We were one hour into the final, and my eyes met Hudson’s for the third time. He openly watched me. Not like he hadn’t been watching me these past few weeks anyway, but seeing him watch me now made me sad. He was worried about me, that much was clear.
I didn’t regret the time we’d spent goofing around instead of studying. What I did regret was allowing myself to be distracted from the beginning. Hudson was a distraction. At the end of the day, that was what our relationship boiled down to. Maybe I pursued him on purpose. Self-sabotage. If I failed, I could blame him. If Paris didn’t work out that summer, I could blame him.
“Il vous reste trente minutes, mesdames et messieurs.”
Dr. Clément’s voice came through my earpiece, startling the crap out of me. His announcement that we had thirty minutes left to complete the exam initiated nearly half the class to rise from their seats, declaring silently that they were already done.
Except this part of test taking was never a silent declaration. I heard everything. Every chair scrape. Every shuffled paper. Every whispered how do you think you did. This very moment was the exact reason I used to take my tests in a separate location in high school.
I put my pen down and waited. There was no sense in trying to finish until the herd had handed in their booklets and left. I looked at Hudson. He was watching me again as he bit his bottom lip.
I couldn’t focus on him right now. I had to focus on the rest of my test. I had to get as many of the multiple-choice questions correct as possible.
“You have five minutes to finish up, Edie.”
Dr. Clément’s voice was soft in my ear. I looked up. Why was he only addressing me?
Oh.
I was the only person still in the 100-seat lecture hall. And I still had an entire page to go. I was done for. This was over. I’d be back in this room in the fall.
I’d kept up the best I could during the listening section. I’d gotten through the vocab and the fill-in-the-blanks and even the adjectives, but the reading section was killing me. The reading section was about to do me in.
I breathed slowly. I still had five minutes. A lot could happen in five minutes. I could get something done in five minutes, get through the rest of this test.
I stared at the few words I’d written on the page. It wasn’t nearly enough. It wasn’t quality and it wasn’t enough.
“You can do this,” Hudson whispered in my ear. “Forget about the time, and focus.”
I shook my head, my eyes on the nearly blank page. I wasn’t going to make it.
“No to which?” he asked. “The you can do this or the forget about the time, and focus?”
I looked up at him. Actually looked at him for the first time in over three weeks. I looked at the way he watched me. The way his eyes told me I could do it. How he genuinely wanted me to beat this test.
“Both,” I said aloud, closing my test and sinking my head back into my hands.
“Edie, don’t—” he started, but I pulled the earpiece before he could finish.
* * *
The exam scores wouldn’t be posted until midnight. I checked my phone for the ninth time, and only five minutes had passed. I still had two hours to go.
“I really want to see The Dress,” Serena nagged for the third time. “Can we just go see The Dress?”
I stared at the Word document on my laptop. I had an essay to write, three casual beachwear outfit designs to finish, and the last chapter of a book for British Lit. Just because French was done and over with didn’t mean I was in the clear for all my other classes, but going to visit my dress had enough pull for me to forget about everything else.
Serena sat on her desk, her legs swinging as she watched me.
I sighed as I closed my laptop.
“Yay!” she cheered as she hopped off her desk. She ferociously shoved her feet into her boots. “Come on, come on.”
“Oh my God.” I laughed as I slipped into my Keds and pulled on my wool coat. “You are out of control right now.”
“I can’t wait another second to see this dress, Edie. It’s all you’ve talked about for, like, ever. There are sketches of it all around the room. You even talk about it in your sleep.” She opened the door and waved me through.
“I’m sure I don’t talk about it in my sleep.”
“You definitely do,” she said as she shoved me lightly with her shoulder.
* * *
It was Grecian. This was in all senses of the term navy blue, but as it moved in the light you saw hints of teal and bronze. It was modeled after one I’d seen on a beautiful actress at an awards show when I was ten. She’d worn it with such grace that I knew I had to have it, and at that time fashion wasn’t a living, breathing thing for me. I kept that image in my mind anyway, storing it until I decided to look it up on the internet when I’d finally dived headfirst into patterning and sewing.
The entire dress was draped, which was a style of construction that meant I’d spent hours standing at the dress form, moving and shifting fabric. Pinning and unpinning. Pricking myself and trying to keep drops of blood off the fabric.
Instead of a traditional belt made of woven rope, this had a stylized structured belt. Cinched at the waist and split up the side seams to form the straps—bridle straps, similar to the way a shoulder holster for a gun would look. The top of the bodice then connected to the straps at the center of the sternum. This formed a soft diamond shape to complete the look of the front of the bodice. It had a plunging back, which meant my back was completely bare. Any lower and the top of my butt crack might have shown.
“It truly looks beautiful,” Serena said as she stood a few steps back over my left shoulder.
The Dress was done and I couldn’t believe it. She’d asked to be there for the grand reveal, which was perfect because I needed someone to zip me up. Double plus, I needed a distraction from the two-hour wait I had until my final grade for French would be posted. Triple plus, Serena was still taking pictures for my portfolio.
“It’s certainly been a labor of love,” I said, making eye contact with her in the full-length mirror. “You like the color?”
“I love the color,” Serena said, taking a step closer to me. “You know that.”
It was a conversation we’d had over and over last year when I was choosing the fabric. I’d dragged Serena into the lab and made her look through boxes and boxes of fabrics. She wanted to see me in something closer to the original color, something in the green family, but once I saw this navy I was sold.
I ran my fingers over the centerpiece, the belt, iridescent in whites, purples, blues. It was stiff, the backed Lycra smooth against my fingertips. The individual pieces affixed to gold cording.
“I love this texture, too,” she said, taking another step toward me. She ran her fingers over the strap, starting at my shoulder and then down my shoulder blade, stopping at my side. “It looks like feathers, or snakeskin, or, I don’t know … a fancy purse.”
I laughed, looking down at my bare toes as The Dress pooled around my feet. It was a bit long, made to be worn with high heels, but of all the fashion choices in all the world, high heels were my least favorite. I wiggled my toes before meeting Serena’s eyes in the mirror. I wasn’t supposed to be barefoot in the shop; it was a rule. Professor Sheelan didn’t want to hear anyone complaining about stepping on a stray straight pin or sharp button or, God help you, a four-inch safety pin.
Serena touched my shoulder again, her fingertip gliding against the strap. “These look like wings, you know.” She smiled. “Like angel wings.”
“I was hoping they would,” I said, delighted as I pulled my shoulder up and pressed my cheek into the right one. “I just can’t believe it’s finished.”
“I can. You’ve worked your butt off on this,” Serena said as her phone chimed across the room. She moved toward her bag. “I know this semester was hard for you, and you spent a lot of time doubting yourself, but just look at yourself now. Look at what you made…”
She trailed off as she checked her phone. Her thumbs tapped quickly before she looked back up at me.
“The next time something is hard, the next time you find yourself thinking you are anything other than completely brilliant, remember this moment, right now.” She pointed at me, her cell in her hand. It chimed again. “Remember the way you feel having accomplished this. Forget the fact that you look like a friggin’ supermodel right now.” She laughed as she checked her phone. “Just remember that this is your calling.”
“Thank you,” I said with a nod.
Serena’s phone chimed again.
“Something wrong?” I asked as I watched her check her phone for the third time. Her eyebrows knitted together.
“Um,” she said, her eyes on the phone as her thumbs tapped. “It’s Hudson.” Her eyes slowly met mine in the mirror.
“What about Hudson?” I asked, bristling slightly. I gathered the skirt with both hands and walked toward the dressing room. “I’m going to need you to unzip me.”
“There’s no time,” she said, her eyes full of urgency. “We have to go.”
Have to go? I repeated in my head.
“What do you mean we have to go?” I dropped the skirt and moved toward her.
“He needs us,” she said, holding the phone up, the screen lit, but I couldn’t read anything written. “We have to go.”
“He needs us for what?” I said, feeling a panic rise inside me. “Is he okay? Oh my God…”
“I think he’s okay, for now. But he needs us, like, now. Apparently, he’s been texting you, too.”
I touched my sides, feeling for my phone in the pockets I’d hidden in the layers of silk and crepe. It was a personal touch, something, stylistically, I believed should be built into every dress. Men got to have pockets at all times; why couldn’t women?
I pulled my phone out, and sure enough, I had eight missed texts.
HUDSON: Meet me at Fay. Asap
HUDSON: I need you.
HUDSON: I mean, I need your help.
HUDSON: Please, Edie. Pleeeaaasssseeee.
HUDSON: S’il vous plaît
HUDSON: Por favor
HUDSON: Bitte
HUDSON: Per favore
I looked at Serena. I rolled my eyes with a sigh. There was no way this was an emergency. I knew Hudson well enough to know this was something else. Part of me wanted to play along because clearly he was planning something, him and Serena.
“Seriously?” I asked.
“What did he say to you?” she asked, keeping up the facade of urgency.
I listed my head and put my hands on my hips. “This is obviously some ploy the two of you are in on,” I said, waving one hand in her direction before placing it back on my hip.
“Edie, I don’t think this is some ploy,” Serena said, holding her phone up again, the screen lit, but again I couldn’t read anything on it. “Can you just get your shoes on, please?”
I sighed as I turned from her. “I’m going to change.”
“Edie—”
I turned back toward her, the tone of her voice catching me in the stomach. Maybe this was serious. I searched her eyes, examined her body language, looked at the grip her hand had on the cell phone.
“You’re serious?” I asked.
She nodded, motioning toward my shoes, which sat by the door.
“It’s freezing out. I’m going to freeze to death if I go out like this,” I said as I moved toward the door, my dress fisted in each hand. I slipped into my yellow Keds, cringing at the look of this dress with those shoes.
“Here,” Serena said, tossing me my cranberry peacoat.
“You can’t be serious,” I said, holding it in one hand while the other held the skirt off the floor.
“You can’t be serious,” she said back, knowing full well that my issue was with the clashing colors.
I heaved a great sigh as I pulled the coat on, flipping up the collar to protect from the wind I knew would immediately freeze both of us.
We scurried across campus to the science building, a building that we both prayed had the heat on full blast.
Serena in sweatpants tucked into sheepskin boots in the traditional tan color everyone had and me in a dress better suited for a gala than for a hike across campus in the wind and rain. We looked ridiculous.
“Why Fay Hall?” I asked as we stepped into the building.
“How am I supposed to know?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair, trying to get out the knots the wind had caused.
I did the same as I looked around the building. I hadn’t been in there since first semester freshman year when I took the obligatory science class for nonscience majors.
I unbuttoned my coat and fished my phone out of my dress pocket.
ME: D’accord. We’re here.
I looked up at Serena to see her staring at me. She took a step toward me as my phone buzzed in my hand.
HUDSON: 4th floor. Room 414.
“Fourth floor,” I said, my eyes on the phone and then up to her. She was standing right in front of me.
“Let me just…” She brushed a few stray pieces of hair behind my ear, tilting her head as she looked me over.
I took a step back. “What are you doing?” I asked, moving toward the bank of elevators.
“Can I just…” She reached out to smooth down my hair on the left side. “Okay, there. And give me that.” She tugged at my coat.
“Give you my coat? Why?” I asked as I shrugged it off anyway.
She smiled, sighing with her hand out, palm up.
I handed her the coat. “This is a setup. What have the two of you concocted?”
“Just go,” she said, her smile consuming her face as she called for the elevator.
The elevator dinged open as I spoke. “I hate you a little right now.”
“Let me know if you feel the same in a few hours,” she said, stepping back as the elevator doors closed.