CHAPTER 6; The First Day

I wore the burgundy blazer on purpose.

Not because it was my favorite, though it was. But because the old Selene owned exactly zero burgundy blazers. The old Selene wore ivory and beige and soft grey, colors that did not demand attention, colors that said I am here but please do not look too hard. I had bought this one two days before my first day at Crane and Aldous, stood in the fitting room mirror for a full minute, and thought: yes. That one. Her.

I took the subway. Another small thing that sounds like nothing and meant everything. For four years I had been driven everywhere in a car that smelled like leather and Dominic’s schedule. Now I stood on a crowded platform with my portfolio bag on my shoulder and strangers pressing in from every side and I felt, stupidly, free.

The Crane and Aldous building was a converted warehouse with wide windows and old brick that someone had been smart enough not to paint over. I stood outside it for exactly thirty seconds before I told myself to stop being dramatic and walked in.

The receptionist, the same college-aged kid with paint on his sneakers who had greeted me during the interview, looked up and smiled like he already knew my name. He probably did. Small teams remember people.

“Selene, right? Nicolas said to send you straight up.”

I took the stairs.

The fourth floor opened up like a breath. Open desks, good light, the low productive hum of people who were not watching the clock. Someone had put fresh flowers in a mason jar on the communal table, the cheap grocery store kind, and that detail made me like the place more than any amount of expensive decor could have.

Nicolas was standing near the window talking to a woman with silver-streaked hair and headphones around her neck. He saw me, held up one finger, finished his sentence, and walked over. No performative welcome, no big announcement. Just a handshake and a direct look.

“Glad you’re here,” he said. “Come meet the team.”

The team was three people. Dax, who had the kind of face that was always slightly on the edge of a joke and the talent to back up the confidence. Petra, detail-obsessed and warm, who shook my hand and immediately asked if I had any strong opinions about font licensing because she needed someone to have strong opinions about font licensing. And Ro, twenty-three years old, fresh out of design school, brilliant in the way that young people are brilliant when they have not yet learned to second-guess themselves.

I liked all three of them inside the first ten minutes.

Nicolas showed me my desk. It sat near the windows, corner position, natural light coming in from two sides. My first thought was that it was better light than the studio in the penthouse. My second thought was that I was not going to think about the penthouse.

“We have a team check-in at ten,” Nicolas said, setting a folder on my desk. “The Hargrove Hotels rebrand is your first project. Full creative lead. I’ve put the brief in there but I want your instincts before you read anyone else’s notes.”

I looked at the folder. “You want my instincts first?”

“That’s why I hired you.”

He said it simply, the way people say things that are just true, and walked back to his own desk. No drama. No performance. Just trust, offered clean, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

I sat down, opened the folder, and got to work.

By noon I had filled half a notebook. Not polished ideas, just raw ones, the kind that come out fast when nobody is watching and nothing is at stake yet. The Hargrove brief was interesting. Three properties, all mid-range luxury, all suffering from the same identity problem: they looked like every other hotel. Safe. Forgettable. The kind of place a business traveler books without thinking and forgets before checkout.

I wrote one line in the margin of the brief that I kept coming back to.

What does it feel like to arrive somewhere and actually feel it?

Petra leaned over from the next desk around twelve-thirty. “Lunch? There’s a Thai place two blocks over. Ro swears by it even though he’s been wrong about food before.”

“I heard that,” Ro said, without looking up.

“You were wrong about the ramen place.”

“The ramen place was going through something. It is much better now.”

I laughed. Actually laughed, the kind that comes out before you think about it. Petra looked pleased with herself.

We went to the Thai place. It was small and slightly too warm and the food was very good. Ro talked about a project he was working on in his own time, a type-design experiment that he pulled up on his phone and showed us with the unguarded enthusiasm of someone who had not yet learned to be cool about his own work. Dax critiqued it with the specific precision of someone who had thought about the same problems from a different angle. Petra ate her noodles and refereed.

I sat at that table in a too-warm Thai restaurant and felt something settle in my chest.

This was what I had given up for Singapore.

Not just the partnership, not just the career move, but this. The ordinary alive feeling of being around people who cared about the work. I had traded it for dinner parties with client wives and international trips where I sat beside Dominic and smiled and said the right things and flew home feeling like a very well-dressed ghost.

I did not let myself stay in that thought too long. It was a door I could walk through and not come back from, and I had a full afternoon of work ahead of me.

We got back to the office at one-thirty. Nicolas was at his desk on a call, phone pressed to his ear, and he glanced up when we came in. He looked at me specifically for just a second, a quick checking-in kind of look, and I gave him a small nod that meant I’m good. He went back to his call.

It was a small thing. A two-second exchange. But I thought about it later when I was back at my desk, because it had been a long time since someone checked on me that quietly. Without making it about themselves. Without needing anything back.

At four-fifteen my phone lit up on the desk.

I almost ignored it. I had a good rhythm going on the Hargrove mood board and I did not want to break it.

But I saw the name.

Not Dominic. Not Camille. Not my mother.

It was a number I did not recognize, but the text below it made my stomach drop straight to the floor.

It said: “This is Priya. Mr. Hartley would like you to know that the Hargrove Hotels account has a Hartley Industries subsidiary attached to it. He thought you should hear it from him first. He will be in touch.”

I stared at the screen for a long moment.

Then I turned it face-down on the desk, picked up my pencil, and stared at my mood board without seeing a single thing on it.

He already knew where I was.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​