CHAPTER ONE
Mirae
I was as at the edge of a cliff, and I had no choice but to jump. So I did.
At first, my instinct for survival kicked in and I could feel myself grabbing on to the rocks and boulders on my way down, the rough edges of the life I had built.
The fall wasn’t painless like I’d thought it would be.
As I descended, each level hurt worse than the previous. I could feel the pain of my legs breaking as I collided with every obstacle. It seemed as if every point of contact was strategically placed to knock the fight out of me for good—to make me give up or give in. What I’d imagined happening quickly was long and drawn out. In fact, my fall took much longer than anticipated. Long enough for the new pain to make me question the old pain.
I started thinking then that maybe I had made a mistake. But my fate had been already set in motion, so there was no turning back.
Everything in me knew this wasn’t a mistake, but my old
pain was familiar while this pain was not. They both paralyzed me the same.
My new fear, though, was that my fall would end with no release. That this jump would be unsuccessful. I would reach the end of my fall and not be dead. Then I would have to live as the walking dead, even worse than I had begun.
I needed to die.
I managed to master the direction of my fall and the pain became easier for me to channel. But the problem was, I couldn’t stop falling. Why is this taking so long? I concentrated harder on channeling the pain even more this time, in an effort to gain speed.
It worked, and my fall hastened but not fast enough. It still wasn’t over.
*
I should’ve just stayed in bed, I thought as I stared out my office window at the LBJ freeway. I focused on the constant flow of vehicles, some faster than others, but all always on the go. I imagined them driving to somewhere meaningful. I longed to do the same—to go anywhere other than this meeting.
It was Friday, my favorite day of the week, and I couldn’t wait to go home and cuddle up with my TV remote control and a glass of white wine. After turning thirty-two, my social life had taken a major nosedive, and I was no longer interested in reviving it. I spent one half of my weekend just happy to not be at work and the other half dreading coming back.
I could hear their fake laughter seeping through the walls into my office, making me nauseous. The people in the next room put such effort into getting along with one another when everyone was looking, but none of them actually liked each other. I sighed. The thought of them cracking their old, leathery faces in phony camaraderie made me angry. And the more I thought about it, the more anxious I felt.
I attempted to talk some sense into myself. Your job is wonderful, Rae. People would kill to work at Freeman Taylor and you know it. Now pull yourself together and get ready for this meeting.
As difficult as it was, I really needed to prepare for this presentation. Our annual Sample Sale was a huge deal for the company. Every year on Black Friday, customers would scramble into the store as the doors opened with the anticipation of finding last season’s designer samples at obscenely low prices. Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Prada, Gucci, Balenciaga, Chanel, and Tom Ford, just to name a few, would provide their past season’s samples after months of courting and negotiating with our buyers. Some women would ditch their families and miss Thanksgiving altogether to fly in from all over the world in order to camp out the night before and be first in line when the doors opened Friday morning. Others would diet all year to fit into the perfect sample size and walk away triumphant with one year’s worth of designer treasures for a fraction of the original cost.
Yes, the Freeman Taylor annual Sample Sale was a big to-do. It brought in millions of dollars in revenue each year, with the weeks leading up to the sale always creating major advertising and social buzz for the store.
Incidentally, those weeks leading up to the sale were always the most stressful for the employees. From September through Thanksgiving sleep was not an option for anyone. Every designer we featured was very strict and specific about how the brand was to be displayed, making it hell on earth for the visual merchandising team.
Once the planogram was developed, all of the accompanying fixtures, props, and decor for each designer had to be ordered, shipped, and set in place before the merchandise arrived. A secret location had to be scouted out and reserved, emphasizing the exclusivity of the event even more. Each designer’s section dawned a separate theme, weaving together an intricate yet simplistic fairy tale that evoked romance, adventure, culture, and elegance.
The PR department temporarily turned into a special ops team whose only duty was to keep any unauthorized media reports from leaking to the public. The visual merchandising team would painstakingly conjure up all of the magical elements for the event. They spent months building, painting, assembling, and, if all else, failed, even stealing whatever “must-have” element a display could not go without.
One year a Visual Merchandising Director went as far as to steal a golden orb from the top of a historical lighthouse to add to the “Lost in a Sea of Romance” theme for Balmain Paris. While attempting to steal the orb she lost her balance and fell to the scaffolding left behind by construction workers who’d been doing repairs the day before. The fall broke the director’s hip, and she was caught and arrested, but not before handing off the undamaged bounty to her assistant, who got away. She was found guilty of vandalizing public property and placed on probation for one year.
The PR department wasted no time defusing the public scandal by taking a clear stance on the company’s disapproval of the employee’s actions as well as its commitment to preserving the community’s historic landmarks. Freeman Taylor donated funds for the restoration of the lighthouse, and all was right with the world.
The Balmain Paris display got rave reviews that year, and after a few years of waiting for the heat to die down from the scandal, that director was placed on the executive board of Freeman Taylor as the chief merchandising officer. A public slap on the wrist, but a wink and a nod behind closed doors, propelled her to the top of her career.
Each year’s sale was bigger than the previous year, and it was a well-known fact that promotion from store level to the corporate office was determined by Sample Sale contributions. Top employees from each store would compete all year to be selected to work on a Sample Sale team. The company would fly the chosen army of sales associates, shipping and receiving clerks, visual merchandisers, and operations specialists to the undisclosed location after they signed special confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. It was truly a covert operation that made the dreams come true for many fashion-obsessed shop girls and boys around the world.
Lately, I had found myself missing my days at ground zero. The countless days and nights spent on the frontline physically executing the plans contrived by the powers-that-be in the corporate office had a certain satisfaction to them. I remember how I’d referred to corporate as “Heaven” because of the way the decisions always felt like they came from the Freeman Taylor gods—if we didn’t like them or we disagreed with anything, there was nothing we could do about it. That felt especially true when I first started with the company after college. I’d majored in fashion merchandising and was hired as a visual merchandising assistant before moving over to the operations department. I had only physically worked five Sample Sales during my twelve years with the company.
By my second year at the store, I had been promoted to an operations specialist and then selected for the Sample Sale operations team the following year. After that, I was selected every year for the next four years, making me the envy as well as the enemy of many coworkers.
I attributed all of my success to my boss and mentor, Julie Sanders. We met when I’d interviewed with her for my first position, and we soon became friends. She became sort of a mother figure for me and had made sure that as she rose to the top in the company that I was never far behind. She gave me advice on who to make friends with and who to stay away from. She always made sure I was exposed to the correct executives for the right opportunities. I was her prototype, and everyone knew it.
After Julie made it to the corporate office, I remained at store level for one year. One day I received a call from Human Resources asking me if I was interested in interviewing for an Assistant Buyer position at our corporate office. Once I was offered the position, my corporate career took off at full speed, with me always succeeding Julie whenever she snagged a new promotion.
Once our promotional pattern was discovered, there were many protestors against my rise through the ranks, but Julie was a force to be reckoned with. She was one of the few women able to seemingly schmooze her way into the “good old boys’ club,” and anyone that came against her found themselves either demoted, stuck in the same position permanently, or out on the street altogether.
I admired her tenacity but secretly wondered if I really had that same stop-at-nothing bravado that she possessed. I appeared to have what it took, but I never felt like I belonged in the same way that she did.
Outside of my relationship with Julie, I pretty much kept to myself. Julie was always shaking hands and kissing babies. I never could tell if this was business or pleasure for her. Most of the employees loved her, and she loved them, until someone became jealous and had to be dealt with.
Most people would say that I was one of the lucky ones, because I was able to climb the Freeman Taylor success ladder so fast. Most store level employees took decades to make it to corporate, if they ever made it at all. But Julie loved her career here, and I appreciated mine. That was a big difference.
Why aren’t I happy?
I shook myself out of my daydreaming, reminding myself of what I needed to focus on. I began to recite some key points I didn’t want to forget during my presentation: “Benchmarking Analysis, check; New Designer Initiatives, check; Marketing and Promotions Rollout, check.”
Julie poked her head through my office door. “We’re ready for you, Rae,” she said.
I gave her a nod and stood from my desk, ready to transform from Rae, the avid daydreamer, to Mirae E. Morgan, VP of Operations at Freeman Taylor. I picked up my reports and headed to the boardroom for my meeting.
*
I pulled up to my garage and noticed that the perennials my mother had planted were dead via the scorching Texas sun. Another plant bites the dust.
I had told her that I didn’t have time for gardening. Nor did I have any interest in hiring a gardener for the three patches of landscape I owned. But my mother, being my mother, insisted, saying that any woman without a pet or a plant would give a man the impression that she couldn’t take care of anything, including him. My mother didn’t hide the fact that she was more than disappointed that neither my baby sister Myra nor I had yet closed the deal on the sanctified union of marriage.
My cell phone started buzzing as soon as I parked my car. As if my thoughts had conjured her, it was my mother. I pressed the button that sent her to voicemail. I didn’t have the time or the desire for conversation. I had been looking forward to a night of doing nothing, followed by a morning of doing the same.
I walked through the door, grabbed a protein bar off the counter, then headed up the stairs to my bedroom to de-robe. “Club comforter” had a VIP section exclusively for me.
People assumed that my position automatically came with an exciting social life, but that was definitely not the case—at least for me. During the week I was a savvy, fashion-forward female exec with the world at my feet, but on the weekends I was a well-dressed cat lady without the cats. And in either scenario, I was always starving.
When I’d first started working at the store, I wore a size ten and couldn’t fit any of the clothes from the Sample Sales. But after months of being tortured by designer pieces I couldn’t wear, I began to watch my diet more closely. What was the point of being around all of those beautiful garments if I couldn’t wear any of them? By the time I was selected to work my second Sample Sale, I was a hungry size four, and my closet looked like the fashion closet at Vogue magazine.
I admired myself in my oversized, antique silver-leaf floor mirror. I bit my bottom lip and sucked in my stomach as I turned to the side for a better view of my physique.
I stared in this mirror often. I had to constantly make sure that I not only maintained my weight, but my image as well. I was always under a microscope, and people expected a certain level of style and elegance from me. I was proud of my image and was committed to keeping it at the status quo. My image had gotten me far as Julie’s protégé.
I often questioned if any of this was worth it, but the answer was always the same: It was all I had. I had the career I’d wanted at the expense of every other aspect of my life and couldn’t let all of those years of hard work go to waste.
I released my abdominal muscles, letting out the air I was holding in. My stomach was flat, but there was still room for improvement. My hips were a little big in comparison to the rest of my body, occasionally deeming it necessary for me to scrounge for a size six on the rare occasion that one was available. Managing the expectations placed on me from everyone required a lot of strength and discipline. It was often difficult, but it was the key to my success at work, and I had mastered it.
I untied the belt of the floral Diane Von Furstenberg dress I’d worn to the office and slipped out of the day’s expectations.
I put on my robe and turned the faucet over the tub before I ran down to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of Chardonnay. I grabbed my purple-monogramed journal from my nightstand and walked back into the bathroom. Just as I placed the wine and the journal, what I like to call my “turn-down kit,” in my bamboo and chrome bathtub caddy, I received another call.
I snatched my phone from the counter, expecting it to be my persistent mother calling back, but I saw it was an incoming FaceTime call from a phone number I didn’t recognize.
“Yes,” I answered.On the other end, I saw a very handsome, chocolate man, with commanding eyes and a dark goatee.
He appeared startled to see me. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “I must have called the wrong number.”
“Oh, that’s okay. It happens,” I fumbled out, shocked at his good looks.
“Right. Well…” he trailed off, a hesitant smile on his face, “Forgive me if this comes off weird, but with how stunning you are, I’d feel like an idiot if I didn’t at least introduce myself now—wrong number and all. Hi, I’m Bryson Whitman.” I can’t believe this is happening right now! I thought. It was a bit weird, if I was honest, but he was so handsome I didn’t really care. Besides it wasn’t that different from online dating – this time it was just by accident.
Nice to meet you, Bryson. My name is Rae.”
“Rae,” he repeated. “Sounds kinda masculine for someone so beautiful.”
“Ha. Well, my name is Mirae . . . Mirae Morgan, but I go by Rae.”
“Now that name is beautiful, and it definitely fits you,” he said.
“Thank you.”
The silence settled for a moment as we looked at each other. “Are you in Dallas Rae?”
Do you want to meet me for coffee tonight? I mean, if there isn’t a Mr. Morgan that would kill me.
I laughed at his politeness. It had been so long since anyone had showed interest beyond a catcall or an inappropriate grope.
“No. I mean yes, I mean”
What the heck did I mean? I was so nervous that my answers got all jumbled up in my head.
“I mean No, I am not married, and yes, we can meet. Do you live here in Dallas? Your phone number isn’t local.”
He smiled, revealing a left dimple and a row of straight white teeth. “No, I live in Baltimore. I’m staying at the Joule downtown.”
“Nice hotel! I said remembering just exactly how nice it was. We can meet at The Weekend Coffee Shop. It’s not far from there.”
Well alright then, Miss Morgan, turns out today is my lucky day! I will text you in an hour if that’s okay.”
“That’s fine. I’ll see you then!”
We ended the call, and I placed my cell on the countertop. Today was my lucky day, not his. Had he called a few minutes later, he would’ve been face to face with my gold radiant facial mask and my hair tied up in a scarf like Aunt Jemima.
Now that I had plans for the evening my nightly beauty routine would have to wait. I pinned my hair up and let my silk kimono robe fall to the floor. I had managed to meet a seemingly nice guy without so much as leaving my house. Things were definitely looking up.
Mia Verde Woman 