Page 35 of Scoring with my Bestie's Ex

“You know I want to be a designer myself,” I say, looking anywhere but at Imogen. “I was hoping you could take a look at them and tell me how I can improve them. Because I think I’m getting stuck in my head.”

Imogen laughed brightly. “Is that all? Of course, I’ll do that for you! Do you have them with you right now?”

I dig into my bag and pull out my sketchbook. She opens it right in front of me.

“Oh! But don’t you have work that needs to be done?” I ask nervously.

Imogen waves her hand. “It’ll get done.”

Nervously, I head to my workstation. I keep glancing over my shoulder to watch her facial expressions.

Normally, I’m good at reading my boss.

Now, though? It’s as though every twitch in her brow or movement of her lip is telling me two different stories.

She loves it.

She hates it.

After some time, she closes the book and comes over to me.

I gulp. I hadn’t gotten any work done.

“This one here.” She opens the book and puts it in front of me. “That’s what you designed for your wedding dress, yes?”

A pang hits my stomach. “Yeah.”

“So you have a prototype to share, right?” Imogen’s eyes are bright.

I chew my lip and slowly shake my head.

Her face falls, but she nods. “Ah. You cut it up when you decided not to marry?”

“No. It’s why I decided not to marry. Steven donated it without telling me,” I admit.

Imogen’s eyes widen. “Oh, that’s—I know where to hide his body.”

Her indignation on my behalf lifts another weight off me. Only another designer would know the true hurt of what he did to me.

“It’s fine. He’s not worth the risk of jail time,” I tell her.

Imogen looks doubtful but nods. “Right. So from what I’m seeing here, the next stage for you is to put it into practice. Get it off the paper and into the fabric.”

My cheeks warm. “Really? You don’t think that the designs themselves need work?”

“Undoubtedly they’ll need some adjustments, but you can’t prepare everything perfectly on paper,” she answered.

I gesture at her patterns. “Yours always seem to work.”

“You’ve gotten used to working with my designs, understanding how my pieces will fit into patterns. While the basics are the same, you need to get a feel for your own work.” Imogen sets my sketches back in front of me.

I smile in relief. Having someone else say that I can do good work certainly boosts my ego!

“Get yourself a portfolio together. I’ll see about adding a couple of your designs into my show—under your name, of course.”

My jaw drops. “Really?”

Imogen laughs. “Really! You’re a great assistant and I’ll be sad to lose you, but you were made for bigger dreams than this.”

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