Page 8 of Love.V2
“Dylan’s the one who messed this up. It should be him freaking out right now. You’re going to walk into that conference room and show them why you, out of all the people who applied to work there, are the right person to lead the creative department at Jinx. Right?”
“Right,” I muttered, grabbing my work bag and slipping out the door.
“Right?!” Vanna demanded loudly, just as my elderly neighbor stepped outside her door.
“Um…right,” I repeated, slightly more enthusiastically as I waved to the neighbor without making eye contact. I hadn’t caught her name when I’d moved in, and now it felt like too much time had gone by to introduce myself.
“Theresa, don’t make me put this baby down and yell at you. I. Can’t. Hear. You!”
I cleared my throat, throwing my shoulders back. “Right. Right!” I repeated, gaining some volume as I smiled. “I can do this!”
“Fuck yeah! Kick ass today, Tessie.” A baby’s soft cry drowned out the last of her words. As soon as the call ended, my smile slid off my face.
After six long, miserable months, I was going to see him again. My heart jumped in my chest, squeezing and flipping at the same time.
That was the thing I couldn’t tell Vanna. My best friend had hated Dylan fully and completely the moment our relationship had imploded.
She’d never understand how mortified and nervous and terrified I was to face him. And at the same time, I had been looking forward to this day ever since I learned I’d get a chance to see him again.
My anxiety spiked at the thought.
In for four, out for four.
***
“…see some of the fantastic feedback our clients provided at the end of the campaign. We’ve already signed with them for another project in the coming months. Of course, they can’t all be winners. Tess, you want to take these?”
Victoria grinned at me with pointy vampire teeth, chestnut hair slicked back in a perfect corporate bun. The baby blue color of her blouse deepened the olive hue of her skin, making her hazel eyes stand out, shrewd and predatory, in the overly bright conference room light.
She looked sharp and polished, and she’d neatly commandeered my slides, no matter how many times I’d tried to interject myself and take back control. Somehow, she’d ended up with the clicker to advance the presentation, and every time I jumped in, she moved along likeshehad been the one poring over the deck for weeks, not me.
I gulped, glancing quickly around the table, feeling sloppy and unprepared. Noel, a designer on my team, shot me a sympathetic smile. Henry, one of the production artists, gave me a thumbs up. I appreciated the support, but it came too late. Victoria had done a great job explaining our team’s biggest wins over the last year, and now I wasstuck talking about clients we’d lost and proposals that hadn’t quite hit the mark.
I should have been angrier, but mostly, I just felt relieved. I smiled at the faces on the video screen.
“Of course. Our team does incredible work, but occasionally, we have a project that falls short. We have a few learnings from the last twelve months that we’ll bring with us on future pitches.”
After walking through my lonely, miserable “losses” slide, the sales team hopped in to recap their year. I blew out a breath, trying not to make eye contact with my team.
All around me, the Jinx staff, forty people strong, lounged in an assortment of chairs dragged from around the office. Our little conference room was packed and getting stuffier by the minute, which didn’t help my flaming cheeks, still prickling from Victoria’s coup.
If Dylan had been there, I would have passed out.
But he wasn’t.He’s not here. Dylan’s not here,I repeated in my head as the meeting rambled on around me. Was he sick? Traveling? Maybe he’d decided to do the decent thing and not crash my work meeting six months after I’d fled into the night like a burglar?
Whatever the case, I shouldn’t have been surprised.
How many times had he canceled a date night or shown up an hour late to a party because “something came up at work”?
I was used to it…Ishouldhave been used to it. But maybe six months away from him had softened my tough skin. I was mad about bombing this presentation, relieved he had missed it, and simultaneously disappointed he wasn’t there.
After all the buildup in my head, my nervous energy buzzed and fizzled as the adrenaline left my system.
All I felt was…empty.
“I love the enthusiasm, everyone.” Eric clapped the nearest sales staffer on the back. “On top of all this great work you’ve accomplished, last year we were bought by the largest media conglomerate in the world. Jinx is their smallest portfolio company, and that might not seem like something to brag about, but it’s because of everyone in this room that we caught the eye of a Goliath like Worther.” He paused to scan the room. Smiles erupted as he searched our faces.
“We’ve done well this year, no doubt about it, but we have to tighten things up.” Eric gestured to the screen where the Worther executives sat in a row, one empty chair at the end. “These guys know we have something special here. They gave us a year to settle in, and now we need to show them what we really got. We’re gonna win more of those deals, right, Tess?”
