Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
“Right away. You guys will take the rest of this week to transition. Mac, since Thomas is so new, I’ll look to you to lead suggestions on how to divvy up your current projects among the team. You’ll start in the new office next Monday, and Mac, you’ll be on the secret project full time. Thomas, you’ll obviously still need to support your team, but lean on me as much as you need. The merger comes first.”
“Got it,” he says with the same tone one might use when the dentist suggests flossing more.
He and I both pick up our key fobs, I’m pretty sure with twin inclinations to toss them in the trash, but I drop mine in my purse, him into his pocket.
“Well,” Thomas says on a sigh as we head back towards my cubicle and his office on the other side of the floor. “This should be interesting.”
“A euphemism if I’ve ever heard one,” I grumble, dropping my bag onto my chair with a sigh. I glance up at him. “You think they’d notice if we just worked from home?”
“Conceding our battle of wills so soon?” he says, lifting his eyebrows.
“You know, ordinarily, that reverse psychology actually might work on me, but right now . . .” I rub at my pounding forehead. “Can we revisit our upcoming nightmare this afternoon?”
“No problem,” he says, not unkindly, tapping his palm lightly atop my cubicle wall and moving away. “I’ll let you get to work.”
Ugh. I drop into my desk chair and close my eyes against the fluorescent lights, enjoying the relative silence since the rest of my team isn’t in yet.
Eventually, I rouse myself enough to retrieve my headphones out of my desk drawer. I’m not listening to anything—my head can’t handle it—but headphones are the universal visual cue for “leave me alone, I’m working.”
And, surprisingly, I actually do get to work. It distracts me a little bit from my headache, and for all my loosey-goosey ways, the more I can get done this week, the less my team will have to take on to cover for me when I shift focus to the C&S merger on Monday.
It takes me a while to get in the zone, but I push through the mimosa-fueled brain fog until I lose myself in the holiday campaign proposal, divvying up who on the team should take point on each aspect. I let the office sort of disappear, the way it always does when I’m in what I call my CV—Creative Vortex.
Eventually, though, the damn headache pulls me out of CV, and I roll my neck to loosen the muscles.
Only then do I notice something on my desk that wasn’t there before.
A triple mocha, extra whip, and a bagel.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tuesday, September 20
I’ve lived in my current building for a few years now. And last year, I moved from the third floor to the fifth, and overlook Fifty-Sixth instead of the noisier Tenth Avenue. The apartment is bigger too. Not big. We’re talking crowded one-bedroom. But it’s a step up from the crowded studio I lived in before.
My neighborhood took some getting used to. Before this building, I lived with Collette in the East Village, with all its vibrant, trendy weirdness. Hell’s Kitchen—or as city officials try to pretend it’s called, Clinton—is vibrant and weird too, just minus the trendy.
It’s grown on me though, and now I can’t imagine living anywhere else. I know the nearest bagel place, the best Thai, the fastest pizza delivery, and the cheapest Greek place. Plus, I know the best park to watch cute puppies while sipping a Frappuccino on a sunny summer Sunday, and the coziest bars to tuck into on a brutal winter evening.
My apartment, too, feels like a little corner of the world that’s mine. Which is weird, because I’ve never been the nesting type. Growing up in Brooklyn, Mom and I rarely stayed in the same apartment for more than a year. My mother was forever on the hunt for the best deal on rent, and I swear bargaining for concessions on new lease terms was one of her favorite activities.
And throughout all that, I’d rarely had my own bedroom. Once, in seventh grade, we’d moved in with a guy my mom was dating who’d owned a successful Park Slope deli. It had marked the first time I knew that two-bedroom apartments even existed, and for one glorious summer, I’d had a space all of my own. Joe—the deli owner—had even let me paint the walls. An electric royal purple, which had been my favorite color at the time.
Then, Mom had cheated on Joe with a bartender, who’d turned out to be married, and we’d been on our own yet again, back to the cramped one-bedrooms where I’d slept on an ugly brown pull-out couch.
I’m not complaining. I’m really not. It had simply been life as I knew it, and I actually sort of liked it. I’d been able to watch as much TV as I wanted, as late as I wanted. If I stayed up until three am drawing instead of doing homework, Mom had barely noticed, even when I came home with Cs in pretty much everything except art class.