Page 38 of Love You, Mean It

“So, uh…sorry things are messy, I didn’t expect anyone.” I glanced over my shoulder as I jiggled the key in my apartment door—it always stuck at first.

“I don’t care, we’re just here to get you ready,” Theo said with a terse nod.

He’d insisted on staying with me at the deli, posting up at a bistro table near the window with his laptop until I’d finished my closing routine. Having him there was vaguely irritating—what was I going to do, try to make a break for it?—but I didn’t have a good reason why he should leave, so I just focused on wrapping meats and salads, slotting things into their walk-in spots, cleaning the slicer, running the sanitizer, mopping the floors, the mundanity of the checklist soothing me…slightly.

But now he was at my apartment. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me when he’d announced this plan that he’d actuallyseeit. I bit my lip as the key finally turned and I pushed open the door.

I crossed to the coat closet—as if I used it on the daily—using the shield of the door to hide my assessing glance. It wasn’tthatmessy, barring a wine glass on the coffee table and a couple coats heaped on the corner of the sewing table, but it felt…dingy.The walls were painted greige before I moved in, and hadn’t been touched since; I could see smudges here and there, scuffs that were suddenly stark against the backdrop of blandness. The smattering of framed show bills and family photos I’d managed to hang before running out of steam somehow just made the walls feel barer. The floors were hardwood, but they were already dull and scuffed when I signed the lease, and the handful of mismatched area rugs I’d thrown around were faded and worn, the ratio of trampling to vacuuming clearly skewing toward “ground-in dirt.” I couldn’t see the kitchen from where I was standing, but I knew the cupboards and countertops hadn’t been updated since the eighties, when ivory melamine with oak trim—curved exaggeratedly to be all space-age and handle-free—was the height of interior design. And then there was the furniture, a combination of hand-me-downs and curbside freebies that not only had no unifying aesthetic, it alllookedlike stuff someone with an actual plan for their place would unload. The only piece that was even remotely nice was the sewing table, an antique trapdoor model Mimi had outfitted with a new machine during my high school years, and which was hidden under my one pile of actual junk.

At least he wouldn’t have to see the state of the bathroom tiles, unless he couldn’t hold it for the twenty minutes I planned to use to get ready. Until I’d moved in, I hadn’t realized they made those seventies-style interlocking-rectangles-and-squares floor tiles in lavender. Though it was distinctly grayed now.

“Can I…take your coat?” I scanned Theo’s face for some sign of what he was thinking. Wordlessly, he slipped it off and handed it to me, leaving the scarf around his neck. “I have wine. And stuff to make Manhattans. Also there should be some Polars in the fridge.” I was babbling, but it helped distract me from the low-level anxiety skittering around my rib cage. Was hejudgingmy place? Why did I care if he was?

“Thanks. I’ll be fine.” He threw me an unreadable look, then settled onto the couch with a creak of the ancient springs. Was it just me, or was he trying to hold himself away from the back? “I’ll wait here, you get ready.”

Grimacing, I hurried off to shower and apply the bare minimum amount of makeup I could get away with. Mascara and a little lip gloss? Maybe some cream blush? Most days I swiped tinted moisturizer over my face and called it good.

By the time I was dressing I felt less tense, more defiant. So what if he didn’t like my place? Not all of us were brought up in literalmansions. Not all of us tried to carve out a personality via the things we adorned our spaces with. And frankly, my focus was on the deli, not an apartment that existed primarily as a place to sleep, eat, and shower. It’s not who Iwas. Theo might model both his wardrobe and his mindset after country club rules, but his “fiancée” definitively did not. Laughing under my breath, I pulled a top out of the closet that I’d only worn once since I moved back from New York. It didn’t fit into my usual routine of deli, family dinners, and the occasional night out somewhere casual. But forPost…

I emerged eighteen minutes after our arrival, skin tight with the need to leave.

“Ready,” I announced. Theo glanced over at me from thecouch—he was more recumbent now, arm stretched along the back as he flicked through his phone. A bemused look stole over his face.

“That’san interesting top.”

“I think so,” I replied tartly.

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“Is that what ‘interesting’ means?”

“In this case, it’s definitely a compliment. Though it’s also quiteattractive,if that makes you feel better.” He approached me, eyes narrowing as he examined the blouse more closely. “Where’d you even get this?”

“Why?” My spine locked in, preparing me for battle.

“Because it’s really exquisite.” His eyes flicked up to mine. “If you’d worn it to dinner Saturday, you could have had Marta taking passive-aggressive swipes at you too. It’s the kind of thing she’d try to buy out at Neiman’s so no one else could manage to re-create herparticularsense of style.”

“Oh, well…I, uh…made it.”

I couldn’t hold his gaze, eyes drifting to the corner of the room as I finished the sentence, my closet-facing bravado withering under actual scrutiny, muscle memory I’d thought had long atrophied kicking in unexpectedly.

I’d never been good at the rejection part during my time in New York, and it never seemed to matter if the director or producer I’d met with was letting me down gently, a string of compliments bookending their eventual “no,” or dripping disdain as they brushed aside my portfolio of sketches and handful of sample garments; I felt the exact same blend of shame and despair every time I was told my workisn’t what we’re looking foror that theyneed someone with more experience. How can yougetany experience if you keep making your way down the ladder and even the scrappier, altogether unglamorous productions won’t hire you? At least toward the end, when the number of offs-Broadway grew too high to bother counting, I’d more often get the excuse ofDon’t have the time and budget for custom costumesthan an objection to my vision orqualifications. Though if that had really beentrue,my protests that my way was actually cheaper, and that I’d gladly make up the difference by taking a lower fee if my budgets were wrong, should have worked.

The blouse I was wearing was from the middle of my extended Failure Period, when I still believed I might eventually land a truly impressive gig if I just showed them howrightI was. I’d made it for a revival ofThe Importance of Being Earnest,one of the seemingly endless string of shows that opted to modernize the physical trappings—set and costume design, the occasional place reference—while otherwise keeping the book intact. I’d never really understood that impulse—if they’re speaking Shakespearean English or reaching for smelling salts every few scenes, a couple leather coats won’t make it feel supercontemporary—but others seemed to, and I was distinctly in the category of beggars, not choosers.

I usually didn’t make costumes for the show I was hoping to get hired onto—even I knew that was too eager—but I’d been so enchanted with the design I’d come up with for Gwendolyn, the shallow, appearances-obsessed lead, that I couldn’t help myself. The blouse was closely fitted, with a small peplum, modified leg-of-mutton sleeves, a high neckline, and explosions of lace around the cuffs and collar, thick swaths of ribbon fixing the frills in place. The bodice and sleeves were a stunning peacock-green moiré sateen, the lace was a gentle tea-stained color, the ribbons a deep navy, and the buttons and seaming were teal to complete the color palette. I wanted to evoke the Victorian era in the shape and Gwendolyn’s personality in the colors, and I’d spent an entire week of late nights and early mornings—really all the hours I wasn’t waitressing—perfecting it.

If I’d been hired, the blouse might have been altered to fit one of the actresses and wound up in the theater company’s wardrobe closet, but I’d never made it anywhere close. The director only met me as a formality; he’d already agreed to hire the producer’s niece, a recent RISD graduate, to keep the relationship sweet.

Instead, it remained perfectly tailored to me—years of sewingin high school had given me an instinctive ability to pattern for my own measurements—and had hung in my closet ever since. The one time I’d worn it out in New York, for my roommate’s birthday, the compliments I’d received felt like a gut punch—if it was so stunning, why hadn’t it worked? If I was actually good at this, why couldn’t I land a single fucking job? And my life in Milborough was much more suited to my never-ending parade of reworked T-shirts and off-the-rack jeans—with the occasional addition of a vintage look I’d tailored to fit better for the vanishingly rare events I attended—than to a highly structural sateen blouse. That wasn’t who Iwashere—even if it had come out of my head and I still went a little fluttery when I fingered the fabrics—but I couldn’t convince myself to part with it, still too proud, deep down, of the beautiful thing I’d created. Letting it go would have felt likereallygiving up on the dream I’d known for some time I wasn’t going back to. Like giving up on some vital part of myself.

“You’re kidding,” Theo said, taking the cuff between his long, slim fingers, frank disbelief on his face. “You madethis?”

“I make most of my clothes. Or at least rework them. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“I remember you doing that in high school, but I didn’t realize…” He looked up, a slight flush in his cheeks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I had no idea you were thisgood.”

I exhaled a laugh.

---