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Miranda sat on the low velvet couch in the suite's sitting room. She was waiting. Miranda Priestly did not wait for anyone. Except, apparently, for Andrea Sachs.
Twenty years had passed since Paris. Twenty years since Andy had walked away from Runway and Miranda. Yet here they were again, pulled back together by the invisible thread that had never really snapped.
Runway was in trouble. The world had changed faster than even she could adapt. TikTok trends dictating hemlines, influencers in sweatpants calling themselves editors. Miranda needed fresh eyes. Someone who remembered what real journalism felt like before it was filtered through algorithms and sponsored content. Nigel had made the call and Andy had answered on the second ring.
The bedroom door opened.
“Wait, wait," Miranda said in a low and lethal tone. “I hope that’s not what you’re wearing tonight.”
Andy looked down at her dark blouse, then back up with wide eyes. “What’s wrong with it? It’s Tom Ford. You used to like Tom Ford.”
She hated how quickly the old insecurity rushed back, even after all these years. She was fourthy-two now, someone who had interviewed heads of state and survived boardroom bloodbaths. Yet one arched eyebrow from this woman could make her feel twenty-two and clumsy again.
“I like Tom Ford when he’s being interesting,” Miranda corrected, letting her gaze travel up and back down. "This is… serviceable. For a Midwestern bridal shower, perhaps. Or a funeral for someone who died of terminal boredom. Not for the front row at the show that will dictate what the rest of the world wears next season.”
Andy burst out laughing. “Okay, wow. Straight for the jugular. I missed that.” Her voice turned softer. “I… I don’t know what to wear. Everything I packed feels either too safe or like I’m trying too hard.”
“Then show me.” Miranda waved a graceful hand toward the bedroom. "We have forty-five minutes before the car arrives. Use them. Efficiently.”
“Five minutes", she promised and disappeared back into the bedroom. The first gown she tried was the emerald green silk slip she’d fallen in love with in Barcelona last summer. Slender straps, liquid drape, the kind of dress that made her feel like a Renaissance painting come to life. She walked out and did a tentative spin. “Well?”
“No.”
Andy stopped mid-spin. “No? That’s it? Just no?”
"Too bohemian," she elaborated. "It whispers ‘I spent three weeks at a yoga retreat in Positano and now I only eat kale and regret.’ when the evening demands a scream of ‘I belong exactly here and you will remember my name.’”
Andy clutched her chest dramatically. “Okay, wow. That one actually hurt. I interviewed the designer, you know. He cried when I told him how much I loved it.”
“He should cry,” Miranda replied without hesitation “For entirely different reasons. Next.”
Back into the closet. The second option was a sleek silver metallic gown, borrowed from a friend at Balmain. Body-hugging, high neck, zero forgiveness. Andy sucked in her stomach, zipped it up and emerged again, striking a pose that was a mix of supermodel and “please don’t laugh at me.”
Miranda’s expression didn’t change but her tone sharpened. “It has fire. It has drama. Unfortunately, it also has the distinct energy of a Brooklyn nightclub at two a.m. where someone is about to make a decision they will text about tomorrow morning with sixteen crying emojis. But we are not going to a nightclub, Andrea. We are going to La Scala. This dress lacks dignity. It lacks subtlety. It lacks… everything, really, except possibly a restraining order from good taste.”
Andy groaned as she backed away. “You’re impossible."
“I’m accurate,” she called after her and this time the hint of a smile actually reached her voice. "There’s a difference."
The third gown was safe, classic, black lace overlay on nude silk, Chanel-inspired, with delicate cap sleeves and a hem that skimmed the floor. Elegant. Timeless. Boring.
Miranda sighed, long and theatrical. “I have seen that exact cut on every wife of a tech billionaire from Silicon Valley to Dubai for the last three years. It is not wrong, Andrea. It is simply… nothing. It says nothing about you."
She planted her hands on her hips. “That’s it. I’m out of options. If none of these work, I’m wearing the hotel bathrobe and calling it avant-garde performance art."
“One more,” Miranda said, almost gently. “You always have one more. Show me.”
Andy hesitated in the doorway, then nodded.The final dress had been her secret weapon all along: deep midnight blue, custom from a tiny Florentine atelier that didn’t even have a website. She slipped it on, but the zipper, hidden along the left side from hip to mid-back, refused to budge past her shoulder blade. She wrestled with it for for a full minute, muttering curses that would have made her mother clutch her pearls, then gave up. “Miranda?” she called. “I need help. The zipper’s stuck. I swear this thing hates me.”
The sound of heels on marble preceded Miranda’s arrival. She appeared in the doorway, crossed the room without hesitation and stopped behind Andy. Her fingers brushed the bare skin of Andy's shoulder as she found the zipper pull. The touch was professional for exactly one heartbeat. Then it lingered. Warm. Intentional. Electric. Andy felt it everywhere.
The zipper glided up smoothly, as if it had only been waiting for those hands.
Miranda stepped back half an inch, but neither woman moved. They were standing far too close. The editor cleared her throat. “It's perfect,” she said, voice lower than usual. “You look… devastating.”
Andy’s cheeks burned. She turned to face her, their bodies still only inches apart. “Thank you,” she whispered. Then, because the moment felt too heavy and her heart was trying to claw its way out of her chest, she added with a shaky laugh, “I’ll… I’ll change again. Be right back. Just need to… adjust something.”
Miranda nodded once, but her eyes didn’t leave Andy’s. “Don’t dawdle. The car arrives soon.”
She returned to the living room, but the sofa no longer felt like a throne. She paced instead, three steps toward the terrace doors, three steps back. Andrea. Always Andrea. The one who left. The one who came back. Miranda had spent decades armoring herself against vulnerability. She was not about to let a blue dress and a stubborn zipper undo her now.
But her hands still tingled where they had touched warm skin.
In the bedroom, Andy stood before the full length mirror, the gown pooled at her feet where she had stepped out of it. She had meant to try one last combination, perhaps the silver top with black trousers but her hands had stopped. What the hell was happening? Her stomach flipped in a way that had nothing to do with nerves about the show and everything to do with the woman waiting in the next room. Twenty years of careful distance, of telling herself the ache was nostalgia, of building a life she was proud of and one zipper, one lingering touch and every buried feeling roared back like a tide she couldn’t outrun.
She didn’ hear the soft knock until the bedroom door opened.
Miranda stood in the doorway, one hand still on the handle. She had come to hurry things along, to remind Andy of the time. What she had not come to do was find her standing there in nothing but lace and the faint shimmer of nervous sweat on her collarbones.
She was so achingly beautiful that the air left Miranda’s lungs in a rush.
Andy’s head snapped up. Their eyes locked in the mirror first, then directly. She didn’t move to cover herself. Couldn’t.
“I apologize. I thought you were-”
Andy moved before the sentence finished. Three fast strides and she was there, hands framing Miranda’s face with a boldness that surprised them both. “Don’t,” she said fiercely, thumbs brushing the sharp line of her cheekbones. “Don’t apologize.”
And then she kissed her.
Miranda froze for a second. Then she melted. Her hands came up and cupped Andy’s face in return and she kissed back like she was drowning and finally finding air.
They stumbled backward together toward the bed and laughed breathlessly when they fell onto it. Andy’s fingers pushed Miranda’s striped silk blouse from her shoulders. Miranda’s hands found the clasp of Andy’s bra and unhooked it with one smooth motion. Her thumb circled a nipple until it hardened under her touch and the brunette gasped into her mouth.
“Oh God,” Andy breathed. Her own hands slid under Miranda’s blouse to find warm skin and the lace edge of an impossibly expensive bra. “I’ve wanted this for so long. You have no idea how many nights I lay awake thinking about you, about this-"
“Shh,” Miranda murmured, nipping her lower lip, then soothing it with her tongue. “Not another word unless it’s my name."
They rolled so Miranda was above her. She hooked her fingers in the waistband of Andy’s underwear and slid them down slowly, as if unwrapping the most precious gift. When she settled between Andy’s legs, the first kiss to the inside of one knee was worshipful. Soft kisses trailed higher until the flat of her tongue dragged upward in one long, deliberate stroke that tore a broken moan from Andy’s throat.
“Miranda, please,” she cried, hands fisting satin sheets, then threading through silver hair. “Don’t stop. God, don’t ever stop."
Miranda hummed in satisfaction against her, which sent new waves of pleasure through the journalist. She took her time, lavishing attention on every sensitive inch, learning every sigh, every tremble, as if committing this moment to memory.Two fingers joined her tongue, curling with perfect knowledge, stroking the exact place that made Andy see stars and forget her own name.
Their eyes met over the length of Andy’s body and in that locked gaze was everything: regret, gratitude, twenty years of quiet longing and the joy of a second chance neither had believed they deserved.
“I love you.” Miranda whispered against her. "I always did."
Tears pricked Andy’s brown eyes. She reached down, cupping Miranda’s face with both hands, thumbs brushing away the single tear that had escaped. “I love you too,” she choked out. “God, Miranda, I never stopped. I tried. I dated. I built a whole life. But it was always you. It’s always been you.”
The kiss that followed, when Andy gently pulled her up, was slower, deeper, full of tenderness.
Then she flipped them with a wicked little grin that made Miranda’s breath catch. “Let me show you how much I’ve missed you," she whispered against her lips.
She moved lower with deliberate, aching slowness, mapping every inch of skin she had once been too afraid to touch. She kissed the elegant column of Miranda’s throat, lingering at the pulse point that fluttered wildly under her lips. She traced the valley between her breasts with her tongue, sucking gently on one nipple until Miranda gasped her name like a prayer. She kissed the soft plane of her stomach, the curve of her hip, the inside of each thigh until Miranda’s legs trembled with anticipation.
When she finally reached her center, she looked up with such open adoration that Miranda’s hand came down to cup her cheek. “You’re beautiful,” Andy murmured. “You’ve always been the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
Then she lowered her mouth.
“Andrea… Andrea,” she breathed as Andy started tasting her.
Her tongue explored every fold, every secret, while one finger slid inside, then two, curling and stroking with the same precision Miranda had used on her. She sucked gently on the sensitive bundle of nerves, alternating pressure and rhythm until her back arched off the bed,
She added a finger when Miranda’s thighs began to tremble violently, her free hand sliding up to intertwine their fingers on the sheets. “Come for me,” she whispered against her. “Let go, my love. I’ve got you.”
Miranda came with a quiet, shattered cry that Andy would remember for the rest of her life.
She crawled back up, gathering the fashion icon into her arms and they curled together under the rumpled sheets, skin to skin, hearts hammering in sync. Miranda’s fingers traced lazy circles on her bare back, while Andy pressed soft kisses to her temple, her forehead and the corner of her mouth, whispering endearments between each one.
They cuddled like that for long minutes. The show, the car, Runway - none of it mattered. Only this. Only them.
Miranda spoke first, voice soft in a way the world never got to hear. “I meant it, you know. I love you. I don’t know how to do this, any of this. But I’m willing to learn. With you. For you.”
Andy kissed her forehead gently. “I love you too. We’ll figure it out. No more running. No more goodbyes. Just… us. And maybe the occasional fashion emergency where I still can’t zip my own dress.”
Miranda laughed against her chest. “You will never zip your own dress again if I have anything to say about it."
They cuddled deeper, trading soft kisses and quiet confessions, stories of the years apart, the regrets that had kept them awake, hopes for what came next, until the suite phone rang with a polite reminder from the concierge that the car was downstairs waiting.
“Oh no,” Andy groaned, sitting up so fast she nearly tangled herself in the sheets. “We’re late. We’re so late. Miranda, the show-”
Miranda was already moving, but there was laughter in her eyes instead of panic. “We are not late. We are fashionably delayed.” She rolled out of bed, grabbing Andy’s hand and pulling her up. Both stood there naked for a second, grinning at each other like teenagers who had just discovered the world, before they started dressing.
Andy tried to step into the blue gown and nearly tripped over the pooled fabric. Miranda caught her around the waist and both of them burst into helpless laughter. “Careful, darling,” she teased, zipping her up with steady, loving hands this time. “I refuse to explain to the press why my partner arrived in a gown made of hotel sheets.”
“Your partner,” Andy repeated, the words sending a thrill through her. She helped Miranda into her own ensemble. “God, we look like we just survived a hurricane. My hair-”
“Is perfect,” Miranda finished, smoothing a stray strand behind Andy’s ear. “You are perfect. And if anyone asks, we’ll say we were discussing editorial strategy. Intensely.”
They rushed down to the lobby, still chuckling under their breath. The elevator ride was filled with stolen glances, whispered jokes about “zipping emergencies,” and one more lingering kiss against the mirrored wall.
Once inside the car, Miranda turned to look at her, eyes soft in a way that made Andy’s heart stutter. She lifted their joined hands to her lips and pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles. “I love you,” she whispered. “Whatever happens tonight, whatever happens tomorrow, I love you.”
Andy squeezed her hand. “I love you too. Always.”