Celeste's Girl¶
✨ Scene 16¶
✨ First Rung¶
Mara didn’t look up.
“First rung.”
And Charlie lifted his arms. Nothing dramatic happened. That was the point.
The mock-up shifted, settled, revealed its stubborn little truths along the side seam — a crease that wanted to become a habit, a boning channel that behaved until it didn’t. Mara watched like a machinist. Lauren watched like a woman who had lived inside garments that asked too much and gave too little back.
Sarah watched like someone waiting to see whether the room would flinch.
Charlie lowered his arms and looked to the ledger. Mara spoke first.
“Write it.”
He did. His pen moved faster than his face could manage. Lauren leaned in just enough to read the headings, not the boy. She didn’t touch the page; she didn’t take over. She simply existed beside the work in a way that made it feel less lonely.
When Charlie finished, Mara nodded once — the whole of her praise.
“All right,” Mara said. “That’s the garment. Now the rung.”
Charlie stilled. “The… rung?”
Mara set the mock-up aside and pinned a strip of tape to the floor in a straight line, like a boundary.
“This line,” she said, “is the edge of hiding. On this side, you can hover. On that side, you’re working while people see you.”
Sarah gave a short laugh. “You’re joking.”
“No,” Mara said. “It’s training.”
Charlie stared at the tape as if it were a trap. Mara pointed to the cutting table.
“Your job is to cross that line, do one real task while we watch, and come back. No explaining. No apologising. Just the task.”
“And… that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Mara said. “Small, repeatable. Until it’s boring.”
Lauren’s voice came in warmer, without softening the standard. “Pick a task you already know,” she said. “Something clean. Waistline mark. Grainline check. Anything your hands can do while your brain is noisy.”
Charlie blinked at her. The warmth helped; it didn’t replace the difficulty.
“The waistline mark,” he said.
“Good,” Mara replied. “On my count.”
Sarah folded her arms. “If he trips, I’m laughing.”
Lauren turned her head toward Sarah, still pleasant. “If you laugh, you’ll be sorting grommets for a week. Quietly.”
Sarah shut her mouth. Mara didn’t react. She didn’t need to.
“Three,” Mara said.
Charlie tightened his grip on the chalk.
“Two.”
His shoulders tried to rise.
“Drop them,” Mara said, flat.
“One.”
Charlie stepped over the tape.
Nothing exploded. No one gasped. The room didn’t change — except that Charlie was now on the side where he could be seen. He walked to the cutting table and did the job: found the notch, marked the waistline, set the chalk down properly. His hand shook once, then steadied.
Mara nodded. “Back.”
Charlie blinked. “Back?”
“Back over the line,” Mara said. “Then forward again. You’ll do it until your body stops treating being watched like danger.”
Charlie swallowed. Then he stepped back over the tape. Then forward again. By the third crossing, his breath slowed.
By the fifth, his hands stopped shaking.
Sarah was no longer watching him. She was watching the method.
Mara wrote in the ledger:
EXPOSURE TRAINING — rung completed: crossed line while observed; task performed; no retreat.
Lauren’s voice came in warm at his shoulder as he turned.
“This is what aerobics feels like,” she said lightly, as if she were naming a weather pattern. “First day you think everyone’s watching. Third day you realise everyone’s too busy trying not to die.”
Charlie startled — an involuntary laugh trying to exist and not quite making it out. Mara was already stripping the tape from the floor, efficient as ever.
“Second rung tomorrow,” she said, as if she were announcing the next seam to sew. “Someone speaks to you while you work. You keep your hands.”
Sarah scoffed. But there was less bite in it now.
“And if I speak to him?” she asked.
Mara looked at her.
“Then you’ll speak like a colleague,” Mara said. “Not like a spectator.”
Sarah held Mara’s gaze, then nodded once — irritated, but compliant.
Charlie looked down at the ledger again, at the new heading. His pen moved.
Under Mara’s line, he added, neat as a vow:
NOTES: did not collapse. did not apologise. hands steadied after third crossing.
He underlined did not apologise once. Then he picked up his chalk.
“Again?” he asked, quietly.
Lauren smiled. “Again.”
Mara didn’t smile at all.
She didn’t need to.
She’d built a ladder.
✨ Scene 17¶
✨ Second Rung¶
Scene 17 — “Second Rung” (Celeste POV)
Mara didn’t announce the second rung like it was a milestone.
She treated it like a seam finish.
“Today,” she said, “someone speaks to you while you work. You keep your hands.”
Charlie’s eyes moved to the ledger as if the page might tell him what that meant in muscle terms. His shoulders lifted a fraction.
Mara tapped the table once.
“No shoulders.”
He dropped them, a little too fast, like a boy caught doing something wrong. Mara didn’t correct the speed. She corrected the premise.
“Not wrong,” she said. “Just unnecessary.”
The mock-up from yesterday lay folded at the end of the cutting table — no longer the centre of attention, which was its own kind of relief. Today’s work was smaller and meaner in its simplicity: chalk lines, notch marks, grainline checks. Things you could do perfectly until a voice arrived and reminded you you were a person being witnessed.
Mara looked at Sarah.
“You wanted front-facing,” Mara said. “You’re the voice.”
Sarah’s mouth tightened. “Me.”
“Yes,” Mara replied, already moving on. “Not as punishment. As training. Speak like a colleague.”
Sarah tipped her chin, as if she’d never been asked to do anything in her life except tolerate it.
“Fine.”
Lauren set her tote down and pulled out a packet of labels, the kind used for tagging bolts and marking stock. Practical. Domestic. Quietly competent. She didn’t insert herself into Mara’s authority. She simply made herself useful in a way that softened the air without changing the rules.
Charlie stood at the cutting table with chalk in hand, pattern pinned, his attention narrowed to the line. He had learned, in three days, that the safest place for him was inside a task.
Mara’s finger hovered over the pattern piece.
“Waistline. Then the hip spring marks. Clean.”
Charlie nodded and began.
The chalk whispered. The line appeared.
It was ordinary. It was safe.
Sarah leaned against a shelf, arms folded.
“You look like you’re defusing a bomb,” she said.
Charlie’s chalk hesitated. A white stutter on the line.
Mara’s voice landed without volume.
“Colleague,” she reminded.
Sarah rolled her eyes. “Fine. You’re working like you’re defusing a bomb.”
Charlie’s fingers tightened. He tried to move the chalk again and the line wobbled — only a millimetre, but enough that he saw it. His breath sharpened as if the room had narrowed.
Lauren stepped closer. Not to rescue. Not to crowd. Her voice stayed low, meant for Charlie, not the room.
“Short answers,” she said. “Factual ones. Then back to the line.”
Charlie blinked at her.
Lauren’s expression was warm but firm, like a coach who refuses drama because she respects the athlete.
“You don’t have to be clever,” she added. “You just have to stay in the work.”
Mara didn’t look at either of them, which was how she approved things: by not interrupting them.
Sarah pushed off the shelf.
“All right,” she said, and this time her tone shifted. Less spectator. More shop-floor. “Why are you marking that notch before the grainline?”
Charlie’s chalk paused again — then steadied, as if the question had given him somewhere rational to stand.
“Because the notch is a reference point,” he said, quietly. “The grainline is easier once the reference is anchored.”
He didn’t look up. He didn’t smile. He didn’t apologise for speaking. He answered, then kept drawing.
Lauren’s mouth twitched.
“That,” she murmured, to nobody in particular, “is the whole trick.”
Sarah watched his hand for a beat, her expression changing in small increments: annoyance, then reluctant interest.
“And if you mark it wrong?” she asked.
Charlie’s chalk moved.
“Then we’ll know,” he said. “Because it won’t match the block.”
Sarah’s lips parted as if she was about to make it personal. Mara’s voice cut in—clean, precise.
“Colleague,” Mara said again, as if it were a stitch standard.
Sarah exhaled through her nose.
“Right,” she said. “If it doesn’t match the block, it doesn’t match the block.”
Charlie made the last waistline mark and lifted the chalk. He set it down properly. That tiny act — putting the chalk down instead of clutching it — felt like proof.
Mara stepped in.
“Again,” she said, and slid the next piece toward him. “Same task. Same voice.”
Charlie swallowed. Then nodded.
Sarah circled to the other side of the table, forcing him to exist in a different angle of attention.
“Does it bother you,” she asked, and the edge returned to her tone, “that all this is… seen?”
Charlie’s chalk faltered — one heartbeat — and then he heard Lauren’s instruction again as if it were written on the table:
Short answers. Factual ones. Back to the line.
“It used to,” he said. “Now it’s… data.”
Sarah’s brow lifted. “Data.”
Charlie made the next line. “If I can’t do the work while someone talks, I can’t do the work.”
That was the most grown-up thing he’d said in the room.
Mara’s eyes flicked up — once — then down again. A microscopic nod, the closest she ever came to pride.
Sarah’s mouth tightened, and for a moment I saw her deciding what kind of person she wanted to be in this system.
She chose — grudgingly — correct.
“All right,” she said. “Then I’m going to give you something useful.”
Charlie didn’t look up. “Okay.”
Sarah pointed. “Your line is drifting a hair at the side-back.”
Charlie stopped. Looked. Adjusted.
“Thank you,” he said, still not looking at her, because the looking wasn’t the point.
He corrected the drift. Continued.
Lauren let out a breath that was almost laughter—private, pleased.
“See?” she said softly. “Learnable.”
Mara reached for the ledger and wrote while Charlie worked. Not as theatre. As record.
She pushed the book toward him when she was done.
EXPOSURE TRAINING — rung two completed: spoken to while working; hands maintained; responses factual; no retreat.
Charlie stared at the sentence as if it had weight.
Then — without being prompted — he added his own note beneath it, smaller, neater:
NOTES: first question shook me. second question steadied me. answered and kept moving.
He underlined kept moving once.
Sarah glanced at the underline, then at Mara.
“That’s it?” she asked, half-challenging.
Mara didn’t bother looking up.
“That’s it,” she said. “Until it’s boring.”
Lauren slid a label across the table toward me. STAYS BLOCK — RETURNING-TO-WORK, it read in tidy print.
“We’re going to need a proper storage system for these,” Lauren said, conversational, warm. “You can’t build a business on paper scraps and hope.”
Mara made a sound that was almost agreement.
“A business,” Charlie repeated under his breath, as if the word had snuck in.
I watched him—just for a second—watch the templates, the ledger, the labels.
There it was: the beginning of a fantasy he didn’t yet have language for. If it’s a business, someone provides. Someone holds it up.
But I didn’t look like someone waiting to be held up.
I looked like someone reading a map and deciding where the road would go.
Mara tapped the table once.
“Third rung next,” she said.
Charlie blinked. “What’s third?”
Mara’s voice stayed flat.
“Someone says something stupid,” she replied. “You keep your hands.”
Sarah smiled without warmth.
“Oh,” she said. “I can help with that.”
Lauren’s smile was warmer, and sharper.
“Colleague,” she reminded Sarah, lightly.
Sarah’s smile tightened.
“Colleague,” she echoed.
Charlie picked up his chalk again.
Not bravely.
Just… as if work was what you did next.
✨ Scene 18¶
✨ Third Rung¶
Scene 18 — “Third Rung” (Celeste POV)
Mara didn’t call it “third rung” until she’d already arranged it.
She treated it the way she treated everything else: as a variable you introduced on purpose, not a chaos you endured.
The atelier looked almost ordinary now—if you ignored the wall of blocks and the ledger that had become a kind of second spine. Labels had started appearing on everything: rolls of tape, drawers of grommets, the brown-card templates clipped and hung like tools instead of mysteries.
Lauren had brought a box of index tabs and, without fanfare, had started turning Mara’s wild ecosystem into something you could scale without losing your mind.
Mara didn’t thank her.
She left the tabs where they were and kept working, which was Mara’s version of endorsement.
Charlie stood at the cutting table with the stays pattern pinned and smoothed. Chalk in hand. Shoulders down. Breathing like a person.
He looked—dangerously—almost calm.
Mara tapped the table once.
“Third rung,” she said, flat.
Charlie blinked. “Someone says something stupid.”
Mara’s eyes flicked up. A microscopic nod. Yes. He’d listened.
“And you keep your hands,” she added.
Sarah, leaning on the shelving, made a pleased little sound—as if this rung had been made for her.
Lauren cut in gently, before Sarah could take it as entertainment.
“Remember,” she said, warm and steady, “you’re not winning an argument. You’re practising staying in the work.”
Charlie’s mouth tightened. He nodded once, and returned to the line.
Mara didn’t look at Sarah.
She didn’t need to.
The rule was already in place.
“Colleague,” Lauren reminded, lightly.
Sarah’s lips twitched. “Colleague,” she echoed, as if it tasted strange.
The chalk moved. The waistline mark appeared. The grainline followed. Charlie’s hand was steady enough now that the work looked like work, not like bravery.
Mara watched for drift. Lauren watched his shoulders. I watched the room.
And then the outside arrived—quietly, like it always does.
A voice from the doorway.
“Well,” it said, with the casual confidence of someone who’d never had to earn a place in a room full of women. “This is… new.”
Graham stood just beyond the threshold with a clipboard under his arm, an invoice tucked into it like a badge. He didn’t step in. He didn’t need to. The comment was already inside.
His eyes moved—automatically—toward Charlie, then toward the stays pattern, and his mouth did the lazy thing men’s mouths do when they think the world is theirs to narrate.
“Didn’t know you’d started hiring lads for ladies’—” he made a vague gesture, as if the garment didn’t deserve a name, “—gear.”
Charlie’s chalk stopped for half a heartbeat.
I felt the room tighten, not with fear, but with focus.
Mara didn’t move. She didn’t rise to it. She didn’t give him a big consequence yet.
She did something sharper.
She glanced at Charlie.
Not as comfort. As instruction.
Keep your hands.
Lauren spoke first, because Lauren’s warmth was not softness—it was steering.
“Hi, Graham,” she said, pleasant as sunshine. “You’re standing on the wrong side of the door for commentary.”
Graham blinked, surprised to find an adult voice already on him.
“It was a joke,” he said, as if that absolved everything.
Sarah made a small sound—half laugh, half snort—then caught herself. Her eyes flicked to Mara, and Mara didn’t even look up.
Colleague.
Charlie’s chalk resumed.
He didn’t turn. He didn’t flare. He didn’t shrink.
He drew the line as if the line mattered more than the world.
Graham tried again, because men often do.
“You lot are serious about this, aren’t you?”
Charlie’s hand stayed moving.
His voice, when it came, was quiet and factual, like a note in the ledger.
“Prototype testing,” he said. “Scheduled work.”
He didn’t look up.
He didn’t invite a reply.
He returned to the chalk as if language was just another tool you used briefly and then put away.
Lauren’s mouth twitched—the smallest sign of approval.
Mara finally lifted her eyes to Graham.
Her tone didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“Invoice goes on the hook,” she said. “If you have a question about orders, you ask me. If you have an opinion about my staff, you keep it.”
Graham’s face tightened.
He looked for the crack in the room—the place where a man could push and be indulged.
There wasn’t one.
He cleared his throat, suddenly very aware of the boundary he’d been allowed to stand behind.
“Right,” he said, clipped now. “Museum called again.”
Mara’s attention sharpened. Not because she cared about his tone—because the word museum was a number disguised as a noun.
“What did they say?”
Graham glanced at the clipboard. “They want another run. More sizes. They’re happy. They’re… impressed.”
Sarah’s brows lifted. Lauren’s expression didn’t change, but her eyes did that thing adults’ eyes do when they’re already calculating logistics.
Mara nodded once, as if she’d expected it.
“Good,” she said. “Leave the details. Go.”
Graham hesitated. His gaze flicked—one more time—toward Charlie and the stays pattern, as if he couldn’t resist trying to make it a story.
Lauren’s voice stayed warm.
“Thanks, Graham,” she said. “We’ll take it from here.”
It was dismissal with manners. That was Lauren’s style: same authority, different temperature.
Graham left.
The door clicked shut.
The room didn’t exhale dramatically. It simply returned to its normal rhythm—as if the comment had been weather, and Mara had installed proper drainage.
Charlie finished the line he’d been drawing. He set the chalk down. Properly.
Then—only then—he looked up.
His eyes were bright, not with tears, but with the adrenaline of having not collapsed.
Sarah opened her mouth, clearly unable to help herself.
“Not bad,” she said. “You didn’t even flinch.”
Charlie’s gaze flicked to Mara—checking the rule.
Mara’s tone stayed flat.
“Colleague,” she reminded.
Sarah rolled her eyes. Adjusted.
“Not bad,” she repeated, different now. “You kept your hands.”
Charlie nodded once.
Lauren stepped closer, her voice quiet enough that it didn’t turn into applause.
“That’s the rung,” she said. “Not the comeback. The staying.”
Charlie swallowed. “It felt… stupid.”
Mara nodded. “Yes.”
Charlie blinked. “Yes?”
Mara pointed at the ledger.
“Stupid is common,” she said. “That’s why we train for it.”
Charlie looked down at the pattern as if it were suddenly the most honest thing in the room.
Lauren leaned on the table’s edge, not invading his space—just present.
“And did you notice something?” she asked, conversational.
Charlie frowned. “What?”
“You didn’t have to explain yourself,” Lauren said. “You didn’t have to persuade him. You didn’t have to win. You just named the work and kept doing it.”
Sarah made a small sound of reluctant agreement.
“That’s how you make them bored,” she said. “Bored men are safer.”
Mara’s eyes flicked to her, the faintest hint of approval.
“Accurate,” Mara said.
I went to the ledger, because the ledger was now where the room put truth.
Mara wrote, fast and sharp:
EXPOSURE TRAINING — rung three completed: stupid comment introduced; hands maintained; response factual; no retreat; task completed.
Charlie stared at the entry, then took the pen.
Under Mara’s line, he added, smaller:
NOTES: wanted to disappear. did not. named the work. kept drawing.
He underlined kept drawing once.
Mara slid the pattern piece back toward him.
“Again,” she said, as if nothing else mattered. “Museum wants more sizes.”
Charlie blinked—caught by the word, not the work.
“More sizes,” he repeated.
Lauren smiled, warm and practical.
“Welcome to being good,” she said. “It creates demand.”
Charlie picked up his chalk.
Not bravely.
Not theatrically.
Just… as if competence had become a habit, and habits could hold you up when people couldn’t.
✨ Scene 19¶
✨ The Numbers¶
Scene 19 — “The Numbers” (Celeste POV)
Mara didn’t call a meeting.
She called me to the cutting table the way she called anyone: with a hand gesture that assumed you’d come, and a tone that didn’t waste time making you feel chosen.
“Bring the ledger,” she said.
Lauren was already there, sleeves rolled, a pencil behind her ear like she’d been born with it. She had a small stack of papers in front of her—printed emails, order confirmations, a delivery docket stamped in red. On top sat a single sheet covered in neat columns, the kind of handwriting that made maths look like it had manners.
Charlie hovered at the edge of the table, not in the old apologetic way. More like a technician waiting for his next specification.
Sarah sat on a stool, arms folded, expression guarded as if she didn’t want to be caught caring.
Mara tapped the stack of papers with two fingers.
“Museum wants another run,” she said. “More sizes. More units.”
Lauren didn’t smile. She rarely did when the stakes went up. She simply slid the top sheet toward Mara.
“And they want delivery dates,” Lauren added. “Not just ‘when it’s ready.’”
Mara’s eyes flicked over the page once. She didn’t read like a person. She read like a machine checking tolerances.
“How many?” she asked.
Lauren didn’t glance at the page. She knew it.
“Thirty-six,” she said. “This batch. With a follow-on option if the first run sells through.”
Sarah let out a low whistle despite herself.
“Thirty-six,” she repeated. “That’s not… boutique.”
“No,” Mara said. “That’s work.”
She looked at me then, and I felt the shift—the moment when a room stops being a room and becomes an organism.
“Open the ledger,” Mara said.
I did.
It fell open to pages that had started to look less like notes and more like proof: neat headings, repeated fields, signatures. Charlie’s handwriting, increasingly steady. Mara’s marginal corrections. The blunt, unwavering language of process.
Mara pointed to the most recent entries.
“How many prototypes did we run last week?”
Charlie answered before I could.
“Eleven,” he said. “Across the three body types. One full redo on the ‘well-nourished’ block. Two seam-finish changes. And… and the underarm guard adjustment.”
He said it like he was reciting something sacred. Facts. Sequence. Outcome.
Mara nodded once. Then she pointed at Lauren’s sheet.
“And how many finished garments left the building?”
Lauren’s pencil tapped the paper. “Nine.”
Charlie blinked. “Only nine?”
Lauren turned her head slightly toward him. Her voice stayed warm, but it didn’t soften the truth.
“Nine finished garments,” she said, “is nine more than most people manage without a system.”
Mara watched Charlie absorb that. She didn’t rescue him from the disappointment. She let it become useful.
“Here’s the problem,” Mara said, and drew a rectangle on the paper with her pencil. A plain box. No drama. “Prototype time competes with production time.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “So you hire someone.”
Mara’s gaze cut to her.
“With what,” Mara asked, flat, “money?”
Sarah opened her mouth, then shut it again. She hated the way reality closed doors. The difference was, Mara used doors as hinges.
Lauren slid another sheet forward. This one looked uglier—spreadsheets always do when they tell the truth.
“Mara asked me to tally costs,” Lauren said. “Materials. Hardware. Labour. Waste. The things you forget to count when you’re still pretending you’re just making pretty things.”
Mara’s mouth tightened, approving the phrasing without commenting on it.
Lauren continued, calm. “We’re profitable on small runs. We’re interesting on larger ones. But only if we stop bleeding time.”
Charlie stared at the sheets as if they were an unfamiliar language.
Mara pointed to him without looking.
“Read the bottom line,” she said.
Charlie flinched. Then leaned in.
“It says…” he swallowed. “It says if we do thirty-six without changing anything, we’ll… we’ll be exhausted.”
Sarah snorted. “Welcome to womanhood.”
Mara’s eyes flicked to her. Not warning this time. Just enough.
Sarah held up a hand. “Colleague,” she muttered, as if correcting herself was a chore.
Mara returned to Charlie.
“And if we change something?” Mara asked.
Charlie stared at the numbers. His mind tried to make them into fabric.
Lauren, gently: “Speak like the ledger.”
Charlie swallowed.
“If we reduce prototype cycles,” he said slowly, “and standardise… more of the steps. Templates. Hardware packs. Cutting order.” His eyes lifted, cautious. “Scheduling.”
Mara nodded.
“There,” she said. “That’s the shape of it.”
Then she looked at me.
“Celeste,” Mara said. “You see it.”
It wasn’t a question. It was an assignment.
I did see it. I could feel my mind doing its favourite thing—taking chaos and trying to compress it into something repeatable. I loved the atelier for its craft, but what I loved more—what I almost didn’t dare admit—was the feeling you got when a system snapped into place and suddenly the world behaved.
Lauren watched my face and gave a small, private smile, as if she’d been waiting for me to say it out loud.
“Say it,” Mara said.
I hesitated, then gave it to them straight.
“We need operations,” I said. “Not vibes. Not heroics. Operations.”
Sarah blinked. “Operations.”
“Yes,” I replied. “Inventory. Vendor schedules. Production planning. QA in a way that doesn’t depend on Mara being in three places at once.”
Mara’s eyes stayed on mine. She didn’t smile, but I felt the pressure ease a fraction, as if she’d been carrying something alone and had just heard someone offer to pick up a corner.
Lauren leaned on the table.
“And if we do that,” she said, warm, almost conversational, “we’re not just making garments. We’re building a business.”
Charlie’s throat moved at the word again.
A business.
I watched him watching the papers, and I saw the thought trying to form into a picture in his head: money, provision, security. The old script, reaching for purchase.
Mara didn’t look at him. She didn’t need to. She addressed the room.
“Wardrobe is already a business,” Mara said. “The only question is whether we run it, or it runs us.”
Silence settled—clean, not tense.
Lauren broke it, the way she always did: by turning the moment into something you could actually do.
“Okay,” she said, brisk warmth. “Decisions. Do we accept the museum run?”
Mara’s answer was immediate.
“Yes.”
Sarah huffed. “Of course.”
Charlie looked up. “Can we… can we do it?”
Mara’s gaze went to him, steady.
“We can,” she said. “If we stop pretending labour is infinite.”
Then Mara turned to me again.
“You want to go back to school,” she said.
The sentence landed with a peculiar precision—like a pin going through fabric. It wasn’t gossip. It wasn’t a guess. It was something she’d observed and filed away as a constraint, the same way she filed away that a seam was rolling or a tie point was anchoring too much load.
I felt my face heat, irritation rising faster than sentiment.
“Yes,” I said. “Uni. MBA. Or at least the pathway to it.”
Sarah lifted a brow. “You? Business?”
I met her gaze. “Yes.”
Mara didn’t let Sarah’s surprise take oxygen.
Mara looked at the numbers again. Then at me.
“I don’t want a business bro,” Mara said. “I want someone who understands this work and can make it survive growth.”
She tapped the ledger.
“You understand standards,” she said. “You understand policy. And you’re already thinking in systems.”
Lauren’s smile flickered, a quiet finally.
Mara continued, blunt.
“But we don’t have the money to send you.”
There it was. The real wall. Not fear. Not doubt. Tuition.
My annoyance sharpened, clean as a blade.
“I can run circles around most people in a classroom,” I said. “I can’t run circles around fees.”
Charlie’s head snapped up. He didn’t speak, but I saw it—the instinctive surge of devotion, the script trying to present itself as solution: I can fix that. I can provide.
Lauren saw it too. Her warmth didn’t vanish. It turned into guardrails.
She looked at Mara, not at Charlie.
“Then we do what we do,” Lauren said. “We solve it like adults.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed, attentive.
Lauren tapped the papers.
“We accept the museum run,” she said. “We price it properly. We track time properly. We stop doing invisible labour. And we set up a fund—transparent, written, agreed.”
Sarah sat up. “A fund.”
Lauren nodded. “Education. Operations. Whatever you want to call it. But it doesn’t happen on hints and hope.”
Mara’s gaze stayed on Lauren for a long second.
Then, a single nod.
“Write it,” Mara said.
Lauren’s pencil moved.
Charlie stared at the page as if a future had started appearing in ink.
Mara glanced at him—not unkindly, not indulgently. Just factual.
“And nobody,” Mara said, “gets to mistake money for authority in this room.”
Charlie swallowed. “No.”
Mara didn’t accept promises. She accepted behaviour.
She tapped the ledger once.
“Good,” she said. “Then we proceed.”
Lauren pushed a clean sheet toward me.
“Start with what you want,” she said, voice warm again. “In numbers. Fees. Timeline. Units.”
I picked up the pen.
Not because I needed permission.
Because this was what the atelier did when it wanted something real.
It wrote it down, and made it measurable.
Outside, the faire carried on, loud and theatrical and full of people telling stories about themselves.
Inside, at the cutting table, we began building one that would hold.
✨ Scene 20¶
✨ Terms¶
Scene 20 — “Terms” (Celeste POV)
Mara didn’t romanticise the museum run.
She laid it out the way she laid out everything: as facts that would either be carried properly, or would break someone.
“Thirty-six units,” she said, and tapped the order sheet once. “That means we stop behaving like a clever pocket of talent and start behaving like a shop.”
Lauren had brought a roll of butcher’s paper and a marker. She unrolled it on the cutting table with a quiet competence that felt, oddly, like a spell. Columns appeared. Headings. Boxes. A place for reality to sit.
CUT SEW HARDWARE FINISH QC PACK PICKUP / DELIVERY
Charlie watched the grid form as if it were comfort in disguise. He stood close enough to see, far enough not to intrude. Chalk dust on his fingers. The mild, contained intensity of a boy who had discovered that order could make him brave without requiring him to be loud.
Sarah leaned on the shelving, arms folded, expression set to fine, impress me.
Mara’s finger moved down the list.
“Hardware packs get made first,” she said. “Grommets counted. Tape cut. Boning sorted by stiffness.” She nodded once at Lauren. “Label it.”
Lauren’s marker squeaked as she wrote, warm voice, sharp mind.
“Hardware packs. Like meal prep,” she said, as if explaining to a child who’d asked why adults didn’t starve. “You do it once, cleanly, and then you stop bleeding time every time you need a grommet.”
Mara didn’t smile, but her shoulders loosened the tiniest fraction. Approval.
Charlie made a small sound—half agreement, half relief.
“QC checklist,” Mara continued. “Nothing leaves the building without it.”
Sarah rolled her eyes. “We’re doing paperwork now.”
Mara looked at her. “We’ve been doing paperwork. We’re just calling it by its name.”
Lauren’s marker paused. She added another box at the side.
TIME LOST:
Mara’s eyes flicked to it. “What’s that.”
Lauren’s tone stayed conversational, but there was steel under it.
“That’s the bit you never count,” Lauren said. “The bit that kills you.”
She looked around the table—not accusing, not sentimental. Adult.
“Before anyone starts volunteering extra hours,” she said, “I want to know how many hours we’re already losing to friction.”
Charlie blinked. “Friction.”
Lauren nodded. “Commute. Waiting on deliveries. Re-doing things because the right tape wasn’t where it should be. Starting late because someone’s brain is fried.”
Sarah scoffed. “Oh my god.”
Lauren turned her head toward Sarah, still warm.
“You can scoff,” she said. “Or you can tell me how many minutes it takes you to find grommets when they’ve migrated.”
Sarah opened her mouth, then shut it again, because the answer was: too many.
Lauren looked at Charlie.
“How long does it take you to get here?” she asked.
Charlie hesitated, as if time were a personal weakness.
“Forty-five minutes,” he said finally. “Sometimes more.”
Lauren didn’t react with pity. She reacted with arithmetic.
“Each way.”
Charlie nodded.
Lauren did the numbers silently with her eyes.
“An hour and a half a day,” she said. “Seven and a half hours a week. That’s a whole workday of your life spent… travelling to the work.”
Charlie’s face shifted—surprise, then a kind of humiliation, as if he’d been caught being inefficient.
Mara didn’t let him turn it into shame.
“That’s not his fault,” Mara said. “That’s geography.”
Lauren nodded. “Sure. And we can’t argue with geography. We can only choose what we do about it.”
Her gaze moved to me.
“Celeste,” she said, as if this were the obvious next line in the spreadsheet, “how are you going to do an MBA while we scale a shop and keep the place clean?”
I felt my irritation rise—not at her, at the world. At the way ambition always seemed to come with a price tag and a time tax.
“I’m not doing it on noise and buses and guesswork,” I said. “I’m not doing it tired.”
Mara’s eyes stayed on mine. I didn’t have to justify the tone. She spoke fluent irritation. She used it too.
“Then we remove friction,” Mara said, flat.
The sentence landed in my chest with a peculiar relief. Not comfort. Permission to be strategic.
Charlie’s eyes flicked between us, trying to follow the move. I could almost see him building a romantic narrative out of it, the way his mind tried to make meaning:
Remove friction. Make life easier. Provide.
He didn’t say it. He didn’t need to. I saw it anyway.
Lauren saw it too. She didn’t pounce. She simply laid guardrails down like tape lines on a floor.
“Logistics,” she said, warm and firm. “Not a love story. Logistics.”
Mara nodded, once. “Exactly.”
I looked at Charlie.
“Do you have a lease?” I asked him.
He blinked. “Yes.”
“How long left?”
“Six months.” He swallowed. “Why?”
Because I can’t stand waste. Because I can’t stand chaos. Because I can feel the future trying to happen and I’d rather write it down than be dragged by it.
I didn’t say any of that. I gave him the clean version.
“I have a spare room,” I said. “Nearer to here. Quieter. If you move, your commute drops to ten minutes.”
Charlie stared at me as if he’d misheard.
Sarah made a small, disbelieving sound. “You’re what?”
Lauren’s marker squeaked as she wrote a new box on the butcher’s paper.
HOUSING / ROUTINE:
Mara didn’t look at Sarah. “Colleague,” she said, automatically.
Sarah shut her mouth. It didn’t mean she approved. It meant she understood the rules of the room.
Charlie’s throat moved. “You mean… live with you.”
“I mean rent a room,” I said, and I kept my voice calm on purpose. Not cold. Exact.
Lauren, warm: “Separate rooms. Rent. Terms. House policy.”
Mara, flat: “Rent doesn’t buy access.”
Charlie flinched at that, as if he’d been accused of something he hadn’t done. Mara didn’t soften the line. She wasn’t accusing him. She was protecting everyone.
Including him.
Charlie looked down at his hands. Chalk dust. Tape residue. The evidence of work.
“I wouldn’t—” he began.
“I know,” I said. And I meant it. “But we’re not building a system that relies on people being good. We’re building one that stays clean even when people get confused.”
His eyes flicked up. Confused, and a little hurt.
Lauren stepped in with warmth that didn’t compromise the standard.
“It’s not personal,” she said. “It’s grown-up. You’ll actually like it, because you won’t have to guess.”
Charlie swallowed.
“What are the terms?” he asked quietly.
That line—terms—was the rung I hadn’t realised we were climbing today.
Mara looked satisfied, in the way she looked satisfied when a stitch finally behaved.
Lauren pulled a fresh sheet from her stack, as if she’d been waiting for this exact moment.
“Okay,” she said, cheerful in the way competent people get when they finally see a solvable problem. “We write it.”
She drew headings without asking anyone’s permission.
RENT: BILLS: QUIET HOURS: STUDY HOURS (SACRED): CHORES: GUESTS: PRIVACY: CONFLICT RULE: EXIT CLAUSE:
Sarah let out a low whistle. “Bloody hell.”
Mara glanced at her. “That’s what adulthood looks like.”
Sarah’s mouth twitched. “It looks like paperwork.”
“It looks like freedom,” Lauren corrected, still warm. She stapled the page to a clipboard. “Same rule as here,” she said. “If it isn’t written, it isn’t real.”
Charlie stood very still, staring at the page. Not panicked. Thinking.
“Study hours sacred,” he repeated, softly.
“Yes,” I said. “If I’m doing this, I’m doing it properly.”
His eyes moved down the list. “Privacy.”
“Yes,” Mara said, before I could. “Non-negotiable.”
Charlie nodded, once. He wasn’t smiling. But something in his posture eased, the way it eased when the ledger gave him rails.
Lauren looked up at me.
“Celeste,” she said, warm, “you set the parameters. It’s your house.”
I picked up the pen.
I didn’t hesitate.
Rent number. Bills split. Quiet hours. No hovering. No improvising “help.” Guests by agreement. Study hours written like a boundary you could build a life against.
Charlie watched my handwriting as if it were a map.
When I finished, I slid the page toward him.
“Read it,” I said. “If you agree, you sign. If you don’t, you don’t.”
Charlie read it slowly. Carefully. As if the paper might bruise.
When he got to the bottom, he paused at the exit clause.
“What’s that?” he asked.
Lauren’s tone stayed light.
“That’s the part where nobody gets trapped,” she said. “Thirty days’ notice. Clean separation. No drama.”
Charlie nodded. He put his name on the page with a steadiness that told me he understood what he was doing.
Not moving in as a boyfriend.
Moving in as infrastructure.
Mara tapped the signed sheet once.
“Good,” she said. “Now we can work without wasting human life on travel.”
Sarah stared at the paper, then at me. Her expression was complicated—judgement trying to find purchase, failing, reforming into something more honest.
“So,” she said finally, blunt, “you’re not doing this because you fancy him — you’re doing it because you’d feel safe?”
I met her gaze.
“I’m doing it because I’m not letting my ambition be eaten by chaos,” I said. “And because he’s useful.”
Charlie’s ears coloured. He didn’t look offended.
He looked… relieved.
Lauren laughed softly. Not at him. With the moment.
Mara didn’t laugh.
She turned back to the butcher’s paper and tapped the production grid.
“Right,” she said. “Now that we’ve removed a friction point, we accept the museum run.”
Charlie picked up his chalk again.
Not bravely.
Not romantically.
Just… as if the world had finally started making sense in the only language that mattered here.
Work.
And terms.