Not look down on them.
Give everyone a shot to be who they were.
It hadn’t been easy in school, especially when others gave her a hard time for refusing to be mean or look down on people her group deemed unworthy.
Plenty of times, she walked away from her friends because she refused to act the way they did.
Now it felt as if she didn’t have that large of a social group because of it.
You’d think it’d be the other way, but it ended up isolating her because she struggled to let anyone in fully.
Even made it hard for her to date because often the men she was with didn’t like that she didn’t fall in line or share their opinions. When she tried to compromise and be someone who she didn’t feel comfortable with, they weren’t happy in the end any more than her.
Oh well. Screw them.
Got that from her mother too.
They drove the twenty minutes to the second building. Traffic was crazier than normal, but the family business was on the other side of Durham.
The parking lot was only half full. In the past nine months, this building had been filling up more, but it was taking time. The work her family did on it was complete, but now it was finding tenants and Kennedy Construction doing the work inside.
Still, in the past five years, they’d expanded to two major commercial buildings. One completely filled, the other getting there.
“Let’s go up to the fourth floor,” Gabe said. “We are meeting Royce there with Garrett and Grant first.”
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing on our end in terms of work, but they’ve got a new tenant they are starting work on. Remember, we own part ofthe building. It’s not just about doing the work and leaving. It’s being invested in all parts of the process and interests.”
She knew that. It was something she had to work on more.
Fierce Engineering and Olson Law handled most of the paperwork and details. The two construction companies came in and did their work, billing for services to the clients once documents were signed. Not even on her end most times because what McCarthy’s did was prior to even getting clients.
They walked to the elevator and up to the fourth floor, the door opening in the hallway.
“Hi, Gabe,” Grant Fierce said. “Jocelyn. We don’t get to see you often. It’s nice of you to stop in.”
“I should get my feet wet more,” she said. “Or so I’m told.”
Gabe put his arm around her shoulder. “We’ll break her in slowly.”
“I hear congratulations are in order,” Garrett said. “We do good work, you know.”
Her brother shook hands with the two Fierce men. “Word is traveling fast,” Gabe said.
Royce would know. It was Gabe’s brother-in-law.
“How is Elise feeling?” Grant asked.
“Good so far,” Gabe said. He looked at Royce. “Unless she’s hiding it from me. Anything going on in the office?”
“Nope,” Royce said. “My father would have figured it out if she had been showing signs of anything. Guess that’s how she hid it so long.”
“Why don’t we walk around and figure out what we are doing in this space?” Grant said. “We’ve got about thirty minutes before we have to meet with the code enforcer.”
Royce unlocked the door to the space and she stood there and listened while they talked about what it’d look like when it was done.
Nothing she hadn’t heard before nor anything that interested her all that much.
