Kelly was already typing. "The Select Collective."
More silence. Different this time. The sort that settled my thoughts. "What about The Selective?"
"That works," Skye said.
Daisy was already nodding.
Even Kelly gave it a smile of approval.
I wrote it at the top of my notebook page and underlined it twice.
Kelly moved fast once we had the name. She'd been doing this long enough that the rest came quickly. Color palette. Primary font. A one-line positioning statement she'd clearly already drafted and was pretending to arrive at spontaneously. I let her have it, and the results were exactly what I'd expected.
We were deep into package options when my phone buzzed on the table. I glanced at the screen. Daemon. A text. How's it going over there? I typed back: Good. Productive. Talk later. Short enough to say nothing. Long enough to say everything was fine.
I set the phone face-down and picked up my pen.
Kelly waited approximately four seconds.
"Who was that?"
"Logistics," I said.
"Mm." She reached for her coffee.
"Zac talks about Daemon a lot," said Kelly.
"I imagine he does." I kept my eyes on my notebook.
"He says Daemon's been useless on the job site all week." She said it conversationally, studying me before taking another sip. "Distracted. Making mistakes."
"Is there something you want to ask me, Kelly?"
"Nope," she said. "Just making conversation."
Daisy made a sound that approximated a laugh.
"Can we talk about the tasting session?" I said.
Kelly smiled at her screen and said nothing, which was worse.
Skye, apparently deciding the best response was food, opened her box and started setting out mini tarts on the meeting table. Lemon curd, dark chocolate, salted caramel, her infamous cherry tarts, two seasonal fruit variations.
She arranged them as someone who took presentations seriously regardless of the audience. I'd brought food. Not samples, but a full spread. Marinated olives, two kinds of bruschetta, a small dish of the white bean dip I'd been testing. The type of food that made a room feel like a table.
Rather than risk tipping the flowers over, Daisy left her bouquet on the credenza, where we could all admire it. Locally sourced, she explained. Nothing imported. Everything that could grow within fifty miles of Coogan's Break.
We agreed on seven o'clock for Monday. Early enough that people could get there after closing up, late enough that the dinner rush wouldn't be an issue for anyone with a kitchen to run.
Kelly looked at it all laid out and said, "This is the pitch."
"This is what we are," Daisy said.
Skye picked up a lemon tart, bit into it, and said nothing for a second. "We're going to beat them."
Not a question. A conclusion she'd arrived at through evidence.
I looked at the three of them. A florist, a baker, a marketer. None of them had asked for this fight, but they'd still shown up.
