I cleared my throat.
“Actually, the position isn’t with Lorena. It’s with me. Lorena is ill and I’m stepping in to help with the company for the time being. I’m hiring an assistant to help me for a few weeks.”
I was feeding her a lie, but the truth was too personal to explain at the moment. The paparazzi were already hounding Lorena’s every move and it was my job to protect her as much as possible.
Josephine’s red lips formed a small “o”.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, nodding and brushing a strand of light brown hair away from her face.
Was she disappointed she wouldn’t be working with Lorena? I couldn’t tell.
“You can retract your application if you’ve changed your mind,” I offered with a quirked brow.
Her eyes widened and she reached out to touch my forearm. I ignored the desire to wrap my hand around hers.
“No! No. I would still like to be considered for the position,” she reiterated. She stared down at her hand on my forearm as if to nail the point home, then quickly pulled it away, clasping it with her other hand in front of her trim waist.
“But now that I have to interview with you this just seems…”
She hesitated and I smiled.
“A bit awkward?”
She laughed. “Well, yes.”
I watched her try to collect her thoughts. The light tan covering her clear complexion made her bright eyes stand out even more. The freckles dotting the tops of her cheeks were a refreshing sight.
I smiled. “Don’t worry about it. I can hardly fault someone for showing initiative when opportunity strikes.”
“Okay well, um, I hope to hear from you about an interview,” she smiled. “But y’know, don’t feel like you have to give me one because of tonight, and me now practically begging for it.”
I choked back a laugh.
Her eyes widened.
“That didn’t sound right, I admit,” she laughed and covered her face for a moment.
I wanted to bail her out of the hole she was digging, but it was too damn cute to watch her squirm.
“Let’s just ignore the fact that I’ve made a fool of myself, all right? I’ll just walk away and you can pretend that I was very charming and put together.”
I bent to catch her eyes and smiled.
“I assure you that there won’t be any favoritism during the interviews. I’ll evaluate everyone with a clean slate.”
She smiled. “Okay good!”
Her gaze darted out to the party and then back to me. “Well, it was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Lefray, and I really hope your sister gets well soon.”
She backed up a step, taking her sweet scent with her.
“I look forward to the possibility of maybe hearing from you about the interview,” she said coyly.
With that, she nodded and spun on her heels. She was swallowed up by the crowd within a few moments, and it wasn’t until she fully disappeared that I realized I’d been watching her walk away, focused on the curve of her hips in her red gown.
Chapter Four
J O S E P H I N E
An hour after I’d returned to my apartment, I was still wearing my rented designer gown as I browsed Facebook on my computer. My hair had mostly fallen out of my up-do (it was more of an up-don’t by that point) and my thrifted Jimmy Choos were lying on the floor beside my coffee table after I’d haphazardly kicked them off when I’d gotten home.
Josephine: I made such a fool of myself tonight.
Lily: Spill. It’s probably worse than you think it is.
Josephine: I told my could-be-future-boss that he didn’t have to give me an interview just because I was “practically begging for it”.
Lily: So…you came onto him. Bold move, Casanova.
I thought back to the way Julian had tried to conceal his laughter. It hadn’t worked. His dimples were there, the smile was there, and I knew he’d caught the unintentional innuendo.
Josephine: Oh god. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m going to bed.
I went through my nighttime routine, finally peeling off the red gown in exchange for a soft nightshirt. I kept my makeup on as I brushed my teeth, admiring the way the Nordstrom counter girl had applied my eye shadow earlier in the night. The gold tones made my green eyes pop and it was a pity to have to wipe it off.
Once I’d checked that my one tiny window was locked and my apartment door was double bolted, I sauntered over to my bed and pulled my phone from where I’d set it to charge. I already knew there were two voicemails waiting for me. I’d ignored the calls earlier in the day, praying they’d both disappear by the time I got around to checking them.
Unfortunately, they were both still there waiting for me.
The first message was from Janine, my loan adviser and least favorite person in the world. I pressed play and stared up at my ceiling.
“Hello Ms. Keller, this is Janine Buchanan from Forest Financial. I’m calling because we didn’t receive your student loan payment last month. This is the second month in a row that we’ve had a late payment from you and I want to remind you that one more missed payment means you risk defaulting. Also, please be advised that after a third late payment we will have no choice but to hire a collection agency and notify the credit bureau—”
I hung up. Ms. Buchanan wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t heard before. Yes, my payments were late, yes I was dangerously close to defaulting on my loan, but unless I could start paying them back with Monopoly money, I was shit out of luck. I could either pay rent or pay my loans, and being homeless in NYC wasn’t cute.
My phone automatically started playing the second voicemail message, and as terrible as Janine’s had been, that one was far worse.
“Josephine, this is your mother.” As if I wouldn’t recognize her voice. “Listen, I know you aren’t going to take this well but I just have to tell you one more time. It’s my job as a mother to make sure you’re making good decisions and I can’t help but feel like you’re headed down the wrong path. Your father and I have talked and we think you should come back home to Texas. You’ve only been in New York for two weeks. No one will even have to know that you left. We’ll help with your loans and you can get a job in town. I’m not sure what you could do with that fashion degree of yours, but we’ll figure it out. I was talking to Beatrice when I was shopping and she said her sister is the manager at the TJ Maxx—”
I pressed end on the message before it was over and dropped my phone onto my bed. Throughout high school, I’d overheard hushed conversations between my parents that often followed the same pattern: my dad would worry that I was being bullied at school for the way I dressed, then my mom would do her best to settle his nerves, but nothing helped. “Why can’t she just be like the other girls?” might not have ever been said aloud, but it was the undertone of most of my adolescent years.
My parents had a way of cowing me so easily, so swiftly, that for a moment I almost considered moving home. How easy would it be to live with them and have them help me with my loans? How easy would it be to give up on living my dream in New York City for a quiet life in Dullsville, Texas? Sure, I’d managed to find a tiny apartment, but how long would I be able to afford the rent? How long could I pretend that anything was going according to plan?
I let the nagging self-doubt sink in. If my parents didn’t believe I could make it, then how could I believe in myself? After all, New York wasn’t for everyone. Right?
But then I remembered Julian and the promise of a job interview and I decided that first thing in the morning I was going to march down to the Lorena Lefray offices and demand an interview.
I had nothing to lose, and I knew no one needed the position as badly as I did.
Chapter Five
J U L I A N
As soon as I returned from the gala, I ripped off my bowtie and tuxedo jacket and threw them on the desk beside my computer. My hotel room was dark, but I didn’t bother flipping on any ligh
ts. I was thirty floors up and there was enough light seeping in from the city that I could see just fine.
I fixed a drink from the mini bar and settled in by the window, staring down at Central Park. I’d hated hotel rooms for years. I’d had to travel a lot in my twenties, helping to expand the Lefray family companies to the global scale they now enjoyed. At thirty-one, all I wanted was to be back home in Boston in the bed I’d picked out and far, far away from the realities I now faced.
The week before, my baby sister had finally entered herself into a rehab facility after years of trying to fight her addictions alone. It was a bold move, one that the media were already suspicious of, but if she had any desire to see her thirtieth birthday, it was the only option she had. I’d promised her I would step in and keep the ship on course for the time being. She had detailed plans to overhaul the entire place, to get rid of the toxic employees and the clock-punching deadbeats while she had the strength to do it. That was where I came in. Unfortunately, that meant I was in New York, holed up in the penthouse suite of some hotel, alone and tired. I loved the power and responsibility, but I resented the monotony of corporate politics. It reminded me too much of my family.
My father died young in a car crash, and neither my sister nor I trusted my mother with the responsibilities of running Lorena’s company, which conveniently left everything on my shoulders.
I took a sip of my drink and mulled over the list of people I still knew in the city other than my family.
There was Dean, an old college buddy who’d settled down in New York after school, but I couldn’t call him at midnight just to announce that I was back in the city for the foreseeable future. I made a mental note to give him a call the next day just as my computer dinged with an incoming email.
I turned toward my desk and contemplated waking it up. Opening my laptop at midnight was a slippery slope—as with any workaholic—but I was far past the point of pretending I had any work-life balance. Answering emails helped me put my world in order, and if anything, I’d sleep easier knowing I had everything prepared to begin work the following morning.
I pulled out the chair from behind the hotel desk and took a seat. I had twenty-two unopened emails, most of which were filled with resumes and cover letters pertaining to the executive assistant position I’d posted around the web earlier that day. I’d posted on the Columbia and NYU alumni pages and I knew I’d have a number of applicants more than interested in the job.
An image of Josephine flitted through my mind. I’d promised her that all the applicants would be judged fairly, but the memory of how she’d looked in that red dress would be impossible to forget. Even still, I knew how to conduct a professional interview. Just because she was beautiful didn’t mean she was the person most suited for the job. If anything, it’d make my life a lot easier if she wasn’t a qualified applicant.
Curiosity won out.
I scrolled down the list of emails until I found one sent from
[email protected] She’d sent her resume about an hour after I’d first posted about the job.
I scanned her resume, attempting to stay as impartial as possible. She’d done her undergrad at a small fashion school in Texas with a focus on fashion marketing and branding. She’d interned for a few local fashion brands while in school and had started a blog a few years before blogging had really caught on everywhere. I clicked the link to her site and smiled at the name. What Jo Wore was a simple website. It was user-friendly with a clean layout and professional graphics.
My interest was piqued as I scrolled down and realized her last post had been about the gala.
What Jo Wore
Post #1248: You’ll never get anywhere by staying in your comfort zone.
Comments: 34 Likes: 309
Tonight, ladies and lads, I will be attending the New York Fashion Gala. That’s right, little ol’ Josephine Keller from way down yonder in Texas (that’s the wild wild West for those of you who’ve never ventured past Fifth Avenue) will be rubbing elbows with New York’s elite. I rented a gown from Rent the Runway. I highly recommend using this site if you’re someone like me and have designer tastes on a beggar’s budget.
I promise to give you all the juicy details about the event as soon as I wake up tomorrow, but in the meantime, here are the top three trends I’m seeing around New York as of late:
Chunky overalls. I’m serious, people. Moms everywhere are pairing them with white converse and Berkin Bags. I’ve linked a few pairs below. BEWARE: as with all ‘kitschy’ trends, this can go south, fast. Be sure you aren’t pairing your overalls with any of the following: chunky tennis shoes, baggy t-shirts, or—god forbid—a fanny pack.
Bright lip stains. (I’m wearing this red shade tonight. It’s a little bold, but I want to stand out.)
Big, loud statement necklaces. Pair ’em with a jersey dress or layer them over a J. Crew tee. These necklaces will be trending for multiple seasons, I guarantee it.
All right, I have to go get ready for the gala! I’m already nervous, but I’m going to think back to the title of this blog post every time I feel like giving up: you’ll never get anywhere by staying in your comfort zone!!!
Until tomorrow,
XOJO
I was impressed enough by her wit to browse through a few more pages of her archived posts. Her writing was approachable and real. Most of the women who worked in New York fashion would never admit to thrift shopping, but Josephine had a freshness about her that her readers seemed to appreciate and connect with.
After scrolling through a few pages, I clicked back to my email and attempted to run through a few more resumes. There were plenty of well-qualified applicants, lots of graduates from Parsons and FIT. There were applicants who had interned with Tommy Hilfiger and Givenchy, but as I finished off my drink, I was still thinking of Josephine. She had half the work experience of some of the other applicants, but I found myself already imagining her in the position. She and I could work well together. She’d make me laugh. Wasn’t that important? And sure, maybe I was also craving another glimpse of those lips. Every man has his weakness.
Before closing down my computer for the night, I opened a new email window and started typing away before common sense set in.
Subject: Interview Request from Julian Lefray
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