Work Text:
“Oh god,” Andy mutters. Her first day at The Mirror is already shaping up to be a struggle. Which is probably not as unexpected as it seems, because somewhere between learning how to force people to do everything on Miranda’s timeline and the fallout of Nate moving away to Boston – leaving her with a one bedroom apartment she can’t really afford to keep by herself and a really ambiguous relationship status – Andy hasn’t actually written anything that wasn’t a carefully worded email in over a year.
“Relax,” Sean says, clearly doing his best to seem simultaneously officious and non-threatening, “it’s just a fluff piece on the State Fair. Let’s just try you out on this one, all right?”
Andy just really hopes she’s not going to throw up all over his desk. “I haven’t really written in a while,” she explains, and hopes that she looks nowhere close to as freaked out as she really feels.
“Sure, sure.” He nods with the air of having heard this song and dance many times before, already busy checking something on his computer. “Just have it in by four, all right? I’ll look it over and see where we are then.”
Andy takes this for the obvious dismissal it is and heads back to her desk.
She’s been assigned a small cubicle in a corner, right next to the file cabinets. The majority of her desk is taken up by an ancient desktop computer, so the haphazard pile of pens and a stapler sit precariously at the edge. As she sits down, it becomes immediately evident that she’s also located right under a draft, and Andy shivers back into her jacket. From her freezing ears, it’s clear that she’s going to have to bring in a hat in the future. Andy sighs and starts digging out her notes. All in all, things could be worse.
Except maybe they couldn’t, because she ends up writing eight drafts over the course of the afternoon, all of them way over the word limit, before having a minor break down in the ladies room. She tears up while imagining Sean say, in a manner oddly reminiscent of Miranda’s quiet tones, that none of this works and that a halfway competent person wouldn’t find it so very hard to write about a local educational showcase without boring the reader to tears.
Tell me I’m not a complete failure of a person, she texts Nigel, desperate for advice.
Who is this? She gets back a minute later. Then, after a long pause, during which she stares at her phone in dismay, her phone pings again. Buck up and get it done. No one has time for whiners.
Which is about right for advice coming from Nigel anyway. Andy takes a deep breath and leaves the stall to go wash her face, thankful that she uses waterproof mascara now and keeps it simple otherwise. At least that’s holding up, so she’s managed to get one thing right today. It makes cleaning everything up easier, and Andy dabs foundation onto her nose and then powders a quick layer over her cheekbones almost automatically. By the time she’s done there aren’t any real signs of her crying jag other than slightly puffy eyes.
She takes a deep breath and stares into the mirror, sees how chic and confident she seems, and misses Runway fiercely because she would never have been capable of doing this before they got their hands on her. Even though it didn’t work out, the evidence of its effect on her is here, and that’s... that’s something. It’s not just a blip on her resume like she’s been trying to tell herself.
And something about that must ping internally because Andy from Runway wasn’t someone to run away from a challenge, and Andy at The Mirror can’t really be either, because she’s the same person underneath. Just a little more skilled at the hair and clothes now.
The internal monologue carries her past a group of interns gossiping outside the ladies, past Sean’s desk, and the desks of half the other writers to her own, and finally, through another three drafts. At lucky draft eleven – the first one to actually hit her word count – she gives up, crosses her fingers, and sends it to Sean.
When Sean sends the piece back a couple of hours later, largely approving and with minor corrections to her lead and title, Andy feels that niggling sense of doubt get smaller.
“See? You can do this,” she mutters to herself, quietly happy. She opens up a new document, starts writing down ideas to pitch.
Her first month is a pretty steep learning curve.
It’s maybe not as visible a transformation as her time at Runway, but it’s distinct nonetheless. This time, instead of learning to anticipate and manage one ridiculously demanding woman’s needs, she’s trying to anticipate the informational needs of an entire city. Honestly, it’s a little disturbing how well that year with Runway has trained her to be sort of awesome at this new job. She’s had a whole year to practice dealing with a constant amount of crippling doubt, absolute panic, and the occasional bad hair day, and still having to produce results, so that stands her in excellent stead at The Mirror.
But it’s more than that. Working at Runway had meant that not only had she needed to be able to remember and call up people’s names and numbers at the drop of a hat, but also that she’d learned to schmooze with the best of them, so learning the names and numbers of the people on her floor is easy, as is keeping their quirks in mind. There’s Sean, of course, her editor and married father of two, balding, bespectacled, and capable of working with a frankly disturbing amount of ABBA and the Bee Gees playing tinnily on his headphones. Then there’s his assistant editor, Shanaiya, who is tall, gorgeous and largely androgynous, and who Andy is vaguely convinced lives in the office because she’s never actually seen her leave or return, but is always at or near her desk. From what Andy’s seen, Shanaiya seems to both hate and love Sean with the sort of passion that can only come from waiting to step into his shoes, and has been known to fling various bits of stationary at him during one of their many fights over Sean’s perennially late edits.
“Don’t worry,” Craig, the web editor with the fondness for cycling and food porn, tells her. “Sometimes mommy and daddy fight but we’re assured that they love us all very much.”
“Or at least they don’t want to kill us all yet,” Mindy says, distracted by toggling her way through the four suit level of FreeCell. Mindy runs the features desk and smokes her way through a pack of Marlboros every day despite claiming to hate the taste of them.
Andy winces as Shanaiya leans around Sean to yell, “What’re you all looking at? Where are the dummy sheets from those advertising assholes?”
“Scatter!” Craig fake-whispers, and then pretends to dive under the nearest table.
Andy eyes him, horrified and amused, while Mindy yells back, “Budget meeting’s not until nine thirty so hold your damn horses!”
Marion, who handles copy-editing and rounds up the freelancers, walks around a corner, sees Shanaiya looking like she’s seconds from killing them all, and backs away. “Coffee run,” he calls out, exchanging one hell willingly for another, and then there’s a flurry of people diving for their wallets and calling out orders.
Everyone at The Mirror seem sure of their roles, working together like a well-oiled machine, and it has taken Andy a while to figure out her own place in the system and to sort out her own rhythms amongst them. She gets used to making small talk in the elevator and leaving a spare hat and scarf at her desk to help with the worst of the draft.
She discovers that her computer is the devil itself, and after the third time Sheila, the IT lady who handles their floor, stares her down, Andy takes Craig’s advice and starts to keep a bar of dark chocolate around to act as a bribe. The first time her story gets held because she doesn’t get her copy in before they put the paper to bed, she learns that Sean is nowhere near as nice as he first seemed when he screams her out. Crying by the side of the building later, she encounters Mindy and her stash of Marlboros and learns that, while most of her office stress smokes, she can’t do that because the taste is vile.
So there’re good days and bad days, and on the days where she’s struggling to keep up with the pace of a paper that gets put to bed at 5pm, it helps that she knows way down in her bones why she wanted to do this at all. Andy knows exactly who she is and how far she’s willing to go, and that gets her over the finish line.
Plus, there’s something about writing at a shitty old desktop at her desk, while working off of a set of scribbled, incomprehensible notes that makes Andy feel like a real journalist, inexplicable pen marks and all. It’s the version of herself she’d known all through college and somehow forgotten over the last year, and it’s odd to suddenly rediscover the part of herself that likes to ask questions and puzzle out angles again, strangely familiar.
She brainstorms in meetings, get assigned stories, fights with Marion about cuts, and has one giant pitched battle for the honour of the Oxford comma. At some point, she figures out that while the coffee on offer in the office is horrible, at least it’s free, and that’s not something to turn your nose up at. And in between all of that, she starts apartment hunting, desperately looking for anything she can afford in Manhattan.
“Why do you need to get a new place anyway?” Nate asks, and Andy sits back down on the couch with her dinner and angles the laptop screen so the camera can actually catch her face.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is sort of a single bedroom apartment that costs only slightly less than what we both made together,” she points out, digging into her chicken salad. “And much as I like The Mirror, they’re paying me even less than I made at Runway. And my parents probably aren’t going to be able to keep helping me out forever, so, you know,” she shrugs, “I have to move.”
“Well,” Nate drawls, “if you’re going to move, you should really think about Boston. It’s great. Full of these people who yell at you and think they know more than you about everything.” He affects a Boston accent. “Mawtha a'Gawd, what didjya put on my plate? Cahn’t you even make a good sawce?”
Andy laughs into her glass of wine. “You’re really selling this to me.”
He smiles into the camera. “I do my best.”
There’s an awkward pause where the both of them search for something to say. Andy wonders for the millionth time if she should ask what they’re even doing now, if they’re dating or broken up or somewhere in between, but she doesn’t think she’s ready for the finality of that particular conversation yet.
She and Nate have been together for over three years, since college, and it sucks that they can’t seem to figure this thing out between them. Every conversation is full of landmines, and Andy’s drowning in the guilt of it all. And this is the other side of her year at Runway, the side that’s far less helpful, because it exposed all the cracks in her relationships.
It’s stupid and it’s childish, but she’s not ready yet to admit that she might want hugely different things from her life than the people she knows and loves. She isn’t sure she could bring herself to come right out and say that while Runway maybe wasn’t the right place for her, it had nothing to do with the hours she worked or the amount of herself she put into it; that she’d have been happy to blow them all off for a job that fit her personal moral compass just a little bit better. She could wrap it all up in being ‘competitive in the job market’ and ‘climbing the ladder’, but the fact of the matter is that Andy loves the sense of purpose she feels, loved it at Runway when they were running her ragged, and loves it now at The Mirror where they’re only just starting to take the training wheels off.
That’s the sort of thing she maybe can’t admit to her friends yet if she wants to keep them, can’t admit to Nate either because she doesn’t know if she wants to keep him, and it sucks. Every conversation has this giant underlying echo of when they’re going to actually talk about it all, and Andy can’t stop feeling like there’s a constant pressure on her to fix them somehow. She has no idea how that’s even going to work.
So she plays it off as a joke instead. “Much as I long for people to insult my sauce – and really, I do. On the rare occasions I cook, I yearn for the feedback –” Nate makes a face, and Andy bites her lip before continuing, “I think I’m going to have to stick with New York for right now, what with all this disastrous poverty and imminent homelessness and all.”
“You couldn’t possibly give it up,” Nate agrees, fake-solemn. He looks like he gets it though, and something in Andy hurts to see it.
“I don’t think I could.” She hesitates. “Nate –”
“Don’t worry about it,” he forestalls her. “When you’re ready, Boston’s a great place for friends.”
She works on not letting her eyes tear up, swipes a hand across her eyes and her nose, and sniffs to hold back anything further. “Just friends, huh?” she checks, knowing what the answer is.
“Just friends.” He looks like he’s tearing up as well. “Still the best grilled cheese you’ve ever had.”
“Yeah,” she says, soft. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“That’s all I wanted to hear,” he says, and changes the topic. “So let me tell you what the saucier did this week –”
Andy mopes for a week. She’s still a professional at work, and Nigel’s whole thing about work lives thriving on the collapse of personal lives still holds true because Nate and she aren’t doing whatever they were doing anymore, but Sean’s finally taken her off small fillers and moved her into features.
“I think you do better with research, and Mindy’s been looking for a new gofer anyway,” Sean tells her.
“This is because I got that story in late, isn’t it?” Andy says, still wallowing in guilt.
Sean nods. “Because it’s been weeks and I’m a grown up but I’ve decided to ignore all of that to hold onto this grudge.”
Mindy nods as well. “He did specify that I was to make you pay for it. No computer, only writing in blood, that sort of thing. Make you walk until those little Prada heels clicking feels like spikes in your brain.” She makes evil wavey fingers, and Andy shoots Sean an alarmed look that he waves off.
For the most part, Andy is pretty sure that they’re joking. She thinks that all the way until they stick her with one of the freelancers that they’ve called in to work on a story regarding the Police Commissioner and allegations of misconduct. The article’s a barely researched sea of bias, and Andy gets stuck with helping to research and talking the guy through rewriting it, playing email tag over the course of the next couple of drafts between the now terrified guy and a fuming Mindy, until sometime around nine when Sean finally calls it a night and bumps the piece from the next day’s budget to a smaller feature sometime in the coming week.
“I should gather all the hair I’ve ripped out tonight and mail it to that bastard,” Mindy fumes, gathering up her bag and coat, almost toppling over the giant pile of files and early prints spread haphazardly over her desk.
Andy, now tasked with taking over the whole thing and rewriting it pretty much from scratch, gives her a morose look. “Something tells me it wouldn’t make much difference.”
Mindy shrugs. “Well, it’s your problem now, Prada,” she offers, rooting around in her bag until, with a triumphant “aha!” she finds her pack and a lighter, and heads outside to smoke away her frustration before getting the train home to her cats.
Left largely alone in the office, Andy sighs and gets back to work, pruning out all the stuff that could get the paper sued for libel and liberally applying the oxford comma; Marion can fucking suck it if he doesn’t understand how important it really is.
Some of the other reporters see her on their way out and wave, call out a couple of jokes about Andy making her bones with the late night edits, and she laughs and waves back, wondering what they’d even think of all the late nights she spent at Runway just to make sure that everything would be perfect for a run-through, Emily grumbling beside her about running out of cheese cubes.
In comparison, The Mirror is like a vacation, for all that it’s a lot of work, because when Andy gets sent home now, she isn’t tethered to her phone day and night – though if Sean keeps moving her up on features, she soon will be – and scary as everyone is, none of them are at quite the same level as Miranda.
By the time Andy’s done, it’s almost ten thirty. She copies the file onto the shared drive for edits, emails a copy to herself just in case, and shuts the computer down. Another half hour on the subway finally sees her home, and Andy resigns herself to another night of moping in her pajamas and looking up apartment listings online.
Does being an adult ever get better? She types out on her phone as she walks up her stairs. Then, taking a deep breath, she sends it and tries not to hope.
She showers and changes into the oldest, rattiest pair of sweats she owns and settles down on the sofa to eat leftover noodle soup for dinner. As she suspected, there’s still nothing miraculously low rent and yet completely appealing on any of the property websites she’s got bookmarked. When she checks, Nate isn’t online, which is actually one of the few pros of the day, given how raw she still feels, despite knowing this was coming.
Fuck it, she thinks, and roots around in her fridge for something, anything to help her eat away her pain. The fridge yields week old couscous, half a pack of uncooked crabsticks, a jar of avocado butter, and some peach yogurt. Andy stares at her options and decides to go with the only real choice.
She’s almost to the bottom of the yogurt, vaguely contemplating actually checking out some of the less serial killer-ish listings on craigslist when her phone pings with a message. Open the door. We’re here.
There’s a second where she’s not quite sure whether to believe it, but when she scrambles up and over to the door, Lily and Doug are actually on the other side.
“Hi,” Doug offers into the ringing silence. “We come bearing ice-cream?” He holds up a plastic bag and shakes it enticingly as if to help Andy move.
But Andy and Lily aren’t listening to him, too busy taking each other in like wary cats. Lily’s face is set, harsh and unforgiving, and Andy’s hands tighten on the door, worried that this is about to be yet another night of forced grovelling, before Lily takes a step forward and hugs her tight.
“Nate called,” she says, low voiced. “Are you all right?”
Andy relaxes into it immediately, relief making her knees weak. She buries her face in the curve of Lily’s neck and just holds on, does her best not to cry.
Lily pulls back though, and smacks at her arm. “You should’ve called us! How could you not call us with something like this?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d pick up,” Any says, sniffling, “but I’m so glad to see you guys.” She hugs Lily and gives up for the moment, lets the tears come.
Lily shushes her and rocks her back and forth, tightening her hug until Andy feels like the tears are being squeezed out of her.
“No, by all means, block the doorway and wait until the ice-cream melts. We all know who’ll be sent out to replace it,” Doug grumbles, and Andy gives a hiccupping laugh before she and Lily shuffle aside so that Doug can get into the apartment.
They end up on Andy’s couch eating half-melted chocolate ice-cream straight out of the carton.
“Wait, you’re serious? You were actually trying to get through a break up on low-fat yogurt?” Lily’s outrage is a marvel to behold. She turns the carton around to check the description. “This has extra stuff advertising good bowel movements! Who even are you?”
“Hey,” Andy says, pointing her spoon at them, “First of all, half my wardrobe is now a size four and I don’t make enough money to replace any of it. Second of all, that stuff is half off so it was actually cheaper than all the other stuff on offer.” She pauses, then gives in. “And there’s also the fact that it was the only thing worth eating in my fridge.”
Lily continues to look unconvinced. “But it’s gross.” She sniffs the carton and makes a face.
Doug clears his throat. “Actually, I eat it and it’s great.”
Andy swivels her spoon in his direction, followed by her head a second later.
Lily looks similarly shocked. “Since when?” she demands.
“Since I found out they do it in grape.”
“Who likes grape?! You’re such a weirdo!”
Andy lets the familiar squabbling wash over her and relaxes back into the couch, content.
“Andy. Andy, do you hear this? Andy! He takes multivitamins too! Ow – stop hitting me! She needs to know. Andy, are you hearing this?”
So things with her and Lily aren’t quite fixed but they’re both willing to give it another try.
“She missed you, not that she’s ever going to admit it,” Doug tells her nearly a month later, during yet another fruitless night of trolling apartmentfinder.com. Lily’s passed out in the bedroom, exhausted after a big push to get a grant proposal in at NYU for a photography workshop/seminar/exhibition. “And she did feel bad after.”
Andy stares into her glass of wine. She doesn’t know if she wants to say this and take the risk of losing it all again but –
“You know I don’t actually think I did anything wrong, don’t you? With you guys, I mean. With Nate and me, it was different. I made excuses about stuff and complained to him all the time, but I kept doing it anyway.” She stares at her hands so she doesn’t have to see Doug’s face. “I didn’t want to admit to him – or, even, to admit to myself – that I liked it. I liked the sense of purpose. I liked being really good at what I did. I don’t think you guys got that, or got how awful it felt to not get it right. And some of that’s on me, because I was sending out mixed messages about hating it, but some of that is also the fact that you guys just... didn’t get it.” She picks at a thread coming loose from the couch, pulls at it until it goes tight.
Doug blows out a breath before he puts his glass down and leans in, bracing his elbows on his knees when he turns to look at her. “Andy, what do you think I do?”
“You’re a corporate research analyst.”
He nods. “Exactly. I spend hours staring at market trends and figuring out how to sell that to clients.”
She nods, not precisely sure where this is going. “Okay.”
He makes an exasperated face at her. “You do know that the market doesn’t exactly stop when I punch out at eight, right? But I’ve found ways in which to work around that.”
Andy’s already shaking her head because he doesn’t seem to be getting it. “Yes, I know, but Miranda –”
He forestalls her. “Was a major hard ass. I know. I was the one who knew the most about her, remember?” He shakes his head and reaches over to hold her hand. “Look, I’m not judging you for missing a couple of birthdays or figuring out that you like to look a certain way. You can work late every night; you’re probably going to do that with The Mirror even now.” And Andy winces instinctively because this is something that she’s been torturing herself with, the fact that at some point she’s going to be really busy again. “Those are your choices to make and that’s fine. We love you anyway. It isn’t like I haven’t skipped out on a bunch of stuff because I needed to get stuff done. Hell, I was barely around for the whole ‘you and Nate implosion fashion extravaganza’, but you didn’t hold that against me, right?”
Andy shakes her head, silent.
He gestures between them. “That’s because our relationship has clear lines that I helped draw. You didn’t do that. You seemed really unhappy and you wanted us to take your side. And your side wasn’t your boss’ side if she was the one making you unhappy. Do you understand now?”
He stares at her and Andy feels something in her crack open, spilling out bits that she’s been holding inside herself for fear that everything will go wrong again. “You know what the weird part is?” She waits until Doug looks encouraging to force herself on. “The weird part is that I really liked it. I liked being good at something and being in charge like that. I could see myself being like Miranda, and... I don’t want to be that person, Doug.”
She collapses into Doug’s side and closes her eyes when he hugs her close. “I don’t want to be the one who isn’t there because she’s always busy or who’s happy to screw her friends over until she needs them next.”
“Well,” Doug says, “speaking for all of us, we’re glad that you’re not.”
Andy laughs and scrubs at her eyes. “Yeah, well, what’s to say that doesn’t happen all over again? I mean, I have a job I like now and it’s going to have some really strange hours eventually. What if this whole thing happens all over again?”
He sighs and sinks further into the sofa, his shoulder automatically dropping so Andy can rest her head more comfortably. “I guess we’ll figure it out then. If you’re happy and you want us around, you’ll make time. And we’ll do the same.”
Andy turns her head to stare up at him. “No guarantees, huh?”
He drops a quick kiss on her forehead, “Nope,” and curls an arm around her in a hug.
“If you guys are done being really fucking stupid, I am trying to sleep in here,” Lily yells from the bedroom.
Andy laughs and pulls away from Doug, gestures around them. “Thin walls. Man, I cannot wait to be done with this apartment.”
“Don’t make me come out there!” Lily threatens, and Doug and Andy immediately hunch down and shush each other, giggling.
Friday sees Andy busy perusing one of the fact sheet sent over by a student at Syracuse who wants to get some publicity going for when they host a dance marathon to benefit local homeless shelters. She’s wondering whether or not to email Sean early for a possible human interest story, pen between her teeth as she types out a quick pitch for the budget meeting, when Craig wanders by.
He leans up against her desk. “You coming out tonight?”
“Hmmn?” She looks up, confused.
He elaborates. “The Bourgeois Pig over in the East Village? We tend to go do a night out about once a month, pretend we have lives.”
Andy thinks about it, considers her current budget which is only slightly above the negligible mark because her parents have been generous, but still not amazing. On the other hand, schmoozing with work friends would be a good move, and she hasn’t been out pretty much since she quit her job at Runway, so it’s not like she isn’t due.
“Okay,” she says, resolute. “I’m in.”
“That’s right,” Mindy yells from where she’s been shamelessly eavesdropping this entire time. “You come out and shake that ass, Prada!”
Andy waves her off. “Why does everyone keep calling me Prada?” she asks Craig, worried that she already knows the answer.
“’Cause you’re so fancy,” he says like it’s perfectly obvious, and wanders over to drape himself against Marion’s desk and invite him out as well.
Andy wonders if she’s supposed to protest the nickname or something, but gives it up as too much effort. Instead she gets back to work, emails a list of pitches to Mindy and Sean before checking the web for any updates she might need to keep track of before they go in for the meeting.
That evening, sitting around a table with Mindy, Marion, Sean, Craig, and Shanaiya (who apparently does leave the office but only if alcohol is in the offing), Andy vaguely regrets having come out with them. Not that they’re not making every effort to keep the conversation flowing, but that having heard her Runway story, they’re all pretty much baffled by her. Plus, everyone’s really drunk and so their filters are sort of nonexistent.
“You really left an entire world of pretty people and free clothes because you felt you compromised your morals?” Shanaiya asks for the third time, having gotten higher pitched with every repetition. She sounds like she’s on the verge of crying with laughter. “Do you even get how journalism works? Everything is morally compromised! Everything!” She waves her hands about wildly and smacks Andy in the boob accidentally. “Oops.” She pounds back the remaining half of her Saison Dupont and then stares into the glass like it will explain Andy’s choices to her.
Marion is shaking his head. “She’s a lightweight but she’s not wrong. You do know that the only thing we ever get for free are lawsuits, right?”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Craig cuts in. “She honestly came out for a good time and she’s feeling really attacked right now.”
There’s a burst of laughter around the table, and Andy shrugs awkwardly, glad for the two drinks she’s had so far that help blur the discomfort of this conversation. “I can’t really explain it. I guess it’s about which compromises you’re willing to make and which ones you aren’t.”
Mindy points at everyone around the table one by one. “I want to be honest. I would kill every one of you for a pair of the boots that Prada is wearing right now. No talk, just kill.”
“You’ve got a lot of killing talk,” Craig says, and Mindy gets up in his face, says, “Oh yeah?”
And then the next thing Andy knows, the two of them are making out wildly, grunting and grabbing at each other like the world’s about to end.
“Oh,” Andy yelps, and shuffles further away on the sofa as Craig leans further into Mindy, his ass pushing into her side.
“Don’t worry,” Marion offers blandly, “this happens a lot.”
“Ah,” Andy offers, at a complete loss. Mindy makes a high pitched noise of seeming pleasure, and Andy shoots to her feet, “Oh wow, look, my drink’s gone. I should go get another,” and beats a hasty retreat to the bar.
She waits politely at the bar for the bartender to notice her, and when he signals that he’s going to be a while, pulls out her phone to text Lily and Doug, worst night ever.
She puts her phone back in her purse and slumps against the bar. She has a few seconds to think about doing the sensible thing and getting a water when a woman steps up to the bar, her purse jabbing into Andy’s side. “Ow! Excuse me, I – Emily?”
“Oh, it’s you,” Emily offers in response, because it is Emily, looking a combination of flustered and annoyed.
“Oh my god,” Andy blurts. “Oh, hey, are you working? Do you need to jump the line?” She steps back and stumbles slightly into someone else. “Oh! Sorry!” she calls out, then promptly stumbles into someone else. “Sorry!”
Emily grabs her and pulls her back to the bar. “Stop that!” Her eyes flit around the bar as she readjusts her position, almost like a nervous racehorse, and Andy’s brain is falling a bit in love with that analogy because Emily’s long and sleek in a colourful set of asymmetrical lines, pared down to the basics of a figure, and there’s something elegant about her, regal even while she stares Andy down.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Emily says pointedly, “but I’m actually here having drinks with Serena.”
Andy nods, and then, taking her chance, does her best to meet Emily’s eyes and look sincere. “Listen, Emily, I never got to really apologise for everything –”
Emily scoffs. “For what? For trying to take my job and failing?” She folds her arms and looks away.
Andy stays silent, miserable, because even if she hadn’t quite intended it that way, that’s sort of what happened anyway.
Emily glances back at her and Andy can see the exact moment when her gaze goes sharp, assessing. “Are you still wearing –”
Andy nods, grateful to have something to talk about. “The Dior dress and the Chanel boots? Yeah.” She takes in Emily’s outfit. “Though, is that dress from the new Junko Shimada fall line? With the Thierry Mugler pumps?”
Emily preens, then seems to remember herself. “I see you’ve kept something from the job at least,” she offers, grudgingly. “I remember when you thought knowing a designer was beneath you.”
Andy winces. “I learned not to think that fashion wasn’t important a long time ago.” She smiles wryly and gestures at herself, “Though I guess I must seem a little behind the times now.”
Emily raises her chin and looks at her like she’s an idiot. “Don’t be silly. Didn’t you learn anything at Runway? You’re still wearing couture and couture is never behind the times; it’s vintage.” She huffs out a breath. “I suppose you don’t look totally awful.”
Andy can feel her lips stretching into a smile. “Thanks,” she offers, soft.
“Yes, well,” Emily says, clearly uncomfortable. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you’d decided to work at some boring newspaper.”
“The Mirror,” Andy nods, “yeah, I am.” She points at her table where Mindy and Craig are still trying to eat each other’s tonsils, the rest of the table deserted. “I’ve got some friends from work there and,” she scans the room quickly, “I guess the rest left.”
“I can see why,” Emily says, sounding repulsed.
There’s a long pause where both of them watch Mindy and Craig grope each other, backlit by the bar’s red lights.
“Well,” Emily says eventually, “I suppose we’d best get on with it.” She holds up a hand and somehow magically, the bartender appears, leaving behind a sea of disappointed faces.
“Marshall,” she says, no nonsense, snapping her fingers, and Andy is somehow completely unsurprised that Emily knows the bartender by name and well enough to be able to command his immediate attention, “I’m going to need a bottle of the Domaine Ragot with two glasses and –” she looks enquiringly at Andy.
“A juniper and tonic, please,” Andy offers politely.
They’re served almost immediately and Andy pulls out enough money to pay for her drink.
“I guess this is goodbye,” she says, awkward. “Thanks, Emily.” She turns to look at the corner Craig and Mindy were in and finds it deserted. “Oh. Shit.”
Emily sighs and starts to lead the way to her own table. “I guess you’d better come with me. Whatever you do, don’t embarrass me in front of Serena.”
Andy lets out a breath, relieved. “I’ll do my best,” she offers, and follows.
“Oh my god,” Andy moans, and Emily hisses at her to be quiet and kisses her again, mouth sticky with lipstick and tasting like red wine. The taste buzzes through her, changes the flavour in her mouth from the bitter wet of the vermouth and the soursweet juniper to something – something not precisely nice, but different; good different.
They stumble into a small table in the entryway of Andy’s apartment, nearly dump Andy’s bowl of keys and change to the floor. Emily shoves Andy’s jacket off her shoulders and presses her arms down along Andy’s sides to grab her ass, pulls the hem of her dress up over it while Andy drags her arms free from where they’re pinned at her sides to dig them into Emily’s hair. She keeps her mouth on Emily’s, biting small, hard kisses against her lips.
“You’re going,” Emily huffs, breathless, swallowing between the words as Andy licks into her mouth, desperate, “to ruin my hair if you keep on with that.”
“Sorry, sorry, yeah, I,” Andy says, barely focused on what they’re saying. “We should. Bed. Bed now.” She walks backwards and pulls Emily along with her, tries to keep her mouth on Emily’s even though they’re barely making any progress,and winds up pressed against the wall next to the bedroom door, Emily’s skirt hiked up over her hips so Andy can grind down against her thigh, slick inside her panties.
Emily shoves a hand between them and works Andy’s dress up, slips a thumb under the edge of her panties (and Andy has a second to deeply regret that she backslid into comfy underwear rather than the drawer of sexy stuff she was too lazy to peruse this morning), pulls Andy in with a hand around her neck to whisper, “I’m not surprised,” snapping the elastic edge of the cotton panties against her cunt.
“I was –” Andy whimpers, the sting of it somehow making her even wetter now that Emily’s smoothing it out by rubbing her thumb against the skin. Her fingers slide back to slip into Andy, two fingers pressing in.
“I don’t care.” Emily’s customary deadpan expression is gone, her face tense as she grunts and works her fingers in Andy, her thumb circling Andy’s clit, sharp sweeps with the occasional hard flick that has Andy’s hips jerking forward, bucking against her thigh.
Andy’s curled into her, mouth trying to work against Emily’s throat, dropping small kisses as she gulps in air. Emily adds another finger and crooks them before pulling her thumb away so she can slap them into Andy’s cunt, the wet smack echoing around Andy’s whines.
The sounds they’re making are overwhelming. Andy feels this hot curl of humiliation because she can’t stop the hitching noises she’s making, the way she’s pushing into Emily like she’s desperate for it, everything buzzing under her skin and building up and up and up, and when she tries to bite down to smother the sounds, Emily grabs her hair and pulls her away, sounding annoyed when she says, “I can’t have bruises; it’s open necks this season.”
And it’s stupid that this should be the thing that works, the sting of her hair, the sound of Emily, huffy and indignant, the way her fingers are crooked and filling Andy so fucking full right now, but it’s what works. Andy’s orgasm punches through her, her whole body pulling in tight and curling, fingers and toes going tingly, muscles in her stomach jumping.
“Uhn,” she groans, and leans forward onto Emily, who wobbles and buckles under her, thumping back hard into the wall. “Oh! Oh, sorry!”
Emily pushes her off, pulling her hands free from under Andy’s clothes, and mutters, “Yes, well, don’t make a habit of it.” Her skin’s flushed lightly, lipstick mussed, and this close Andy can see the slight shimmery layer of foundation and pressed powder, and the pink haze of a blush that’s struggling to be seen through it. It’s mesmerising; Andy’s never seen Emily anything other than pale and perfectly put together – except for the one time with the cold, and this is different from the rheumy eyes and the dripping nose, this is – it’s pretty, the way she’s flushing along her cheeks and her chin, down to her pale throat and cleavage where Andy can see it so much clearer.
“Are you done looking? Or is this another time it’s going to be you getting what you want and me left hanging?” Emily gripes, pushing Andy away to step out of her pumps.
She pushes the bedroom door open and walks in, hands already reaching back to pull the zipper down the line of her spine, the dress flowing away from her shoulders and perching on her hips like a multicoloured flower, still pulled in tight at her waist until Emily pulls it up and over her shoulders to drape it carefully on a chair.
Under it, she’s wearing nothing but a small black thong, nothing to ruin the lines of the dress, and Andy has a moment where she thinks, this is the art part of fashion, this second, before Emily pulls her thong off and puts it on the chair as well, sits on the bed and moves back so she can watch Andy watch her when she drops her knees open so Andy can see how she’s waxed smooth and glistening wet.
“Come on,” she says, voice impatient but losing some of its edge because of her breathlessness, one hand already sneaking down over her stomach to slip between the folds of her cunt, and Andy yanks off her dress and leaves it crumpled on the floor, ignores the high pitched sound of annoyance Emily makes at that to quickly unzip her boots and yank off her panties, unhook her bra.
“Oh my god, you’re just going to leave it there!” Emily sounds horrified, but Andy ignores that to scramble onto the bed and kiss her, get her hands on Emily’s breasts, small and pale, to slide her way down and kiss her tight, tucked in ribcage, her stomach, and down to her cunt, nosing apart the folds and licking, flicking her tongue in small circles.
It’s not that Andy hasn’t kissed girls before. She totally has. There was Marjorie back in her second year at Northwestern, and Katya, who she dated for a few months before meeting Nate. She’s even kissed Lily one drunken night, the two of them laughing into each other’s mouths, kisses sloppy wet with tequila after a night out. She’s gone down on a few of them too, though they weren’t nearly as demanding as Emily seems to be, never seemed to want as much out of Andy as fast.
Emily tightens her hands in Andy’s hair and pulls her in closer, basically orders her to fuck her with her tongue instead of the long laps up her cunt that Andy’s been using. Though, to be fair, they weren’t as skilled either, Andy thinks, cunt clenching from the memory of Emily’s fingers, the sting of her hair being pulled.
“I can’t believe I have to say this, but focus on my clit. That’s what it’s there for,” Emily mutters, the sound muffled through her thighs clenched tight around Andy’s ears.
A couple of minutes later, Emily huffs again. “Fingers, Andrea. I shouldn’t have to tell you this.” Andy responds practically on autopilot, her tongue still working Emily’s clit, mentally crossing her fingers and slipping a finger in, careful. “I can take more than one. Come on already!”
Somewhere through the third round of Emily belittling her skills, Andy has a weird realization. “You’re sort of like the Miranda of sex,” she says, pulling away from Emily’s cunt, her fingers still working, two of them crooked and pushing in.
Emily stares her down, eyes narrowed and face flushed, but then eventually relents. “I suppose that’s actually a wonderful compliment,” she mutters, cutting her eyes away to stare at the wall.
Andy considers and then nods. “There’s that. Also, there’s the bossiness.”
Emily glares. “I hardly think it’s bossy to expect a certain amount of basic understanding of how a woman’s vagina works. I mean, you’ve got one, for heaven’s sakes, so surely you’d understand not to assume just a tongue laying there is going to be enough.” She seems to run out of steam there, though she continues to glower at Andy, the effect oddly heightened by the combination of green eyeshadow and red hair.
Andy shrugs philosophically. She’s worked for a demanding boss before, and Emily’s clearly learned her style somewhere, so if Andy takes all that weird nostalgic build up in her belly and applies it, she’s pretty sure she can make this work. And, well, if first you don’t succeed, try fingers again.
“I’m a fast learner,” she says, biting her lip against the smirk that’s building there, “I’ll see what I can do.”
She thinks about what she knows about Emily and goes with her gut, splays her fingers out over her hips and presses them into the bed, checks, “marks here okay?” and waits for Emily to wave the question off before she sucks a small bruise high against the bone, presses it hard with her thumb, and sure enough, Emily hisses and rolls her hips against Andy’s hands.
Andy rolls with that, leaves small stinging nips against the skin of Emily’s inner thighs, careful not to go below the skirt line, pushing three fingers into her cunt and spreading them, licking around them while Emily shudders around her, legs going tight around her shoulders and her fingers clawing at the sheets.
Her chin’s wet with spit and come, and Andy noses at her clit as Emily clenches down around her fingers, muscles pulsing with her orgasm, thighs shaking. Andy crooks her fingers, working her through it, licking up to her clit and lipping at her cunt, pressing kisses into her thighs and the curve of her belly.
“Don’t let this go to your head,” Emily says, between deep gulps of air.
Andy presses her smile into the skin of Emily’s thigh until she feels she can squash it somewhat. “I wouldn’t dare,” she says eventually, doing her best to sound sincere and hide the curve of her mouth.
It’s still playing on Andy’s mind the next day while she’s working on getting together a quick advertorial for a local clothing brand, the print copy flung at her head by a blushing Mindy who mutters, “You worked in fashion, right? Here! Sorry about last night,” before she flees back to her desk.
It’s easy work, just a case of rewriting the précis the company emailed over, and Andy’s completely capable of writing about the newest fall trends on offer and still mulling over the memory of Emily pulling her dress back on and repairing her makeup in Andy’s bathroom – “Is this really all you have?” – and leaving, the half-awkward half-victorious shame of a one night stand buzzing under her skin.
She’s got most of it done when her cell rings with an incoming call from Emily. Andy has a second of panic because she hadn’t anticipated Emily calling her again, but her phone’s buzzing so this is really happening.
“Hello?” she asks, tentatively.
“Andrea! Thank god. Miranda asked me to pick up a selection of twenty or so scarves from Hermès this morning, but thanks to you and our little thing last night I forgot like a complete idiot, and this will be the second time and you know how Miranda barely forgave me for the first time which was at least half your fault, and now it’s almost time for the preview with Chris Benz and I can’t afford to leave the office at all.”
Emily gets all of it out in seemingly one breath, and Andy’s barely capable of processing it all. “Okay,” she offers, confused, “but what –”
“This isn’t a social call, Andrea!” Emily screeches. “Go to Hermès! Martine knows what we need and has it all waiting. Just go there, pick them up and come straight here, no stops.”
“Emily, I can’t just –” But Andy’s already speaking to dead air. “Shit.”
She’s about to call back and insist that she can’t help, except that somewhere in the back of her mind she can’t stop thinking about the last time Emily went to Hermès and the fight they had in the hospital after. It’s all mixed up with the Emily from her time at Runway, gradually softening towards her, and the Emily from last night, grabbing Andy’s hair, biting at her lip, and Andy doesn’t really stop to think about why she’s doing this, just heads over to Sean’s desk and says, caught out and awkward:
“Hey, so, I wouldn’t normally ask at all, but Emily, the girl I know – well, she’s not just a girl I know now cause we, last night, um, yeah –” Andy stumbles, caught out, but then ignores it to keep going, “anyway, my old boss is sort of giving her a hard time and I just need to take half an hour off to go drop something off with her? Please?”
Sean eyes her over the edge of his glasses. “Is the advertorial done?”
“Yes,” Andy says, promptly. Then, when Sean keeps staring her down. “No, not really. It’s mostly done. It needs a little more work. A tweak maybe.”
He leans back in his chair and sighs like he doesn’t know what the world is coming to these days. “Go on, go help your girlfriend out.”
“Oh my god, thank you so much!” Andy doesn’t bother to correct him about Emily not being her girlfriend – she doesn’t have the time and the last thing she needs is Sean changing his mind because casual sex partner and ex work acquaintance doesn’t quite qualify – and grabs her bag and her coat and races out of there.
“What took you so long?” Emily asks, grabbing the bags from her when she arrives, panting and barely upright. The run from Hermès back to the Runway offices got her there just under the half hour mark, but only just, and Andy can barely breathe, hunched over her desk.
The gorgeous blonde sitting in her old spot gives her a confused and rather hostile look, taking in Andy’s dishevelled hair and last season’s jacket, and clearly dismisses her as someone ‘not important’ and goes back to look bored and fabulous, except that Emily snaps her fingers in her direction and orders, “Go get a glass of water right now. Go. Go. Can’t you see my fingers snapping? Go.”
“Em,” Andy huffs, “it’s all right. I need to get back to work anyway.”
Emily gives her a confused look. “What? No, the water is for Miranda. Actually, you should probably go.” She starts to shoo Andy towards the door. “Who knows what Miranda would think of just the sight of you. Just, try not to bother anyone on the way out.”
Andy purses her lips and stands her ground. “You know what? No.”
Emily pauses, taken aback. “No?” she asks, like perhaps she misheard.
“No,” Andy says, firm. “I just did you a favor. “ She points at herself. “I just left my new job to come here to run an errand that you asked me to do. So don’t ‘try not to bother anyone’ me. I deserve to be thanked.”
Emily scoffs. “Do you want a medal or something, just for picking up a bag of scarves?”
Andy hasn’t actually thought about what she would want, but she crosses her arms and fires back anyway. “Maybe not a medal, but maybe I want to feel appreciated.” It’s weird how being in the office is bringing back all those feelings of being constantly undervalued. “Maybe I want a ‘thanks, Andy’, or a ‘well done, Andy’, or a ‘here’s something to show I appreciate you, Andy’, huh? Maybe I want that.”
Emily huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “What? So you want me to what? Take you out to thank you for getting a bag of scarves?”
Andy wasn’t expecting that but – “Yes,” she says, decisive. “That’s what I want.”
“Um,” says the blonde, looking awkward and holding a glass of water.
“What?” Emily snaps at her. “Just go put it on the desk like you’re supposed to. Honestly, you’d think I have to tell you how to do everything.” The girl makes a high pitched noise of worry and scurries past them into Miranda’s empty office.
Emily takes a deep breath, clearly refocusing, and pushes the few hair that have artfully come loose from her chignon back behind her ear before she looks at Andy. “Fine. Nine tonight. Come by my place,” she leans over her desk to scribble out an address on the Upper East Side, “and we’ll get this over with.”
Andy takes the piece of paper and smiles triumphantly. “It’s a date.”
“Oh god, what was I thinking?” she moans into her arms, head thumping against the table.
Lily takes the chance to grab a couple of Andy’s fries and drizzle them with ketchup. “I don’t understand why this needed an emergency lunch meeting,” she says, eating her spoils.
Doug leans over and says, faux-sincere. “Is it because she’s a girl? Andy, are you coming out to us again?”
“Ugh,” Andy mutters, levering her head upright. “No, thanks, the once was enough.”
Lily sneaks another couple of fries and tries for Andy’s burger but gets her hands slapped away. She rubs her hand as she asks, “Is it because you think it’s too soon after Nate? ‘Cause I’m here to tell you, you guys were not sleeping together for a long time before this whole ‘official breakup’ thing happened, so I’m all for this whole sorrowful mourning period being over.”
Andy sighs. “No, it’s not Nate.” She pauses to actually think about it. “Well, not totally, though it is really weird that this is my first real date thing after we’ve, you know, really called it off. It’s just – Emily is. I mean. She’s Emily! She used to snipe at me in the office, and I used to eat her cheese cubes when she wasn’t looking, and, you know. It’s weird.”
She looks at their faces but based on their expressions, neither Lily nor Doug understand what she’s getting at. “So?” Doug prompts.
“So I don’t know if we’re even right for each other. I mean, she’s still at Runway, living the fabulous life, and I’m two steps from eviction and eating carbs again.” She crunches into her fries to drive the point home.
Lily stops slurping the last of her drink to check, “I don’t get it. It’s not like you’re marrying her or something; it’s just a date. Go. Have fun. Get laid. Share the details.”
“Yes, please,” Doug chimes in.
Andy rolls her eyes at them.
“What?” Lily says, defensive. “Doug and I are both very single and you’re clearly living the dream and banging models. So sue me if I want to live a little vicariously.”
“She’s not a model,” Andy laughs. “Though, okay, I get your point. Not,” she points out when they both look gleeful, “the whole sharing details bit, but the whole it’s only one date thing. I’m going to take your advice. I’m going to be calm. In control. Relaxed.”
She looks at her watch. “Oh my god, is that the time? Mindy’s going to kill me!”
“I’m going to kill you,” Mindy threatens, leaning over Andy’s desk.
“I’m really very sorry,” Andy says, frantically typing as she fills in the remainder of her copy for a follow up on last week’s look at the fires out in the West Village. She adds in a dateline and a lead and copies it into the Features Drive.
Mindy pretends to consider it. “Well, I suppose that you’ve seen my dirty secret,” she pauses to wiggle her fingers at Craig, getting a sheepish smile back, “so I think it’s only fair you let me in on yours.”
Andy barely looks up, now reading over her copy for the advertorial. “My what?”
“Your secret girlfriend.” Mindy leans in and cups a hand around her mouth to fake-whisper, “Sean’s terrible at keeping secrets.”
Andy aims a terrible look over at Sean’s desk, but he’s got his headphones on. He’s bopping his head as he types, and Andy resolves not to find it adorable in the least, particularly since he’s just made her the new office gossip piece.
“Sean’s mistaken,” she says, “she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Oh?”
Mindy looks disbelieving, and Andy feels compelled to clarify. “We’re actually going on a date tonight but nothing’s happened, really.”
“So,” Mindy draws the sound out, “it’s not the girl from The Pig the other night?” Andy must look caught out because Mindy shoots Andy a sly, pleased look. “Knew it!”
Andy frantically backtracks. “It’s not like that. We used to work together –”
“Been there, done that,” Craig announces as he walks past to the fax machines.
“Yeah, you have,” Mindy agrees, and high-fives him.
Andy ignores them. “I mean that we knew each other from back then and we’re just, I don’t know, trying this out for now.”
Mindy nods. “I know that game.” She stops leaning against Andy’s desk, pushes her arms up to stretch the kink out of her back. “Well, if you ever need to talk, I’ve got a shoulder and a ciggie free.”
Andy nods gravely and says, “Thanks,” oddly touched.
Mindy waves this away. “Now give me my feature or else I’ll grind your bones to make my bread, Prada!”
“I’m typing as fast as I can,” Andy calls back, fingers flying over her keyboard, smile tucked away in her cheek.
Emily’s apartment is at the top of a lovely four-storey walk-up in Yorkville. Andy squashes the ridiculous amount of jealousy she feels as she climbs the stairs to Emily’s place, has to console herself with the thought that she likely couldn’t afford this place even if it did open up tomorrow.
“Oh, it’s you,” Emily says when she opens the door, and Andy smiles tightly, hands awkward in the pockets of her coat as Emily steps aside to let her in.
“Just make yourself comfortable,” she says, and waves Andy towards the living room.
The apartment is gorgeous, with high ceilings, and painted a faint lavender with white trim, slim mahogany furniture and wrought iron framework in key accent points. It’s more a centrepiece than a home, and Andy thinks of Emily last night in her mess of a bedroom, their coats draped over her ugly but comfy couch, and can’t figure out how she got to the point where they’re even going on a date.
“Look,” Emily says from inside one of the rooms, “I know I said we’d go out tonight but I’ve just had an absolutely hellish day. Chris Benz managed not to get a single nod from Miranda, and then the new girl forgot to get her the usual evening coffee, and so obviously it was my fault that the new girl had forgotten her order, and now everything for the fall feature has to be redone. Nigel’s still at the office and I have to go in early tomorrow, and really, the last thing I feel like doing tonight is going back out there right now. What are you doing?”
The last bit is said with some puzzlement, which Andy thinks is sort of hilarious since all she’s doing is putting her coat back on.
“I’m leaving?” she offers, since it seems pretty obvious.
“Yes, I got that. I’m not a moron,” Emily snaps. “But why?”
Andy gestures to sort of encompass everything. “You seem like you sort of had a really busy day and you’ve got to be up early tomorrow. And I know how demanding Miranda can be. So I guess I thought we’d just – I don’t know, do this another time, I guess.”
Emily stares at her, lips pursed, from the doorway to what looks like her room, from what Andy can see of it.
“No,” Emily says.
Andy is baffled. “I beg your pardon?”
“I said no.” Emily beckons her closer, waves her into the room. There are what look like a million scarves draped over the bed, covering the plain white sheets.
“Are these the Hermès from today?” Andy asks, distracted.
“Yes,” Emily says, noncommittally, slipping her fingers into the neck of Andy’s jacket and smoothly pulling it off and away. She stares at them, looking repulsed. “Miranda thought they were hideous. Martine’s losing her touch and nearly got me fired.” She wanders of, presumably to hang Andy’s coat up somewhere. “She didn’t even want them in the office, absolutely insisted that I take them home and burn them maybe. Who knows.”
Emily comes back into the room and starts to unbutton her shirt, step out of her heels, absolutely matter of fact. “Take your clothes off,” she orders, and reaches behind herself to unzip the leather leggings she has on.
Andy has a second where she wonders if maybe she should disagree or something, mouth opening to suggest that she leave, except that Emily’s drawing out the tails of her shirt and exposing a gorgeous Agent Provocateur bustier in unrelenting black, and pushed up against Emily’s pale breasts and narrowing into her waist, it’s just stunning.
“Holy shit,” she whispers, and forgets any excuses she was going to make, any plans to try this another time, and drags her own shirt off, skims the elastic waistband of her skirt down her hips, taking her pantyhose with it.
She leaves them in a pile and steps in towards Emily, has to get her hands on all that skin, has to kiss her way down Emily’s throat and to her breasts. She presses her lips against the skin just above her nipples before she hooks a finger in the material and makes it dip, rubs a thumb against its tip, laves it with her tongue and then blows on it so they peak as she watches.
Emily makes a quiet sound and holds Andy’s head to her breasts, tightens her hands in her hair and drags her face up so they can kiss, Emily’s teeth pulling at Andy’s lower lip until it feels full and sore and worn.
“I have to take this off,” she whispers into Andy’s mouth, and Andy nods, half dazed with the thought of Emily in the bustier, the way it pulls her waist in and flares her hips out.
“Wait here,” Emily orders, the command oddly reminiscent of their time in the office but undercut by how breathless she is, the flush that Andy’s starting to grow familiar with rising under her skin. “I just need to go to the loo.”
Andy nods and watches her gather up a robe and head into the bathroom, unable to look away until the door shuts. Then, reminded of Emily’s actions the night before, she unhooks her own bra, pulls off her own panties, and, picking the two of them and her clothes up, lays them out in the room’s only chair.
Turning to survey the bed and its mass of scarves, she’s suddenly struck by a thought. “Hey, Emily,” she calls out, loud enough that Emily can hear her in the bathroom, “what would you say to you maybe tying me up with some of these scarves?”
There's a thump and a muffled grunt before Emily's voice blasts out. “What? Are you mad? Tightly knot a Hermès? You'll strangle the fabric!”
“My bad.” Andy smiles wryly to herself, fingering the material. Instead, she gathers the scarves up and wraps them in the loose tissue paper she finds in the store’s bags before she places them aside.
By the time Emily comes out of the bathroom, naked, Andy’s pulled the covers off the bed, made herself comfortable against the sheets. She’s tried to drape her body as artfully as possible, and it’s worth it for the look of shocked awareness Emily betrays before her face goes back to its regular look of stoic dismissal.
“I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” Emily says as she hesitates near the foot of the bed.
“Was I not supposed to?” Andy pulls herself upright, walks over on her knees to the edge of the bed and tugs at Emily’s hand.
Contemplative, Emily presses her thumb against the dip in Andy’s lower lip, and Andy accommodatingly lets her lips fall open so that Emily can run her thumb over to the side of her mouth, cup her chin before pulling her in to kiss her.
Everything’s a bit different this time. Slower, for one, with the two of them taking their time with each other. And oddly, it’s way more romantic; wrapped up in the sheets of Emily’s wrought iron bed, the lights off so the room’s actually lit by moonlight and not a neon sign advertising Chinese takeaway like in Andy’s bedroom.
Andy shudders through the build up of her first orgasm, feels it roll through her while Emily keeps eating her out, so that her nerves are firing and pinging, her skin tight and oversensitive as she chases the feeling into a second, larger come.
She feels wrung out, loose and sweaty, as Emily climbs back up the bed to kiss her, mouth tasting like cunt and her legs bracketing Andy’s so Emily’s rubbing herself off on Andy’s hip. The slick, wet pressure of it presses down so firmly that Andy can barely get a hand in there, has to work to get her thumb on Emily’s clit and help her along, body curving over Andy’s as her hips work faster, eventually gasping as she collapses along Andy’s side.
Andy stares at the ceiling, still breathless. “Wow,” she murmurs.
“Um,” Emily offers from where she’s still collapsed into Andy’s side.
Andy silently basks for a while, feeling oddly content with the world. At some point, Emily makes a grumbling noise and shoves her over onto her side, curls up against her back, one leg shoving its way between Andy’s own.
Andy falls asleep smiling.
She wakes up to Emily panicking and dressing, throwing on a midnight blue silk Adeam dress, hastily smoothing down the tulle accents at the collar, shoving her feet into bright white Jimmy Choo stilettos. She’s yanking files and electronics from a red leather Stella McCartney bag and dumping them into a Lee Savage briefcase in pale pink, cursing as things fall to the floor.
“I take it Miranda called,” Andy slurs, rubbing at her eyes as she gets out of bed. She checks the clock and isn’t surprised to see that it’s only six.
“Yes, obviously,” Emily says, frantic. “She wants everyone in the office by nine so we can do the run through first thing, which means –”
“Which means that you’re already late,” Andy says with dawning horror. “Okay, you go fix your hair and make-up, I’ll switch out your bag and get you some coffee.”
She grabs Emily’s robe and belts it on before falling to her knees to start gathering up the stuff from where it’s fallen on the floor. She grabs everything that she can see and starts to organise it quickly in the briefcase, familiar with Emily’s system.
Emily doesn’t move though, seems struck by Andy’s willingness to help. “You would do this?” she asks, voice wavering slightly. “I mean,” she says, more firmly, “why would you help me with this?”
Andy sighs and shuts the briefcase, stands it upright. “I know what your job is like, okay? I don’t mind.”
“But,” and Emily seems stuck on this, “but, you quit.”
“Yeah. Because I didn’t want the endgame, not because I didn’t understand what the job was like.” She turns away to grab her clothes from the chair and starts getting dressed. “I just don’t want to be Miranda at the end of it all.”
Emily scoffs. “Everyone wants to be Miranda.”
“Yeah? Well, not me.” Andy purses her lips and gestures at herself. “I like being me.”
Emily looks troubled, and Andy glances at the watch again. “Look, you don’t have a lot of time, okay? Just, trust me on this one. I don’t mind. I’m good with this, and I’m happy with helping you out.” She points at the door. “I’m going to go make some coffee and stick it in a travel mug for you, okay? Then you can go straight to work, and I’ll come by and drop off the coffee order once I’ve picked it up.”
She’s so busy planning everything out that it takes her by surprise when Emily grabs her and pulls her into a kiss, lips pressing hard against her own, then gradually softening into something less desperate.
“It’s – I – thank you,” Emily says, holding her face. Then, almost as if she’s remembering herself, she pulls her hands away. “It would mean something if you were willing to help me this way.”
Andy smiles and grabs Emily’s hand, links their fingers. “I’m good with helping. I like this. You. I like you.”
“Yes, well,” Emily seems at a loss for words. Then, swallowing repeatedly, she forces out, “I like you too.” She stares across the room, and it takes Andy a second to figure out that she’s staring at the briefcase, neatly placed next to her coat, the bags of scarves moved out of the way to stand under the desk.
“All right,” she says, almost checking, and Emily squeezes her hand once briefly before she pulls away.
“I can’t have you distracting me now; I’ve got so much to do. So you go get the coffee, and I’ll – I’ll see you tonight then,” she says, tone softening by the end.
“Yes,” Andy says, nodding decisively. She’s smiling so hard her cheeks almost hurt, but it’s worth it. “You’ll see me.”