“That’sa cheap answer.”
“What do my personal desires have to do with Revenant?”
“Everything, Josie. They haveeverythingto do with the creation that fell out of your head and now exists in the real world, perceivable and consumable by friends and strangers alike.”
“You’re freaking me out.”
“Good. Nobody ever gets anywhere interesting when things are comfortable.”
“To be clear, are you asking me to contort myself into an uncomfortable position as a means of keeping you interested? Here I thought you were areformedfinance bro.”
“Stop avoiding the question. I answered yours, didn’t I?”
He waits patiently, letting me summon the courage to articulate something that no one—and I meanno one—has ever asked me before.
What do I want more than anything?
My brain runs through a list of obvious responses:to get B Corp Certified, to make our customers happy and confident with the way they look, to be the best friend to Camila I can possibly be, to be a daughter and sister my family is proud of.But something tells me Will’s not going to accept any of those. They’re all associated with somebody else. They’re all desires built onperception.Which maybe says something all on its own about my fatal flaw.
What do I want, just for me?
“I want my existence to be meaningful,” I all but whisper. My eyes are trained on the bottle of wine, but I force them up to Will’s. He’s watching me with singular, patient attention, with the same focus he gave me in that presentation yesterday. “I want to add value to my community and still be true to myself. A girl who’s into clothes and self-care and pretty things and riding my bicycle, but also environmental conservation and positive social change. I havea fear of being a waste of space. So I guess my biggest desire is… the opposite of that? I want to have totry,but not just for the sake of it. I want the focus of my efforts to be good, and deep, and meaningful. Does that make any sense at all?”
I press my lips together, a blush collecting on my cheeks as the full weight of my speech settles over Will Grant. His eyes are roving my face, searching for something.
“Makes perfect sense,” he says, his voice scraping out. “And for the record, I know exactly how you feel.”
This, I wasn’t expecting. The fact that we both love cycling is one thing, but connecting on an emotional level is… uncharted.
“Really?” I ask, my tone soft.
Will nods, his stormy eyes still locked on mine. I wonder if he’s planning to elaborate—to give me a morsel of history that explains his own insecurity over the depth of humanity he doesn’t know if he can personally accomplish—and for a moment, it seems like he just might. But then our waiter comes back holding a to-go box with Derrick’s untouched meal, and the moment passes.
Still. I leave dinner that night feeling a little bit less alone.
On our drive home after the meal, Will asks me about my bike. When I tell him it’s mostly pink, he emits a bitten-off laugh and says, “I bet that suits you.” He walks me up to my front porch, bids me good night, his eyes lingering on mine until the door clicks shut between us.
On Friday, after our meeting when Will “picks my brain”—which is mostly him asking questions about my company vision and me going on a passionate tangent—he leaves me with not one, but five reference letters from his other clients.
They’re glowing, every one of them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Saturday pop-up was Camila’s idea. Soft launch a physical store before you actually open one.
(Camila’s a genius.)
We’re hosting the all-day event in an airy rental space in the Warehouse District of downtown Austin. I arrive hopeful, optimistic. But when I say it goes from bad to worse, I mean it like this: what started as a controllable dumpster fire devolves into the gaping, smoking crater where a fiery meteor hit the earth.
It’s a gorgeous day, the smallest breeze carrying a hint of daisies and early summer grass across the Austin sky. I left my keys on my front car tire for Will and rode my bike here instead. Cami is by my side, strapped up in her signature weekend athleisure, an iPad cinched to her waist. I head next door to buy a carafe of coffee for us and the other staff who are coming to help later. Then we get to work. We spread out racks of clothes on hangers, organize sweaters on the shelves. Cami and I spend the morning hanging, folding, staging.
The new director, Margaret—who, before coming to Revenant, managed a handful of fashion stores for a large brand in Dallas—does not show up as early as we do. I can see the confusion grow on Cami’s face the later it gets. Finally, Margaret arrives at ten thirty, looking pleasantly surprised we’ve already staged the place.
The event is supposed to start at eleven a.m. sharp. By this point, we have a small line of customers waiting outside the event space. It becomes clear Margaret has not trained herself—or any of the other staff pitching in today—on the checkout devices. (At ten forty-five, we’re watching YouTube videos on how to accept card payments.) And that’s just the beginning of our problems.
Once the doors open (late) and customers begin browsing, the lack of fitting rooms becomes apparent. (One! And it’s also the only bathroom!)
I go into problem-solving mode: call my spray tan girl, offer her hundreds of dollars if she can quickly wipe down her spray tents and bring them by for the day. Then I send a staff member to Target to buy every college-dorm floor-length mirror.
