Thank you all for reading and commenting. Here's chapter nine.
Chapter nine
Miranda sighed. Just ten days ago she and Andrea had decided that they would try and be friends and it was already going less than stellar. Miranda was avoiding Andy again and she was doing it out of fear. Miranda Priestley was scared yet again. For a woman who had the reputation of being fearless she sure was scared of a lot of things. Now she was scared of something that most normal people treasured and even tough Miranda had absolutely no desire to be normal she still craved what most people had and treasured. Friendship.
Miranda couldn't really remember the last time she had a true friend. Sure she had Nigel and Emily but that wasn't exactly the kind of friendship that everybody treasured. Miranda wanted and feared the sort of friendship that was built on mutual trust, that required to let people in, that required a certain amount of vulnerability and she wasn't sure she could pull that off.
She wanted that kind of friendship with Andrea. She didn't want the casual kind where you only exchange pleasantries and don't really care about the answers to the questions you asked. She wanted to have a real friendship with Andrea. But she was scared, afraid that Andrea would see the real her, the woman behind the mask and run in the opposite direction. If it were anyone else that had suggested to be friends she would've thrown the notion overboard and forget about it, but it had been Andrea and Miranda needed Andrea like she needed air. To let the woman walk out of her life again simply wasn't an option. She would take whatever Andrea had to offer and being friends was a beautiful offer that created an opportunity to get closer to Andrea than she had ever been. So failure was not an option which is what had Miranda terrified. She wasn't good at talking about her feelings, at opening up and she certainly wasn't good at letting other people in and now she had to. There was simply no other way because the alternative wasn't acceptable. So now she just had to figure out how these normal people did it and she would do it too. Simple no?
She sighed again knowing there was something else on her mind. Something that she wanted, no needed to do and that something had the potential of ruining her friendship with Andrea before they could even give it a try. She had so many emotions raging inside her right now and that was making everything so much more confusing. She felt incredibly conflicted. She was happy and scared because of the 'trying to be friends' thing but she also felt guilty, not the all consuming guilt that had gripped her before Andrea said they could try and be friends but she still felt guilty which was no more than normal she decided since she had played a role in making Andrea's already bad situation worse. But the emotion that stood out from all the others was anger. She had never felt so damned angry in her life. She was angry at the filthy lowlifes that had dared to touch and hurt Andrea in such a horrible way. She wanted to hurt them back make them feel everything that Andrea had experienced multiplied by ten. She also felt frustrated knowing that she would never be able to achieve that. But maybe she could try and do something else to help, to keep Andrea safe. It would be tricky and she would have to call in many favors but she was sure it would be worth it. She hesitated a slight second thinking that Andrea may not like it if she ever found out about this. Maybe she shouldn't do this? The thought of losing Andrea again was unbearable. She couldn't go through that kind of pain again but she also couldn't live with doing nothing. She decided to go ahead with her plan and if Andrea found out and didn't like what she had done she would explain herself, apologize and beg if necessary. She reached out for the phone and dialed the number.
To say that Andy was in a bad mood would have been a huge understatement. She was pissed off. Right now she was supposed to be sitting at home relaxing, listening to her daughter telling her how her day was, waiting for the twins to come over and play some kind of game with them and Sophia. But she wasn't where she was supposed to be, instead she was sitting here waiting in this restaurant. It was a famous restaurant but Andy didn't like it: the interior was cold, the waiters were snobs and to be honest the food didn't look that great either. But that wasn't the worst of it. Andy was sitting here instead of at home because Irv fucking Ravitz had summoned her. Everybody in the fashion industry had known that A.S. Leighton would be unavailable for two weeks. Andy had made sure of that, but apparently Irv Ravitz had the insane idea that that didn't apply to him and he had bothered her till she gave in and arranged to meet with him. For this alone Andy was angry, but right now he was running late and that made Andy furious.
She tried to distract herself by thinking about things that made her happy. She thought about Ally and the twins playing some kind of game. That thought led her to thinking about Miranda which was something she had been doing a lot lately. She hadn't seen Miranda this week and that had bothered her, but the woman was probably busy and she would see her in a couple of days since she had to be at Runway on Monday to speak with Nigel about her work. Maybe they could have lunch together? After all they had to start somewhere. In all honesty Andy was afraid of this friendship thing with Miranda. It was such a different kind of relationship than the one she had had with Miranda six years ago. She still kind of saw Miranda as her superior, still had this strong urge do everything she could just to please the woman which meant she never felt entirely comfortable in Miranda's presence. She had always been either insecure or angry in her presence and that was something she was going to have to overcome in order for the friendship to work and Andy so desperately wanted it to work.
"Miss Leighton, a pleasure to finally meet you," the overly sweet voice interrupted Andy's thoughts. When a very irritated Andy looked up to see Irv's smug face she knew he was up to something.
Miranda hung up the phone certain she would get what she wanted. It had taken quite a bit of convincing but her French friend owed her and he would get what she asked for. She had asked him to find out everything he could about the two criminals that had attacked an American woman named Andrea Sachs six years ago. She wanted to know everything about them. Their names, their past, which prison they were in, how long their sentence was, who their cellmate was, even when they had a cold. She wanted to know everything so she could make sure they couldn't hurt Andrea ever again. Being concerned about each other and trying to protect the other was a part of a good friendship wasn't it? She wasn't exactly sure what Andrea would think about this, but it was something she just had to do. She could only hope that if Andrea found out she wouldn't mind it too much.