The One Who Got Away is Back

Present 6 ♡ Casually Powerful and Definitely Fabulous

The professional pictures from the wedding started to come out the next weekend. First it was the reel from the rehearsal dinner where every guest, man, woman or child, was dressed in impeccable white. Meanwhile the bride and groom dressed in vibrant turquoise.

I found a snap of a girl dancing alone with abandon by the shore. The sand she kicked up glinted against the sunset, its glare obscuring her face from the shot. But upon closer inspection I noted that her hair was a soft pink, and after doing a double take I realized it was me. That was the best picture of me anyone had ever taken, so I saved it to my files and kept browsing.

There weren't many pictures of the actual ceremony yet, but I did find one of Page in her dressing room after she'd put on the wedding dress I made for her. Estelle kneeled behind her on the floor, fixing up the train, and although Page's profile was the most outstanding focus of the shot, I could be seen half obscured by her as I made sure the details of the gown were as they should be.

I downloaded that one too, and with the ladies' permission uploaded it to my personal website. I'd made a full blog entry of the preparations leading to Page's wedding, and taken quite a few artistic pictures of the finished dress with Poonam's help. It wasn't necessarily that I wanted my specialty to be wedding gowns, but I did want it to be an important revenue stream of my own future brand.

I'd been trying to come up with a good name for it for weeks. I kinda liked Berry Happy, but that was probably a good name for a kids' line. All I could think of was using my name, Adele Holt, but I kept wondering if one day someone would make the connection between me and my multimillionaire conglomerate owner father. I didn't want anyone to ever think I owed my success to him, whatever that may shape up to be.

Meanwhile I spent the week working hard on the business case for Miguel. I already had quite a lot of research on the topic of apps done, let alone on consumer behavior patterns and fashion and retail data. It was more of a matter of consolidating everything while making sure of emphasizing the gains for Tropicana, rather than the expenses we would have to incur.

I felt a lot of nostalgia while I worked on this, thinking back to the time in college where he and I worked on a similar project together. How would I have imagined back then that one day it'd be Miguel whom I'd have to impress, and not some random, faceless investor? Who would have known that we would go down our different paths and find each other this way?

Well, technically we'd found each other naked first. Small details.

The following Friday caught me on my work bench, typing away on my laptop at six in the morning. This was a good two hours or more before my usual arrival to the office, but I hadn't been able to sleep well the previous night. Despite the fact that with the design review being after lunch, I would have all morning to work on the last touches of the business case, I just didn't want to leave anything to chance. Who knew, I might take a bathroom break in the middle of work and return to find my laptop mysteriously under a tractor with Mr. Diapers whistling innocently in a corner.

"Good morning."

I swiveled on my stool and found Miguel behind me, walking into the office with his fancy suitcase and a travel mug. Today he was in a classic grey suit and white shirt.

Out of the many obvious things I could have pointed out, one of them being what he was doing here so early for example, the one I brought up was, "Huh, I like that your shoes are the perfect shade of your suit."

Props to a guy who'd found perfect grey loafers.

Miguel smiled so wide that it transported me back to college.

"If I'm going to work in a fashion design company I have to look the part, right?"

Then he took one turn for me, allowing me to inspect his full outfit. I startled him a little when, upon returning to face me, he found me right in front of him. He looked good enough to eat, but there was one simple way his look would be even more devastating. I popped open one more button in his shirt, not enough to make him look sleazy or anything, but enough that he looked relaxed. Less corporate.