With a triumphant smile, my best friend snatched the eight hundred dollars in cash from the counter and declared my hard work was the perfect down payment for the designer bag she deserved.
She was supposed to be my fifty-fifty partner, the “face” of our brand.
I was just the ghost in the workshop, the one covered in sawdust who designed, built, and shipped every single product while she took all the credit. My savings account had become her personal playground, funding a life of boozy lunches and spa weekends disguised as business expenses.
She never imagined the ghost in the workshop was also the one who held every password, and I was about to use them to dismantle her whole life’s work—which was, of course, entirely my own.
The Paper-Thin Partnership: A Receipt for Resentment
The hum of the laser cutter was the only company I kept most nights. It smelled like progress and burnt sugar, a scent I’d come to associate with the thin line between passion and exhaustion. Tonight, it was etching a delicate lace pattern onto a set of walnut coasters, the final piece of a fifty-item order due tomorrow. My order. My design. My machine.
My phone buzzed on the workbench, rattling against a stray piece of sandpaper. It was a Venmo notification. *Chloe requested $125.48. For: 🥂 Business lunch + inspo!*
I stared at the screen, the blue light harsh in the dim workshop. The accompanying photo on her Instagram story, which I’d already seen, featured two artisanal cocktails and a plate of oysters. Her lunch companion was not me, but some influencer I vaguely recognized. I was eating a cold slice of leftover pizza over the sink.
“Inspo,” I muttered to the laser cutter. The machine didn’t answer, just kept methodically carving away the wood I’d paid for.
This was the looming issue, the one that sat like a stone in my gut. Aura & Elm, our boutique, was technically a fifty-fifty partnership. But the numbers didn’t feel like fifty-fifty. The hours didn’t feel like fifty-fifty. And a boozy lunch with a socialite certainly didn’t feel like a business expense, not when I was still trying to recoup the cost of the industrial-grade sander I’d bought last month.
I sighed, rubbing the sawdust from my forehead, and tapped ‘Pay.’ The money vanished from our shared account with a cheerful little *whoosh*. It was easier than arguing. It was always easier than arguing.
The Face of the Brand
The next morning, my phone buzzed again. This time it was an Instagram notification. Chloe had posted.
The photo was gorgeous, I had to admit. It was a flat-lay, artfully arranged on a distressed white-wood background she’d bought for her apartment. It featured the very walnut coasters I’d finished at 2 a.m. The lighting was perfect, catching the intricate, laser-etched details. My details.
The caption read: “Woke up feeling so inspired and just had to bring this new vision to life! ✨ So in love with how our new lace collection is turning out. Every piece tells a story. #AuraAndElm #HandmadeWithLove #CreatorLife”
My fingers tightened around my coffee mug. *Our* new collection. *Woke up feeling inspired.* I had a vision, all right. It was of me, bleary-eyed and covered in a fine layer of wood dust, coaxing the design file to cooperate with the machine’s quirks.
The comments were already rolling in. “OMG Chloe, you are so talented!” “Your vision is everything!” “I can’t believe you make these, they’re stunning!”
Chloe, of course, was replying to each one with breezy charm. “Thank you, darling! It just poured out of me! 😘”
I scrolled until my thumb ached. Not a single mention of my name, the workshop, the laser, the late nights. There was only Chloe, bathed in the warm, flattering glow of stolen credit. I was the ghost in the workshop, and she was the face of my work. The brand’s face.
A Loan Is Not a Loan
“Hey, babe, got a sec?” Chloe’s voice on the phone was a syrupy mix of urgency and casualness, a tone she reserved for when she wanted something.
I was in the middle of packaging the big coaster order, nestled in crinkle-cut paper and tied with twine. “Barely. What’s up?”
“Okay, so, don’t freak out,” she began, the universal preamble to a freak-out-worthy statement. “But my radiator kind of… exploded? It’s a whole thing. The landlord is being a troll, and I need to get it fixed like, yesterday. The thing is, I’m a little short until my parents’ trust thing kicks in next month.”
I paused, a roll of packing tape in my hand. I knew about the “trust thing.” It was a mythical unicorn Chloe invoked whenever real-world finances became inconvenient. “I’m sorry to hear that, Chloe. That sucks.”
“Totally! Anyway, I was thinking, I could just borrow a little from the Aura & Elm account to cover it. Like, maybe a thousand? I’ll pay it back as soon as the trust clears, I swear.”
A thousand dollars. That was our entire budget for materials for the holiday collection. That was the profit from the last three weeks of my sleepless nights. “Chloe, we can’t. That’s our operating capital. We need that for the new leather shipment.”
“Oh, come on, Sarah,” she sighed, the sweetness evaporating. “It’s a loan! It’s our money, isn’t it? Fifty-fifty. You can just, you know, be creative with the budget for a bit. You’re so good at that stuff. Think of it as an investment in keeping your business partner from freezing to death.”
The guilt hit me, right on cue. She knew exactly which buttons to push. I was the practical one, the responsible one. She was the free-spirited artist who couldn’t be bogged down with such trivialities as rent or, apparently, car radiators.
“Fine,” I said, the word tasting like ash. “But you have to pay it back. I’m serious.”
“You’re a lifesaver! I knew you’d understand,” she chirped, her crisis miraculously averted. “Talk soon!” She hung up before I could say another word. An hour later, a thousand dollars disappeared from our account. The “memo” line on the transfer simply said: “Biz expense.”
The Shadow of Doubt
Mark found me staring at the business banking app that night, long after our son, Leo, was asleep. The numbers on the screen seemed to mock me.
“You look like you’re trying to solve cold fusion on your phone,” he said, handing me a glass of wine. He sat beside me on the couch, his presence a warm, solid counterpoint to the anxiety churning in my stomach.
“Worse,” I said. “I’m trying to understand my business partner.”
I explained about the lunch, the Instagram post, the thousand-dollar “loan.” I tried to keep my voice even, clinical, but the frustration bled through.
Mark listened patiently, his expression unreadable until I finished. Then he swirled the wine in his glass. “So, let me get this straight. You put in the seed money from your savings. You do ninety-nine percent of the physical labor. You design all the products. You manage the inventory and shipping.”
“Yes.”
“And Chloe… takes your joint funds for personal expenses, claims your work as her own on social media, and what else? What’s her official contribution?”
“She’s the face,” I said, the words sounding even more ridiculous out loud. “She handles the marketing, the brand identity. She’s the one with the eye, the connections.”
“Her ‘eye’ seems to be firmly fixed on your wallet,” he said, not unkindly. “Sarah, honey. This isn’t a partnership. It’s a parasite.”
His words hung in the air, sharp and true. I wanted to defend her, to bring up the years of friendship, the late-night talks in our dorm room where we first dreamed this all up. But the defense felt hollow. The dream we’d had back then didn’t involve me funding her lifestyle while I ran myself into the ground.
“She’s my best friend,” I whispered.
“Is she?” Mark asked gently, and that was the question I couldn’t answer. It followed me to bed and haunted my dreams, a quiet, persistent shadow of doubt.
The Cracks Begin to Show: An Order of Magnitude
The email landed in my inbox like a golden ticket. It was from a boutique hotel chain, the kind with minimalist decor and thousand-dollar-a-night suites. They’d seen our work—or rather, *Chloe’s* Instagram feed of my work—and wanted to place a custom order.
They wanted two hundred bespoke leather valet trays, debossed with their logo, for their new flagship location. And they needed them in three weeks.
My heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. This was the kind of order that could take Aura & Elm from a side-hustle to a real, sustainable business. It was validation. It was a massive amount of work. It was exactly what I had been hoping for.
I immediately called Chloe, my voice buzzing with an excitement I hadn’t felt in months. “You are not going to believe this,” I said, reading her the email.
“Oh my god, babe! That’s amazing!” she squealed. “I knew my networking was going to pay off. I think I met their marketing director at that gallery opening last month. I totally manifested this!”
I bit back the comment that manifestation doesn’t cut, dye, and stitch two hundred pieces of leather. “It’s a tight deadline,” I said, steering the conversation back to reality. “I’ll need your help. We’ll have to set up an assembly line in the workshop. I can do the cutting and stamping, but I’ll need you for the dyeing and finishing.”
“Totally, totally,” she said, her voice a little distant. “I’m there for you. Just let me clear my schedule. This is huge for us!”
For the first time in a long time, a flicker of hope ignited in me. Maybe this was the turning point. Maybe this huge opportunity would remind her what a real partnership looked like. Maybe we could finally be a team again.
The Vanishing Partner
The shipment of raw leather arrived two days later. Ten giant rolls of beautiful, supple hide that smelled of earth and possibility. It cost nearly every cent we had left after Chloe’s “loan,” but I knew it would be worth it.
I spent two full days measuring and cutting the two hundred identical pieces, my rotary cutter gliding across the hides until my wrist screamed in protest. The workshop floor was covered in scraps. I texted Chloe: *Leather is all cut! Ready to start the dyeing process tomorrow morning. 9 a.m.? I’ll bring coffee.*
Her reply came three hours later. *OMG so sorry, just saw this! Something HUGE came up. I have to go to this super exclusive wellness retreat for a couple of days. It’s for networking! The people who go there are, like, major players. It’s an investment in the brand, you know? I’ll be sending good vibes from the sauna! xoxo*
I stared at the text, the raw-cut leather pieces stacked neatly on my workbench. An investment in the brand. While I was about to invest the next two weeks of my life in repetitive, mind-numbing labor, she was going to a spa to “network.”
The flicker of hope from the other day didn’t just die; it was violently extinguished, leaving a cold, dark smoke of pure fury. There would be no assembly line. There would be no partner. There was only me, the leather, and a deadline that was now terrifyingly close.
The good vibes from the sauna never arrived.
Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due
I worked like a machine possessed. My life became a cycle of waking, working, collapsing into bed for a few hours, and then waking up to do it all over again. Mark took over everything with Leo—school drop-offs, dinners, bedtime stories. He’d leave meals for me on the workshop steps. I barely saw them.
My hands were stained a deep mahogany from the dye, my fingernails permanently grimy. I debossed two hundred logos, stitched eight hundred corners, and burnished what felt like a million miles of edges. The workshop was my whole world, a dusty, leather-scented purgatory.
The day of the deadline, I packed the final valet tray into its custom box. They were perfect. Each one was a testament to my skill and my sheer, bloody-minded refusal to fail. I was exhausted, but I was proud.
Just as I was loading the last box into my car, Chloe’s Tesla pulled into the driveway. She glided out, looking refreshed and glowing in expensive yoga pants and a cashmere sweater.
“Wow, look at all this!” she said, gesturing to the boxes. “You are a rock star, Sarah! They look incredible.” She picked one up, turning it over in her hands. “See? I knew we could do it.”
*We?* The word was a slap in the face.
“I have to go deliver these,” I said, my voice flat.
“Oh, no, let me!” she insisted, pulling her phone out. “You’ve done all the hard work. Let me be the face for the delivery. I’ll schmooze the hotel manager, make sure they know who we are. It’s all part of the brand experience.”
Before I could protest, she was arranging the boxes in her pristine trunk and air-kissing my cheek. “You go take a nap,” she said brightly. “You’ve earned it. I’ll handle the victory lap.”
Two hours later, Aura & Elm’s Instagram page was lit up with a new post. It was a selfie of Chloe with the hotel manager, a stack of my valet trays artfully displayed on the concierge desk behind them. The caption read: “Such an honor to deliver this massive custom project to the stunning new @HotelVerve! Pulled some serious all-nighters to get this done, but so worth it to see my vision come to life. So grateful for this journey.”
My vision. I dropped my phone onto the couch and laughed, a raw, humorless sound that scared the cat.
The Ledger of Lies
That night, I couldn’t sleep. The rage was a living thing inside me, a hot coil in my chest. I finally got out of bed, went to my office, and opened the Aura & Elm accounting spreadsheet.
I’d been avoiding it, putting it off, because on some level I knew what I would find. But now, I wanted to see it. I needed the cold, hard data to back up the fire in my veins.
I started from the beginning, a year ago, when we first opened the joint account with my initial investment of ten thousand dollars. I meticulously went through every single transaction. I cross-referenced receipts, invoices, and the endless stream of Venmo and Zelle transfers to Chloe.
It was all there, a horrifying ledger of lies.
“Biz lunch.” “Marketing materials.” “Client gifts.” “Inspo trip.” Hundreds, then thousands of dollars, siphoned off for her haircuts, her designer clothes, her brunches, her yoga classes. My ten thousand dollar investment was gone. The profits we’d made since then—the profits *I’d* made—were almost entirely gone, too. All of it had been steadily drained to subsidize her life.
And the thousand-dollar “loan” for her radiator? I found the charge on the shared business credit card from three weeks ago. It wasn’t for a plumber. It was for a weekend at a luxury resort and spa. The wellness retreat.
The numbers on the screen blurred through my tears, but these weren’t tears of sadness. They were tears of rage. She hadn’t just lied to me. She had stolen from me. She had stolen my money, my time, my work, and my friendship, all while smiling and calling herself the face of my dream.
The foundation of our partnership wasn’t just cracked. It had been a hollow shell from the very beginning. And I was finally, finally ready to bring it all crashing down.
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