Where Dreams Are Written

Chapter 1-2

Perrin’s fashion design friends, her new husband Bill’s Emerald City Opera companions, and both of their personal friends all jostled happily together, mingling one table to the next. It was a joyous event, laughter an ingredient more common than the regional wines or the amazing food. If she knew how, she would swirl down into the crowd and appear to be enjoying herself. But the artifice usually so readily at hand eluded her and she remained, standing among the flowers.

Perrin swirled by in Bill’s arms, laughing and shining with joy—a joy she had created in herself, despite her past.

Melanie found that the most surprising thing of all. She had always seen herself as too damaged to find a true relationship, yet Perrin’s past had been far worse than hers. Here she was, Perrin outshining them all so effortlessly.

The bride’s dress was a conceptual and technical masterpiece. The dress, and the complementary one that Tamara wore, emphasized a fairy lightness, a magic that made them both appear to float about the room; both too joyous to touch anything as mundane as the real world. The diaphanous gold over a form-fitting sapphire sheath—like sunset glistening on the ocean. On Tamara’s emerging curves and mahogany red hair it modestly promised the woman yet to come.

“Truly, Perrin,” Melanie had told her over appetizers, “even in Milan, such work would be valued.” It was no less than the truth.

Russell came by, nudged her slightly closer to one of the flower vases and snapped a couple of quick photos. He may have retired from fashion photography, but his skills had grown rather than diminished. Without doing it consciously, she had watched him move through the room, arranging groups but making them look candid.

Jaspar, Perrin’s new son, had taken to following Russell around and the two were now consulting on which shots to take and how to set them up. The boy drank it up like a sponge. Russell with children. Melanie put a hand over her heart to stop the pain at the image. He would be such an amazing father even if they were not to be hers.

The shutter clicked again. She stuck her tongue out at Russell, but pulled it back in before he could raise his camera once more. He laughed, then he and his protégé moved on to other subjects.

She felt her phone buzz. Business. She always let the business line through no matter where she was, except during the wedding ceremony itself. Early in her career, jobs were offered, negotiated, and scheduled in the time span of a week. Now, if they didn’t reach you immediately, the job could be gone before you called back. This was a text.

There was only one line: Sorry. Swimsuit cast now set. Maybe next year. Sue.

This should have been a contract, not a brush off. This should have been a shot at the cover; her chance to tie Elle for the record of five covers. Instead, she wouldn’t be in the issue—for the first time in eight years. There had to be a mistake, but no matter how many times she reread the message, it didn’t change. She never begged. She was Melanie. The demand for her modeling time was constant and costly. But this one time she texted back to make sure.

Sue answered immediately, So sorry. If in my hands, you’d be in. S.

White lie there, Sue was the editor-in-chief and could easily override any underling’s decisions, but you never burned bridges in this industry. So, she wrote back a quick Thanks and looking forward to next year. M. White lie back.

It happened.

To others.

Not to Melanie. She’d never lost a contract before. Ever. Not since that photographer’s cat had scratched her moments before her first big hand-modeling contract when she’d been eleven. The scar had healed long before the memory of her mother’s head-wrenching slap for the lack of caution.

Melanie stood on the periphery of the wedding crowd and used all of her control to remain calm. Passive. Immobile. She had known it was time to start planning for her next step. She’d seen too many girls fall by the wayside with no backup plan and many, unlike Melanie, had not been careful with their earnings. There was always some seventeen-year old with perfect skin waiting to be discovered.

But she hadn’t been ready for it yet. Tyra had her talk show and acting. Iman had her cosmetics and had married David Bowie. Naomi was still working, though not as often as she’d like, for a variety of reasons. There were whole chains of supermodel restaurants, as if the skill in the studio and on the runway somehow translated across industries, which it almost never did. And there was only one Kate in the world, only one Claudia, only one Heidi.

It wasn’t the death knell of her career, but people would hear that she’d lost the swimsuit issue. Soon, not this year but probably next, her contracts would start to go down instead of up in both money and frequency. She hadn’t worked this hard to become second-rate. Even if Victoria’s Secret renewed her as their signature model, the writing was on the wall.

She moved along the edge of the room to find a chair in which to sit, her équilibre was not being reliable at the moment.

Russell, of course, chose that moment to emerge from around the gently flickering fireplace and step in front of her.

She sighed and strengthened her shields.

“Wow! You look like you’ve just been gut-punched, Melanie. What’s up?”

Russell. Of course. The one person who could see when she was upset. Kind, frequently oblivious, and married to Cassidy Knowles instead of to herself. Russell didn’t know everything about her but he knew more than anyone else ever had. Ever. Including how to read the Ice Queen’s true emotions if her guard had slipped in the slightest.

There was a time that hadn’t been true, but her single failure at making their relationship a lasting one had changed everything, and now he could read her when no others understood. She had been the one to make the mistake of falling in love with him; he had been the one to not notice and leave her behind.

“I appear to have just lost my boyfriend and the next swimsuit issue in the same ten minutes.” The shock of saying it aloud cut her inside, despite wearing her cloak of calm for the rest of the world.

“Carlo dumped you? Where is that s**t? I’ll kick his damned ass for being so stupid.” Russell was tall, taller than she was if she hadn’t been wearing heels, and began scanning the crowd looking for him.

“Already on his way to Italy, I fear.”

“Does he have any idea what he just threw away? Asshole.” He sounded truly pissed on her behalf.

Melanie smiled to herself. Although Russell had done the same to her, worse because she’d been in love with him as she’d never been with Carlo di Stefano, he was ready to leap to her defense. She pulled Russell close for just a moment, to share an instant of his strength, then kiss him on the cheek.

“Hey, no falling for my husband.” Cassidy came over to join them, she said it with a smile.

“Excusez-moi. Too late.” Melanie could have bitten off her own tongue. Not that it was a secret, for Melanie had told Jo and whatever one of the three friends knew, they all knew. But the truth behind her words shifted her light joke over closer to envy.

Cassidy’s gentle hand of sympathy on Melanie’s arm made it both better and worse. The understanding was kind though, and Cassidy was always kind to the very core.

“What’s going on that’s made Russell so angry?”

Melanie told her.

“You lost the swimsuit contract?” Cassidy sounded deeply shocked on Melanie’s behalf. She at least understood which bit of news was actually important.

“Wait,” Russell spun to face her from his continued search for the departed Carlo. “You what? Crap! Is Sue even dumber than Carlo?” Melanie had met Russell while working on a swimsuit issue, had become a key model for Russell Morgan Inc., and shared his bed for almost a year. “I’ll give her a call and—”

“And,” Cassidy interrupted his growing tirade, “ruin any chance of her ever working with Sue again. No, Russell.” Though she was half a head shorter than Russell and looked even more slender than she was when compared with his broad-shouldered frame, it was clear that Cassidy was indeed the right wife for him. She smoothed out Russell’s hair-trigger emotions so effortlessly that neither of them probably noticed. They were that much in sync. Like Perrin and Bill, they were each so much better together than apart. Melanie would have gotten right up in his face and they’d have gone at it.

Once again, Melanie felt the stab of envy. Would she ever find a man to love her that much?

“Now what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Silence. No one answered. Because no one was there.

Josh Harper stood at the doorway and listened to the odd quality of his voice echoing about his empty Chelsea condo on New York’s Lower West Side. No wife, not anymore according to last week’s small sheaf of papers and a court ruling. No lawyer, done and paid off the following day. Not even a realtor, “Just leave the key on the counter. The new owners will be changing the locks tomorrow anyway.”

He didn’t know anything anymore. The underpinnings of his life had been abruptly pulled when the woman he’d adored had decided she was no longer interested in men, or being married to one. No acrimony. No alimony, their incomes were near enough identical. No hurt, at least on her side, just sadness and apologies and a chaste kiss to end the five happiest years of his life.

With the wondrous and painful insight of perspective, he could now see what she meant, who she really was that neither of them had noticed. But that did nothing to ease the pain. Rather it only added to his sense of feeling foolish. He’d been naïve...or dense…or stupid enough to marry and love a woman who…wanted another woman.

He ran a hand over the Gaggenau cook top where they’d made a thousand meals together, the big double oven that had delivered turkeys and pies to large gatherings of friends. Mostly her friends, he could now see. Mostly women, though she swore that hadn’t been conscious.

Josh still couldn’t understand the echoing emptiness that had so recently been his cozy home. That had included his wife. Worse, she’d known for over half a year but had delayed telling him because she couldn’t figure out how to approach the subject without hurting him.

At least she didn’t have a girlfriend yet, she’d always been true to him just as he had to her.

One thing was clear, he needed a fresh start.

A completely fresh start.

And he could afford one. With his half of the money from the sale of the condo and furnishings, added to his half of their savings, he was set for a while. For several years if he was careful.

Josh pulled out his phone as he stood there at the door with his computer bag over his shoulder, his only constant companion. He’d left a dozen or so boxes, mostly cookbooks, with a storage company that would ship them if he ever figured out where they should go. His other belongings hadn’t even filled the trunk of his BMW waiting for him downstairs. Perhaps he’d been too severe in shedding his past, but that was done now too.

He hit speed dial on his phone. When Shirene answered, he kept it simple.

“I quit.”

“Don’t be an i***t, Joshua. You can’t. You’re my senior editor. Your prose is part of what makes Gourmet Week hum.”

“You have my four emergency articles already on file in case I was sick or something went wrong. Well, it’s gone wrong. Consider them and my unused vacation as my thirty days’ notice.”

“No, Joshua, my friend. For ten years you’ve dedicated your life—”

“To reporting about food. And it was fun. But it’s not what I set out to do in the beginning. It’s not what I want to be doing ten years from now. Call Elric, he’ll come aboard happily and do a great job for you. Give you a fresh viewpoint.”

“But Joshua—”

“I’m so done, Shirene.”

There was a long silence before she finally responded, “If you ever need a job in the industry, I get your first call?”