“Listen, the team and I met last night, and you’re our top, top pick for this. We’re so excited to bring you on.”
“Wh—really?” I should leave it at that, but I don’t. Instead, I say what I’m thinking. “It seemed like the sketches I presented didn’t work for you.”
“This is a moment we need to move on,” she says, as though I haven’t spoken at all. “You’re on the verge of a brand transformation.”
“Yes, I agree, but I thought the ideas I proposed—”
“Hidden messages,” she interrupts. “It’s brilliant. We want to do a whole line. We’re thinking messages of motivation, maybe one over the course of each month? I’m sure you could work it out—I saw that program! Anyway, we think it could be a hit, especially if we do it quickly. Sort of a game for our consumers, you know? It’s terrific.”
A game.
That quickly, my house-of-cards confrontation schedule collapses all around me, fresh pain about Reid punching through my chest. Every game I played with him had felt so sincere, so honest, so special. And every game had led towork—and to a relationship—that was sincere, honest, special. Now all of it feels trivialized, false. My name and Reid’s tied together in some shallow, scandalous narrative, and I can’t even speak to him to find out what’s true and what’s not. All my effort and creativity for Make It Happyn reduced to this, a half-baked offer to turn my mistakes into money.
This is such amess.
“Meg?” Ivonne says. “Are you still there?”
Part of me wants to give her a hard no, to simply hang up at this ham-handed proposal, maybe even to block her number, too. But I’ve been self-employed in this city for too long to do anything that reckless, and anyway, I feel dangerously close to one of those blurting, I’ve-reached-my-limit outbursts that’s gotten me into so much trouble before.
I compose myself enough to make an apology, and a request to call her back, given what I describe as “some distraction” in my current circumstances. She laughs congenially and agrees—ha ha ha, isn’t scandalhilarious?—but asks that I call her first thing Monday.
“Sure,” I promise before hanging up, though I don’t see how I’ll have any more clarity on this issue by Monday.
It’s a slog to get home. It’s muggy and gray, my personal worst weather combination, and anyone who’s out in it seems like they don’t want to be, including me. Sure, I’m glad I got to talk to Cecelia, but maybe that’s enough for the day. Maybe I could let myself hide for a bit longer, hand over my phone to Sibby until tomorrow, while I wait and hope for Reid to call.
That hiding—it’s what I want most as I trudge up the stairs to my apartment, feeling the energy leak from my bones. When I open the door, I’m head down with headphones on, hiding, hiding, hiding, but my day of confrontation isn’t quite over yet, because when I finally pull them from my ears and look up, I see that it’s not only Sibby here in the apartment.
It’s Lark, too.
And in her hands, she has her planner.
“I didnothide anything in there,” I blurt immediately, because I guess I’ve finally snapped. I wish this proclamation—which is true—seemed more convincing, but since I have actual beads of sweat on my forehead, I’m sure I look like Lying Witness Number Four, sent over here from central casting.
“Well, this is awkward,” says Sibby, grimacing as she looks between me and Lark. “In this case, I canliterallysay I’ve been there.” She gestures to where I’m standing.
Lark laughs.
Wait . . . she laughs?
“What’s going on here?” I say, my gaze now the one ping-ponging between them. They look like they’re about to put on face masks and watchThe Princess Tent. Honestly that’s a pretty good idea, but I still can’t figure out what’s happened here since I left.
“Lark came to check on you,” says Sibby. “She was worried.”
“I read the news and thought I’d come over,” she says. She holds up her planner. “I was showing Sibby what you’d done for me while we waited for you to get back.”
Sibby? It’s Sibby now?
“Why have I never hired you to do a planner?” Sibby says, gesturing to Lark’s. “This one is gorgeous.”
“Because you use an app,” I say.
“Point,” says Sibby, holding up a finger. “How’d it go with Cecelia?”
I rub at my sweaty temples. “You guys, I need a minute. What is—are you two friends now?”
“We had a nice talk while we waited for you,” Lark says. “You didn’t tell me Sibby was auditioning again.”
I gape. “I didn’t know she was.”
