Page 88 of Night and Day
“So, you guys broke up and he still offered you a job?” Kati stared at her in awe. “He’s not your average butt clencher, is he?”
Mia shook her head, suppressing a laugh. “No. He honestly doesn’t hold grudges, which is admirable, but I’m not sure he ever really loved me so much as appreciated my skills.”
“You helped him a lot when he was developing the idea, didn’t you?”
Mia twisted in discomfort. “Yeah. But only because you couldn’t really spend any time with him without hearing about it. He’s just all about... productivity.” Mia expelled a sad laugh. “It’s exhausting, to be honest.”
“Maybe the butt clenching is just ultimate productivity? Maybe he’s doing Kegels or something?” Kati’s mouth twitched with mirth.
“Men do Kegels?”
“They have a pelvic floor, don’t they? But you’re right, probably just training the butt cheeks. Sorry, I had a Kegel lecture earlier.”
Mia laughed, tears clouding her eyes. She’d missed her sister more than she’d realised.
“I’ll keep an eye out from now on. That’ll make it more entertaining. Which is great, because if I’m honest, the job terrifies me. He’ll make me do all the public speaking because he hates it. They all do. It’s like they can’t talk to other humans without clenching not just their butts but their faces. It’s nauseating. I’ll have to pitch for them at Slush, do these presentations... But I don’t really have other options.”
Chapter 34
Mia stepped throughthe meeting room doors, cursing at yet another glass wall that wasn’t frosted. After three days as the acting head of PR, she’d slipped into something new yet familiar, blood whooshing in her ears as her mind tackled a constant stream of challenges.
To her relief, Mikko had agreed to her asking salary, without the stock options. She didn’t need to get rich on the back of this. She just needed money to get the hell out of here. Their negotiations had taken place via email, short and sweet. They’d briefly met in the office, but so far she’d managed to avoid spending any time with him one on one, or running into the Portuguese Carlotte. The flexible hours made it rather easy.
The work had sucked her in like a rollercoaster, filling every minute of her life, invading her thoughts. She needed a moment to herself, right now. It was Sunday and nobody was supposed to be in the office, yet the buzz had only lessened by a degree as they prepared for Slush, the upcoming tech pitching event. Mikko seemed to be working around the clock, and others followed his example out of solidarity, or lack of social life.
Mia sat at the awkward but trendy trestle table, letting out a long sigh. She finally had a decent pitch. It only needed a couple of more user stories and some visuals. She’d tap into the designer after the lunch break.
The open office felt like an aquarium, one currently blasting Rage Against the Machine, where you couldn’t make a private phone call without leaving the building. With half the furnishings still allegedly on their way (Whose responsibility was it? Had they dropped the ball?), every step on the hard laminate floor echoed off the walls, sending micro tremors to the giant window overlooking the half-frozen ocean and to the screens displaying the number of users signed up for the new service.
Mia suspected Mikko had attempted to recreate the scene fromThe Social Networkand fancied himself the next leader of a multi-trillion-dollar company – an awkward genius with poor social skills and questionable fashion sense. She wasn’t sure about the genius part, but the rest seemed accurate.
Mia finished her sandwich, washing it down with something called Brain Booster she’d found in the office fridge. It looked and tasted exactly like blackcurrant juice, but obviously there was some kind of higher science at work. She gathered her rubbish, along with her brand new laptop – courtesy of the job – and headed back into the open office, bracing herself for the loud beat that made the halogen lamps reverberate. The all-male staff (evidently, Carlotte didn’t have to work on Sundays) seemed to draw energy from old school metal, enjoying the chance to blast music without headphones when the building was empty of others. Thankfully, that only happened on Sundays.
Scanning the space, she noticed Mikko with two developers. They stood in front of the screen, staring at the number which had frozen at 143,502. Was there a glitch or had the app user base stopped growing?
Her gaze fell on Mikko’s ill-fitting jeans and she almost laughed out loud. He did look like he was clenching his butt cheeks! How had she never noticed that before? In fact, he seemed to continuously tense and relax his gluteus muscles. Mia pressed a hand to her mouth, determined to swallow the giggles. If she was lucky, she could sneak out without them noticing. She had so much to do, and whatever was wrong with the screen –or Heaven forbid their sign-ups – would potentially drag her off course and make her day even longer.
