Read Chapter 16: BETWEEN

The collection began with twelve looks and became thirty-two.

Then twenty-six.

Then thirty.

By August, Camille dreamed in fabric shortages.

Between had to do too many things at once. It had to prove Bellwether could make desirable clothes. It had to show continuity without looking archival. It had to photograph well, sell well, fit production capacity, impress editors, reassure the board, and frighten Northstar.

Julian called that list "a normal season with unusually explicit anxiety."

Camille called him insufferable.

They worked anyway.

The strongest look was number seven: a fluid ivory dress beneath a cropped navy jacket with exaggerated interior seams. The jacket looked formal until opened, revealing unfinished silk facings intentionally left visible.

"Too literal," Julian said at first.

"You designed half of it."

"I can dislike my own ideas."

"An advanced American skill."

The weakest was number nineteen.

Everyone knew it.

A pale green suit hung on the form like an apology.

Mara stared at it.

"Maybe it needs accessories."

"It needs burial," Camille said.

Julian removed it from the line.

No one objected.

At fittings, their old competition returned in useful form.

Camille pushed for movement.

Julian pushed for line.

She cut sleeves wider.

He narrowed shoulders.

They no longer fought to win. They fought to locate the garment neither could see alone.

That distinction changed everything.

One night, near eleven, Owen the textile designer watched them revise a coat.

"This is disgusting," he said.

Camille looked up. "What?"

"You two used to be entertaining. Now you finish each other's complaints."

Julian pinned the collar.

"We can fire him."

"I'm not sure either of us has that authority."

"Tragic."

Owen left.

Camille stepped back from the coat.

"Do we?"

"Do we what?"

"Finish each other's complaints."

Julian considered.

"Only the predictable ones."

She threw a pin cushion at him.

He caught it.

The spring preview would be held not at the flagship but in Bellwether's old cutting floor on Thirty-Eighth Street, a space the company had not used since manufacturing moved out of Manhattan in the 1990s.

The room had scarred wooden floors and huge industrial windows.

Camille loved it immediately.

"It smells haunted," Mara said.

"Perfect," Camille replied.

They decided against a traditional runway. Models would move through the space among cutting tables displaying patterns, historical pieces, and new construction samples. Buyers could see the garments up close.

Leonard hated the idea.

"Runways create spectacle."

"Spectacle disappears," Camille said. "We need proof."

"Proof of what?"

"That the clothes come from knowledge Northstar cannot reproduce by licensing a logo."

Julian supported her.

The budget barely passed.

Then, two weeks before the preview, a production crisis hit.

The Italian mill supplying their navy wool reported a machinery failure. Half the order would be three weeks late.

Three weeks after the preview.

Camille read the email at six in the morning.

By six fifteen, she was at Julian's apartment on the Upper West Side.

He opened the door wearing sweatpants and one sock.

"This had better be fatal."

"Wool."

He stared.

"Come in."

They spent the morning calling mills.

No substitute matched the hand.

Changing fabric would require refitting eleven garments.

At nine, Julian said, "We cut the navy story."

"No."

"We don't have cloth."

"We have sample yardage."

"Enough for four looks."

"Then four looks become the story."

He looked at her.

"Everything else shifts."

"Yes."

"It destroys the color rhythm."

"Then make a new rhythm."

Julian paced.

Camille waited.

This was the moment she understood something about him.

He was not afraid of change.

He was afraid of change made without enough thought.

She had once mistaken the difference for conservatism.

Finally he stopped.

"Charcoal after navy. Ivory after charcoal. Then the rust."

Camille saw it.

"Yes."

"Four navy looks only."

"Yes."

"And no one tells Leonard until we have a revised line sheet."

She smiled.

"Now you are learning."

For the next ten hours, they rebuilt the show.

At seven that evening, they sat on Julian's kitchen floor eating takeout from cartons because the table was covered in fabric.

Camille leaned against a cabinet.

"This is romantic."

"I own chairs."

"Unavailable chairs."

He handed her noodles.

On the counter, his phone displayed an unread email from Halden.

Camille saw the sender.

She did not ask.

Julian noticed her noticing.

"They want an answer after the preview."

She nodded.

"Thank you for telling me."

"Growth."

"Painful?"

"Unbearable."

She smiled.

Outside the window, summer rain began against the city.

Inside, navy wool covered half the apartment.

Camille thought this might be what belonging looked like before it became permanent: not certainty, but choosing to remain in the room where the problem was.

The night before the spring preview, Camille could not sleep.

At two eleven she stood in the kitchen wearing one of Julian's shirts and stared at the line sheet on the refrigerator.

Julian appeared behind her.

"You know looking at it won't change tomorrow."

"I am checking."

"For what?"

"Mutiny."

He opened the refrigerator.

"Do we have eggs?"

"How can you eat?"

"Years of training."

They made scrambled eggs at two in the morning.

Camille sat on the counter while Julian cooked.

"This is not how I imagined New York," she said.

"What did you imagine?"

"Lofts. Taxis. Very thin women smoking outside galleries."

"Accurate in 1997."

"I was eight in 1997."

He handed her a plate.

"What else?"

"Important dinners. Dramatic success. Maybe a doorman."

"You have a broken buzzer in Greenpoint."

"Reality has been disrespectful."

Julian leaned against the opposite counter.

"What did you imagine Paris would be when you were a child?"

"Home."

"That's not an answer."

"It is the only city children don't imagine if they already live there."

He considered this.

Camille took a bite.

"My father used to take me to the Marché Saint-Pierre for fabric scraps. Not because he understood fashion. He liked bargaining."

"You don't talk about him much."

"Neither do you."

"Fair."

She looked down at the plate.

"He thought design was impractical. But he kept every drawing I made."

"What did he do?"

"Electrical work. Small contractor. He could repair almost anything and believed paying someone else was a moral failure."

Julian smiled.

"When did he die?"

"When I was nineteen. Cancer. Not fast."

She rarely described it.

The final year of her father's life had made time feel both precious and unbearable. Every plan became conditional. Every departure seemed selfish.

Julian set down his fork.

"I'm sorry."

Camille nodded.

"For a long time after, I thought ambition was disrespectful. My mother had lost her husband. I wanted to leave Marseille, then Paris, then eventually France. Every departure looked like choosing myself over someone."

"And now?"

"Now I think staying out of guilt is not a gift."

Julian was quiet.

She realized the sentence applied to him too.

Bellwether.

His father.

Halden.

Neither said it.

At three, they went back to bed.

Camille slept.

In the morning, when chaos began, she remembered that conversation only once—when she saw Julian across the cutting floor, steady in a crisis and still free to leave it.

Love, she thought, was perhaps not asking someone to stay.

It was making sure they knew departure would not erase what had been real.