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Miranda had a solution for everything.
At least, that was what people assumed. She was like Batman, some said. Her team had made it a habit to always throw the damage her way—albeit in fear—because, apparently, she had the power to make the impossible possible. It was what made Runway the empire it is now. She was never outplayed, never caught off guard, never off her game.
But for all her greatness, Miranda did not have an answer to this.
Jealousy.
Or whatever it was she felt in her gut when somebody so much as breathed Andrea’s air.
Andrea, of all people. Her brown-eyed, puppy-looking, always-pouting assistant—who was too naive to notice when people wanted to get into her pants.
It irked Miranda. The irresponsibility behind it. Her job demanded precision and alertness, and a love-struck assistant at the sight of a woman smiling a little too widely was not something she needed.
She hadn’t even thought women had that effect on Andrea. It would have explained so much.
“I didn’t know you spoke another language,” Miranda said, slightly thankful for how casual it had sounded.
Andy looked at her, the city lights flashing against her skin. She wore a smile, her cheeks flushed. It was either that Japan’s weather was a tad unforgiving, or that Andrea had just been told how her hair complemented her facial features.
Miranda almost scoffed. Women will always fall for the bare minimum.
“I picked it up from a friend in college. She was a transfer student from the Philippines,” she answered, an almost audible brightness in her voice.
Miranda moistened her lips and cleared her throat. “Well, it certainly came in handy.”
Andrea’s smile widened, and Miranda almost wished she’d get a face spasm from it.
She wasn’t even supposed to be with Miranda on this trip. Elias-Clarke wasn’t so generous when it came to Miranda, so she often handled business deals alone and fended for herself—or, if she was in the mood, paid for her assistant’s fare.
Miranda was never in the mood.
So she told Andrea she’d be gone for a week, leaving her behind to manage Runway in her absence. Miranda’s previous assistants would have thanked all the gods in heaven. Miranda gone for a week? Holy shit.
But no. Andrea looked at her, lips jutted, eyes glassy. She looked so pathetic—almost funny, as though the thought of Miranda being gone physically hurt her—that the next thing Miranda knew, she was instructing Andrea to book a flight for herself and tossing her her personal card.
Miranda cursed herself for hours later that night.
As it turned out, she did need Andrea on this trip.
Anne, the young woman looking to expand her fashion business to greater heights, had seized the opportunity to reach out to Runway. She paid a hefty amount, too, and signed a five-year contract for several feature pages in the magazine.
Andrea did all the work. No, she didn’t explain the technicalities of the partnership—she didn’t even open her mouth, except to greet Anne in a language Miranda only later realized was Tagalog. She smiled a little, blushed a little, maybe even giggled—and Anne was already scribbling her initials on the papers.
Miranda sat through it all, dumbfounded.
It made Miranda think that maybe she wasn’t as capable as she believed—if the beating in her chest and the pounding in her head were anything to go by.
She didn’t understand it, couldn’t fully wrap her mind around the feeling, much less the thought.
Miranda was never the jealous type. For all she knew, her husbands—her exes—had been fucking other women for the entirety of their marriages, and she hadn’t given a damn.
She was never one to marry for loyalty, anyway. Loyalty required devotion, and devotion required time—time Miranda didn’t have.
“Do you need me for anything tonight, Miranda?” Andrea asked, already on her feet to help her out of her coat, fingers sliding softly over the older woman’s shoulders.
Miranda tossed her bag onto the nearest couch, making a beeline for her suite’s personal fridge.
“So eager to leave,” Miranda commented after opening a bottle of water with more force than necessary.
Andrea blinked at her and flushed even deeper. Miranda wanted so badly to punch something.
“Well,” Andrea said, fidgeting with her hands, “Anne invited me out. She knows a local bar and wanted me to try it.”
Of fucking course.
Miranda chewed on her lip, her grip tightening around the now-empty water bottle.
She forced air into her lungs, and with a smile so forced it almost hurt, she said, “Oh, go ahead. I wouldn’t want to waste more of your time.”
She turned on her heel and walked to her room, not waiting for Andrea’s response as she shut and locked the door.
To behave like a child was so far beneath her. Miranda knew Andrea was a fully grown adult, more than welcome to spend her personal time however she pleased. If that meant being with a beautiful woman her age, Miranda would have to swallow it and let her be.
That was far easier said than done.
Only thirty minutes after Andrea left, Miranda was already on her feet, pacing. Her mind raced with thoughts. Andrea drunk. Andrea drunk in a place she didn’t know, with people she didn’t know. Not like Miranda knew her any better.
All she knew was that Andrea wanted to be a journalist. She was from Ohio. She had won many awards in college. She kept a photo of a cat on her desk. She favored black and blue—her pens, stationery, notepads all in those colors. She loved pop music and googled a concerning amount of Britney Spears during working hours. She blinked a lot, especially when she was pretending to listen to someone talk. She didn’t eat vegetables, always pushing them to one side whenever Miranda asked her to order food. She didn’t like coffee; she preferred tea. She wrote her name in a certain way, the A wrapping around the last letter, whether it was Andy or Andrea. And she would always, without exception, draw a heart on her notes to Miranda.
Miranda was in no position to be concerned.
Still, it didn’t stop her.
Hours ticked by, and she lay awake in her room, stretched across the enormous bed, feeling a particular kind of loneliness she hadn’t known in a while. She was in a foreign city with someone, and yet she was spending the night alone. Maybe if she were more fun, or younger, or smiled more.
Maybe if she were less of a Miranda and more of an… Anne.
When her phone first buzzed, she wasn’t sure she’d heard it right. She had already said good night to the twins, and no one would dare contact her directly without going through her assistant first.
But then again, her assistant was rather busy. With a grunt, she picked up her phone and didn’t bother to put on her glasses, squinting at the screen. It was a little blurry, but she caught sight of Andrea’s name and a message that began with a “Hey.”
Miranda’s heart jumped to her throat. Fishing out her glasses, she sat up and leaned against the bed’s headrest.
“Hey. I’m not sure if you’re still awake,” the message read.
Miranda was very much awake. She typed a short, quick response of “Why.”
The next thing she knew, her phone was ringing in her palm, and she almost threw it in shock.
Andrea was calling.
She schooled her expression and straightened her hair, only to realize Andrea wouldn’t see her anyway—and immediately felt stupid for it. Her hands shook slightly when she pressed the phone to her ear.
“Hello,” Andrea’s voice said on the other line, a little slurred.
“What.”
“Oh, there you are,” Andrea said. She spoke something away from the receiver, excusing herself, maybe, and when she returned, the background noise had softened. “Are you settled for the night?”
Miranda’s fingers twitched in her lap, wrapping a small corner of the blanket around her index finger. “I was, until you disturbed me.”
Andrea should have been offended, should have recoiled—but instead, she laughed softly.
“It’s nice in here. The food is good. The drinks are good. And the people are nice,” Andrea said.
Miranda rolled her eyes. “Thank you for letting me know how much fun you’re having.”
“Oh, I’m not having fun,” Andrea said, her voice lowering slightly. “Fun is when you’re here. But you aren’t, so this is only acceptable.”
Miranda could almost taste copper in her mouth from how hard she was biting the inside of her cheek, her fingers going numb as she fidgeted with the blanket.
“I’m sure Anne could lift the mood.”
Andrea hummed, and Miranda could almost imagine her nodding. “Maybe,” she said. “But Anne is not Miranda, so I don’t know.”
Miranda choked on air. Heat rushed to her face, and her throat suddenly felt in desperate need of water—and oxygen.
“You’re drunk,” Miranda said, trying to change the subject.
Andrea made a noncommittal sound. “I’m sober.”
Miranda exhaled shakily. “Then you are being very dumb right now.”
Andrea laughed, and despite herself, Miranda couldn’t help but smile. “I am. I think I am.”
Miranda didn’t want to end the call. Didn’t want to think that after this, Andrea would return to Anne’s company and forget the conversation ever happened once she was thinking clearly.
“Do you want me to come back?” Andrea asked, her voice hopeful—almost as if she wanted Miranda to say yes.
“You deserve to have some time for yourself,” Miranda said with a huff.
“Ah,” Andrea said. “Okay, then.”
Miranda wanted Andrea to insist, to say that all the time she needed was with Miranda. But Andrea simply said a brief goodnight and hung up, leaving Miranda to spend the rest of the night thinking.
Tomorrow came in a haze, and Miranda woke up with a massive headache that not even Tylenol could ease. She had stayed up too late and only managed two hours of sleep.
Andrea came knocking on her door an hour later, sporting that same smile she always wore in the morning—except this one looked brighter.
“Had a night, I see,” Miranda commented before she could stop herself.
Andrea looked at her and nodded. She looked a little too good for someone who had spent the night out. “Yeah.”
Miranda wanted to ask if she remembered their brief conversation from last night, what time she had returned, whether Anne had stayed with her all night, whether she had taken Anne back to her hotel room. She knew better, however. She didn’t care. She shouldn’t care.
Moments later, they were already in the car on the way to Anne’s run-through. Miranda had never had a longer week.
Still, she thought that while Anne might be fitter, younger, and better suited to Andrea in ways she wasn’t ready to dwell on, fashion was one thing she could never outshine Miranda in.
Her fingers already tingled at the idea of being destructive. She just needed to channel all this rage into something else, didn’t she?
Anne greeted them with a smile that stretched from ear to ear, giving Miranda a courteous hug before moving straight to Andrea and linking their arms together as they walked toward the studio.
Miranda followed behind them, stomping, her stilettos echoing sharply on the floor with every step.
She couldn’t even be disastrous, because Anne’s showcase was the best she’d seen so far. And coming from a lesser-known fashion personality, that was impressive. Miranda didn’t tell Anne that, though.
Instead, she told Andrea to hurry up or she’d have to walk back to the hotel.
Andrea bade Anne goodbye, and Anne responded with a lingering kiss on the cheek that had Miranda fuming—she used every ounce of restraint she had to act like an adult and stop herself from throwing herself off something high.
Death would be far easier than dealing with whatever this was. Miranda wanted to tear her hair out in frustration, and she couldn’t even voice it. She had to sit through a twenty-minute car ride, seething in silence.
“That went well, right?” Andrea asked.
Miranda didn’t look at her, still busy trying to steady her aching heart. She could feel a twist in her gut and genuinely felt like she might throw up.
Fucking jealousy. What was she, twenty? Fucking jealousy.
“It was passable,” Miranda said, staring out the window.
Andrea hummed. “But was it worth the deal?”
Miranda was really not in the mood to talk about business and definitely not in the mood for Andrea’s eagerness to earn compliments for her goddamn crush.
Somebody just shoot her.
“It’s business. If the designs were trash, I could still find a way to make it acceptable,” she said.
“Okay.”
Miranda turned to look at Andrea, her eyes furrowing at how she looked like a kicked puppy. Her lips twitched into a faint wince.
“It wasn’t to say that your girlfriend’s work was trash,” Miranda said through gritted teeth.
Andrea looked back at her, and, yup, there was that fucking blush again.
“She’s not my gir—” Andrea stopped herself. “Alright. She really wanted you to like the collection.”
Oh, Miranda knew. Many people did.
“Well then you can report back to her later. Consider giving her a kiss on the forehead too, since she did so well.”
Nigel used to tell her she really needed to work on her sarcasm, but if sarcasm was the goal, people should at least be smart enough to catch it. It wasn’t her job to adjust the way she spoke to protect other people’s fragile little feelings.
The look Andrea gave her afterward, however, made her reconsider that personality class she always refused to take.
Back in her suite, Andrea had diligently helped her out of her coat, and before Miranda could even set her bag down, the younger girl rushed over to take it and place it neatly aside.
She trailed behind Miranda as the editor-in-chief launched into her usual tirade of instructions for their last day in Japan. Miranda couldn’t wait for the week to be over.
Opening the fridge, she grabbed a bottle of water and, still talking, tried to twist the cap open. After several failed attempts, and a stinging palm, Andrea snatched the bottle from her hands and opened it.
Miranda watched her carefully as Andrea then took her hand and began massaging the part that had turned red from her futile attempt to open a damn bottle of water.
“We talked a lot about you last night,” Andrea said.
Miranda pulled her hand back instantly and stepped away, nearly on the verge of fully losing her composure.
“Bore someone else with this story, Andrea,” she said instead, sitting down on one of the couches, ready to review the notes from the earlier run-through.
Andrea followed her and stood just a few feet away. Where Andrea got the idea that Miranda wanted to hear about her stupid crush on this girl she had met just the other day, she had no fucking idea. But Miranda wanted it to end. She was on the verge of begging, even.
End this. Fucking end this.
“I kind of wanted to share it with you,” Andrea said in a voice so soft she might as well have been asking for Miranda’s bank account PIN.
Miranda’s jaw tightened. She inhaled, shut her eyes for a second or two, and then smiled. “Go on then.”
If Andrea had a tail, it would be wagging.
“She asked what things you liked, and I provided her the information because apparently she brought several collections,” Andrea said. “I was very proud of it,” she added, her voice turning even softer.
“Of her having several collections?”
“Of coming up with something that would make you proud.”
Miranda had no way around jealousy, but she didn’t fare any better in this area. Andrea looked at her with wide eyes, sparkling with many things—including, now Miranda knew, the thought of making Miranda proud.
“That’s above your pay grade, Andrea,” she said.
“Still, I liked knowing I helped you. That’s why I behaved so well during yesterday’s contract signing and agreed to the night out. I wanted to make sure we were in Anne’s good graces, because if we were, then you’re happy, and when you’re happy, I’m—” Andrea paused, realizing she was rambling. Then, with a ragged breath, she continued, “I liked knowing that I made you proud.”
Miranda’s headache was full-blown now.
“I really wanted to go back last night,” Andrea added.
Miranda couldn’t look away. She could only watch as Andrea’s face turned even redder than it had been all week. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed, her hands trembling at her sides.
“Why didn’t you?” Miranda asked, challenging. She could hear her heart in her ears.
Andrea anxiously wet her lips. “I wasn’t sure what line I could cross,” she exhaled. “And I really didn’t want my efforts to go to waste because you seemed proud of me when we got the deal.”
Miranda was proud, sure. But she was more angry than anything. She wanted to die—but for a different reason now. Her obliviousness, maybe. Her stupidity, definitely.
“I thought you actually liked being with Anne,” Miranda said, her voice embarrassingly strained.
“I did. She was nice to have around,” Andrea said, and Miranda frowned. “She was the one who suggested I call you last night.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t stop wondering if you were okay, or if you needed me for anything, or if you—” Andrea swallowed. “If you wanted me back.”
Miranda rose to her feet and crossed the space between them in a single, decisive step, cutting off whatever else Andrea might have said. She caught Andrea’s face in her hands and kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle, not at first—too much frustration, too much restraint finally snapping all at once. An entire week of this misery. An entire week of this torture.
Andrea froze for half a second, just long enough for Miranda’s stomach to drop, before she melted into it. She kissed back quickly, as if she’d been waiting for permission to do exactly that, her hands finding Miranda’s waist and holding on like she was afraid she’d disappear.
Miranda exhaled sharply through her nose and pulled her closer, one hand sliding into Andrea’s hair. The tension in her shoulders loosened as Andrea sighed into the kiss, like everything she’d been holding back had finally found somewhere to go.
When they finally broke apart, Miranda was the one who pulled away, though she stayed close, her forehead resting against Andrea’s. She could feel Andrea’s breath, still uneven, the faint brush of her eyelashes against her cheek as Andrea’s eyes fluttered shut.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
“You have no idea how much pain I was in,” Miranda said, somehow needing to admit it out loud.
Andrea laughed and kissed her again—shorter than the last time. “Anne did say you were jealous.”
Miranda groaned, the sound muffled by another kiss from Andrea. She could get used to this. She really could get used to this.
“Were you jealous?”
Miranda pulled back just enough to glare at Andrea, and with a defeated sigh, she said, “It wasn’t my best moment. I refuse to go through that again.”
Andrea giggled, pulling her into a hug and nuzzling her face into her neck. “It was a little entertaining. You looked cute stomping your feet.”
Miranda rolled her eyes and was about to turn away, her face red with shame, when Andrea ran after her and hugged her from behind.
“You will not say a word about this to anyone,” Miranda warned, though it lacked any real bite.
Andrea giggled but nodded. “Okay. I’ll etch ‘jealous Miranda’ into my brain. It will be our little secret.”
Miranda’s head felt like it might burst, but she allowed herself to relax, leaning back into Andrea’s touch.
“It will be our little secret,” Miranda agreed.