Page 102 of The Night We Met

She looks up at me and a tear falls down her cheek. I feel like absolute shit.

“I’ve been a terrible friend. Because when Liam passed I could only think about myself. I never considered your part in all of it.”

Sarah was interning for the family friend that ran asports business with agents. She was tasked with getting teams to get Liam on their radar. And as the days dwindled and no teams were calling for him, the defeat on both of their faces crushed me.

“I thought I was fine. It’s been years since he passed. But sometimes I’ll look around and feel like he should be here.”

The day Liam passed, Sarah got news that a team did want him. I never took the time to see how the other people in my life were affected. At the time my grief took precedence.

“Have you seen a therapist? Or at least talked to anyone?” Seeing a therapist helped me. I still see mine regularly.

She shakes her head. Defeat coats her body. Who was once the strongest and confident out of our group is slowly drowning in guilt. I don’t want what happened to him to happen to her.

I scoot next to her and wrap my arm around her shoulder, pulling her into me. “I think talking to someone would really help. You’ve always been Team Kamryn, well now it’s time for me to be Team Sarah. Anytime you need me, I want you to call me.” Her body trembles with the sobs I know she’s trying her hardest to lock down. “If you need to get away from the city, name the place and I will personally go with you. You don’t have to be tough every single day, Sarah. If you want a slumber party, say the word and I’ll have Mason do our bidding. You’re my best friend and I can’t lose you.”

We stay like this for however long Sarah needs it. What became a roommate assignee when we were eighteen, has become a lifelong sisterhood that transcends any sororityconnection that we made. I catch Mason watching us from the backdoor and give him a small smile.

I almost feel even worse for abandoning the friendships I had for a relationship with him. While I know he would never make me choose, I do need to find that balance.

Kamryn

Nina: Landed at the airport. Be at your office shortly.

Me: Be waiting with open arms

When we graduated, I didn’t take Nina’s word to heart about us helping each other out. Tack on my issues with Liam and my spiral through grief and I wasn’t in a good headspace to reach out to anyone. Let alone think about fashion design. But when I was thinking of my next line, I was stuck. Call it writer’s block for fashion. Nothing helped. Not strolling around the city, not watching TV, or listening to music. Nothing sparked for my next line. So I reached out to Nina on Instagram.

It was tricky with a lot of back and forth to get our schedules to match up. She does fashion consulting for the businesswomen and men in the DC metropolitan area. The fear of her rejection to collaborate was always at the back of my mind. But when she stated she wanted to do somethingother than suits, we both jumped at the chance for her to fly out here.

I’m pouring my first cup of coffee, when a knock sounds at my office door.

“Hey!” I greet as I rush over to Nina. “You’re stunning.” It’s true that Nina was gorgeous in college but the years away from collegiate life have done her well. “Do you want some coffee? Or tea?”

“Coffee would be great.”

She sets her bag and sweater on the couch in front of my desk while I get to work on her coffee. “This place is great, Kamryn.”

“Thank you.”

When I have Nina’s coffee prepared, she follows me over to the oversized couch that’s in my office. I have a few small mood boards laid out with hopes that it would spark something. But apparently my inspiration and talent have disappeared.

“So what were you thinking?” Nina notes as she shuffles around the mood boards.

Placing my coffee on the floor and kneeling closer in front of the coffee table, I find a picture of a couple of dresses. “Maybe do a dress line?”

Nina looks at me like I just said she was debt free, “Genius.”

For the next few hours we pour over every type of dress to make: casual, cocktail, black tie, work casual, little black dress, club dresses, and every type of print, cut, and length.

“What about wedding guest dresses?”

We add that to the design board. We sketch until we’ve filled up multiple pages of our sketch books and Procreate pages. We mix patterns and fabrics. We pullout our phones and look at the dresses we may have worn in the past and alter the designs to have more function that what we had.

In the end, we scratch the idea of wedding guest dresses for the time being. And focus on the everyday type of dress.

My stomach rumbles, breaking us out of the zone. “I guess that’s a sign for us to take a break. Do you want to go out for lunch, or order in?”

“Order in. I’m not picky,” Nina replies.

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