in? He had to wait until everyone was assembled and Phil was donating his free time to decide he wanted a burger? This was the thing that drove her crazy about Victor and his rainbow hair—he could be so creative and yet act like an impetuous teen.
Sometimes Carly couldn’t help but wonder how he had managed to accomplish what he had. Victor was an Austin phenom. When he was eight, he was creating looks in the family’s game room. When he was fifteen, he was working on a team to design juvenile looks for Gucci. At the age of eighteen, he’d become the youngest contestant to ever win Project Runway. He’d designed a red-carpet look for a popular television actress that had garnered a lot of national attention. But that attention came with a price—Victor couldn’t handle the fame. He’d been caught drinking underage at a bar in Nashville. He’d made a comment that some mistook as body shaming. His response to media inquiries about his behavior was to threaten to punch people. He gained a reputation for not showing up when he was supposed to, for not delivering on his designs when he’d given his commitment. And then, he’d just disappeared.
Now, at twenty, he was ready to make a comeback. He was going to have his first solo show at the New Designer Showcase in the run-up to New York Fashion Week in February. It was by invitation only, and Victor had been asked to participate because his work was on fire.
One would think that Victor would have had a publicist in place after all his early success. Someone to help guide him. But he didn’t until Carly came along.
She was still working at DBS when she came across Victor’s pop-up shop on South Congress Avenue. She’d thought his aesthetic was very interesting and had googled him out of curiosity. That’s when she’d learned about his antics outside the fashion world. “Wow,” she’d muttered as she’d perused the Google listings about him one rainy evening. “Way to blow it, dude.”
It wasn’t long after seeing his pop-up that Carly was laid off. At first, she’d been shocked. Then incredibly pissed. And then she’d skipped over a few steps of the grieving process and gone straight to determined to make it, thanks to the encouragement of her former college roommate, Naomi Burrows.
At Naomi’s insistence, Carly had flown to New York to hang out with her for a couple of weeks. “You can’t mope,” Naomi had advised her. “You can’t walk around like the little match girl, all downtrodden and shit. You’ve got to get out of your own head. What you need is a change of pace and a change of location.”
Carly knew better than to argue. Naomi was used to telling people what to do. She was the assistant to a big-time literary agent, and she worked with authors, which, Naomi said, turned a person into a boss. “It’s amazing,” she’d once told Carly, “these people write such incredible books, but can’t put a schedule together. You have to take them by the hand and lead them.”
Carly didn’t know what that meant exactly, but Naomi loved her job and she was always talking about publisher parties and book launches, and she was good at taking people by the hand and leading them. So Carly took Naomi’s advice and flew to New York.
She’d only ever been to New York for quick work-related trips, but until she stayed with Naomi and her roommates in Manhattan, she had never really been to New York. For those two glorious weeks, Carly lived more, partied more, slept more, and genuinely laughed more than she had in her whole life. She felt like she was living inside a Sex and the City episode. She was Carrie Bradshaw! Well, maybe Miranda . . . but still.
Naomi and her roommates went out every night, and every night, there were guys around, flirting and teasing and, wow, Carly had never been around so many eligible men. Naomi and her friends did not seem to care that they were crammed into a two-bedroom apartment where they’d converted a dining alcove into a third bedroom. Carly spent the entire two weeks sharing a bed with Naomi.
But it was worth it. Carly accompanied Naomi to a book launch at a swank hotel that made her feel like she’d hit some jackpot. She attended a book signing at the Strand with a famous author and felt very cosmopolitan. While Naomi worked, Carly took