Chapter Three — Proximity
639 Words
She became the official stylist for Hale Media's talent roster within two weeks. Raymond's arrangement, presented to her as opportunity.
The work was genuine.
She was extraordinary at it had always been and she threw herself into it with the complete focus she brought to everything, because complete focus left no room for things she didn't want to feel.
She saw Damien three times a week. Sometimes more.
He was not what the file said.
The file said cold. He was precise. The file said ruthless. He was direct sometimes uncomfortably so but directness is not the same thing as ruthlessness and she had met enough of both to know the difference. The file said no known weaknesses.
The file had missed:
That he brought coffee to the building's night security in a thermos every Friday. Not sent brought, himself, in the elevator, at eleven pm., because he worked late and felt it was important to not be the kind of person who didn't notice the people around them.
That he had a battered copy of a poetry collection on his desk that he'd clearly read many times, the spine cracked in three places, certain pages folded at the corners.
That he had a scar along his left collarbone from the accident — she had seen it once, briefly, when his shirt had shifted — and he touched it sometimes without seeming to notice.
That when he looked at her really looked, the way he did when she said something that surprised him she felt it in places that were deeply inconvenient for a woman on a mission.
— ✦ —
The first time it almost became something, they were alone in his office at nine p.m. on a Thursday.
She was reviewing fabric samples for an upcoming press tour. He was working at his desk. The city was a circuit board of light below them and the office was quiet in the specific way of rooms where two people are both pretending not to be aware of each other.
"Can I ask you something?" he said, without looking up from his screen.
"You can ask."
"Why styling?" He looked up then. "You have the mind of a strategist. The observation skills of something considerably more than a stylist.
Why this?"
She kept her eyes on the fabric sample. "I like translating people."
"Translating."
"Everyone is trying to say something. Most people don't know how to say it visually. I figure out what they mean and I say it for them." She set the sample down. "It's like — learning someone's first language."
He was quiet for a moment.
"That's the most precise description of empathy I've ever heard someone give," he said, "while making it sound entirely technical."
She looked up.
He was looking at her with that expression
the one she had filed under complications and kept finding new subcategories for.
"I'm not particularly technical," she said.
"No," he agreed. "You're not. That's what makes it interesting."
The air between them did something she didn't have a category for.
She looked back at the fabric sample. Her pulse was doing something unprofessional.
"I should go," she said. "Early fitting tomorrow."
"Celeste."
She looked up.
"I don't know what this is," he said. Quietly. Directly. No performance she had come to understand that he was constitutionally incapable of performance. "What happens in this room when it's just us. But I want you to know I'm not I'm not unaware of it."
She held his gaze for three seconds.
"I know," she said.
She left before either of them could do anything about it.
In the elevator, alone, she pressed her back against the wall and closed her eyes and breathed through her nose and told herself, firmly, that she was a professional.
Her hands were not entirely steady.
- Writer
