The Difference Between Getting and Needing

t h i r t y - s e v e n

if devotion is a river
then i'm floating a w a y . . .

〰️〰️〰️

It was often rare for Nadia to be at a loss for words. She was a gifted chatterbox, and it was one of the many reasons I loved her. It was why we'd gotten along for all these years and why she was my only close girl friend. Where I lacked in emotional depth and sensibility she made up for it by having lightning-quick reactions and practically no filter.

Watching my wedding video stunned her into silence; her mouth hung wide open like the screws keeping it together just popped out and I wasn't even sure if she had blinked for the entire fourteen minutes. The last time I saw her like that was about two weeks ago when I told her about Gus and I eloping. Her reaction was exactly the same now as it was then.

After the video ended, she still didn't say anything. She had been bugging me all week about it, so I promised her once we got through Donatella's show alive that I'd let her see it. Three o'clock in the morning on our only Saturday in an incredible foreign city like Milan seemed to be the one and only time to show her.

"Are you kidding me?" She choked out the words, finally. When I looked at her sitting next to me instead of at my discarded stilettos on the floor, I realized she was actually crying. "That was..." she stopped to gently dab at her eyes with her fingers. "Precious. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Forget all that stuff I said about annulments or whatever. You two are meant to be. I'm calling Jeremiah right now and telling him we need to get married."

"Oh, stop it," I chuckled, snatching my phone out of her hand. "You know you guys are gonna have the most spectacular wedding."

"Yeah, if he ever proposes," she sneered to herself. "He's already thirty-six. The age gap never bothered me before, but I'm hoping he might want to settle down soon. Preferably before I'm over the hill, as they say."

"He will propose, trust me. He'd be an idiot not to," I reassured her, and since she knew I was right, it got a little smile out of her. "So, was the video worth waiting for?"

"One hundred percent. Can I watch it again?"

"Absolutely not."

She crossed her arms and pouted at me for rejecting her request as she mumbled, "Bitch."

As I laughed at her usual choice of insult for me, my attention went to my phone that buzzed on my lap with a new text. A dopey grin spread across my face as soon as I read it.

Gus 🖤: can you fucking come home already??? I'm tired of waking up alone

Me: two and a half days left... we got this

Rather than spending time catching up on sleep, Nadia and I were unwinding by having a heart-to-heart on the couch in the living room of Donatella's Milan apartment after what would now be known as "the week that nearly killed me".

And I thought Sutton's wedding was bad. Fashion week was like the last two years of my life jammed into seven long, excruciating, mind-blowing days. Still, it was all that I'd dreamed it would be and more from the minute Donatella hired me almost four years ago. Mentally and physically, I was hanging on by a thread, but I couldn't have been more grateful to be a part of it all.

The first two days were by far the worst. Sunday didn't necessarily count since we spent it on an airplane and by the time we landed, we were escorted into a taxi, got to the apartment to unpack, ate dinner at this tiny restaurant a few doors down, and went right to sleep. Monday and Tuesday were all prep work for Donatella's show – fittings, runway rehearsals, reworking the seating chart, more fittings, and meetings on meetings on fucking meetings. With the press, with influencers, with magazine editors, with other designers. You name it, we spoke to them.