Four Of A Kind

Chapter 94: [2.69] Harlow Valentine vs. The Imposter Syndrome

I merged onto the highway. “That sounds like a metaphor for something.”

She went quiet for exactly one second, which was unusual for Harlow.

“Maybe,” she said, then bounced back immediately. “Anyway! The fitting is for the November campaign. They’re doing a winter theme, so there are a lot of coats. I actually love coats. Do you like coats?”

“I own one good coat. Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Black wool. Long.”

She lit up. “I’ve seen you in that! It looks really good on you.” She said it the way she said everything, easy and immediate, like the thought came out the moment it formed. No filter, no calculation. Just Harlow. Her cheeks didn’t flush and she didn’t look away, because for her it was just a true thing she said out loud.

I kept my eyes on the road. “Thanks.”

“You should wear it more. You have a good silhouette for long coats.” A pause. “That’s a fashion thing, not a weird thing.”

“I know.”

“I just want to make sure.”

“Harlow.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s fine.”

She smiled at the window.

The V-Girl offices occupied two floors of a glass building near the garment district. The moment we walked in, three assistants appeared from nowhere and surrounded Harlow with fabric swatches and schedule confirmations. She transformed in real time. The bubbly girl from the car shifted into something more focused, her eyes moving over the rack of winter coats with the same attention Vivienne gave to financial reports.

“This one has the wrong button spacing,” she said, pulling out a cream peacoat. “And the belt is supposed to be at the natural waist, not the hip. It changes the whole proportion.”

The assistant wrote something down. I stood slightly behind Harlow with my arms loose at my sides, watching the room. Three stylists. Two photographers. A woman in the corner who kept glancing between Harlow and her laptop. Everyone moved around Harlow the way people moved around all the Valentine sisters, like orbiting something that generated its own gravity.

The fitting ran an hour. I made two calls, answered Vivienne’s scheduling questions via text, and ate an apple I’d grabbed from the house because no one had offered me anything and I’d learned to always bring food.

On the way out, Harlow was quieter. She carried a paper bag of samples they’d given her and walked with her head slightly down, thinking.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“They changed three of my suggested pieces.”

“The campaign director?”

“Vivienne.” She said it without bitterness. Just flat. “She reviewed the line last week and flagged them as ’off brand.’ Which, she’s not wrong, technically. But I picked them because they’re fun, not because they’re on brand.”

I didn’t say anything. Sometimes the best response was just to be standing there.

“It’s fine,” Harlow said. “I know how this works.”

She sounded, for one moment, less like herself.

Then she looked up and pointed at a food cart across the street. “Oh! Street waffles! Have you ever had street waffles?”

“I have lived in cities my whole life, Harlow.”

“IS THAT A YES?”

I looked at my watch. Forty minutes until the art supply pickup. “Yes.”

Her entire face changed back to itself, like a light flicking on. She grabbed my sleeve and pulled me toward the cart, and I let her, because the waffle cart was definitely troublesome but she’d needed something, and sometimes that was enough.

The waffles were good. She documented them for Instagram with the focused attention of a surgeon. I ate mine in four bites and watched the street.

“Isaiah,” she said.

I looked at her. She was still looking at the waffle, picking at the edge of it.

“Do you think… I’m just the cute one?”

The question sat there. Small. Almost casual. Except Harlow didn’t ask small questions.

“What?”

“Like. Sabrina is the smart one. Vivienne is the capable one. Cassidy is the fierce one.” She finally looked up. “And I’m the cute one. The one people like because I’m nice and I smile a lot and I don’t make things hard.”

I held her gaze. “I think you noticed that those coats had the wrong button spacing before anyone else in the room did.”

“That’s just fashion stuff.”

“You also told me what EL wire was before I could finish asking about LED lights. You build full costumes from scratch. You run the most functional club at Hartwell while also managing your social media, your V-Girl obligations, and somehow still finding time to know everyone on staff at the manor by name.” I took a sip from my coffee. “That’s not cute. That’s actually a lot.”

Harlow stared at me. Her eyes had gone very wide and very bright. For a horrible second I thought she was going to cry on the street outside a waffle cart.

“Don’t,” I said.

“I’m NOT crying.”

“I can see you considering it.”

“I’m NOT.” She pressed both hands against her cheeks, which were turning pink. “That was. You’re not supposed to say things like that.”

“You asked.”

“I didn’t think you’d actually answer like that!”

“What did you expect?”

“I don’t know! Something generic! ’Oh Harlow you’re so much more than cute, sparkle sparkle.’” She did a flat impression of encouragement that was funny enough to make me want to smile. “Not like. Evidence.”

“Evidence works better.”

She lowered her hands. Her expression had gone soft, the way it sometimes did when she let the bright surface settle for a second.

“You’re strange,” she said quietly.

“Frequently.”

She bumped her shoulder against mine, and I let her, and we stood there on the sidewalk for another moment before I checked my watch and said we needed to get the art supplies before Vivienne’s two o’clock call turned me into a productivity casualty.

On the drive back, Harlow sat with the oversized package on her lap, her cheek against the window, watching the city go by.

At some point, quietly enough that I almost missed it, she said, “Thank you.”

Not for the waffles. Not for carrying the package.

I understood what she meant.

“Sure,” I said, and kept driving.