Work Text:
Runway has continued to exist even after Andrea Sachs had made her leave. In fact, it had never been stronger. A new passion had been crafted, a place been made after Andrea Sachs decided to bid farewell to the magazine. It seems in her absence, the place only grew more powerful, but also colder. Infinitely colder.
That fact is something that Emily Charlton has decided to ignore wholeheartedly. She told herself that Runway was better without Andrea, way better even. Andrea was her direct competition, after all. She was only there to make things harder for Emily, they would have never worked out or even become friends, is what she told herself. But Emily couldn’t deny that the office felt colder, not because of the air conditioning, but because of a presence. Or the lack of said presence.
Nevertheless, life went on for Emily Charlton. She went on with being Miranda Priestly’s first assistant, as she had previously done. Nigel had found a new assistant she couldn’t be bothered to put effort into teaching. She found it hard to not miss Andrea Sachs, but only for work. Nothing more.
But Andy Sachs had another plan.
After finding a pocket dial from Emily in her call history once, she has full on convinced herself that it was not a pocket dial and decided to work towards an impossible goal: serenading Emily Charlton so that Andy could eventually be forgiven, and then keep serenading her for Project: Get A Girlfriend.
Jeez, she was starting to sound so nerdy with all of these stupid actions labeled as projects so they didn’t seem as stupid. Andy was taking her lunch break, sulking around her new work friends like it was announced her pet goldfish just drowned. She was pretty sure her friends were making fun of her for looking like a wet dachshund with huge doe eyes, but she was too wrapped up in flipping through Runway’s newest edition to look for any mention of Emily’s name.
Just then, she came across a page detailed about ideas surrounding their next Spring collection. Under the magnificent sketches of fruit-inspired dresses, there was a marvelous signature over a small printed name. Emily M. Charlton, listed as the designer for these stunning dresses. Andy could not believe her big doe eyes. They almost popped out of her eye socket before she realised her friend snapping his fingers next to her ear, and she finally looked up from the magazine that had somehow consumed all 30 minutes of their lunch break.
“Jesus, what the hell?” Andy retracted from the sound of the snapping. It was irritating her and distracting her from a very important project. Not that these people care or know about her top secret mission, but she still acted like it was blasphemy whenever they took her out of such a focused state.
Unfortunately, it was back to working at the desk for Andrea Sachs. Perhaps she could have another chance of scouring Gotham for answers on how she would macarena her way back into Emily’s life. But Jesus, it’s starting to feel like not even Batman could get Emily to budge. But who knows? She was Andrea Sachs after all.
The afternoon eventually passed, and Andy decided to make her way into the quietest Starbucks she could find. She finally had the chance to sit down and properly analyze the magazine like she was doing the twins’ english project again. Andy couldn’t keep track of how many times she had said the word project to herself today.
Her fingers eventually landed on the page full of fruity drafts, every sketch graced with a vibrant colour from an equally vibrant fruit. Strawberries, bananas, and even mangoes. Andy’s eyes hovered specifically on the mango design, the curve of the corset complimenting the yellow material in such a way it genuinely looked like a mango. A beautiful, ripe mango. Perhaps fruits for spring were truly groundbreaking.
The designs were genuinely stunning, and Andy looked like a kid on Christmas morning going through all of them. This was Emily Charlton. A cold, viperous woman who barely wore anything that wasn’t cool toned eyeshadow and black clothing. Yet, her bright and fruity designs lay on the pages. Perhaps she had an alter ego named Fruity Charlton? Andy wasn’t so sure.
Just then, it was like everything had clicked in Andy’s mind. Emily clearly liked fruits if she could make such intricate clothing designs out of such amorphous shapes. Andy could imagine herself trying to cut the mango’s skin in a specific way so she could get it to bend like sleeves. She’d probably have sticky hands that did in fact smell like mangoes. Bummer…
Back to the main point, Andy had stopped fantasizing about her dress making abilities via fruits and actually remembered what she just realised. She could make a fruit basket for Emily! Nobody would stop her from making a cute fruit basket filled with skinless mangoes and knife marks from a very clear amount of failed cuts. Wait, no. Andy wasn’t going to give Emily the mangoes she did surgery on, for crying out loud…
The grocery store fell victim to Andrea Sachs later that night. She left with 2 packs of strawberries, a bunch of bananas, and roughly 12 mangoes. Twelve. And also an overwhelmingly large bottle of the cheapest, shittiest red wine she could find. She barged into her apartment door with the determination unlike anything seen before to create a fruit basket.
Andy set down her massive fruit collection onto the table and popped off the cork of her wine. She grabbed an old basket her mom gave her, and started plotting. Should she paint the basket black so it matched Emily’s aesthetic? Oh, but the contrast would be too overwhelming and definitely not pretty. She could really use Fruity Charlton’s help right now.
Andrea gave up on designing the basket for now and started to lay out the fruits in the basket. It only clicked to her that she bought far too many mangoes as she laid the seventh one down. This was starting to look more like a mango basket than just a fruit basket. She was really losing it.
Besides, what was she even trying to achieve here? Does Andrea Sachs think she can lure Emily Charlton in with an abominable amount of sweet tropical fruit that probably wasn’t even as sweet and as tropical because they were from the cheapest grocery? Andy was grasping at straws here. Nevertheless, she was already 2 glasses and 12 mangoes deep. God fucking damn it.
Project: Be Forgiven is looking like an incomprehensible task now.
Project: Get A Girlfriend was even further gone into the galaxy than Andy was when she somehow finished a bigfoot sized bottle of red wine in one sitting.
Yet somehow, against all odds, she positioned the fruits in a way it actually looked… appealing. And not mangoes with a drop of strawberry and banana. It had actually looked quite pretty, the yellow fruit towered in a way that the rest of the fruits were kind of complimenting the tower. Andy could imagine Emily wearing the mango dress she sketched on top of this magnificent, strategically built Mangifera Indica palace. She was sure the shitty wine was getting to her now.
“I am genuinely a fucking genius. She’s gonna love this.” Andrea whispered, carefully fixing any fruits that were out of place as if she was playing Jenga with her 7 different personalities only cheap alcohol could unlock.
It was nearly 4 in the morning now, and the basket had been finished. Andy painted it with the leftover acrylic paint she bought for that one science project with all of the planets she did for the twins. The basket had this sort of gradient, going from red to yellow to pink. It almost looked like a mango… But honestly, everything looked like a mango to Andrea right now.
“Okaayy… The basket is done. Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something?” Andrea said, holding a pen in one hand and her sticky notes in the other. She shrugged and went back to staring at her beautiful creation, the mango tower. A hand painted, vibrant fruit basket. A castle of twelve mangoes being protected by the dutiful strawberries, their horses being the bananas.
Apparently, this was no longer a fruit basket but a highly detailed and engineered castle that was bulletproof, explosion-proof, and hopefully NOT Emily Charlton proof. After Andy realised why she was holding the pen in her hands in the first place, she started plotting what to write on her note.
“Umm… Uh. Dear Emily? No, ugh. It’s not like I wanna write her a love letter. Um.”
Andrea pondered, pen always hovering but never actually writing on the sticky note. She was a journalist and yet she couldn’t come up with a normal note to a friend. She was also drunk. And maybe the friend she was writing to was more to her than that, but we needn’t get into those details now.
After a 20 minute period of unbreaking silence, Andy finally wrote something simple on the note.
“Saw your designs in the magazine. They’re really pretty, Em. Accept my gift?”
Andy
That was it. Andy was done. She was hopeful enough that Emily would get the sincerity of her message through her gift, her extremely awesome project mango gift. But her nerdy thoughts aside, Andy really did wish Emily would get the memo. There’s no better display of desperation than twelve mangoes and a handwritten note with the shakiest handwriting you’ve ever seen.
Andy was gonna catch some sleep tonight.
The sun eventually rose, Emily Charlton along with it. Today was probably going to be another busy, boring day where she ends up at the club drinking with Serena and watching everybody dance with each other. She was okay with it, really. The first assistant doesn’t have the stamina or patience to deal with all of that, anyway. The girl just needed to wind down at the end of a busy work day.
Emily threw on an outfit. mostly Valentino. She wanted to look stylish but comfortable today, since the recent days have been full of burn outs and getting ready for yet another gala. She had to teach the new second assistant how to deal with The Book since her and Miranda will be the only ones going to that benefit. But it didn’t feel the same with the new girl.
Obviously, it wasn’t going to feel the same. The new girl was already well-versed in her own fashion sense and was as skinny as Emily. She wasn’t like Andrea who wore her hideous skirt on day one and ended up coated in Chanel the next week. Nobody was like Andrea anyway, she was special in her own regard. Emily couldn’t deny that.
Emily walked to the office calm and collected, having her own Starbucks order with her and getting ready to set up Miranda’s desk. She was going to come in a little later today, having heard the twins begged her to have breakfast with them after only God knows how long. Emily almost felt peaceful, like the aura of the Elias-Clarke building was going to be nothing but soft and quiet.
It was hilarious, how terribly wrong she was.
The office eventually filled up, and Miranda arrived no later than 10 am. It was a relatively calm day so far, since Emily had already finished every scheduling conflict and had gathered and confirmed the details about the coming benefit. So she was basically stuck behind the desk doing nothing unless Miranda called her name, but that really just meant the new assistant.
There was one time though, after Andy just left. Miranda kept calling the new girl Andrea and it drove Emily insane. Thank god it only lasted one day, though. As Emily’s lunch period neared, she swore she heard Nigel call Andy’s name. But she decided to ignore him and hoped she’d have just heard him wrong.
Emily Charlton wasn’t exactly known for being an artist, but she wasn’t known anyway. Although after Andrea had left, she would carry a sketchbook around in lunch and just sketch away, next to Serena. Lunch was basically free time, seeing as Emily only ate at home and nowhere else. On one specific lunch occasion, Nigel spotted the two girls sitting together and Emily’s sketches. He then dragged her into the corner, spent 30 minutes convincing her to let him show the sketches to Miranda, and left as giddy as a puppy who was given a pup cup.
Just as Emily was about to go to the cafeteria to take said break, she looked up and saw Nigel and Andy having a conversation together, and a ginormous mango tower about the size of Andy’s head. Was she having a hallucination?
Scratch that thought.
What the hell was Andrea Sachs doing here?
Before Emily Charlton could tactically evade the gaze of the father daughter duo, Serena came up from behind her and pushed her closer to the two. Emily uttered about 50 different curse words until she turned back forwards and nearly bumped into Andy, who had the biggest smile on her face.
“Oh my god! Serena, you are going to pay for this.” Emily whispered before Serena scattered and ran away.
“Hi— Hi Em!” Andy smiled, her voice clearly shaky. She tried to block the pile of mangoes from her peripheral vision and only have Emily in her line of sight. It wasn’t particularly hard, seeing as Emily Charlton was the most beautiful woman in the world. Looking at Emily made Andy feel like her heart was going to explode.
“Andrea. It’s been… a while.” Emily straightened, pushing her hair back with one hand, clutching onto her sketchbook for dear life in the other. Her hands were clearly shaking, but she kept them steady. Emily couldn’t make eye contact with Andy, not now when she was wearing such stunning clothes and her dumb doe eyes haven’t changed one bit.
“You still look chic, Andy.” Emily muttered, barely audible. She felt her breath hitch and grow a little faster. She hated that.
Andy melted. Her unnaturally straight posture just crumbled at Emily’s words. She didn’t really expect their first face to face conversation to be all gooey like this, but she is so glad. Andy almost reached out to grab Emily’s hand, but she kept her distance.
Emily twitched, but she didn’t move.
Always back and forth with these two.
“You still look… I can’t even describe how you look, Em. You’re gorgeous.” Andy moved closer, inches away from holding the other woman’s hand.
“Is this your plan to make me forgive you, Andrea? Showing up to my office and… apparently bringing me a fruit basket. If you can even call it that, really…”
“Hey! I worked exceptionally hard on that. You better take it.” Andy pouted and moved back, playing hurt. But Emily could see the cheeky smile under her pout. And God help her, her stomach was turning in ways it should not be.
“Exceptionally hard? When did you start using words like that, Andy?” Emily smiled, and unlike anything she had done before, she pulled Andy in for a hug. Not just a normal, friendly hug either. She had her palm on the back of Andy’s head and almost melted into her body. Maybe she did miss Andy more than she wanted to admit.
Andy froze. Her brain, which is usually always running in top shape, stopped working. She’s pretty sure that her nose had started bleeding, but hopefully not. Her hands found Emily’s back and squeezed her tight, not wanting to let go.
Emily stood still for a while, just holding Andy in her arms and feeling her breath speed up. Her heart betrayed her, she couldn’t keep up the cool act today. She did in fact miss Andrea more than she should’ve.
When Emily pulled back, Andy almost fell down backwards before she caught herself on a very conveniently placed table. Emily leaned forward to try and catch her but snapped back to standing up straight and looking away before Andy could notice. Though she did notice.
“So… I come with gifts!” Andy said excitedly, bringing her mango basket to Emily’s desk, with Emily following right behind her. Emily smiled, checking out the basket design. It looked like a school project, but a damn good one. She had to give Andrea her flowers.
“I can certainly see that. Where on earth did you get nine mangoes?”
“Twelve, actually.”
Emily tried to lift the basket, and realised that was a horrible idea. She set it down, took the small sticky note and squinted her eyes.
“Saw your designs in the… Andy. You read the magazine?” Emily leaned on her desk, the heat rising to her cheeks again. She had to find a way to stop melting into a puddle whenever she was around Andy. Emily stuck the note on her desk and looked up at the girl in front of her, smiling like Andy personally lifted all of her burdens from her shoulders and tossed them into the ocean.
"Of course I read the magazine. I didn’t know if you were gonna kill me if I called you so I… checked on you through the magazine.” Andy felt like a stalker for saying that.
It’s not like Emily was the Joker and she was Batman. But when this girl gets nervous, she just starts saying random stuff.
“God, this girl.” Emily thought to herself. But she just couldn’t stop smiling so fondly at Andrea. Emily fiddled with the sticky note, staring at it because meeting Andy in the eyes was too difficult for her extremely flustered self right now.
“It’s not like I would’ve had your head on my desk if you called me, Andy. I know I may have been… You know. To you during our entire period at Runway but I… I could never really hate you, Andy.”
Andy’s smile grew progressively bigger, but a helpful Nigel behind Emily was telling her to cut it off and tone it down. She still smiled, obviously. But a smaller, constrained smile. Andy’s gaze never left Emily’s flushed face, the dusky eyeshadow being the only thing saving Emily from looking like a tomato. Andy paused for a moment, and enveloped her hand into Emily’s. Of course, one would never admit it to the other, but it was clear how her breath hitched at the contact. It was so, excruciatingly clear.
“Em, I just wanna say. The designs? They’re stunning. I don’t know how we haven’t seen them in the industry before, it’s a genuinely creative concept. Fruits for spring! It is groundbreaking!”
Emily rolled her eyes playfully and nudged Andy. She couldn’t believe that they were sat here, face to face, reunited because of… mangoes. Specifically her design that was inspired around mangoes, but that was a mouthful. Imagine telling your children how you met your mother, and you go: “Mangoes”. Not that Emily was thinking of children, much less with Andy. Hell no.
“Well, thank you. I gave designing a try in my past time, and Nigel just had to interfere. We went back and forth for nearly thirty minutes, because I refused to show my designs to Miranda. And yet, he—
“Walked out of the cafeteria with your sketchbook in hand. Oh, god— That sounds like such a Nigel thing to do!”
“And that he did. It was frankly insane, but I couldn’t be more grateful. Don’t let him hear that.”
“I have ears!”
“Shut up, Nigel!” The two girls said in unison, and they lost it. Andy was bent over backwards creasing into silent, wheezeful laughter while Emily sat on her desk clutching her stomach, praying that nobody else but the three heard that. She was unraveling, and she was unraveling in front of Andrea Sachs. Her line of defense surrendered long, long ago.
At one point, they had gotten so immersed in their conversation that Andy was starting to eat the strawberries in the basket she made for Emily. Her hand was ultimately swatted away by a very whimsical Emily Charlton, who was clearly losing it at the sight of Andy fiddling with the fruit basket before she could.
“Oh my god, Andy. You’re like a claw machine that isn’t rigged.”
“Hey! Stop it! I didn’t know that these strawberries were going to be that good, okay?”
“Well clearly, they’ve got to be good. You keep reaching for them like it’s an automatic response.”
“Emily!”
Suddenly, the air around the office grew colder. Emily’s phone started vibrating with an insatiable hunger, like the phone was going to explode if she didn’t answer that call right this second. It probably would, honestly. Not even Emily’s phone is willing to face a disappointed Miranda.
“One sec, Andy.” Emily whispered, flipping her phone and answering it. In a fraction of a second, Emily’s eyes grew very frantic very quickly. Clearly, Miranda was barking orders (as she always was), and Andy happened to have noticed. Andy grabbed the notepad and pen on the desk and handed them to Emily, who was now furiously writing down notes and increasingly hearing more information that is definitely not making sense to her.
About 3 pages of notes later, the call finally ended. Andy had forgotten how hard it was to be Miranda’s assistant, the toll it was taking on Emily was clearer now than ever before. Although, something was off. Emily did in fact seem like that phone call siphoned half of her lifespan, yes. But there was a shine in her eyes that wasn’t there before. Andy could tell that Miranda had told Emily something that she’s been wanting to hear.
“Look, I know you have this whole cold hearted girl personality going on, and even though we’ve established that it clearly goes away when you’re with me, there’s this like… Glitter in your eyes after that call. What’d she say, Em?”
Emily rolled her eyes at the sneaky jab at her personality by Andy. But it was true, Miranda had announced to Emily something she’s been waiting for since the magazine dropped.
“So… Miranda has a plan. She’s apparently going to set me up with designers from Dior so we could discuss the designs that I sketched for the magazine.”
“Oh my god! Wow! Holy shit!”
“Andy, keep your voice down! For Christ’s sake…”
“Sorry! Sorry… Right, inside voice.”
And so, there began their journey of learning how to be friends again. Maybe, possibly, even more.
Project: Be Forgiven has been successful.
It’s been 6 months since Andrea Sachs and Emily Charlton had bloomed into something more that didn’t quite have its own title yet. Nights spent together at the bar, others tangled in each other’s arms.But they both refused to put a label on what they had now, not unless the other was ready.
Well, Andy had been ready since the day she saw Emily again. Andrea Sachs, despite being the busy journalist that she is, has made it her personal mission to make sure the fruit basket she gave Emily at work was never empty. She’d try and give new fruits every so often, but she made sure to always have at least one mango there. Mangoes were basically the symbol of their relationship. You could say that what they have is mangold.
Emily however, no matter how much she loved Andy, couldn’t ever return the kindness to her. She was always so busy with design work and “collaborative processes”, she would repeat to Andrea as if she was a child. Andy was rooting for her, obviously. But there was a gap in their presence, and there was no denying that.
Despite the “magic” and “fun” that the two women experience with each other, (as described by their friends) there was clearly something brewing between the two. Emily couldn’t come home without smelling like some kind of alcohol, and Andy didn’t know how many times she had to take care of drunk Emily and send her off to work with lemon juice. Andy understood that work was stressing her out, Andy had to understand. Because then they’d start fighting again and she’d obviously lose.
There was a day when the two finally stopped acting like there wasn’t a wedge being driven between them. Emily came home from the bar, as always, wasted. And Andy finally snapped.
“God, Andrea. Just fucking deal with it, please. I am so tired from work— How many times do I have to tell you this? And you keep… pushing and pushing. I need space!”
“What about me, Em? Do you honestly think I don’t get tired? Do you think I wanna deal with you coming drunk out of your mind every night, knowing damn well it’s going to happen again tomorrow? What even is the point, anyway! My words enter one ear and leave through the other!”
“Oh my god, you’re acting like you aren’t living and doing your dream job. What do you have to stress about, again? Writing about puppies being birthed or something? Do you realise what it takes to be, I don’t know— the assistant of Miranda Priestly while simultaneously working on my own career? Do you know how to balance that?”
“Well clearly, you don't because you come home smelling like alcohol every night! Every night, Emily! If you’re not up blabbering about how miserable your day was at work, you’re hungover and sobbing about how hard your life is! Oh, but I don’t know anything about your life, right? Because I definitely don’t take care of you when all of this happens!”
“Do you want a gold star for treating me like your fucking girlfriend, Andrea?!”
“Maybe when you actually start telling other people I’m your girlfriend, I will!”
Low blow. And it definitely landed.
“Bloody hell. It always comes back to this with you.”
“So you know it’s something that has been bothering me since, I don’t know, we started living together?”
“Yeah. And I also know that I don’t have time to—”
“So when?”
“Andrea, just stop.”
“So when will you have time for me, Emily? Time for us? Cause I’m ready. I’ve been so ready for you to tell your friends about me and talk about me as somebody who’s more than just your old colleague.”
“Andrea, please.”
“Please what? Please hear me out, Andrea. Please listen to me waste my life away at the job I choose to do. Please let me lie to myself about our relationship, plea—”
“Andy.”
“Forget it, Em. This isn’t gonna work.”
“Andrea, please. Sit down with me, let’s talk. Please?”
“What are we gonna talk about, Emily? You’re going to ask me to forgive you again? How do I even know if you’re being genuine with what you say, when you’re just drunk all the time?”
“B-because… I just am. People can be genuine while they’re drunk, Andy… You know me.”
“Yeah. I know you. And you aren’t one of those people, Em. You just aren’t.”
Emily was glued to the couch. Andy wasn’t looking at her while packing all of her stuff into the big bag she kept at the corner of Emily’s bed when she started coming home wrecked. Andy shouldn’t look back, she couldn’t. She’s afraid of what might happen if Emily met her in the eye, if Emily really looked at her.
It was clear that Emily had no fight left in her.
It was so, excruciatingly clear.
The red head sat still on the couch, watching the love of her life pack her stuff. She couldn’t even process this properly, her brain felt like mush after the argument and the drinks weren’t helping. She didn’t even realise that tears were falling until Andy finally looked at her, and she had the sudden urge to straighten up and look away.
“You can’t even look at me.”
“Andy, I’m overwhelmed—”
“I’m sure you are, Em. It’s fine. I’ll get out of your sight.”
Andy glanced at the place. It looked like hell. Dresses everywhere, sketch books torn apart, multiple crushed up cans in their trash bin. Andy knew that Emily wouldn’t be able to fix all of this on her own, she knew that very well. Despite her hesitation and urge to just get out of there, Andy set her bag down to fix things up.
Emily wasn’t moving anymore, couldn’t. She was drifting in and out of consciousness on the couch, wanting so much to tell Andy that she loved her. That she was her girlfriend and they’d fix this. That Andy only needed to hold out a little longer. But the consequences of your actions have a funny way of showing up when you really don’t need them to.
Before Andy finished up around the apartment, Emily was already asleep. Beneath her eyes were still undried tears, and Andy just couldn’t leave her like this.
When Andrea Sachs left, the apartment would be clean. The closet would be organised. The food and drinks would be refrigerated. Emily Charlton would lay in bed, falling asleep in the presence of Andrea Sachs for the last time.
She would not know how to live with the regret of it all.
But Andrea never left Emily without giving her something. Food, letters, drinks. Emily Charlton would always have something to wake up with, someone to wake up with. God knows she didn’t appreciate that enough.
The letter was at the very bottom of their never-ending fruit basket, that Emily moved to her apartment a month into their relationship. Andy would always cut some cold mangoes for Emily to have while sketching, and they’d joke about gluing the pieces of fruit together to make a new dress. She never went a week without that damn fruit, it was a staple in their little apartment life. A symbol of their beginning, and perhaps also the beginning of their end.
The fruit basket remained full after Andy left. Emily would buy mangoes to place in them, let them rot, and just replace them. She constantly replaced them when one went bad, so she never had the chance to see the bottom of the basket. Emily thought that with time, maybe it wouldn’t be just her who would keep their basket full. She was wrong.
It was ironic, the effort she put into keeping that part of her life alive. Always replacing but never eating. Always saying but never giving. Perhaps her actions had become the only outlet of Emily Charlton’s life where she isn’t plagued with the memory of her failure, the only plausible routine left for her.
Andrea Sachs was doing fine on her own. Surviving, as she always did. She survived leaving Paris and Miranda. She survived leaving Runway. Andy Sachs was now learning how to survive leaving Emily. And how to live with the idea of never becoming what they once were again.
Andy still thought about the fruit basket she painted by hand. The one with a goofy note written on it with the shakiest handwriting because she was drunk. She never wanted to taste alcohol again, actually.
She constantly thought about the letter she wrote. The fact that she never deleted Emily’s number, and was hoping for a call. The fact that Emily probably isn’t used to not having mangoes by her side while she was sketching. Of course, their life would continue even after they split. But it would be stagnant. Their development would be frozen in time, just as the fruit basket was. Always kept still. Always kept perfect.
Andy’s letter, frozen in time.
Emily’s spot at Runway, frozen in time.
The fruit basket.
Forever stagnant.
There is always a beginning—
And an end.
Andrea Sachs and Emily Charlton’s reunion was not planned. It was never supposed to happen. Not like this, anyway.
It was a Friday. It had been 6 months since the two last saw each other. Emily had been thriving in Runway, and her collaborations with Dior. Her designs were all over the magazine and the showrooms. Models walked, magazines edited, brands ran to get her thoughts on every dress. Her response was always along the lines of:
“I was inspired by the one and only Miranda Priestly. Her work has always been a pleasure to watch and witness, and she gave me this opportunity.”
But at Paris Fashion Week, Emily Charlton was interviewed by a young journalist who happened to look scarily similar to Andrea. Maybe that set something off in Emily’s brain. Because unlike anyone had ever seen before, she answered the next set of questions with an unsettling honesty.
“So, Miss Charlton. How does it feel to have your designs come to the big stage after a year of hard work, right here at Paris Fashion Week?”
“It feels absolutely amazing, I am so honored to be here and have my designs featured by people and brands I have adored since I was a girl. It’s almost unreal to experience all of this.”
“Do you have somebody to experience this with, Miss Charlton? Our City of Love is a sight to see!”
Emily chuckled. It was too quick, too dry. But she acted like that wasn’t the case.
“Ah, do I have somebody…? No, no unfortunately…”
Something solemn grew in Emily Charlton’s eyes. But the solemnity came with ambition, as it always did.
“But I used to. She had already been here before me, so I’m sure she didn’t miss much. But I wish I could experience how it is to be under the Paris lights, with her.”
Emily looked at the camera, like she knew Andy was watching.
“Andy. I’ll call you later, alright? We should talk.”
The interview nodded furiously and kept sharing thanks with Emily. They both smiled at each other, and went their separate ways.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Andy grabbed her phone, almost dropping it thrice before she flipped it open to look for Emily in her contacts. Why would she admit to their relationship on TV? Why now, when she finally had it all?
This would ruin things for her.
Brands would pull everything back if they knew Emily Charlton was in love with a girl.
With Andrea Sachs.
Within the next 10 minutes, Andrea felt her phone buzz. She picked up on the first ring.
“Emily, what are you doing?”
“So you saw my little spectacle on TV, Andy? I’m glad.”
“Emily, please. Are you planning anything?”
“Planning what, Andy? Planning to get you back, maybe.”
“Why would you announce it to the whole world? This isn’t normal.”
“You wanted them to know, right? I let them know, Andy.”
“I wanted you to let them know 6 months ago.”
“But it took me 6 months to prepare myself to tell everybody that I loved you. I could only say it now, so I’m making sure that you saw everything. I’m making sure that everybody knows.”
“How are you going to deal with this, though? I mean, the backlash, Em— they’re going to kill you.”
“Don’t worry about that, Andy. I’ll take care of it. Do you wanna get lunch together once I get back?”
“I— Well, of course. But, Em! Back to the point, do you need me to help you? I know a lot of people in publishing. I can help you.”
“Don’t worry your pretty head about it, Andrea. I’ll see you soon?”
“Em, when exactly will I see you?”
“You’ll know.”
“Emily—”
“I love you, Andy. Don’t worry about me, alright?”
A long, suffocating tone echoed in Andy’s room.
Emily hung up on her. Right, it was okay. They’ll discuss this when Emily comes back. They’ll fix everything and work together to preserve Emily’s reputation. Andy sounded like a guy’s name anyway, right?
Emily Charlton had other plans.
She placed her phone down on the cold countertop. Paris was especially lonely without anybody to accompany you. The Eiffel tower was so beautiful. So, so beautiful. She could imagine Andy trying to snap photos of it back when she went with Miranda, since the clothes she received that day included photos of the entire place. She used to hold them with jealousy and contempt, but now, she had reached her dreams.
Emily Charlton was a designer now. In Paris, fulfilling what she considered her destiny. Her dreams were in touch, all except one. Andy.
Oh, Andy.
She didn’t have the guts to face Andrea again.
She never would, really.
And so, she never did.
Emily sat on the balcony chair, a glass of rose wine in between her hands and a container with no label in the other.
“God, Paris really is beautiful.” Emily smiled, watching the Eiffel Tower glimmer in all of its glory, and downed whatever was inside of the small container.
That morning was the last morning where Emily would wake up with a fruit basket she’d refill herself.
That night was the last night Emily Charlton would go to bed with it full. The “Mangifera Indica palace”, as they’d call it. The meticulously engineered mango tower that Andy worked
exceptionally hard on.
Life would move on for Andrea Sachs after that night.
Emily Charlton would stay frozen in time, embedded in Paris’ history. Maybe not in the way she wanted to be.
Nevertheless, she was always going to go with a bang.
“City of Love, huh?” Emily breathed. It felt irregular, it felt doomed.
But that was how life was without Andrea Sachs, anyway.
Emily Charlton wasn’t willing to continue her life like this without Andy.
And that was so, excruciatingly clear.