Cosmic by celeste, p.25
Cosmic by Celeste, page 25
A roar of applause, real this time, rolled across the room. The cameras zoomed in, catching the power shift. Thad and Celeste, side by side, arms linked. Richard, boxed in by security, shrinking by the second.
For the rest of the night, the narrative held: not scandal, but survival. Not fraud, but the courage to keep making something worth fighting for. The hashtags bent to #CosmicTruth and #StillStanding. The press, ever hungry for the next pivot, reframed the event as a battle of authenticity, with Thad and Celeste emerging as icons of resilience and innovation.
The board, newly sobered, reassembled in the green room, plotting statements and damage control, but no one cared. The story had already moved on.
Thad and Celeste rode the elevator to the roof, where the party had spilled over, the air cleaner and the stars almost visible through the city haze. Neither said a word for a long time.
Eventually, Thad broke the silence. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Are you?”
He shrugged, then smiled. “I think I might be.”
They looked out over the skyline, the hum of the city settling around them.
He reached for her hand. “What now?”
She thought for a minute, then answered, “We go back inside. We thank everyone. We do the thing we said we’d do. Then tomorrow, we make the next one.”
He grinned, liking the sound of that. “You want to get a drink first?”
She looked at him, mischief finally returning. “Only if you spike it with something dangerous.”
He laughed, the sound rich and unguarded. “You know I will.”
They went back down into the heart of it: the noise, the bright lights, the endless appetite of a world that could turn on you in a heartbeat, but sometimes, if you were lucky, gave you a chance to turn it right back.
They stood together, arms wrapped around each other, the cameras snapping but no longer mattering.
And for the rest of the night, they danced.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The day after the launch, Thad’s office smells like gunpowder and burnt sugar. There’s a haze of sleep deprivation clinging to everything on his tongue, in the stubble carving shadows down his jaw, in the way the LED ticker at the foot of his monitor seems to twitch even when he’s not looking directly at it. Celeste is cross-legged on his couch, barefoot, hair still perfect but face pale as an X-ray, picking at a Danish cheese that someone from PR left on her desk at 3 a.m. They haven’t spoken a real sentence in an hour, but it doesn’t matter; every notification ping in the building is a new exclamation.
On the desk, his laptop chugs data from half a dozen dashboards: sales, search trends, real-time social media mentions, a heatmap of retail stockouts that’s bleeding across the northeast like an epidemic. He scrolls, reloads, and double-checks the server bandwidth. For a while, he tries to keep up, but the exponential curve is like a joke told in a language he’s only begun to learn.
Across the glass wall, the office is a human coral reef, the brand team strung out on espresso, interns dead asleep at their desks, and someone from Operations passed out cold on a yoga mat in the reception area. The city outside is still sleeping off the afterglow, but inside, the building’s veins are wide open, pumping information and caffeinated blood.
Celeste’s phone vibrates so hard it threatens to leap off the armrest. She picks it up, thumb flicking over the lock screen, her eyes narrowing to parse the swarm of alerts.
“Vogue ran a second feature,” she says, not bothering to look up. “Their science writer wants an interview. And three beauty editors are now arguing on Instagram about which body chemistry sets off the top note best.”
“Is one of them the one who called it ‘chemical warfare for the soul’?” Thad asks, scrolling. He’s seen the comment; he’s also seen the follow-up and the 10,000 likes it racked up in an hour.
“Two of them,” she says. “But they’re split on whether it’s a compliment.”
He smiles, then stretches, feeling every tendon protest. “How are you not passed out right now?”
She tilts her head. “I haven’t slept since,” she checks her watch, then shrugs. “Since you poured champagne into my coffee last night. Which was a bad idea.”
“It was a necessary idea,” he says. “You were about to panic-order more chromatography columns.”
Celeste’s gaze slips from her phone to him, a gentle recalibration. There’s a darkness under her eyes that makes her look raw and perfect and not at all like the scientist the world expects. “You should see what’s happening in the group chat,” she says and tosses him the phone.
He catches it, thumb already seeking the Slack icon. Every channel is on fire. Maya has meme'd the sales graph into a literal rocket; someone in Marketing has superimposed Thad’s face onto a Renaissance angel. Every ten seconds, a new message: a TikTok reaction, a retail milestone, a link to an article with a title so hyperbolic it would have made his mother laugh herself hoarse.
Three separate threads are dissecting the “moment” from last night’s livestream, the one where he and Celeste did not so much touch as stare at each other for a fraction too long, allowing the whole world to invent a narrative for them. The comments range from the deeply sincere (“couple goals, no notes”) to the obscene and back again.
He looks up and watches Celeste reading over the rim of her paper coffee cup. “It’s not real, is it?” he says. “All this?”
She shakes her head and sets the cup down with a shiver of hands. “It’s real. But it’s also not. It’s what happens when the world can finally pay attention to the thing you cared about in a vacuum for years.”
He nods, understanding more than he wants to admit.
The door swings open without warning. Natalie blows in, trench coat thrown over last night’s suit, hair damp from rain or maybe sweat. She’s carrying three newspapers, a tablet, and a binder clipped so thick it could function as a weapon.
“You two look like shit,” she announces before even clearing the threshold.
Celeste smirks, “You say that like it’s news.”
“Please,” Natalie says, “the only news is the Wall Street Journal calling you ‘the most dangerous power couple in the American luxury sector.’” She slams the binder on the desk, scattering Post-it notes. “Also, Belgium is already threatening to sue.”
Thad raises an eyebrow. “What for?”
“Something about non-compete and trade secrets and possibly emotional distress. I only skimmed.” Natalie flips the tablet to show a headline: COSMIC BY CELESTE SHATTERS LAUNCH RECORDS, followed by a photo of Thad and Celeste side by side, clearly mid-laugh and clearly not expecting the camera. “You two did it. The board is in full meltdown.”
Celeste sits up straighter and more awake. “Good meltdown or bad meltdown?”
Natalie waves her off. “Good. The kind where everyone pretends they've always supported you. Even the fossils. Someone sent a fruit basket to your lab this morning.”
“Did they use the right address?” Celeste asks deadpan.
Natalie actually laughs. “I had them reroute it to the security office. HR can’t figure out how to open the fridge, and it’s causing minor panic. But that’s not important. What’s important is that.” She glances at Thad and lets the silence draw out. “They’re asking when you’ll present your transition plan to the executive committee.”
Thad sets the phone down. His hand is steady, but he feels the tremor in his chest, like a note held at the edge of feedback. “Transition plan,” he repeats. “That’s code for?”
“That’s code for CEO,” Natalie says. “Acting, interim, but probably permanent, unless you manage to get arrested or die in the next six months.”
He blinks. “Richard?”
“Gone. Packed up last night and didn’t even leave a forwarding address. His assistant says he’s on a boat to the Azores, but my bet is Paris or tax exile.”
He lets it settle in. The office, the company, the city, all of it, is his now, or at least until the next round of carnivores circles in.
Celeste’s phone vibrates again. She glances at it, then slides it to Thad.
“Read that one out loud,” she says, and her voice is softer, almost proud.
He reads: “Hello, Celeste. I had to write that Cosmic is the only thing my daughter will wear now. She’s seventeen and says it smells like hope if hope could have a body. Thank you for making something true.
Sincerely, Dr. Han Li.”
He hands the phone back. For a second, neither of them says anything. The weight of it lands heavily, in a way the numbers and headlines never could.
Natalie breaks the spell. “You have a press call in twenty and then the Today Show at noon. Wear something that doesn’t look like you’ve been living on cigarettes and Gatorade.”
She exits in a flurry, leaving the office momentarily silent except for the distant, arrhythmic tap of someone in Finance clapping in another room.
Thad looks at Celeste. She looks at him. There are a million things to say, but none of them matter as much as the way their hands find each other, hidden below the desk, fingers locked tight as a binary star.
“We did it,” he says, and the words land like absolution.
Celeste nods, a smile barely visible in the sunbeam that’s finally, against all odds, made it through the clouds.
Outside, the city keeps moving, oblivious. But inside the office, the future is theirs.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
The boardroom feels different this morning, less like a jury box, more like a summit, but the underlying tension is still there, electrified by the memory of last night's spectacle. Thad stands at the head of the table, hands braced on the lacquered wood, watching as department heads and directors file in. There’s a new edge to their movements: less resignation, more hunger. Word has spread about the numbers, the reviews, and the headline that won the morning cycle. Now, they want to know if the story is real or another performance.
Natalie is the first to break the ice, banging a gavel she must have pilfered from Legal. “Meeting is called to order. The CEO’s first address, followed by agenda review, then Q&A.” She shoots him a look that says, Don’t blow it.
Thad doesn’t have a script. He’s slept maybe ninety minutes; the rest of the night spent replaying every second of the launch, every stumble, and every win. His notes are three bullet points on a bar napkin, now smudged beyond legibility. He doesn’t bother with a slideshow; he stands up and lets the moment hang.
“Morning, everyone,” he says, and the echo is more echo than greeting. “I know most of you have already been up for hours. Some of you never went to bed. I want to start by thanking you for carrying this place through chaos and for not setting it on fire when you had the chance.”
There’s a ripple of nervous laughter. The finance guy coughs discreetly into his sleeve.
Thad keeps going, finding his rhythm on the fly. “My mother used to say that perfume was a memory you could wear. However, Chic Alchemy was never about the bottles. It was about making things that last, things that matter, even when no one’s watching. That’s the part I want to keep. The rest, we get to rewrite together.”
He glances around, letting the words land. “I’m not here to throw away what works. I’m here to make sure it keeps working, even if it pisses off everyone who thinks it shouldn’t.”
He ticks off his main points on callused fingers. “First, we go all-in on sustainable sourcing. If a raw ingredient can’t be traced to the farm, we don’t use it. No greenwashing, no PR spin. Second, we open up manufacturing. No more black-box secrecy; we build transparency into the supply chain. People should know what they’re putting on their skin and who made it. Third, we give ten percent of every new launch to the charitable causes my mother started, addiction research, women’s education, the stuff she actually cared about.”
He stops and meets the eye of the board chair, the old ambassador with the iceberg composure. “That’s my transition plan. We’ll still make the best perfume in the world, but we’ll do it on our terms.”
There’s a silence, not hostile but expectant. The ambassador is the one to speak. “And your personal plans, Mr. Hastings? Are you committed to this role, or should we expect another… hiatus?”
The undertone is clear: Are you going to run at the first sign of boredom? Is this another stage for you?
Thad shrugs, not defensively, but honestly. “My music’s part of me. It always will be. But I learned a long time ago that running away only works if you don’t care what’s behind you. I care about this place. I care about what happens to it.” He glances at Celeste, who’s sitting straight-backed at his right, hands folded, her gaze locked on a point halfway between the window and infinity. “I’m not abandoning anything. Least of all this legacy. But I also know I’m not a one-man show. That’s why you’re all still here.”
He gestures to the group. “You keep the wheels turning. I’ll make sure there’s still a road to drive on.”
There’s a stifled laugh from one of the directors, and the room lightens a little.
The agenda moves to Celeste, who is introduced as the “lead architect of the Cosmic breakthrough.” She stands, smooths her jacket, and projects her notes onto the wall with a single tap. Her slides are spare, almost brutalist: bullet points, line graphs, and a few clinical photos of the new micro-lab.
She speaks with clipped precision, every sentence sharpened for maximum penetration. “Cosmic was engineered for scale. We’ve built redundancies into the process, including two separate production lines, automated quality control, and a comprehensive audit trail for every batch. As of 9 a.m., our fill rate is at 98 percent and trending higher.”
She moves on, confidence increasing with each word. “Our IP is protected. Our supply chain is diversified. We have a bench of five follow-up scents in R&D, two of which are pre-approved for fast-track launch. The primary risk is now operational. Can we meet demand without sacrificing quality or transparency?”
Someone from logistics interrupts. “How long until we can double the output? Retail is already screaming.”
Celeste answers without flinching. “If we get the new reactor online by Monday, I can give you a 40 percent bump in two weeks, doubled by the end of the quarter. But I need approval for round-the-clock staffing.”
She glances at Thad, a signal. He nods.
“Approved,” he says and writes it on the legal pad with a Sharpie.
Natalie leans in, voice pitched to the table but not the room. “That’s probably a record.”
The Q&A lasts less than ten minutes. Every question Celeste answers with a mix of math and metaphor. When someone asks about market cannibalization, she deadpans: “If we’re not eating ourselves, we’re probably not hungry enough.”
By the time the meeting adjourns, Thad can sense the shift. The skepticism hasn’t evaporated, but it’s circled back into something almost like faith. The old guard isn’t fond of him, but they acknowledge that he’s not fulfilling the CEO role. He actually means it.
As the directors shuffle out, a few stop to shake his hand. A couple even congratulate Celeste, who takes it with the icy grace of someone still not used to winning.
When the room empties, Natalie lets out a long, theatrical sigh. “I’d have bet on a mutiny, not a standing ovation,” she says. “You’re learning.”
He grins, then sits, the adrenaline finally draining from his legs. “You think they bought it?”
She shrugs. “You’re not your mother, but you’re close enough. That’s all they ever wanted.”
He glances at Celeste, who’s packing up her notes with delicate, almost obsessive precision. He wants to say something about how proud he is, about how none of this would have happened without her, but the words are stuck behind a wall of professional cool.
Instead, he stands and offers his hand. She hesitates, then takes it, her grip steady as a beam.
“Ready for phase two?” he asks, the question half a dare.
She meets his gaze and, for once, doesn’t look away. “Always,” she says.
They exit together, leaving the boardroom behind them. On the wall outside, a new poster gleams: COSMIC BY CELESTE. Now, Forever.
He thinks, 'Not a bad place to start.'
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
The elevator ride from the top floor to the factory level takes less than a minute. Still, it feels longer, like descending through layers of atmosphere, the pressure increasing as they sink closer to the engine room of Chic Alchemy. The doors open onto a corridor lined with safety glass; beyond it, the production floor glows with light from a hundred busy stations, all humming with synchronized purpose. The usual low buzz of fluorescent anxiety is gone, replaced by something almost like music: the clack of relay switches, the hiss of pneumatic tubes, the percussive rhythm of capped bottles rattling down the assembly lines.
Celeste leads, badge clipped to her lapel, and Thad follows in her wake. Workers look up as they pass, but instead of averting their eyes, they nod or even wave, a subtle act of defiance against the old regime. He recognizes a few faces from the crash course in manufacturing Natalie put him through last winter, but most are new to him, a reminder of how fast the company had to pivot to survive the last quarter.
They reach a bottling line where a woman in safety goggles is monitoring the output. Celeste pauses, bends down to read the real-time QC display, and asks, “Any problems with the fill ratios?”
The woman grins. “Not since we switched to the new calibration protocol. My team owes you a bottle, by the way.” She holds up a flask labeled “Bellamy Batch,” the ink still wet. “We made a variant with an extra shot of vanillin. It’s dessert in a bottle.”
Celeste beams, then introduces Thad as “the boss who won’t fire you for customizing the product.” The team laughs genuinely, and Thad feels something loosen in his chest.
They wind through the floor, past the micro-lab where Maya is orchestrating a test run on the next scent. She gives Thad a thumbs-up and a wink, then mouths, “Check your inbox,” before disappearing into a cloud of dry ice.
