Almost.
“Gosh,” I said, leaning on the counter and lowering my voice confidentially. “I’m so sorry about this, miss, but it seems you’ve been caught up in a little misunderstanding between me and my brother.”
The girl paled slightly, visions of Appalachian family dynamics no doubt dancing in her head. “…brother?”
“Yeah, we get that all the time,” I said with a sigh, “because he’s adopted, and people think we’re a couple. We’re actually expecting two more people—his girlfriend, and my fiancé. I know Asher hasn’t seen Maybelline in ages, and I’d love to be able to give him a little privacy—you don’t think you could just add another cabin to the account…?”
Her hands scrambled on the keys, flustered. “I, I, I’m not sure—it’s just, Mr. Young is the name on the account, and since he didn’t authorize it—”
“It’s those memory problems,” I said gravely, with a concerned shake of my head. “Ever since the orphanage—oh, they used to beat them so terribly there, sometimes when we were kids Asher would still wake up screaming and wetting the bed— thank goodness the U.N. shut it down and found all those children nice homes. But some damage can never be undone.”
The girl’s eyes were so wide I was worried they might pop out of her head. “That’s so terrible!”
“It is, isn’t it.” I laid my hand over hers. “Thanks for being so sympathetic. Not everyone understands what a trial it is, you know?” I sighed deeply, and tried to look melancholy. I thought about Asher’s betrayal of my hopes, and that seemed to help. “I wish he would open up more about it to me, but at least he has Maybelline. He can talk to her about anything. The last few years they’ve been together…he’s been so much more open, so much more able to enjoy life. A true American success story.”
The girl’s eyes were filled with tears. “That’s so beautiful. I’ll add that extra cabin right away.”
“Thank you—” I checked her name tag—“Ava. This means so much to both of us.”
I salved my guilty conscience with a hefty tip, and then set out for my new cabin, courtesy—though he didn’t know it yet—of Asher Young’s apparently tragic childhood.
#
My room was gorgeous, with polished wooden beams and furniture so plush you could sink into it and never come back out, but I couldn’t calm down. The high I’d gotten from outwitting Asher’s trite little seduction scheme had deflated like a punctured hot air balloon as I faced the fact that it had all been a seduction scheme in the first place. He didn’t think my business could succeed the way I wanted it to. He hadn’t even been interested in listening to my strategy—he’d just leapt in and steamrollered all over it.
I opened up my briefcase and spread my samples over the bed. The pale violet brassiere with the velvet lining, the cobalt blue teddy with lace fringe, the sheer babydoll sewn from silk so fine you could have pulled it through a wedding ring—they still seemed beautiful to my eyes. They still seemed like a worthwhile dream.
So why couldn’t I convince anyone else?
Maybe I was never going to succeed. Maybe I didn’t really have what it took. Maybe all my designs were uninspired trash and my clients were gullible fools and I was just deluding myself with thinking that I’d ever made a difference in the confidence and self-esteem of the women who came to me. Maybe it was just underwear.
I looked out the window into the sculpted hedges as a tear rolled down my cheek. I’d wanted to believe so much that I wasn’t just doing what I loved, but that I was doing good, too. Inspiring self-confidence wasn’t exactly world peace, but it had been something.
And now it was nothing.
Another tear rolled down my cheek, and I felt a sob catch in my throat as I hugged myself against the sudden chill of self-doubt and despair.
And then Asher, with some truly impeccable sense of timing, knocked on the door.
He didn’t actually wait for me to open the door—probably that would have violated the bylaws of Overreaching Douchebags International—but barged right on in. “Are you calmed down now? I thought we could discuss—”
“There is nothing to discuss!” I interrupted, my voice harsh as my sadness flared into rage. “You’re not even interested in discussing; you didn’t listen to a single thing I said. You just want to talk at me and talk at me until I’m buried under a huge pile of logic and cost-benefit ratios and I give up my integrity and do things your way!”
“Because my way makes sense,” he said, starting to get hot around the collar. He took a step back, pulling his phone from his pocket and waving it in the air like a light saber. “Look at these projections!”
I crossed my arms and gave him the stink eye.
Asher took a deep breath, visibly reining himself in, and then held out the phone tentatively, like peace offering. “We’re talking a 150% return rate on investment here,” in a voice so carefully neutral it could have come from Switzerland. “I don’t see what the issue is. You could be sipping martinis on a beach this time next year, not a care in a world.”