Three Words: High Fashion Lingerie
Friday nights were lab nights, and lab nights meant a minimum of two hours of sitting at a sewing machine, drafting patterns, or sketching out designs.
Tonight was a design night. It started as a sewing night, but then I stabbed myself three times in the same spot while pinning a zipper in place and quit.
The lab was a big space made small with all the equipment, boxes of fabric, and egos. There were also racks for clothes, mannequins for dressing, and rolls upon rolls of paper for drafting patterns.
I sat at a drafting table, the second one in on the right. The row had eight tables, and for whatever reason I liked the second one from the window. Behind me was the main entrance to the lab; to the left of the door sat four rows of sewing machines. Five machines per row, twenty sewing machines. The sound of twenty sewing machines going at once was not a sound one chose to endure. At least it was a sound I chose to not endure. Hence the Friday night lab, a time slot no one else wanted.
Across from the sewing machines was a wall of floor-to-ceiling cabinets and industrial shelving, everything packed to the gills with fabric. Each box contained a different color, texture, weight, and weave. Distressed and fibrous. Lacy and plush. Silken and stone washed. Everything and anything you could imagine.
I was working on an assignment that had us each pick two terms—a style of clothing and a form of clothing—at random, and then design three pieces. My two terms were intimate apparel and haute couture.
Translation: high-fashion lingerie. I was going for boudoir meets Martha’s Vineyard.
I’d been working on a two-piece brassiere and skirt for almost an hour, lost in my drawing and the soft music coming from my earbuds. The brassiere was two-toned, and the skirt was sheer from waist to midcalf, a thick opaque silk at the hemline. I pushed myself upright, my hands pressed into the table as I stretched my back. Hunching over the table could be murder on my back if I wasn’t careful. I spun the picture to the left and then to the right, getting a look at it from both angles before reaching for my pencil.
I was happy with it, but it was missing something. It needed color, and my pencils were in my bag across the room. I pushed back from the drafting table only to be stopped almost immediately. I turned to look over my shoulder and screamed as my nose collided with a stomach.
I ripped out my earbuds and looked up at the same time, breathless.
“Jesus, how long have you been standing there?” I gasped, my hand on my chest.
“I don’t know, like, five minutes maybe,” Hudson said with a shrug, his hands shoved into his pockets.
“You’ve been standing over me for five minutes?” I wiped my forehead with the inside of my wrist, knowing I had pencil pretty much everywhere else.
“Probably,” he said with a smile. “Actually, maybe longer.”
I looked up at his smiling face. His rosy cheeks and piercing eyes.
“It’s okay, I know what you’re thinking and it’s fine,” he said, finally taking a step back.
“I don’t think you have any idea what I’m thinking,” I said slowly. The truth was I didn’t even know what I was thinking. It was nearly midnight on a Friday night, and I was in a locked building. How the hell had he gotten in? How the hell did he even know where I was?
“Oh, well, never mind, then,” he said as he pushed up onto his toes. Once, twice, three times.
“Did you want something?” I asked, the only question I could seem to get out. There were about a million running through my head, but that was what came out.
“I had something to tell you, and you weren’t answering your phone.”
My phone was across the room, in the same bag as my colored pencils. I hadn’t touched it in hours.
“Who’s celery stalking who now?” I asked as I looked up at him.
He looked back at me with a smile.
“Anytime now, Wes. What did you come over here for?” My stomach tightened. I didn’t wish him around until he was standing in front of me. He was like the answer to a question I didn’t know to ask.
“Oh, right.” He bounced on his toes again once before rocking to his heels. “I came up with code names for us, you know, when we use the transmitter.” He pointed to his ear.
“Code names? What does that mean?”
He laughed as he searched my face. I must have been wearing the thoughts running through my head all over my face. “Code names. Like names to call each other when we use the transmitter.”
I shook my head, still not comprehending what he was trying to say.
“You know, like the Eagle has landed or the Rainbow has left the sky. You know, like that.”
I nodded slowly as I watched his face. He loved that stupid transmitter. The first day he wore it he said it made him feel like a secret service agent and texted me about it the rest of the day. I neglected to tell him that I’d referred to it as the spy kit for years; I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I used to think it was cool, too.
“Oh-kay,” I said, stretching out the word.
“What are you working on?” he asked, leaning over me. His heather charcoal jacket, the one with the stitched brand logo and perpetually popped collar that looked too good on him, brushed against my bare arm.
I held my breath.
“Who’s gonna wear that?” he asked, turning his head toward me, his eyebrow quirked. His face was so close to mine I could feel his breath on my cheek.
“Probably no one,” I whispered. Not because of the words, but because of the person hearing them. “It’s just an assignment.”
“You get to draw bras as homework?”
“Not exactly, but yes,” I said.
“What else do you have?” He leaned over me again, reaching for a drawing I had already completed. “Please tell me you’re going to make this one?”
I closed my eyes, knowing exactly what he was thinking as he tapped his finger against the sketch. It was a one-piece with layered silk at the hips and shoulders, but sheer everywhere else. Small cherry blossoms covered the groin, but only a sprinkling went up the bodice. It was delicate and revealing.
“I think Clément has this. Are you sure this is an original design?”
“Eww!” I said, scrunching my nose. “Some men can absolutely pull off lingerie, but him…” I shook my head as I pictured Clément in this particular article of clothing. Some things you just couldn’t mentally unsee.
He smiled down at me. “You never know.”
“Thanks for the imagery.”
“Anytime.”
“Well, I’m not making any of these. Sorry.” I smiled as his face fell. He took one last look at the sketch before plopping into the chair at the next table. “Disappointed much?” I asked.
“That’s a tragedy,” he said, shaking his head, swiveling back and forth in the chair. “You’re good at this,” he added before pushing off and sending himself into a full twirl.
“So you’ve said.”
“And I’ll keep saying it,” he said pointedly. “Because it’s true.”
I blushed, smiling at my sketches and then at him. “Didn’t you have something you needed to tell me?”
“Oh, yeah!” He planted his feet and came to a halt facing me. “The nicknames. They’re perfect.”
I sighed loudly, exhaling as I slid down the chair and stretched my legs in front of me. I lifted my arms and folded them over my head. This should be good.
“So I was online, and I found a very scientific way to create a code name. I did yours for you.” He smiled.
“How very generous of you…”
“Yours is Pink Peony,” he said with a smug look. “Mine is Sergeant Style.”
A burst of laughter came from somewhere deep inside me that I rarely tapped into. “How scientific could this system be if that is your nickname? Sergeant Style couldn’t be further from an accurate name for you.”
“Edie, it’s a code name. It isn’t supposed to be spot on. That’s the whole point,” he said as he pushed off the floor again and spun once.
“You seriously tried to get ahold of me for an hour about this, and then when you couldn’t, you somehow celery stalked me to a locked building and then got into the building just to tell me this?”
Hudson’s eyes lit up. He shook his head slowly as he watched me. “Edie,” he said as he leaned into me, his face so close I felt his breath on my cheek again. “You have pencil on your forehead.” He brought his thumb to his mouth and then rubbed it just above my left eyebrow.
I froze, my eyes closed briefly. “You did not just lick your thumb and then touch my face.”
“I sure did,” he said, sitting back and sending himself into another spin in the chair. “And I didn’t celery stalk you; I happened to be in the building the other day and happened to walk by this room and then happened to see the sign-up sheet that said you were here on Friday nights. It’s really all very innocent.”
“Oh…” I don’t know if innocent would be the word I would have used. “How very convenient that all those things happened to take place,” I said, my eyes narrowing as I tried to hold in a smile. “But I don’t believe for one second that you came all the way here, at this time of night, just to tell me about those code names.”
I watched him spin in the chair, my insides twisting in all the best ways. It was obvious he just wanted to see me and as much as my insides loved it, my brain was repeating Paris over and over.