Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 22331 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 89(@250wpm)___ 74(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22331 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 89(@250wpm)___ 74(@300wpm)
I smile as I spot my high school fashion projects on display. My sewing machine, and my way of bedazzling things and making everything my own. I always had my own sense of fashion, it's what stirred me to want to try to do it for a living.
Sure, I cringe a bit at some of the designs of t-shirts I did, but who doesn’t cringe at the stuff they did as a teenager? It’s simply the natural order of things.
I had such lofty dreams then. Of making clothes that would be worn by runway models, going to the most fashionable shows all over the world. And living the high life the entire time. When a top-of-the-line company rolls out their new lineup in Berlin, they aren’t exactly catering the event with Burger King. My life was going to be caviar and limousines, and the fact that I came from a little town like Home, Washington, would just be a piece of trivia about my rise to the top of the world.
There’s just a small problem with all of that.
I don’t think I want it anymore.
Everyone in the fashion world talked down to me for the last four years. Like I was some hick who couldn’t possibly know anything. I watched as they berated the models for being the slightest bit overweight, people I considered friends and people I knew had serious mental struggles surrounding their weight.
It turned out to be a disgusting world. It’s not about making cool clothes, or celebrating personal expression. It’s a commercialist way to make a bunch of haughty old men feel superior. Which is true for a lot of things, but I guess I was just naive enough to think maybe they hadn’t infested fashion like they did.
My high school pieces are cringe as hell, but I remember what I thought back then. How I poured my heart into knitting and sewing those things. Even when I was far away, I knitted quilts for Plum and Lucy, and blankets celebrating the weddings that I was too far away to attend. One of my professors spotted me working on one of the blankets in one of the fashion department’s sewing areas and dismissed it as amateurish. He said a real fashionista should aim higher.
Fuck that guy.
Fuck fashion.
That's what I want to say. I take the dress I wore to my prom out of my closet and clutch it to me. My parents paid so much to let me chase my dream. All of my brothers just followed in Dad’s footsteps, got work in construction and became productive members of society almost immediately out of high school. Bartlett saved up some money to open his own store with our parent’s aid and blessing.
Lemon went to college, and she’s prospered in her chosen field, with a little help from the family construction company giving referrals to her interior design firm.
And me?
I want to throw it all away. The tens of thousands of dollars spent on tuition, spent on room and board, and the trip to Paris. The whole trip was supposed to be for the apprenticeship, not some backpacking trip, but I flaked out on it so quickly.
I feel like a failure. Someone who’s going to disgrace the family. It wasn’t like I was denying one of the boys a college education, our parents saved and planned well for all of us. But I still feel like I dashed my parents’ hopes and dreams for me.
My mother expects me to make Rough a household name.
That's not going to happen. Even if I tried.
I collapse onto the small sofa I have in my room, feeling useless and pathetic.
There’s a knock on the attic door. “Come in,” I say, not wanting to be too antisocial.
Climbing up through the hatch is someone I didn’t expect to see.
Hank Black.
I’m taken aback by his presence. I always had a crush on him when I was younger, but he graduated and moved away after my second year in high school. Sure, teenage Fig may have had some fantasies she used in her alone time, but I knew it’d never happen. Having him show up again was like seeing a ghost. A hot and sexy ghost, but still a ghost. A small memory from high school that was meant to be put away with the rest of them.
“I think your mother is preparing to serve the pies she made.”
“Oh? Um, thanks.”
He climbs all the way into the attic. He’s tall enough that he has to hunch a little where the ceiling slopes. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“Really?”
“You got evidence to the contrary?”
“You seemed awfully quiet during dinner. Especially when everyone was talking about you and your future.”
“You noticed that?”
“I’ve always noticed you, Fig. Always.”
4
HANK
Her room has a certain charm to it. It’s definitely the room of someone who is creative.