I almost walk away. But before I go, Reid catches my hand, pulls me toward him. When he’s got me close he wraps his arm around my lower back, gathering me against him, something desperate in his hold, something reminiscent of that night in his old bedroom. He has to lean down to put his mouth close to my ear.
“I’m sorry,” he says, so quiet that I have to strain to hear him. “Thank you for coming here. For having dinner with me.”
I pull back, setting a hand against his cheek and looking into his eyes. They’re all mixed up now. Part sad, part sorry. I try to put a question in mine.
“We’ll talk about it,” he says. “I promise. But I have to get back in there.”
I nod and smile, press my mouth to his in a brief kiss. It should make me feel better, I guess, that he acknowledged it. I’m giving it time; he’s giving it time. It’snota scandal. It’s only something uncomfortable, something he maybe needs to work through on his own. And he did promise to talk about it.
But when I finally walk away, I have the most sinking, unpleasant feeling.
I have the feeling that I can’t count on that promise at all.
Chapter 18
On Friday afternoon, I’m sitting on a cushy love seat outside of a rented conference room inside a huge, swanky Midtown hotel. Behind a set of double doors across from me, nine members of the Make It Happyn creative team are apparently settling back in after a long lunch they’ve taken, having heard two other pitches this morning. When I’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, checking in with the front desk per the e-mailed instructions I’d received last week, a hotel staffer had made a quick phone call, and within minutes I was being greeted by a young, energetic assistant named Daniel, who’d updated me on “the team’s” morning while escorting me to my waiting spot. Daniel had offered me coffee or tea or Pellegrino, as well as a sleek promotional booklet about Make It Happyn’s parent company, a Florida-based crafting retailer that mass-produces everything from yarn to scrapbooking tools to jewelry-making supplies. Daniel had called me “Miss Mackworth” three separate times and had also told me he was “rooting” for me, though something tells me he might’ve said the same thing to the other two artists who were apparently here before me.
I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that I don’t belong here, that something’s off.
I should be feeling one hundred percent confident. In the portfolio resting beside me are my originals, ready to be displayed on the conference table, the same way I’d done yesterday during my practice run in the cozy familiarity of the shop. On top is my tablet and the adapter I purchased especially for this, ready for the projector I’d gotten an e-mail confirmation about two days ago from a Make It Happyn assistant (who was not Daniel). On my body is a trendy, dark denim A-line dress, accessorized with a sunny yellow belt and brushed-gold bangles on my wrist, hoops in my ears. And most importantly, in my head is the pitch itself, practiced and refined, praised by my small audience of friends in the shop.
But somethingisoff.
Not for the first time today, I’m tempted to break a promise to myself, to pull out my phone and check my messages. But over the last two days, ever since South Street Seaport, all it’s been is a distraction, a preoccupation, almost a compulsion. I’ve been checking it too regularly, staring at the messages from one particular person, looking for something hidden in the bland, polite words that have come through.
Each time I’ve gotten one, I’ve felt a creeping sense of dread, familiar to me from months of similar polite brush-offs from Sibby. I cling to the two phone calls Reid and I have had in between these messages—one yesterday afternoon right after my practice run, and one at 7:05 this morning, precisely five minutes after my alarm had gone off. During both, he’d told me how sorry he is for having to work. He’d told me he misses me. He’d asked if I was ready, if I was nervous, if I’d been stretching. He’d deflected when I’d asked him if he was all right. “Busy,” he’d said. “Tired.”
Last night, when I’d been doing a final run-through alone in my apartment, my intercom had buzzed, and my heart had skipped a beat in hopeful excitement. But it’d only been a delivery—a dozen yellow roses, a card with unrecognizable handwriting.Meg, it had read, in the messy script of some flower shop employee.You’re ready for this. We’ll celebrate your pitch tomorrow, I promise.—Reid
But I’m not reassured about that promise. We still haven’t gotten to the other one, after all.
I’d tossed the card, kept the flowers.
Nothing’s off, I reassure myself, plaiting my fingers in my lap.Youareready for this.You want this. Don’t get distracted.Don’t let yourself get blocked.
I concentrate on my breathing, counting out my exhales. Briefly, I close my eyes, taking Cecelia’s suggestion from yesterday that I visualize myself in the room, presenting confidently.
“Meg?” a woman’s voice says before I get all that far in my visualization.
The dark-haired woman who’s come to get me introduces herself as Ivonne, my first contact with Make It Happyn, and she is as bold and vibrant in person as her voice was on the phone. Her summery dress is patterned all over with bright pink flowers; her high heels—which add four inches to her petite frame—match. She seemsthrilledto finally meet me, and I get a jolt of you-don’t-have-to-visualize-it confidence.
And the mood in the conference room is similarly welcoming. I miss the natural light of the shop, miss being surrounded by my friends and the beautiful, comforting tools of my trade, but the team is talkative as I set up, all of them complimenting me on my work, my social media. Within minutes my originals are spread out on the table, each one covered with a matte black sheet of paper, which I’ll ask members of the team to reveal as I move through the presentation I’ll be projecting on the screen. The scans are good, but it’s not the same as seeing them on paper.
And then I begin.
I do it exactly as I rehearsed yesterday, introducing myself and my city walk-inspired pitch. I start with the vintage-inspired treatment, lettering for the headers like old signs, the colors muted and sometimes patchy, a faded effect that took forever to get exactly right. Then the trees—my lovely, gorgeous trees—branches and leaves growing across the pages, complemented by small, simple serifs that don’t steal the focus. The final reveal is my favorite, my most recent addition, designed and refined over the last two weeks or so, when Reid’s long hours had me longing for those not-too-warm spring days of walking. Each month a secret, subtle tribute to a different neighborhood we’d walked together, lettering inspired by its architecture or its attitude, lightly drawn lines linking one page to the next, as though they are train routes or street grids on a map. Maybe you’d see it if you knew New York, maybe you wouldn’t. But every page is unique, and each time you turn one, you feel as if you’ve genuinelymoved. You’re in a whole new place, but somehow, you’re still in the same general space.
When I did this pitch in front of Cecelia, Lachelle, and Lark, their faces had been a blend of pride and awe, bigoohs andaahs when I’d change the slide, when I’d cue them to reveal a sketch. Cecelia, in particular, had wiped her eyes when I finished, had told me how proud she was of how much I’d grown, how much my art had developed.
I get it, that the Make It Happyn folks have to be more circumspect, but I’m not all that far in when I see the mood in the room shifting, when I notice a few cocked heads, a few furrowed brows. At first, I check my visuals—is the projector working right, are the sketches turned the right way, did anything get damaged?
But everything looks exactly the way I intended it to.
So something isdefinitelyoff.
“What excites me about these sketches,” I say, moving into the final part of my presentation, “is that they tell more than a color story, or a seasonal story, or the occasional holiday story. They’re cohesive, gender neutral, and—”
“Miss Mackworth,” a man in one of the corner seats interrupts, and I swallow, feeling a fresh wave of nerves. I clutch at my tiny projector remote like it’s a lifeline.
