Archive of Our Own

 

“I have to try so hard not to fall in love.
I have to concentrate when we kiss.”

The Hold Steady, “Hornets! Hornets!”

---

Miranda’s salutations were never effusive, but she and Andy usually spared a moment or two for bland pleasantries before they started taking off their clothes. Today, however, it was obvious something was a little off from the moment she walked into Andy’s apartment. She barely said hello, and kept her eyes focused on the furthermost wall as she set her bag down on the table by the door. Still, even as Andy realized something was wrong, she couldn’t stop herself from smiling as she shut the door behind Miranda. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day,” she said.

Miranda glanced at her, having barely moved beyond the threshold of the apartment. “I should have called and canceled,” she said quietly. She bent down and pulled a bottle of red wine from her bag.

“Did something come up?” Andy asked as she took the wine. Cabernet sauvignon. The wine was a surprise, but more shocking was Miranda’s statement: when it came to this, she hardly ever let herself get double-booked—and if she had, she wouldn’t have delivered the message in person.

“Not exactly.” A blush crept over her face, faint enough one might have easily missed it, if it weren’t for the late afternoon light slicing insistently from between the slats of the window blinds. Andy tried to read the eyes that didn’t want to settle on any one thing, and remembered in a flash how the same expression felt on her own face, years before, upon arriving at her boyfriend Nate’s dorm room. They’d only recently started having sex, and he was obviously eager for it.

“You have your period,” Andy said, certain.

Miranda’s eyes settled in Andy’s direction. She sighed a martyr’s sigh. “Yes. Early. I’m sorry.”

“Well, don’t apologize.” It was refreshing to hear Miranda apologize for something, but in this case her regrets were entirely unnecessary. “I mean, you’re here. You still want to…hang out, right? You’ve got time before your dinner meeting with, um, that hair guy?”

There was no smirk at Andy’s use of the phrase “hair guy.” No glower. Nothing but Miranda practically mumbling the words, “I postponed the dinner until next week.” To a trained ear like Andy’s, she sounded almost sheepish. She didn’t add “before I knew I was going to start my period,” but the words were there in her voice. The dinner was the reason they’d decided to meet in the afternoon in the first place. Ordinarily, they spent every other Friday night together at Andy’s apartment, starting late in the evening, along with the occasional weeknight when their schedules permitted it. Miranda wouldn’t come over if her daughters were at home, and the nights the girls were with their father or at a sleepover and neither of them had a work commitment were few. Andy cracked up (partly from nerves) the first time Miranda called her to schedule sex, but sobered quickly when Miranda didn’t join in. This was serious business. Serious enough that Miranda had informed Andy of the dinner meeting over a week in advance, so Andy would have time to request to leave work a couple hours early on the Friday in question. Miranda would have the girls the following Friday, and neither of them wanted a month to go by without seeing each other.

“Oh.” This was odd. On a normal Friday they would be lying down already, or at least kissing. “Okay. Um, well, take your coat off and stay a while. I’ll make some coffee, or—”

“Fine. But I don’t want to talk about—”

Paris. Runway. The month of October. Her divorce. Her family, or Andy’s family for that matter. Long-suffering Nigel’s career. For all they had done to make their bodies available to each other, so many subjects were off-limits.

“I know.”

“I can—you know—for you—” Ordinarily Miranda excelled at specifics, even intimate ones.

“I’d feel weird about that, I think.” Andy grinned at stiff, sunlit Miranda, who had taken off her wrap but hadn’t sat down yet. “Let’s just relax.” She paused on her way to the kitchen, vaguely contemplating the wisdom of saying what she knew was going to come out of her mouth next. “We’ll be good today, all right?”

Good. The word was intentional, and from the way recognition pierced her face, Miranda knew exactly why Andy chose it.

---

After Andy’s third work-week at the Mirror drew to a close, she stood in a daze near the door of the rattling subway car that carried her closer to home.

She had been dismayed, not to mention a little embarrassed, when she realized the first few weeks at any new job had the potential to be as scary as her start at Runway. From March to October, she’d associated fear almost entirely with Miranda Priestly, and was perhaps unduly shocked to experience a healthy dose of apprehension every time she entered the Mirror building. She liked most of her new co-workers quite a bit, and thus far hadn’t committed any errors more serious than a couple minor screw-ups while adjusting to the computer system. Still, she was utterly terrified that she was going to destroy her chances at success in journalism. Miranda’s disapproval might not have been the ultimate consequence for failure to perform well as a reporter, but the actual consequences—her editor losing faith in her writing, her fellow writers refusing to take her seriously, further distance from her own creative satisfaction—were, if anything, more horrifying than a certain sharply dressed and coiffed and mannered woman’s displeasure.

In theory, it was kind of refreshing to have new things to be frightened about, but in reality, she was exhausted. She had a lot to do over the weekend, and wasn’t entirely dismayed about returning to a relatively empty apartment. Focus was essential, and she was grateful she had space to herself even if she was still angry over the circumstances that had afforded her such solitude. Andy could admit to herself—and to Lily, who was being a lot more understanding about the whole thing than she’d expected—that she was relieved by Nate’s departure to Boston, and, in some ways, by her own departure from Runway. That didn’t mean she wasn’t guilty over her sudden abandonment of Miranda in Paris and, in spite of herself, the way she and Nate had grown apart.

When Nate realized that leaving Runway wasn’t the same thing as getting over it, he’d been incredibly annoyed. He seemed to think that once Andy was free from the demands Miranda placed on her time and energy, everything would go back to the way it had been. When she’d called from JFK to inform him that she was back in New York early and had left her position, she quickly discovered that he’d been staying with Doug. Her suggestion that he remain with their friend for a few more days should have tipped him off to the fact that their relationship was effectively over, but it didn’t, and in a moment of weakness Andy decided he could stay at their apartment as he finalized the details of his move to Boston. That arrangement had lasted from the weekend before Andy started at the Mirror until Tuesday. Three days, and he was gone. They’d agreed that he would email her in a few months to let her know how he was doing, and that they would decide from there how much communication they could handle.

Very recently she’d smiled brightly—if shyly—at Miranda in the street, and had mustered up another glowing smile while sitting across from Nate in a carefully chosen restaurant—one neither of them had tried before. Those smiles had been as real as they come, but they’d taken a lot out of her, and she’d decided she was done smiling at people for awhile.

As the subway car slowed to a stop, Andy wondered for the umpteenth time why she didn’t feel more relieved that the inevitable break-up had finally happened. She could blame the ominous feeling in her stomach on the new job, but she knew that these nerves were from a different place entirely. There was something else coming, and with a sudden urge to hurry Andy exited the train the moment the doors opened, walked across the platform, and waited for a car going in the opposite direction. Within ten minutes, she was standing in front of the Elias-Clarke building, both hoping for and dreading the possibility of seeing Miranda, exhilarated by the fact that she had no idea what either of them were going to say.

---

Andy considered herself relatively proficient with her Mr. Coffee, but as she stared him down, tablespoon in hand, she regretted her casual offer to make coffee for Miranda. They had never, ever sat down for a social cup of coffee together—and Andy had certainly never offered Miranda coffee she’d made herself. In her old life, anything other than the perfect, piping hot Starbucks would have gotten her murdered. And in her new life, the only things she and Miranda were doing “socially” were kissing, touching, fucking, and sleeping. There wasn’t a whole lot of space for sitting around with hot beverages, chatting about—what? What were they going to talk about?

She decided she would tackle the most immediate problem first: the ratio of ground coffee beans to water. It was relatively obvious that the coffee should be strong, but the line between hearty and swampy was delicate indeed. As she opened up the coffee filter, she wondered briefly if the coffeemaker was clean enough, and quickly decided that it would take too long to do a thorough cleaning of all the parts. She was ashamed to see that her fingers shook a little as she scooped coffee into the filter, but thinking of her fingers made her think, completely unexpectedly, of the one of the last times Miranda had come over, maybe a month ago. She’d begged for four of Andy’s fingers inside her instead of the usual two or three, and the sheets had gotten so wet that they’d had to sleep very close together on Andy’s side of the bed. Maybe a pot of coffee wasn’t such a big deal after all. Then the realization that she thought of her bed as having an “Andy’s side” and a “Miranda’s side” even though she slept alone thirteen out of fourteen nights was almost enough to make her lose count of how much coffee she’d measured out.

After what seemed like an eternity, Andy made her way back to the living room, two mugs of coffee in hand. She’d chosen her favorite mug for Miranda, a shiny robin’s egg blue one Lily had made in a college ceramics class and given to her for Christmas a few years back.

Andy perched on a chair facing the sofa and practically held her breath as she watched Miranda take her first sip.

“What?” Miranda asked after she swallowed.

“Coffee complex,” Andy explained weakly. “You gave it to me.” She took a taste. It was fine. It was coffee. Better than what you could get at a diner at 4 a.m., but significantly less divine than what they brewed at her favorite coffee shop down the street.

Miranda didn’t exactly bend over backward assuring Andy that this was the best cup of coffee she’d ever had, but she did keep drinking. “You know what all that was about, don’t you?”

“A whole lot more than how you like your coffee, that’s for damn sure.”

“Yep.” The syllable was flippant in a way that mocked the slanginess of the word, mocked Andy for taking the coffee so seriously all those months, and today. It zipped through the air, and then there was silence.

The silence was monstrous. It overtook the chair and the couch and the whole room, until it was impossible to picture a person talking in any of the five boroughs. Miranda and Andy were tiny in its awful midst as they sat and sipped their coffee, thinking of what they could but did not say.

---

Apparently Andy had retained some of her creepy anticipatory timing where Miranda was concerned. She wasn’t outside Elias-Clarke long enough for her hovering to become awkward before Miranda came storming out of the building. She moved quickly, but Andy could see even from a distance that she was tired. Her features bore the sort of rigidity that might have been accompanied by a sigh and a glance in Andy’s direction if they were riding in the car together, the briefest acknowledgement of the whirlwind within which Andy was expected to keep a constant, dependable pace.

The nice thing about not having friends at work was that you never got caught up in a tedious discussion in the lobby. You never had anyone holding you up on your way the car. The day was over when it was over. Miranda was dismayed that this day was going to be longer than expected—Andy could see this in the way her expression turned quickly from shock to rage as soon as she saw Andy’s necessarily fast approach. They met halfway between the door to the building and the door to the car, stock still against the pedestrian traffic flowing past them on the sidewalk.

“What could you possibly want?” Miranda asked. Andy was amazed: she’d heard Miranda express anger and sadness and, occasionally, a begrudging satisfaction, but always in an observational form. She remarked on her world and the people who populated it were expected to deduce from these observations how she was feeling and how she would like them to respond. For all that one was never supposed to ask Miranda anything, Miranda asked relatively few non-rhetorical questions herself.

“Never mind,” Miranda said to Andy’s stunned silence. “Get in the car.”

Andy didn’t even think about whether or not she was going to obey, and just like that was pulled back into Miranda’s life. The car ride to the townhouse was completely devoid of conversation. Miranda didn’t so much as open her mouth until they were seated on two facing chairs in the front room. It was seven p.m. and they were both hungry and thirsty, but Miranda didn’t provide any refreshments. Those were for guests.

“I wanted to apologize,” Andy said. “For my timing in leaving. It—”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

Andy hadn’t come all this way to be told to shut up. “But—”

“Your leaving in Paris was unprofessional and irresponsible. You already know I was floored by your decision. And yet, I suppose you felt your action was without alternative. You might recall that I, too, have chosen to take the only available course of action from time to time? The only thing more repugnant to me than your particular brand of self-righteous disloyalty is your contriteness.” Every word was calm and measured, like she’d been practicing for this moment.

“That’s why I wanted to apologize for my timing. I could have given you my two weeks notice, or at least finished out Fashion Week. You’re right that I didn’t feel like I had any other options, but I did. I just…ignored them.”

“I don’t want to talk about this. Did you think stalking me outside my office was the polite thing to do? You’re here out of a sense of obligation? I got your thank-you note, by the way. For the recommendation. What a lovely token. Trust me, I can manage perfectly well without your good manners.”

Andy snapped. “God, Miranda! You get to do what you want all the time. That day in Paris was the only time I can remember that I was acting solely in my own interest.” She stuttered a little, but knew that any speech she might have prepared in advance would have flown out the window in this moment. “C-c-can you imagine if the only time you did that in your life turned out to be so incredibly stupid? What that would feel like?” She didn’t add that coming to see Miranda today felt like her second experience with total self-servitude, and that it didn’t seem to be going much better this time around. It was kind of embarrassing to think that she showed the most gumption in running to and from Miranda.

“Oh, you’ve had many opportunities to act of your own accord. You’ve just chosen not to. You listen—listened—to me, or you listen to your boyfriend, or—”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.” Suddenly, it felt very important that Miranda knew this.

“Well. You had one until very recently, didn’t you.” There was a question mark missing from her inflection.

“And you had a husband very recently, too. Wow, what a great guy.” Andy couldn’t believe she’d said something so sarcastic and cruel. It felt wonderful.

Miranda smiled. “It’s not so difficult to be a bitch, is it? Maybe not the most inspired word in our vernacular, but I think it fits this moment rather well.”

Startled, Andy stood up, and Miranda joined her so they were eye to eye. No one had ever called Andy a bitch before, and she’d stopped thinking of Miranda as one after about three weeks on the job. She wasn’t about to apologize, though, if there was even a reason to do so. Not when Miranda was smiling like that. Besides, if Miranda couldn’t stomach actual remorse, she hated to think of how she’d respond to something less sincere.

“You can do whatever you want,” Andy said.

She meant it as an accusation, even a dismissal, but Miranda misinterpreted. Her laugh was mirthless. “You don’t want to know what I want.”

Months ago, when Andy had first realized Miranda was attracted to her, she’d turned the knowledge over and over again in her brain until she could admit that she was always disappointed when Miranda was busy or distracted and Andy couldn’t sense her eyes anywhere. Now she discovered that staring that lust in the face was a lot different than feeling it follow her out of Miranda’s office. She swallowed hard. “How do you know that?”

“Maybe I don’t.” Miranda raised her eyebrows.

“Maybe you don’t.” She stepped slightly closer, until there were only a couple of feet between them.

“You should have canceled my evening when you had the chance.”

Andy gasped. “You wouldn’t let me, you—”

“Of course I didn’t let you. That doesn’t mean the opportunity wasn’t there. Haven’t you been listening?” Miranda looked away from Andy. “It wouldn’t have been right, anyhow. Abysmal timing.”

Andy prayed they were discussing the same thing. She couldn’t bear the humiliation of finding out later that she’d been talking about sex while Miranda was pining away for the chance to dish out more career advice or something. Then Miranda resumed eye contact, and there was nothing instructive or professional or—God forbid—maternal about her demeanor. Rushing into the room was that terrible, looming presence Andy had sensed on the subway. It was much stronger now—of course making almost coded plans to sleep with Miranda Priestly fell into that category of feeling. The elegant furniture, the restrained hues of the wallpaper, the very structure of the walls—all of it turned into something drawn by Escher.

“You want me,” Andy breathed. She couldn’t help but speak the realization out loud, couldn’t keep a tremor of excitement from her voice.

“I want to be listened to when I say I don’t want to talk about something. I’d be happy to avoid your trouble spots as well. If you have them.”

“Please answer me.”

“You are very attractive. I can’t quite hate you enough to—to—stop this from happening.”

The compliment, buried as it was in malice, felt like being slapped. The slight stammer didn’t do much to soothe her, either. “So are you,” she said. “Attractive. And I don’t hate you, not that it matters.” It was an admittedly lame response, but considering she was practically having an out-of-body experience, she cut herself a little slack.

Though she stood very still, Miranda kind of looked like she wanted to get started right away.

“Um,” Andy started, and blushed deeply. “Before we, ah, I mean, I think we’re on the same page here, but…”

“What is it?” Miranda’s breathing had sped up: the increase wasn’t dramatic, but it was noticeable given the distance between them.

“I really ought to get tested,” she said in a rush. “I don’t generally sleep around, but it might be a good idea.” She was hoping to avoid mentioning Christian Thompson’s name in this conversation. Still, even though their personal past was none of Miranda’s business, if Christian had passed along anything more unsavory than suave underhandedness, Miranda certainly deserved to know about it.

“Ah,” Miranda nodded. “All right.” She took an unconscious step away, as if an extra foot between them would mask the fact that she’d been about a second from proposing immediate sex on her living room floor.

“Do you think…you should get tested too?” Andy had the strange thought that if Miranda was younger—maybe someone who, like Andy, had been a politically active feminist college student at the beginning of the 21st century—she would have offered immediately, and that if she hadn’t offered Andy might have had reservations about the whole thing. She understood, however, that Miranda was in a different place.

Miranda smirked. “I live like a nun.”

A perfect—or even moderately appropriate—response to this statement didn’t immediately present itself, but Miranda continued. “Stephen, on the other hand...” She sighed. “I’ll get tested.”

“Okay,” Andy said. She felt a bit light-headed as she searched for something else to say. “Are your daughters around?” She hoped not, considering the living room floor had been a distinct possibility.

“No,” Miranda said tersely. “The girls have the week off from school for Thanksgiving. They’re spending the holiday with their father this year. They left this afternoon, after classes.”

Andy had almost forgotten about Thanksgiving. The Mirror certainly wasn’t going to stop for the holiday.

“Well,” Andy said, fishing around in her purse for one of her cards. “I have a new cell phone number,” She squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment. “Obviously.”

“I will call it,” Miranda said, taking the card. “So we can do something irresponsible just as soon as we see if our responsibility has paid off.” She rolled her eyes. “2005. God.”

As she made her way to the subway for the second time that evening, Andy tried to convince herself that perhaps this was simply the way adults operated. They handed out business cards, investigated their sexual health, and threw their concerns about history, the future, age, gender, and power to the wind. Yeah right. This was truly weird, at least for her, and she knew it. And wanted it anyway.

On Thanksgiving Day, Andy lacked the energy to cook a big meal and invited Doug and Lily over for cold-cut turkey sandwiches instead. If Nate had been there, he would have insisted on cooking a turkey himself, and would have delegated responsibility for the side dishes to his friends and meddled in their cooking anyway. But he wasn’t there, no one mentioned him, and the sandwiches tasted pretty good. Besides, Andy was occupied with far more than missing Nate. She was sad because she was making her parents sad by not returning to Cincinnati for the holiday. She was in limbo with Planned Parenthood and with Miranda. And on Wednesday, a woman in her department had said pointedly, “You know, when I started here they kept me in Obits for a few months.” Andy was mostly annoyed with herself because the comment made her feel guilty about the small success she’d already achieved.

She thought of Miranda a thousand times that Thursday. There was a good chance she was alone, and Andy wondered if she was eating traditional food prepared by her or her housekeeper, or if she was pretending the holiday didn’t exist. She wondered if she talked to her daughters that evening, and if the phone call made her sad. That night, as she crawled into bed, she thought with an unnerving degree of wistfulness about how it might be nice—interesting, at least—to crawl into bed with Miranda. She wondered if she was going to want to meet up at the townhouse or at Andy’s apartment. It would be strange to see Miranda here, her head on the unoccupied pillow next to Andy’s, the one Andy kept on the bed like some sort of place-keeper.

She sternly reminded herself that Miranda was going to call her, hopefully with proof of her own “nun-hood” and with an enduring desire to let Andy help her get even farther away from saintliness. That they’d already mapped out the order of things. That fantasy was no good to her now, and probably no match for the reality that hovered in the distance.

---

When they were through with their coffee, Andy took the empty mugs to the kitchen and re-emerged a couple minutes later with two glasses of the cabernet in hand. It didn’t seem quite right to immediately follow up one beverage with another, but she was at a loss for what else to do. “Care for a depressant to follow the stimulant—” she started to joke, and stopped when she saw that Miranda sat with her handbag propped up next to her on the couch. She had pulled a large plastic bag out of the handbag, and from it was extracting several varieties of fabric, all rolled around tissue paper. She unrolled each piece, so the fabric was spread across her lap in swaths of deep purples and burgundies.

“I had these ordered last week,” Miranda said, offering no explanation for why she’d brought the fabric with her, nor any commentary as to whether or not the quality of the material pleased her.

It was strange to see Miranda holding something so unformed. Andy had seen her handle finished garments hundreds of times. She was always careful with them: even when her face and words were disdainful, her hands held the material so as to avoid wrinkles, and she stroked the clothing almost involuntarily before hanging it up or handing it back to a designer or staff member. The only things she wasn’t careful with were her coats, when she threw them onto Andy’s desk, but that was a style choice all its own, and the coats were always hung up immediately following their daily flight.

Even undressing, hardly able to wait for what was going to happen next, Miranda was gentle with her clothes and with Andy’s. On the first night they had sex she’d had the presence of mind to fold both pairs of slacks and lay them on the seat of a chair, with their blouses laid neatly over the back of the same piece of furniture. She’d been less circumspect about their underwear, leading to an awkward naked search later on, but even in pulling that article of clothing away from Andy’s body it had been clear that she delighted simultaneously in the flesh and the fabric. Miranda’s respect for the very fibers that made up clothing taught Andy to go slow, whether she was undressing Miranda or herself or getting dressed for work—even dressing in something quite inexpensive, something attractive but cheap—on mornings she was completely alone.

This fabric seemed messy, almost overwhelming, in comparison to the completed pieces Miranda cared about so dearly. There were at least four pieces of cloth piled in her lap, cradled in her arms. “Look at these,” Miranda said. “What do you like about them?”

Andy set the wine down on the coffee table and sat down on the other side of Miranda’s bag, which was large but didn’t seem large enough to hold the amount of cloth that practically enveloped Miranda by this point.

“May I touch them?”

Miranda nodded. Andy let her hand rest against Miranda’s thigh as she reached over the bag and toward the fabric, giving each piece of cloth a turn between her fingers. “I really love this one,” she said finally, caressing a silk so deeply eggplant it was almost black in the fading light.

“Why?” Miranda asked, before Andy had a chance to continue. She hadn’t seemed to notice the touch to her thigh.

“It’s, um—it’s rich but light,” Andy explained. She felt Miranda’s eyes on her. “I mean, the color isn’t light at all, but it would feel light to wear, I think. It’s one of my favorite colors, too. Not showy, but elegant,” she paused. “Do you think it’s elegant, even in a big rectangle like that?”

Miranda tilted her head. “Maybe.” To refer to something so purple, the word came out surprisingly grey.

“Are you having something made?” Andy asked.

“No. But I have plans for at least some of this material.”

“Do you sew, Miranda?” Andy realized as she said the words that she shouldn’t have been surprised.

“Not often, anymore—but yes, I do.” She looked away from Andy, and seemed to take note of the glasses on the table for the first time. “You opened the wine,” she said as she began rolling the fabric back up.

“Yeah,” Andy laughed. “I never know if it’s more polite to open it right away, so the person who brought it can have some, or to make some show of stowing it away for a special occasion. It could go both ways, I guess, depending on the circumstances.”

“It’s not important,” Miranda said. Andy noticed she didn’t say “It doesn’t matter,” because it did matter, to lots of people, and maybe to Miranda in certain situations. She was right, though. It wasn’t important. And Miranda certainly wasn’t inclined to give Andy any clues as to the proper way to graciously receive wine. Besides, talking about etiquette was the worst etiquette of all, and Andy figured she deserved Miranda’s reticence.

Once Miranda returned the fabric to her bag, she reached for both wine glasses and handed one to Andy. As they clinked their glasses together and drank, they looked each other squarely in the eye, which was essential etiquette in some places.

They sipped in a shared quiet for awhile. Andy looked down at the wine. Blood red. She felt a clinch of tenderness in her stomach for Miranda.

“Can I kiss you?” Andy asked, startling herself with her timing but not with the fact that she had asked. They hardly ever did anything to each other without asking. Even now that the sex was a given, it was consistently punctuated by murmured questions and non-verbal clarifications. When it came to this, neither of them suffered from an inflated sense of entitlement.

“I don’t know.”

Andy’s stomach sank. There was something to be said for asking, but up until now the answer to very nearly everything had been “yes.”

Miranda squirmed a little, and moved her bag to the floor.

“Is that a yes or a no?” Andy asked, cringing when she heard how abrupt the question sounded coming from her mouth. It was a question Miranda might have asked, if she wanted to kiss and Andy was the uncertain one, except in her voice it would have been sexy, like a challenge, and Andy knew what the answer would always be.

Miranda managed to look hateful and desirous all at once. “A yes,” she sighed, though she didn’t move an inch closer or set her glass down or do anything at all. Andy had to scoot toward her all on her own, setting her glass on the table and doing the same with Miranda’s. She placed one hand on the back of the couch behind Miranda’s shoulders and brushed Miranda’s cheek with the other, gently turning her head until it faced her own.

They kissed for a long time, warm wine kisses, and were both breathing hard when Miranda pulled away.

“You are so pretty,” Andy said, breathless and sincere. “I should tell you that more often.”

Then Miranda’s face was pink, her skin oddly warm against the cool of her eyes.

“Are you frustrated?” Miranda asked. She’d gotten her breathing under control rather quickly. “Do you wish we were fucking?” Her tone was cool, so detached from the vulgarism that the word seemed almost refined. She tapped a finger against Andy’s knee. “As I said, I could still fuck you tonight. I don’t mind; I enjoy doing it.”

Andy told herself not to smile, and insisted to herself that this wasn’t the single most wonderful compliment she’d received in her life. “No,” she said. “I don’t want to.” She really, really wanted to, but she was more inclined to find out where else the night could go. “I just want to do this. Drink wine. Kiss. Or drink wine and have dinner.”

“Let’s fix dinner, then,” Miranda stood up, grabbed her wine, and headed quickly toward the kitchen. “What are we making?”

Andy was surprised. She’d been about to suggest they order in, but was glad she didn’t. Cooking would be more interesting. She already felt, all the time, that she was a passenger on a runaway caboose, drifting faster and faster in the wrong direction. The least she could do was take interest—and pleasure—in everything leading up to the stupid, unavoidable crash.

---

At the beginning of their first night together, Andy worried for a hysterical instant that Miranda was going to micromanage everything from the taking off of clothes to their eventual orgasms. Sitting on the edge of her bed in the dark, feeling Miranda sit down next to her, she imagined her taking and taking and taking. Maybe everything was going to be hopelessly, uncomfortably lopsided. Then Miranda slowly reached out her hand, brushing the uppermost button on Andy’s shirt with her fingertip. “May I?” she asked, sounding like an oddly proper child paused before a candy bowl.

Andy nodded, unable to smile or speak or move, as Miranda worked the buttons with gentle fingers. When the shirt was open all the way, she placed a thumb on each of Andy’s shoulders, between the shirt and the skin, and pushed the shirt off Andy’s body. There was a sharp intake of air into both of their throats, and Miranda leaned forward and kissed Andy’s collarbone. They proceeded in the same tone, removing each other’s garments, kissing the skin underneath, until they were both naked and lying side by side on top of the covers. Andy had expected an angry frenzy, but what she was getting instead was so soft and slow that she couldn’t completely register—not in the moment, at least—the presence of something a little frantic in Miranda’s eyes. Whatever it was, it didn’t surface completely.

Miranda asked lots of quiet questions, wondering about tempo, pacing, how many fingers, does this feel good, how about now? Neither Andy’s answers nor her own questions were quite as articulate, but somehow, they worked. The moment stayed soft but grew faster and faster, until they came one after the other, each moaning a little. Later, Andy couldn’t recall who was first, nor did it matter.

When they were done they sat up in bed, propped against pillows that had gotten pushed back toward the wall. The bedroom didn’t seem as dim as it had when Andy led Miranda there only a minute or so after her arrival, but Andy reached over and turned on the bedside lamp anyway.

“Are you okay?” she asked, nervous even though she’d broken the rule plenty of times already. Somehow, asking Miranda if she could touch her breasts, if she could go inside her, hadn’t felt nearly as transgressive as checking in with her afterwards as to her emotional wellbeing. She snuck a glance at Miranda. Her face was a little shiny, and she seemed to be focusing on breathing in and out, but not too deeply. Moderation following excess.

She nodded, and said curtly, “Yes. Are you?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

There was a pause before Miranda spoke again. “This will work, I think.”

“What—what will?”

Miranda made a gesture suggestive of the expanse of the bed. “We obviously have something to get out of our systems. This is the solution.”

Andy really, really wished Miranda wasn’t so fond of these communal pronouns. Our systems. Everyone wants to be us. But instead of addressing the issue, she heard herself say, “Okay. Got it.”

There didn’t seem to be much more to discuss after that. After all, they weren’t there to process what had happened in Paris, or what indefinable energy had hummed between them at Runway. And they certainly weren’t there to hammer out some notion of the future. All they were going to have was a setting (Andy’s bed), a timeframe (every couple of weeks, with necessary breaks when Miranda had to go to Europe, though she wouldn’t be back there until the January fashion week in Paris), and a set of tools (their own hands and mouths, and, if they got brave as time went on, who knew what else). All of these were the means to ends (satisfaction, power, control, release) that would probably remain private. Even in sharing their bodies, they would be alone in the reasons why.

Until it was out of their systems. It made some sense, even though Andy was already starting to worry about who was going to tire of the other first. Before tonight, as her mind wandered to their arrangement in nervous anticipation, she’d hoped for pride’s sake that it would be her. Now, sitting here stunned and slack with pleasure, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe spontaneous combustion would be better—an exhaustion of desire so mutual something supernatural would have to cause it.

In that moment, the only exhaustion in the room was for lack of sleep. It was late, and even if they’d been alone, neither of them would have planned to sleep in on Saturday morning. Miranda was a naturally early riser, and Andy had gotten so used to seeing the crack of dawn five or six days out of the week that she’d lost the ability to truly enjoy soaking in bed past seven or eight.

“Are you tired?” Andy asked.

“Yes, a bit,” Miranda made a sudden move toward the edge of the bed. “Let me just, uh, collect my things—”

“Oh, no, you can stay. If you want to. I have an extra toothbrush.” Like dental hygiene was the elephant in the room here. Like the only thing stopping Miranda from proposing marriage, buying Andy a puppy, and starting every sentence that came out of her mouth with “We” was toothbrush availability.

“All right, fine,” Miranda said slowly. “I’ll leave in the morning. Early.”

Apparently, after months of tension, animosity, ass-ogling, and a single night of sex, the logical next step toward ridding their psyches of these pesky hang-ups was to find their underwear and put it back on, along with a couple of camisoles from Andy’s lingerie drawer. They took turns getting ready for bed in the bathroom, emerging with faces scrubbed bare. When they got into bed, there was no touching or closeness. Still, it was surprisingly peaceful to feel the sensation of bare limbs against cotton sheets, the heaviness of Andy’s blankets and comforter, the way the bed—already warmed up from the sex—held heat so much better when two people were in it.

The morning was rushed but quiet—no snuggling in bed, obviously, and no coffee or breakfast or talking beyond the necessities. Miranda spent a while in the bathroom, showering, putting on make-up and the outfit she’d brought with her (apparently she’d thought an overnight stay might be in the cards), while Andy putzed around the apartment, trying to appear occupied. As Miranda headed to the front door, she turned around and looked Andy in the eye. “Only us, correct? No one else.”

Andy rightly assumed that she was talking about sex. It was a given that no one else would be privy to the details of their agreement. “Absolutely,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t even want to—” Too much information. “Only us.”

“Transparency is essential in this sort of situation.” Trust, too. Maybe they would have that.

“I agree completely. So—you’ll call me? About, um, Friday after next?”

“Yes. Goodbye.”

Miranda left quickly, but all day, typing an article from home, Andy swore she could feel her fingers ghosting across her shoulders, breasts, wrists, spine.

---

Food was less tense than the coffee, easier to navigate than the wine. There wasn’t a lot of space to move around Andy’s kitchen, but once she dug up a package of chicken tenderloins and some vegetables from her fridge, neither of them needed to move around much. They stood next to each other, Miranda over the range, Andy over a cutting board that took up all the counter space. Soon the kitchen was filled with the hissing sound of chicken sautéing in olive oil, punctuated by the chopping of the knife.

“How’d you learn to cook?” Andy asked. She figured the question was okay. At least the answer wasn’t going to be I learned to cook because you abandoned me in Paris. Or I learned to cook because my husband is divorcing me. Or the moment I hurt Nigel, I knew I was going to be spending a lot more time in the kitchen.

“My mother. A very long time ago,” Miranda said. “What about you?”

“My ex-boyfriend, but he was such a great cook that I’ve really only utilized what he taught me now that he’s gone. I like cooking, though. I’m slowly getting better at it. More adventurous, though you wouldn’t know it from what we’re making tonight.”

Miranda picked up the spatula and began to turn over the tenderloins, exhibiting an extreme amount of concentration for someone so obviously competent in the kitchen. Andy thought the conversation was over, but after a minute or so Miranda said, “You could say something similar about me. I never showed a bit of interest in cooking while she was alive, but I absorbed far more than I let on. As you know, I don’t cook much now, but I wish I could thank her. Tell me when you want to get those vegetables going.”

She rummaged in the cabinet for spices, adding pepper and rosemary to the meat with sharp flicks of her wrist. The disclosure prompted no visible change in her, but the kitchen seemed sad. In a way, the solution to the puzzle of Miranda as cook had something to do with abandonment after all.

At least a minute went by before Andy said anything else. “I think most teachers get used to some degree of ungratefulness, as tragic as that seems.” The rest of their conversation, through the cooking and the eating and the finishing of the wine, was paced the same way. Everything so slow that even direct responses to previous statements seemed disjointed, isolated. Like performance art, or two ships signaling in a storm. An outsider might have found it awkward, but there were no outsiders present.

“Stay and watch a movie or something,” Andy said, when she saw that their plates were almost empty. She was discovering that Miranda responded well when she put a little bossiness in her voice, and more than anything she didn’t want Miranda to leave. She realized that was also what the coffee had been about, and the wine: keeping Miranda occupied and without an excuse to cut the night short. She couldn’t just leave mid-movie, or without finishing her drink. Eventually they would get tired, and Miranda would see that even in the absence of sex there was a bed conveniently located just down the narrow hall.

---

In December, about a month after she and Miranda started sleeping together, Andy spent a whole night fixated on how much she loved Miranda’s body. It was strange how a body could be both like and unlike the person to which it belonged. Miranda’s was stunning, proud, and—at least in this moment—got what it wanted, which was Andy’s mouth pressed between its legs. At the same time, it was responsive in a way that defied Miranda’s personality. It got wet and dry and itched and ached and craved and was fulfilled.

After she brought Miranda to orgasm she kissed the insides of her thighs and murmured, “This is so good.”

Startled, Miranda laughed. “No. This isn’t good.” She tried to explain when she saw Andy’s stricken face. “I don’t mean good as in delicious; I mean good as in right. I don’t—” She pressed her fingers to her temples.

Andy stared at her. They’d made the bed into a throne of pillows and Miranda seemed far away. She was reigning, whether she wanted to or not. Andy was crouched before her and really, really didn’t want to cry. Her face was already a mess, and she’d been so happy only a few seconds ago. There was no way to respond, so she pulled herself up until she was sitting between Miranda’s legs, her own legs folded underneath her. “I have to go wash my face,” she said a moment later, and left Miranda lying there, still and spread out but closed to communication.

Even alone in the bathroom with the faucet running, Andy didn’t cry. She took a shaky breath, stared at herself in the mirror, and thought: Until it’s out of our fucking systems. Maybe that would be soon. She washed her face and brushed her teeth before heading back to the bedroom with a sort of directionless resolve. Miranda hadn’t turned on a light in the time Andy was gone. The only change in the room was that she had closed her legs and folded her arms across her chest.

The next day, Miranda left even more quickly than she did on their first morning. Andy got dressed and went into the office shortly after, knowing she would drive herself crazy if she stayed at home and pretended to work. By the time she got to her desk, there was an email from Miranda in her inbox. It said:

What do you think of this article?

MP

Linked was a piece from the New York Times on the general elections in Iraq. Andy wondered what in the world Miranda wanted: Andy’s take on the political situation itself, a critique of the journalist’s writing style, recognition of a particular bias? She ended up reading the article three and a half times before figuring out exactly why she was intrigued by the content but didn’t enjoy the reading experience. The article was surprisingly dry in tone, trying for an edgy skepticism and not quite getting there. She said as much in her response email, and held her breath as she wrote two unrelated lines at the end of the message:

I can’t help it that Friday night made me happy. Next time I’m going to pay a lot of attention to that shivery spot at the nape of your neck, and maybe you’ll be happy, too.

AS

Miranda didn’t respond to the part about her neck, and certainly not to any allegations about her supposed happiness or unhappiness. But she did agree that “edgy skepticism” done badly was a truly miserable thing. Her next email, about mice injected with stem cells for the purpose of studying human neurological disorders, was much longer than the first. She was of two minds about the entire process, and the fact that Miranda Priestly had a—hypocritical, yes, but endearing—soft spot for mice made Andy all the more eager to write a postscript about her wrists and hair and the surprising warmth of her body in December.

As the weeks went on, Miranda’s emails became increasingly analytical, and Andy’s increasingly erotic. They didn’t talk about them in person, but their writing was there in the room with them every time they had sex. Miranda didn’t explain her beliefs to many people, and desired feedback even less often. That she expressed both to Andy made Andy feel interesting and informed and worth…she didn’t know what exactly, but the correspondence was gratifying. She liked to think that her emails did something similar to Miranda, who was fawned over all the time but rarely told she was truly beautiful. Quite frankly, there wasn’t anyone in the world in the same position as Andy—close enough to create detailed assessments of Miranda’s sexual strengths and brave enough to let Miranda read them.

Andy often let herself think of strange, lovely things when she touched Miranda: things she wasn’t brave enough to send to her. She thought of floury hands working pastry dough, or of taking a petal between thumb and forefinger and stroking it gently, relishing the texture. When Miranda’s breathing started to get loud against the dark, Andy imagined an indoor windstorm, or the ocean rushing the apartment. Later, whenever she noticed that many of her recollections of pleasure with Miranda were bound up in organics, she explained to herself that she had to keep her writer’s mind about her. She couldn’t let her creative senses succumb to atrophy, even in this, even about things she couldn’t bring herself to write down.

She told herself it would have been easy to hold Miranda, even to have her naked and begging, and think nothing but “Oh my God, Miranda is here with me.” Miranda’s world was full of people who worshipped her or needed her to think that they did, but when she really thought about it, Andy had to admit that she’d never been in either category. Even when Andy worked for Miranda, blind prostration was missing from her professional approach. At first ignorance was to blame, then indignation, and now there was no way she could give a name to the whys and hows of her refusal to humble herself at the altar of Miranda Priestly.

Though Miranda would never say so, it was clear that this quality had always been one of her favorite things about Andy. The words for a proper explanation didn’t exist. She couldn’t say, “Andrea, the way you refuse to deify me is so refreshing” when there was so much they weren’t speaking about already.

Anyway, worship wouldn’t have worked for long in this scenario; it would have burned out in weeks, and they made it to the beginning of March without slowing down. So, flour. Rainstorms. Their bed a tangled garden. Anything for Andy to keep their flesh earthbound, a little bit less than sacred, since it obviously wasn’t sacred to Miranda. Miranda, who saw nothing good in this, and probably didn’t see any gardens either.

One night they’d been asleep (in Andy’s case) and quiet and still (in Miranda’s) for well over an hour when Miranda nudged Andy awake. “Listen to that,” she said, her voice a little ragged from the late hour and the silence, and Andy’s ears took in actual howling wind, pellets of rain driving against the big old windows.

“In like a lion?” Andy said with a grin.

“I always forget how much I love the first rainstorms.”

Apparently, weather talk wasn’t small talk if you were naked and it was the middle of the night. “Me too,” Andy replied. “It’s going to be warm soon.” She felt a fluttering in her stomach, not exactly sexual, but like something wonderful was happening. A massive shift, seasonal in scale, fabulously scary. She let her hand creep toward Miranda’s bare shoulder where it peeked out from under the sheets, and swirled her fingers against the smooth skin there. After a few moments she felt Miranda’s fingers encircle her wrist and drag her hand down under the covers to Miranda’s left breast.

“You want to get going again?” The sound of Andy’s voice was dampened by the storm.

“No,” Miranda’s voice was even quieter. “I have to sleep—I haven’t yet. If you could just—” She hesitated, and let go of Andy’s wrist. “If you could just touch?”

“Sure,” Andy murmured sleepily, thinking of how glad she was that some nights they didn’t bother dressing for bed. “I’ll touch you so gently.” She sounded like one of her emails. She left the covers as they were, so they were both buried under the sheets and comforter and the extra blanket they needed in the winter but wouldn’t need much longer. She let her fingers trace lazy circles around one breast and then the other, noticing when Miranda’s nipples started to respond but treating the response as secondary to the task of relaxing her, getting her to sleep. Miranda’s breathing started to slow down after only a minute or so, and Andy figured she was asleep or very close to it when she pressed a kiss to Miranda’s shoulder. But Miranda gasped and tensed up, and her eyes popped open.

“Sorry,” Andy whispered.

Miranda turned away so she was laying on her side, her back to Andy. Andy’s arms felt lost, but she retreated into her own space.

“Goodnight,” Andy said to Miranda’s back. She didn’t get a response.

Sleep faded the tension, apparently, and the next morning they returned quickly enough to their original position: lying side by side, shoulders pressed together, Andy cupping the underside of Miranda’s breast in a gesture she told herself was purely designed to elicit mutual sexual pleasure. Nothing soothing about it. This wasn’t like the time they absent-mindedly fell asleep holding hands and woke up hours later with aching wrists and stiff fingers. They weren’t stupid; they learned from at least a few of their mistakes.

Andy let herself marvel—silently, with her fingers—at Miranda’s soft warm flesh, at one point intertwining her fingers with Miranda’s so they could both feel the pebbling of her nipples. They spent a good twenty minutes awake in bed that morning, which would have been unimaginable in November.

The next time Miranda came over, neither of them could get to sleep for a long time.

“Miranda?” Andy whispered.

“Yes?”

“Not having anyone know about this is getting really hard.” Andy knew Miranda probably wasn’t the best person to talk to about this sort of thing, but that was the whole issue: there wasn’t anybody else, not so long as they were keeping their “arrangement” a secret.

“Logistically, you mean? Your friends are wondering about your schedule?”

“No,” Andy said, though she wished the answer was “yes,” that it was something that simple. “The schedule issue is easy enough to work around. It’s just, um, a little overwhelming to have to—to compartmentalize this. I feel weird that no one knows.”

Andy steeled herself for Miranda to question the wisdom of continuing to meet. To imply, maybe not in so many words, that Andy could take what she could get or take nothing at all. She certainly wasn’t expecting to hear Miranda say, “Tell someone, then. The right person.”

“You’d be okay with that?”

“If you tell the right person there won’t be any problems, will there?”

“No. I guess not.”

“Then tell one person. See what it feels like.”

“I think I’m going to tell my best friend, Lily, maybe you’ve heard me mention her—”

“I don’t need to know who. It isn’t really my business, is it?”

“Not exactly,” Andy conceded, though it felt very much like Miranda’s business. “Are you going to tell someone?”

Their bodies weren’t touching, but Andy could feel Miranda stiffen. “I’m not sure.”

“That’s cool,” Andy said quickly. “I was just wondering.”

A week later, while she was putting in a few extra hours at the Mirror, two emails arrived within a minute of each other: one from Miranda, and one from Nate, who had apparently decided to fulfill the last promise he made before Boston. She spent a stupid minute trying to decide which to open first before settling on Nate’s because she looked forward to it less. Nate was “with someone new” but was thinking of her often and hoped she was well—all in a few sentences. For once, Miranda’s email was short, too: she’d finally gotten around to seeing “The Compulsive Line: Etching 1900 to Now” exhibit at MOMA, and wanted Andy to see it too so they could discuss it. With bitterness, Andy thought about how visiting an exhibit Miranda had seen would be like going on a date but at separate times, and about all the conventional dates Nate was probably going on with the “someone new” in his life. She burst into tears before she knew she was sad.

Jennifer, the woman who liked to exhibit a lot of her own edgy skepticism about Andy’s career, made an inquisitive noise in her direction. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Andy sniffed. She looked Jennifer right in the eye and said, “My mom just sent me a really touching E-Card, all right? Shouldn’t have opened it at work.”

It was definitely time to talk to Lily.

---

Andy and Miranda regarded each other with some amusement as they got into bed that night. It occurred to Andy that it was strange that this should feel strange—it was really incredibly ordinary to reach the end of the day, feel tired, and decide to fall asleep next to someone who had reached the end of her day and felt the same. They’d slept in the same bed—this bed—quite a few times, but the absence of post-coital stupor made tonight’s circumstances feel sharply different. There was nothing sweaty or out of breath or calm-muscled about this moment. Their days were simply finishing in close proximity—that was all it was.

Or not quite all. Without asking, Andy scooted down the bed until her head was level with Miranda’s midsection. She leaned over, pushed Miranda’s camisole up a little bit, and kissed her abdomen. “Hey there, Miranda Priestly’s crazy uterus? Thank you for a lovely day,” she said softly, pressing the words against the warm skin. Andy knew then, as she had known and re-known a hundred times, that she was the crazy one, the one with a death wish.

Miranda cringed, but she didn’t look mad when Andy peered up at her face. “And it’s usually so under-appreciated.”

“An unsung hero,” Andy agreed, matching the dryness of Miranda’s tone. Another kiss. “How’re you feeling?”

Miranda shrugged. “I’m fine. I feel fine.” The words sounded far away, and a little wet.

They stayed like that for awhile, Andy curled up against Miranda’s torso while Miranda worked her fingers through Andy’s hair. Andy sank deep into the moment, resting her head gently on the surface she’d just kissed, so deep she was startled when she heard Miranda sniff a little and looked up to see tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Miranda, are—”

Miranda shook her head, opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and opened it again. “What you were saying just then—it somehow reminded me of a moment…I think of it far more often than I should.”

“Tell me.”

“When I was pregnant with Caroline and Cassidy, I talked to them on a regular basis. Little things about my day, how excited I was to meet them, what our lives were going to be like. I wasn’t muttering to them on the subway like an insane person—just at home, in private. Can you picture someone doing that? Of course you can, you were just talking to my—anyway, one evening John came home early, but I didn’t hear him coming toward the bedroom. He made fun of me as soon as he realized what I was doing.”

Trouble, clearly. Andy had long believed that Miranda was better at handling blatant hatred than teasing. Miranda continued, “I’m sure he just thought it was amusing and wasn’t actually trying to mock me. But that day I started shutting him out of a lot of the planning for the twins. When they came I wanted to do everything for them and he never got into the habit of helping, and after a while I started to resent him. I stopped giving him a chance. It was unfair, but I knew he wasn’t the right person for me. I didn’t realize how wrong until—” She took a shaky breath, trying to stave off actual crying. Andy moved back up the bed, placing her hand on Miranda’s abdomen and laying her head next to Miranda’s on her pillow.

“Until what?” Andy asked gently.

“Sometimes when we’re together I can’t help but think about what it could have been like back then, if we were the right ages and everything had lined up more...properly. If I’d been with you instead.”

“Oh…” Andy breathed, her head spinning. She had no idea how to respond.

“I’m sorry,” Miranda said, crying in earnest despite her best efforts. “I thought—if we slept together enough times—it would go away—” She sobbed. “I thought—I’d realize I was wrong about you, too. But it isn’t—going away.”

If Andy forced herself to be honest, she’d known for months that their physical desire for each other wasn’t going to wane anytime soon. Still, she hadn’t let herself hope that the affection she definitely, without a doubt felt for Miranda could be returned in any workable capacity. Apparently, that affection was there for her too, but loving Andy—if that was how this wish of Miranda’s could be defined---was something Miranda wanted to rid herself of, because the timing was bad. Andy felt a creaking in her chest, reminding her that her heart wasn’t broken but that it could be, that it wouldn’t take much. A little more of this would do it.

“Oh,” Andy said again. “Miranda, feeling this way about me makes you sad?”

Miranda grasped some of the bedsheet into her fist and yanked at the fabric a little. “It’s knowing I did everything wrong—that I can’t go back—”

“But you didn’t do everything wrong.” Andy forced herself to smile. “Look, aren’t you glad that your daughters are exactly who they are?” Miranda nodded. “Even if it had been you, me, and a turkey baster in 1995, or if we were both, like, in our early thirties or something, or if I was some male version of myself and got you pregnant, Caroline and Cassidy would be totally different people. Maybe they wouldn’t even be twins. And maybe we’d stop getting along, or we wouldn’t be attracted to each other, or any number of things we have no way of knowing.”

“I wouldn’t want a male version of you.”

“Well, good, since you’re not getting one. I feel the same way. And I wouldn’t want you younger, any more than I want to be older. I’m glad neither of us can start over.”

“A turkey baster?” If Andy could make a joke in an incredibly fraught moment, Miranda could deflect emotion with the best of them.

“Yeah, you know, for the sperm. Even lesbian mommies need it. If they want a biological kid, that is.”

“Ah.” Miranda smiled through her tears. “Of course.”

“So, um. That’s probably not going to happen for us. A change that big. But maybe we do need to take stock of this, figure out something that’s going to make us both feel better about where things are going.”

Miranda didn’t respond. She was looking straight ahead, still crying, though silently. In her second miraculous flash of understanding that day, Andy read in her face that Miranda was picturing every possibility at once, cataloguing them, finding them all beyond her famed ability to plan and control and influence. Andy saw in pieces a terrible movie of Miranda’s imagined future: being expected to date Andy and dine with her and coming up short on time. The relationship breaking to the press, further complicating her divorce and shocking both their families. Coming out to her daughters, to her co-workers, to the friend or two she still had, and meeting their disapproval and disgust. Getting bored with a more conventional relationship, or worse, getting more and more enthralled but finding that Andy was bored. The sex getting awkward, or uninspired. Andy realizing she wanted a boyfriend after all, or maybe a female partner who was actually a nice, adorable, friendly person. Her children losing yet another adult they’d come to trust and depend upon. It was a film of worst case scenarios, years of failures that to Miranda seemed inevitable.

Andy stroked Miranda’s skin and murmured in her ear. “Hey, I know you’re smart enough to worry about a lot of things at once, but it’s a lot healthier not to.”

“I’m not good at healthy things.” Andy could hear in Miranda’s voice that she said it to be contrary but that it was also true.

“Neither am I, as it turns out. I’m not asking you to change. I really love what we do together. And I don’t actually think it’s all that unhealthy.” She forced her tone softer, sweeter, and braced herself for Miranda’s reaction to what she was going to say next. “But maybe it wouldn’t kill us if we went and got coffee sometime, or if I met your daughters, just to hang out. Re-met, rather.” Miranda’s eyebrows raised at this, which Andy ignored. This wasn’t the time for Andy to regale Miranda with the story of her first meeting with the twins. “Or maybe we could talk about work, or, or…Paris. So gradually we wouldn’t even realize it was happening,” she added, trying not to sound desperate and failing miserably.

“Today was good,” Miranda said.

“Yeah. It was. So will you think about what I said?”

“Yes.” The reply was immediate. Tired but eager.

“Don’t make me any promises. I’m not going to make you any either.” Marriage was a promise, and it was stressful to watch Miranda and Stephen extract themselves from it, even though Miranda never talked about the divorce.

Miranda shut her eyes, Andy turned off the bedside lamp, and they both stopped talking. The silence was like a promise not to promise anything, and neither of them had to shift position or take their hands away from each other in order to fall asleep.

---

Andy had come to look forward to Fridays and Mondays very much. Even the Friday nights she spent without Miranda were nice: sometimes she went out for a drink with friends or co-workers, and other times she stayed home and read or cooked or cleaned the apartment. Now that she lived alone, she took more pride than she ever had in keeping her home clean and taking good care of herself. If there was a mess in the kitchen or if she ate Chinese take-out three nights a week, she was the only person around to blame. Surprisingly, doing chores and household tasks on a Friday night was a lot less embarrassingly dull than she might have imagined back in college. Besides, the other Friday nights were exciting enough to make up for them. Those other Fridays were her favorites, but all Fridays had their perks.

Her appreciation of Mondays was a stranger thing. Andy often worked at least one weekend shift; still, Mondays dragged with the weight of a new work week. But after Nate left for Boston, she and Lily started meeting for drinks after work nearly every Monday night. It gave them something to look forward to after the weekend was over, and there were lots of good happy hour specials. Doug came along when he could manage it, but more often than not it was just the two of them. Secretly, they liked that. Their closeness had taken a beating in New York, but once Lily admitted that Andy wasn’t the only one who had been changed by life in the city, and once Andy admitted that she needed to make their relationship a bigger priority, they’d managed to successfully navigate a more adult friendship.

By the time the break-up was a few weeks old, they spent comparatively little time discussing Nate’s departure. Lily’s work at the gallery and Andy’s work at the paper were far more absorbing topics. They hardly ever talked about dating or relationships—or, obviously, sexual arrangements with former bosses. Lily hadn’t dated anyone for a while and frequently got defensive when anyone broached the subject, and she tended not to ask Andy any questions either, presumably out of sensitivity for her status as newly single. Monday evenings were starting to read like a slightly tipsy celebration of working too much and ignoring men altogether. Andy wondered where that kind of energy had been when she started at Runway, and her guilt that Lily didn’t know about Miranda swelled ever larger. Mentioning how she felt to Miranda had helped a little—Miranda’s words had helped her grasp the fact that those Friday nights in bed together did exist in reality even if they were thus far carried out in secret.

The week after Andy got “permission” from Miranda to kiss and tell, Lily practically set up the conversation for her. Settling into a small corner table at a bar that was way too pricy on the weekends but just right on a Monday night, she handed Andy a drink and said abruptly, “You look like you have news. You’re dating someone, aren’t you? I know you’re not moping over Nate anymore. I mean…you kinda stopped before you started. Almost.”

Andy swallowed. “I’m not dating anyone, but…”

“But?”

“You really aren’t going to believe this.”

Lily did believe it. She was shocked, but she believed it. Mostly, she had lots of questions, and it was when Andy realized all the answers seemed obvious to her that she understood how fully she had been living and operating in a world where she and Miranda were a given. Indefinable and endlessly confounding, but a given. Lily wanted to know if Miranda really “liked women,” and if Andy actually found Miranda attractive and wasn’t just along for the ride, so to speak. If anything had happened between them while Andy was still at Runway. (“Of course,” “of course,” and a milder “of course not.”)

“You’re not totally whipped,” Lily said incredulously. “You’re not at her beck and call 24/7. I seriously had no idea any of this was going on. Do you realize how omnipresent she was when you worked for her? You would have already gotten two calls since the time we got to the bar.”

“I know,” Andy said. “That’s part of why I was afraid to tell you. I figured you’d remember how things were and assume this was the same kind of situation. It isn’t. At all. And we’re being really discreet. We have to be.” Silently, she admitted that they would be discreet even if both of them were free as birds.

Lily’s face was solemn. “Oh my God. Her divorce isn’t final yet. I read about that in a magazine for crying out loud. Well, I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks. It’s not like there’s much to tell anyway.”

Lily looked skeptical, so Andy tried to clarify. “I mean—this isn’t like, like dating or something. There’s no commitment.”

“Wow,” Lily sighed. “Remember in high school, when we were guessing which one of us would have sex first and you said you would never sleep with anyone you didn’t love?”

“Yeah,” Andy said slowly, like drawing out the syllable was going to buy her time. She realized Lily had no idea about Christian, either, and sleeping with him had been the real aberration.

A light went on. “Oh. Oh my God. Andy, you only see her once every two weeks. Does she even know?” As usual, Lily knew how to get to the point.

“I don’t want to ask for any more time,” Andy said quietly.

“Isn’t it strange, though? Don’t you feel disconnected—just seeing this person twice a month and doing something—” She’d been talking quietly already, but lowered her voice considerably. “—so intimate?”

“Well, we keep in touch,” Andy said, glad to be back on marginally more solid conversational territory.

“Phone?”

“Nah, she’s pretty terrible with the phone. I send her dirty emails.”

Lily said “Oh my God” for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

Andy blushed, but she wanted to continue. She felt light-headed and nonsensically happy. “I just write about what I want to do to her, and what I want her to do to me. And my favorite things about her.”

“Does she respond?”

“She writes me about stuff she reads in the Times. And The Nation, which I’m pretty sure she started reading because I told her how much I like it. A lot of times I get emails from her in the mornings, when I know she reads the paper. But sometimes they come at really weird times, like three a.m. She’s a good writer. And she always wants my feedback—what I think of the articles and what she says about them and everything.”

“Andy, you’re beaming.”

She knew it and couldn’t help it. “Really?”

“You’re absolutely beaming. You are in for it. You’re—you’re writing smut for a fifty-year-old woman.”

“Um…she’s not quite fifty yet. But her birthday’s soon.”

“What are you going to do to celebrate?”

“We’re not going out, Lily. I mean—we don’t go out. At all. We stay in. Besides, her birthday’s on a Tuesday this year.” She didn’t explain what that meant, why it mattered that it didn’t land on a Friday—the right kind of Friday, at that.

“Well, are you going to get her something?”

“I was thinking sex.”

Lily laughed. “This is so crazy, Andy.”

“I know. I’m kind of really happy and really miserable all at the same time. Thanks for not freaking out.”

Lily patted her hand. “No problem. I mean, I’m not your mother…or Nate…or paparazzi…or…”

“Stop it!”

“I’m just saying, give me a little credit.”

---

In the morning Andy lay in bed, listening to Miranda get ready for her day. She felt, if not completely relaxed, more calm than she had in a long time. Then, through the half-open bathroom door, she saw Miranda reach into her toiletries bag for an orange plastic pill bottle, pop open the cap, place a pill on her tongue, and fill a Dixie cup with water. All of a sudden, there was a sinking in her stomach, like finding out a family secret, like witnessing a private harm. She’d never seen Miranda take a pill before, and although she knew quite well that people took pills all the time, for all sorts of reasons, in the second she saw it there was no question of politeness or restraint.

“What is that?” she asked in a shaking voice, making it to the door just as Miranda swallowed.

Their eyes met in the small, plastic-framed bathroom mirror. “Anti-depressant,” Miranda said, sighing. When Andy didn’t say anything, she went on. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s my prescription. I take the proper dosage. You’re acting like you just caught me with stolen OxyContin.”

“Sorry,” Andy said. She felt retroactive guilt for her depressant/stimulant joke the night before, even though she was pretty sure Miranda hadn’t registered it at all. “I just—I didn’t know, and--”

“I think we established last night that there’s quite a lot we don’t know about each other.”

“Well, now I know this.” Andy stepped a little closer, until she was standing next to Miranda. She pressed her hand to the small of Miranda’s back. “Do you mind my asking if they, ah, work? If they’re doing what they’re supposed to?”

Miranda shrugged. “It’s only been a couple of months, but I suppose so. I suppose they work.” She mirrored Andy’s touch, then slid her hand down to give Andy’s rear a gentle pat. “Not as well as this,” she added, looking meaningfully at the placement of her hand.

“Is my ass your anti-drug, Miranda?”

“Mm. More like a supplement.”

“I can handle that.”

“Good.”

“My therapist thinks this is a bad idea.” The admission was conversational, almost chatty.

“What is?”

Miranda shook her head briefly, and clarified. “Us sleeping together.”

Andy harrumphed her dismissal of this opinion, but her face soon broke into a smile. “So you did tell someone!”

“Doesn’t count. She’s confidential, I pay her, and I only mentioned it once. I might stop seeing her, actually.”

“It counts for something.”

Apparently Miranda, for all her poise and stubborn rejection of the healthy and infinite confidence as arbiter of fashion, saw something painful in herself—in who she was, or in how she felt—and was working to change it. With help. Andy realized that this wasn’t the right moment to do what she wanted to do, which was to hug Miranda from behind, look at both of their faces in the mirror, touch her and kiss her everywhere she could reach. Miranda didn’t seem ashamed about the pill, but she would misinterpret that physical sweetness as pity, or as Andy scrambling far too quickly toward normalcy, slipping along the way. She opted for a quick kiss to Miranda’s cheek, and was nearly out the bathroom door before she said casually, “So, I’m making breakfast and more mediocre coffee. You should stay if you have time.”

Apparently, Miranda had a little time to spare.

---

Later in the week, Lily and Doug came over for dinner and a movie. “Wow,” Doug said as he walked through the door. “Your apartment’s really neat. Actually, it’s been really neat for a while now.”

“The godforsaken lease is up soon—they might start showing the place.” This was true, but even truer was the strength of Miranda’s obsession with cleanliness.

“You didn’t tell me you were looking for a new place.”

Andy shrugged. “Money. I’m not looking very hard yet, but I should be.”

“Well, the apartment looks awesome. Oh—not to change the subject, but I keep forgetting to tell you that there’s this amazing film playing at the Sunshine on Friday.”

Lily giggled. “Andy has plans that night.”

“Oh, um, actually those plans are a little earlier than I thought, but I don’t know if I’d be able to—” Andy cut herself off abruptly, but not before earning a quizzical look from Doug.

“I do have plans,” she amended. It was simpler this way. “I’ll explain later, Doug. I promise.” She’d decided that much since Monday.

She hardly watched the movie, distracted by the little thrills of nervous excitement that kept shooting through her stomach.

---

They didn’t have to wait two weeks to see each other again. Partway through the week, John decided he wanted to trade custody weekends with Miranda and take the girls to see his parents in Connecticut on Saturday. Miranda sounded nervous over the phone, offering to come over after dinner and to spend the night.

On Saturday evening, in lieu of saying hello, Andy stretched out her arms, and Miranda went into them, and added her own arms, and for a moment all they did was stand wrapped in each other. Miranda quickly turned the affection into something else, kissing Andy’s neck, biting down a little. They made it as far as the sofa before their clothes were off.

The love was all the better for their unplanned weeks of abstention. They managed somehow to sit in each other’s laps on the floor in front of the sofa, so they were locked together and every sensation, each movement, pulsed through both their bodies. The first time Andy came, she saw Miranda even through her shut eyelids. The second time, she saw dark purple, something she couldn’t remember happening before. Miranda hadn’t come yet, but she was close, and Andy pressed her shoulders against the couch and let her lay her head back against the seat cushion.

“I’ve got you,” she murmured into her neck before shifting all of her focus to her fingers entering Miranda steady and hard, filling her and pushing her nearly past return, and to hearing Miranda speak her name almost reverently, like the moment was holy. Miranda lifted her head, and they stared at each other as she rose up and came back down, their mouths slightly parted. The days were getting longer, and there was light enough to see each other sharply.

“Oh,” Miranda said. She might not have realized she was saying anything. “Oh.” Andy hummed in pleasure.

The previous week notwithstanding, they’d never gotten together so early in the evening, and when they too worn out to keep going it was only nine. Even the thought of sleep was far off, so they dressed slowly, taking their time picking up their strewn-about clothes. Andy noticed happily that in the rush to get started, neither of them had been particularly careful with their outfits.

The expanse of hours ahead of them didn’t scare Andy quite so much tonight. There had been some really excellent emails between them in the last eight days, including a couple that made her realize with a start that she hadn’t felt this good about herself in years, maybe since she was a senior at Northwestern. Feeling good about her writing made it easier to feel good about everything else.

After they’d had some water and washed their hands and faces, Andy suggested they walk down the street to the café she liked. “I have to put on make-up first,” Miranda said.

“No, you don’t.”

“I am going out in public.”

There was no point in arguing, so Andy shrugged and said, “You’re lovely.” Miranda went into the bathroom and did her make-up, but she didn’t put on much.

The night was windy but warm, and it was a pleasant change to spend the afterglow outdoors instead of falling asleep or lying in bed. “I guarantee that you are going to enjoy this coffee,” Andy said confidently, and Miranda laughed. Their shoulders brushed together as they walked.

The barista was rude to Andy, rolling her eyes when she took a long time deciding what to order, and this made Miranda laugh too, once they were settled at a table. “She hated you,” Miranda said cheerfully, her smile radiant. Andy wasn’t offended; she and Miranda weren’t exactly walking joke books, and she’d decided they should take their joy where they could get it.

“How’s work?” Andy asked. Hang the caboose, and her half-hearted belief that it might re-connect to the train. Hang a long and happy life. Still, before she could stop herself, she added, “You don’t have to answer that.”

“Work is fine,” Miranda said slowly, as if she couldn’t tell whether Andy was kidding about pushing boundaries or was actually taking (another) boundary and stretching it to the limit. She went on to provide several anecdotes that didn’t sound at all fine to Andy, who heard every detail with the ears of an assistant. It occurred to her that maybe Miranda felt “fine” about Runway far more often than Andy had believed when she was in the thick of second-assistant-crisis-mode. Looking back, it was pretty apparent that this mode of operation was expected, and was the product of some rather effective motivational tools on Miranda’s part, but had only rarely indicated actual crisis. Listening to Miranda talk about Runway gave Andy a pang of missing Nigel and how he’d always calmed her panic; he hadn’t been mentioned, but hearing anything about that office reminded her of him. She’d been too mortified to call after quitting in Paris, but thought she might try to reconnect with him soon.

“How is your work?” Miranda asked, her tone indicating that she expected an answer, considering she had been cooperative enough to provide one.

“Good but completely crazy,” Andy said honestly. “I won’t bore you with the details, but—”

“No, bore me,” Miranda said. “Please.”

They left after an hour, and when they reached the front door of the apartment building, Andy fumbled with the door knob with one hand and took Miranda’s hand in the other. Their hands had just been hanging there, practically touching of their own accord, on the entire walk back, and it seemed right.

Once they were halfway up the stairs, Miranda paused. Andy realized this stairwell, with its musty smell and stained carpeting, was the ugliest place she’d seen her. “You should come to my house next time. We could cook dinner first, or order some food. What would you think of that?” She started walking again as soon as the words were out.

“That sounds great,” Andy said, keeping up. “Really great.” It occurred to her then that in a way, this was a contest: a competition to see who was going to be the most comfortable with “dating”—the most flexible and casual and open to change. Of course, Miranda had suggested cooking dinner first—meaning that she was inviting Andy over for sex, meaning she wasn’t breaking the original rules completely. Naturally, she’d also managed first in another sense, as neither of them had provided the other with an explicit dinner invitation before. Andy thought she might like this contest a lot more than the last one, the one where they each tried to be the best at feigning emotional detachment from sex. They hadn’t been cut out for that race at all. She stroked Miranda’s palm with her thumb, and grinned at the tiny sigh the touch provoked.

When Miranda pounced on her before she’d completely shut the apartment door, kissing her and slipping her hands beneath her collar and saying “Can I? Can I?” about everything at once, it was Andy’s turn to laugh. She was tipsy with caffeine and adrenaline, desperate to make up for lost time, and suspected Miranda was operating under similar motivations.

The next morning, Miranda waited until breakfast was over and she’d gathered up her belongings before pulling a silky, eggplant-colored skirt out of a garment bag and handing it to Andy without saying a word. Andy was silent for a moment, running her fingers over the familiar material. She felt tears spring into her eyes and finally said, “Oh my God. You made this. You must be so sleep-deprived.”

Right there in the kitchen, she took off her pants and put on the skirt, which was knee length and embellished with a beautiful, velvety button at one side of the waistband. Fully zipped, it was a snug fit but not restrictive, and even without a mirror she could tell that her ass looked absolutely fantastic. “I love it,” she said, not caring that her enthusiasm was obviously embarrassing Miranda. “How’d you get the dimensions right?”

Miranda cleared her throat. “I am…relatively familiar with your proportions by this point, but when I wasn’t sure I asked Nigel. He has a lot of experience dressing you.”

Andy’s mouth dropped open. This weekend was like the sexiest episode of The Twilight Zone ever. “Nigel knows?”

“Nigel knows that I sewed you a skirt. He may surmise what he will.” She chuckled and said wryly, “You can imagine the constant battle I wage with myself not to spill the graphic details.”

“I love the skirt, Miranda.” Andy’s tone was serious. “Thank you.”

Miranda might have left without saying anything in response, without even a proper goodbye, if Andy hadn’t grabbed her at the door and held her still for a kiss. The small moan that left Miranda’s throat when their lips parted was going to tide Andy over until their “dinner date” at the townhouse.

Miranda slipped out the door as soon as the kiss was over, and Andy thought about how it seemed that whatever they did, they were going to keep leaving each other in myriad ways. But there were considerable arrivals too, filling up her inbox, doorframe, the other side of her bed. On Monday, she was going to show up for work wearing a purple skirt, and resist the urge on Tuesday to wear it again.

THE END

Entry tags:

devil wears prada, fic