“He’s awesome. I freaking love his bald head. And he has the longest, curliest eyelashes, but strong hands, and god, could he kiss.”
“Nice,” she said, drawing out the word. “Ya kissed him. That’s awesome.”
A heat washed over my face. Was I blushing in front of Fantine? What the hell was I embarrassed about? Or was it just excitement?
Satisfied that I’d gotten a kiss out of the date, Fantine had happily returned to flipping the TV channels, looking for something more interesting than me. Which wasn’t saying much.
So, I forged ahead. I’d have her full and undivided attention momentarily.
Three…two…one…
“I talked to Marlon a bit about the sharing thing.”
She didn’t even look away from the TV.
“Yeah? What about it?”
When I didn’t continue, she stopped flipping and placed the remote on the coffee table in front of her.
“How does it work?”
That was a good question.
“Like they all date one woman at the same time. Marlon said it was hot as hell.”
“Wow. Just wow. Better than a threesome. A five-some! You’ll have a harem of good-looking men. I mean, shit, they’re male models. You just hit the man jackpot.”
I’d hit on something. Wasn’t sure what, though.
* * *
After spending the rest of the weekend sacked on the couch with Fantine, watching one Netflix show after the other while I sketched new designs, I was raring to go to work Monday morning. I hadn’t felt that way in a while. Maybe I was getting my mojo back?
But before I did, I pulled out my sewing machine and set it up in place of the two-person kitchenette table we only ever used as a dumping ground. I ran my fingers over my prized possession; a used Swiss model I’d scraped together the money to buy. I loved it with every inch of my being. Because we had a couple industrial machines at the office, I normally used those when I needed to sew something quickly. But what I was planning to work on now had to be done in the privacy of my own home.
We always had extra, unused fabric at the studio left over from whatever the sample sewers were working on. We ended up with huge quantities of fabric sometimes, which we would donate to the area fashion schools, unless someone in the office wanted it. In fact, that was pretty much how I ended up working for Forest—I loved his men’s wear fabrics and asked for an internship. One thing led to another and boom, I was in. Forest gave me a chance, and even though I was disappointed in him because of recent developments, I still had a soft spot for him.
So my plan was to be completely silent about my at-home projects and draw no notice to myself with the fabrics I was allowed to take home. I mean, if someone were to ask, I could always fib and say I was working on something for a friend—which was kind of true because I always made my friends test my designs. But I was keeping my cards close to the vest from now on.
The old confidence was seeping back, thank god. Not that I’d had doubts about my design abilities, no. It was more like, was Iback to getting shit on by life or was all that in the past? That was haunting the hell out of me. But I’d taken that unfortunate line of thinking and squashed it like an ugly bug in the middle of the living room floor. Hell, no. I wouldn’t go back to where I’d started. I just wouldn’t. Kid in the foster system, bounced from one house to another, not really wanted by anyone, told I’d not amount to anything. Well, that might have been a person I once knew.
But it was one I didn’t know any more.