was me agreeing to dinner at my girlfriend’s house.” Christian straightened and ran a hand over his tie. “We’ve been dating for months. It’s time I met your parents, don’t you think?”
“We’re not actually dating.”
“They don’t know that.” His calm rebuttal only infuriated me more. “I have to meet them eventually. There are only so many excuses you can make. This way, we get the meeting out of the way, and they’ll stop badgering you.”
He had a point. Still, I hated how he’d gone about it.
Dinner was in less than an hour, and I wasn’t mentally prepared for a meal with Christian and my family.
How would my parents react to him? How would he react to them? I’d seen how Christian could charm a table in New York, but that had been with friends.
The last time I brought a boy home—Quentin Sullivan, high school prom—my parents had grilled him so relentlessly about his GPA, college acceptances, and five-year plan that he’d burst into tears during the limo ride to the dance. The minute we arrived, he mumbled something about making a mistake and spent the rest of the night dancing with some other girl.
Christian had no idea what he’d gotten himself into.
Our ride to my parents’ house was as silent as the one to Josh and Jules’ over the weekend.
His confession about wanting me was the elephant in every room we were in together, but neither of us addressed it.
I didn’t know how to address it. Maybe it’d be easier if I didn’t want him too, but every time I tried to bring it up, my nerves got the better of me.
I snuck a peek at Christian. The air between us hummed with a hundred spoken words. They tightened my lungs and cut off the flow of oxygen until I grew lightheaded.
The air conditioning was on, but I cracked the window open and sucked in a small gasp of fresh air.
We stopped at a red light.
Christian didn’t say a word about the window, but the heat of his stare was like a brand against my skin.
I kept my eyes out the window and away from him until we arrived at my parents’ house, where bigger worries drowned out our tension.
As expected, my family greeted him the way they would any guest—polite and welcoming on the surface, but secretly sizing him up with every move he made and every word out of his mouth.
He’d brought a two-thousand-dollar vintage red from his extensive wine collection with us, which endeared him to my mother, but my dad was harder to impress.
“I’ve heard of you.” Jarvis’s tone suggested what he heard wasn’t particularly flattering for Christian. “Harper Security, correct?”
“Yes, sir.” Christian passed me the bowl of mashed potatoes. He’d donned a more casual outfit than his usual suits for dinner, but somehow, the button-down shirt and jeans made him look even more intimidating, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. A hint of challenge disguised as a smile flirted at the corners of his mouth. “I work with the government on occasion. I know Secretary Palmer well.”
My dad’s face settled into a mask of grim lines at the mention of his boss. “I’m sure you do.”
The clink of plates and glasses replaced conversation until the main course. The lull gave me a chance to rehearse my answer for our traditional sharing of accomplishments.
I finished the first piece of my fashion collection. Oh, did I forget to tell you? I’m starting a fashion brand. I have a—
“How’s your job at D.C. Style going?” Natalia’s question sliced through my inner musings.
I still hadn’t told my family I’d gotten fired. Every time I tried, the words made it halfway up my throat before they withered and died.
“It’s fine.” I raised my water glass to my lips and hoped no one detected the slight shake in my hand.
“Hmm.” The scrape of Natalia’s fork against her plate sounded like nails against a chalkboard. “You know what’s funny? I was in the neighborhood the other day. I had a meeting near your office, so I thought I’d drop by and say hi. But when I showed up, the receptionist said you don’t work there anymore. She said you haven’t worked there in almost two months.”
All movement stopped like she’d pressed pause on the scene. We were no longer people but wax statues of ourselves, frozen into a grotesque tableau of shock and denial.
Christian was the only one who showed a hint of life. His concerned warmth caressed my suddenly icy skin, and the even rise and fall of his chest steadied some of my nerves.
I’d thought his presence at dinner would throw me off-kilter, but it was doing the exact opposite.
I couldn’t say the same for my parents, though.
My father’s skin had leached of color, and my mother’s mouth formed a surprised red O. It took a lot to surprise Jarvis and Mika Alonso, and a crazy, inane part of me wanted to whip out my phone and record the moment for posterity.
“I told them it must be a mistake.” Natalia’s eyes pinned me like a bug to the ground. “There’s no way you got fired and didn’t tell us. Right, Stella?”
Regret coated the back of my tongue in the form of bile.
The urge to lie again was so great it almost dragged me under its spell, but I couldn’t keep up the charade forever. Eventually, they’d discover the truth.
It was time to stop hiding and own up to what happened.
“It wasn’t a mistake. I’m not working at D.C. Style anymore.” Every syllable scraped my throat on its way out. “I got fired in mid-February.”
Silence clung to the room for another beat before it exploded into curses and shouts.
“Mid-February! How could you keep this from us for so long?” my mother demanded in Japanese.
She grew up in Kyoto and reverted to her first language whenever she was upset.
“I was waiting for the right time to tell you,” I answered in English.
I hadn’t practiced Japanese in years, but its lilt was so familiar I felt like I was sitting in weekend school again. My parents had been too busy to teach me and Natalia the formalities, so they’d enrolled us in Spanish, German, and Japanese classes when we were children. They said it was to help us connect with our mixed heritage, but I suspected it had more to do with the fact foreign language proficiency looked good on college applications.
“And what have you been doing all this time?” The quiet rumble of my father’s anger seeped into every corner of the room. “You haven’t found a new job in two months?”
I twisted my necklace around my finger until it cut off my circulation.
Cool, calm, collected.
“I haven’t applied for another office job. I earn a lot of money from my blog, and I just signed a campaign deal with a big brand. Six figures. I’m earning a full-time income.”
“Perhaps, but it’s not a stable income.” Jarvis pressed his lips so tightly together they were nothing but a slash of white against his brown skin. “What happens when the deals dry up? Or if you lose your account? What about an emergency fund? How much do you have in savings?”
He fired the questions like bullets.
“I…” I glanced at Christian, who tipped his chin in a silent show of support. His expression was placid, but something turbulent lurked beneath his eyes. A shiver scampered down my spine before I faced the firing squad again.
“I don’t plan on becoming a full-time influencer. I actually…” Just say it. “I’m going to create my own designs. For a fashion line. And I have a bit of savings left, but I’ll replenish it once I get my next payment for the Delamonte campaign.”
A guillotine of silence hung suspended over the table before it sliced through the air and triggered another explosion.
“You cannot be serious!” Mika gripped her fork with a white-knuckled hand. “A fashion designer? Stella, you graduated from Thayer. You can be anything! Why in the world would you choose design?”
My father was stuck on the other part of my bombshell. “What do you mean, you have a bit of savings left? Where did the rest of it go?”
Sweat dampened the nape of my neck.
Go big or go home.
My parents were already pissed at me. I might as well rip the Band-Aid off my other secret and deal with the consequences all at once.
“I’ve been paying for Maura’s care at an assisted living facility.” I released my necklace and tucked my hands beneath my thighs to prevent them from shaking, but my right knee bounced with nerves.
It was a good thing my mom couldn’t see, or she’d yell at me for that too. According to Japanese superstitions, shaking one’s leg invited the ghosts of poverty or something like that. It was one of my mother’s biggest pet peeves.
“She has Alzheimer’s,” I continued. My hand curled around the edge of the chair for support. “I’ve been paying her room and board for the past few years. That’s where most of my money has gone.”
This time, the silence wasn’t a blade; it was a boa constrictor wrapping itself around my limbs and strangling me until my breaths puffed out in tiny bursts of air.
My mother paled until she resembled a paper cutout of herself. “Why would you do that?”
“Because she has no one else, Mom. She took care of me—”
“She is not family,” Mika bit out. “We’re grateful for the years she spent with you girls, and I understand why you have an attachment to her. But she hasn’t been your nanny in more than a decade, and you aren’t swimming in money, Stella. You’re unemployed, for Christ’s sake. Even when you worked at D.C. Style, your salary was pitiful. Spending tens of thousands of dollars a year caring for a former family employee when you’re not financially stable is the most irresponsible, foolish—”
Anger lit a match in my stomach and eradicated every ounce of guilt over my lies.
I hated how my parents dismissed Maura as a mere former family employee when she’d been so much more. She’d sung me to sleep as a child, guided me through the turbulent years of puberty, and weathered the storm of my early high school angst with remarkable patience. She’d been there for every skinned knee and every teenage heartbreak, and she deserved more than a passing acknowledgment for all she’d done.
Without her, my parents wouldn’t be where they are today. She’d kept the household together while they built their careers into legends.
“Maura is family. She was more of a mother to me than you ever were!” The words burst forth before I could stop them.
Natalia’s gasp drowned out the clatter of her fork against her plate. She hadn’t said a word since she outed my firing from D.C. Style, but her eyes were the size of saucers as she gaped at me.
Neither of us had talked back to our parents since our rebellious teenage years. Even then, our rebellion had been mild—a snarky comment here, a night of sneaking out to a friend’s party there.
We weren’t the poster children for bad behavior, but I…oh God. I’d basically told my mother she was a shitty mom. In front of a guest and the rest of our family. At dinner.
The pasta I ate earlier churned in my stomach, and I faced the very real possibility that I might throw up all over Mika’s favorite Wedgwood set.
My mother reeled like I’d just backhanded her. If she’d been pale before, she was a ghost now, her cheeks completely blanched of color like someone had sucked the life out of her.
For once, Mika Alonso, one of the most feared attorneys in the city, the woman who had an answer for every question and a rebuttal for every argument, was speechless.
I wished I felt good about it, but all I felt was nausea. I didn’t want to hurt her. I hadn’t expected my words to hurt her because they’d been so obvious. My mother had never been around when I was a child. She’d once joked herself that Maura was our surrogate mother.
But there was no denying the hurt filling her eyes and twisting her face into an unrecognizable version of itself.
Beside her, my father’s face was unrecognizable as well, except his was dark with barely leashed fury.
“You stepped over the line, Stella.” His low voice sent another wave of nausea crashing against my insides. “Apologize to your mother. Right now.”
The backs of my thighs pressed against the tops of my hands while my head swirled with a thousand responses.
I could apologize and smooth things over. Anything to erase my mother’s hurt and my father’s anger.
The little girl in me still cringed at the thought of making my parents mad, but anything less than full honesty would only be a temporary salve for a festering wound.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you, Mom.” The crack in my voice matched the one splitting my chest. “But Maura practically raised me. We both know that’s true, and she doesn’t have anyone else to care for her. She spent the prime years of her life looking after me and treating me like I was her own daughter. I can’t leave her alone now when she needs me.”
I didn’t look at Natalia, who’d liked Maura but didn’t have the same bond with her. My parents’ careers hadn’t taken off until I was five and Natalia was ten. By then, she’d been too old to form the same attachment to our nanny that I had.
She wouldn’t take my side. She never did.
Other than a small flinch, my mother didn’t react to my words. My father, on the other hand, grew even angrier.
Jarvis Alonso did not take well to people disobeying his orders.
Thunder swallowed the usually warm brown of his eyes until they turned a hard, implacable black.
I’d never been scared of my father, at least not in the physical sense. But in that moment, I was terrified of him.
When he spoke again, it was in a rumbling growl he usually reserved for discussions about foreign dictators and terrorist cells.
“Stella Rosalie Alonso, if you do not apologize to your mother this instant, I will—”
“I suggest you don’t finish that sentence.”
Christian’s quiet voice sliced through the toxic fumes of my father’s anger like they didn’t exist.
Like Natalia, he’d been silent since dinner went off the rails, but the tension pouring off him said a thousand words.
If my father’s fury was a gathering storm, Christian’s was a dark, silent tsunami. By the time those in its path scented danger, it was too late.
And as my eyes darted between my father’s pulsating jaw and Christian’s lethal stare, I had a sinking feeling that the bad evening was only going to get worse.
