Get it together, Landry.
“I don’t have other plans,” he said. “I can follow you there.”
“Great. Cool. Awesome.” Three synonyms? Really? I turned and practically fled to my car before I could embarrass myself further.
During the drive back to the office, my brain had a full-on civil war with itself.
What are you doing?demanded the rational part.You’re about to show him your app concept? The thing you’ve been working on in secret for years? The thing you haven’t even shown Anica?
He’ll understand it,argued the part of me that was apparently determined to make terrible decisions.We’ve been working well together, and he just defended you to that bitch mother.
So, one decent act earns him access to your secret passion project?
It’s not like that. I just... trust him.
Since when?
I don’t know! Recently! Shut up!
Great. Now I was telling myself to shut up. It was going really well.
By the time I pulled into the office parking lot, I’d nearly talked myself out of the whole thing three times. But when Hudson parked beside me and got out of his car with that questioning half-smile, I knew I was going through with it.
“Everything okay?” he asked as we walked to the building.
“Yep. Fine. Great.”
He blinked at me, and I waved a hand dismissively. “Ignore me. I’m just being weird.”
“I’m used to it,” he said, and I could have sworn there was fondness in his voice.
The office was quiet and dark when we entered. I flipped on just enough lights to navigate to my desk, not wanting the harsh fluorescents to ruin the strange, liminal feeling of being here after hours.
Oh my god, stop it,I scolded myself.It’s an office, not a romance novel setting.
“So,” Hudson said, leaning against the edge of my desk. “What did you want to show me?”
This was my last chance to bail. I could make up something about a new vendor or a design concept for the Kussikov-Martin wedding. Something safe. Professional.
Instead, I unlocked my bottom drawer and pulled out my tablet and notebook.
“I’ve been working on something,” I said, my heart racing stupidly fast. “A side project, kind of a passion project really, for about a year now. I haven’t shown the full concept to anyone.”
Hudson straightened, his expression shifting to something more focused. “What kind of project?”
I took a deep breath and powered on the tablet, pulling up the wireframes and prototype screens I’d been developing. “It’s a comprehensive wedding planning app, but with an emotional core that most planning tools miss. It’s also targeted at people like us. Professionals.”
As I scrolled through the designs, I explained my vision: a platform that tracked not just vendors and budgets, but the emotional journey of wedding planning. It incorporated storytelling elements, allowing couples to fill out an emailed form about their relationship milestones alongside practical planning tools. It had features for managing family dynamics, preserving cultural traditions, and creating personalized timelines based on a couple’s unique priorities.
“The key innovation is this algorithm,” I explained, pulling up a flowchart. “It learns from the couple’s decisions on their end of the app if they choose to download it, or they can just fill out this survey and it turns their responses into a personalized planning experience for us to use. It’s not just about logistics—it’s about what matters most to them.”
Throughout my explanation, Hudson was unnervingly quiet, his eyes fixed on the screen with an intensity that made me nervous. Was it that bad? Had I just humiliated myself by sharing my half-baked idea with the industry’s biggest perfectionist?
When I finally ran out of words, he still didn’t speak. He just stared at the screen, his expression unreadable.
“So... yeah,” I said awkwardly into the silence. “That’s my thing. My app thing. It’s still rough, obviously, and?—”
“It’s brilliant.”
