Sneak Peek of Never Landing

Everett

I loved my job.

At least, that was what I kept saying to myself as I sat through the tenth meeting of the week.

What was quickly becoming my last-straw meeting.

Unlike most of them, it wasn't one of those "this could have been an email" meetings. No, it was the big one. The one where we talked about all the work I'd done on the Crosslife account over the last two months. Eighty-hour weeks, every night and weekend consumed by research and art and writing. Crosslife was a trillion-dollar life insurance conglomerate, and I'd come up with their entire new ad campaign. The slogan, the storyboard, the art, it was all mine. All out of my brain, without a single bit of input or help from anyone else.

It was unheard of in the company. It was supposed to be a writer and an artist, every time. A team of creatives, working in concert. But my boss had told me he didn't have anyone else to help. That he had faith in me. He believed in me, and when I finished and secured the Crosslife account, imagine the bonus. The credit. The money Crosslife would be giving the company.

And yet, somehow I was entirely unsurprised as I sat next to him while he smiled at the CEO of Crosslife, nodding. "Thank you so much. It really is some of the best work I've done in years. I don't usually get down in the trenches anymore, but for you guys, of course. And I guess Everett here just couldn't handle the stress of coming up with something new. You know these young guys, always biting off more than they can chew."

The CEO didn't even glance my way. A woman to his right was looking at me, sad-eyed and knowing. Part of me wanted to see it as pity and lash out, but I recognized the look. It was empathy. Understanding. She'd been there. Probably thanks to the asshole next to her, who was eating up my boss's ass-kissing and nodding along like it was simply his due.

I glanced across the table to my boss's right, to Tom Smith, one of our most experienced writers, who'd agreed to sit in on the meeting despite not having even glanced at my work before the presentation. He'd told me a dozen times since I'd started that I needed to learn to play politics. I could hear his ancient, gravelly voice in my head in that moment, low and bored and so very tired of my dramatics. "Being in advertising is more about playing the game right than doing the job right, Everett. You need to learn finesse. Give the boss what he wants, and you'll get what you want back."

But that wasn't how it had gone. I'd worked the eighty-hour weeks. I'd done the job alone when I was supposed to have help. I'd done it faster and better and more and...now I was getting nothing. No credit. Not even a glance from my boss. Fickle betrayal, thy name was James Warren.

Yeah, fine, Warren's name was on the building and mine wasn't. But that didn't mean he ought to steal my credit. It meant he should be happy he'd hired someone who got the job done. Right?

Finally, after what felt like hours of meeting and being entirely ignored except when someone had to ask me a question because they were talking about my goddamned work while pretending Warren had done it, the CEO of Crosslife stood up and shook Warren's hand, then Tom's, while telling them he looked forward to seeing them with the completed campaign plans in January. Then, ignoring me, he turned and walked out.

The woman who'd spent the meeting sitting next to him gave me a nod as she stood. "Good work, Mr...."

And fuck me, that was when I realized Warren hadn't even introduced me. "Everett Bailey, ma'am. And thank you."

She glanced down at my computer, then back up at me, and I couldn't help but feel like she was trying to communicate something to me. The computer was in front of me, of course. It was my personal laptop—the company hadn't even bought it for me, but required me to provide my own, since "you artists are always so picky." It was the only computer on the table and had been connected to the overhead to project the plans to show the CEO.

That was probably how she'd known that the work was mine.

Fuck knew why her CEO couldn't be bothered to pay attention to a little thing like that.

I slid the computer closer to me, and she nodded sharply, like she thought I'd understood her. Did she think I should hold the files hostage until Warren gave me credit? I was pretty sure that my employment paperwork said anything I produced on company time was company property. It wasn't like I could go behind Warren's back and sell it to them.

On the other hand, she didn't even shake their hands. Just turned and marched out on her terrifying looking four-inch stiletto heels. In the hallway, she started talking to the CEO, who suddenly seemed more animated than he had during the entire meeting, waving his arms and smiling at her and looking...hell, almost fatherly. Wish I'd met that guy and not the one who'd ignored me.

Maybe it was just me. Everyone ignored me. Overlooked me. Stole my work and took credit for it. If I was the one who kept getting stepped on, didn't that mean I had to be complicit in some way?

"Well then," Warren said, sounding self-satisfied, leaning back and clasping his hands over his middle. "I guess lunch is cancelled. You've got a lot of work to do if you're going to have final print ads ready for Crosslife by January."

When I continued to just sit there for a moment, he turned and motioned at me, waving both his hands in a scat motion, like he was telling a dog to get off his couch. "Off you go, back to work."

I unplugged my computer from the projector and left the meeting room in a daze.

That was it. He'd taken credit for the last two months of my life, now get back to work. Spend the next month working on something he'd already taken credit for.

I went back to my desk and sat there, unseeing, at my closed laptop for...well, I didn't know how long.

Tom passed by, stopped, gave a deep sigh, and turned back to me. "Don't make this a big drama, Everett. You did fine, now get back to it and finish the job. That's what you make the big bucks for."

Big bucks?

How the fuck much did he think Warren paid me? It wasn't "big bucks," that was for sure. It was enough to pay my rent and eat, but that was about it. If I hadn't worked full time through college, my parents graciously paying the five thousand dollars a semester I still couldn't afford while working full time, I'd have had student loans I couldn't pay for on top of that.

Suddenly, I felt an icy wind flow over me. Grabbing my computer and holding it against my chest like it was the only thing I had in the world, I went to Warren's corner office. The door was open and he was alone, so I walked in.

He glanced up from his computer at me, then back. In the reflection on the enormous windows behind him, I could see that the only thing open on his computer was a game of solitaire. What was this, the nineties? Did he not know if he was going to sit around playing computer games during work hours, there were way better ones these days? Zombies to kill and hot vampires to romance and not crappy 2D card games that hadn't been updated since freaking nineteen-ninety-two.

But no. Warren was of the generation that used the term "new-fangled" and thought computers alone were silly and frivolous.

"Well?" he asked. "I'm busy here."

To my credit, I didn't laugh. Busy playing the most pointless card game known to man. It wasn't even a game of skill or talent. You could beat it or you couldn't, depending on the random way the cards were dealt.

I couldn't worry about that, though. There was a reason I'd come to his office. "My bonus. The bonus you promised me if I secured the Crosslife account."

His smile in return was predatory. "Now Everett. It wouldn't look good if I gave you a bonus after telling Crosslife I made the ads, would it?"

"Crosslife doesn't check your books. And you didn't make the ads. I did. I've been working on this account for two months, and I did literally all the work." When his expression didn't change, I pointed out, "And now you're asking me to do more work on it. Without giving me the bonus you promised me."

"Well you haven't finished the job yet, have you?"

His smile didn't flag, and we both knew the truth. He was never going to give me a bonus. Worse, he knew that I knew, and he didn't care.

At some point, when I kept letting everyone step on me, did I start to deserve it? Had I earned that?

I turned and walked away, clinging to my laptop like it was a lifeline as I went.

Next thing I knew, I was standing in front of my apartment door. I'd somehow left the office, walked the half-mile to my apartment, and gone up three flights of stairs without even noticing. Shrugging, I pulled out my keys and unlocked the door, going in to collapse on the couch.

It was true. If I kept letting everyone walk all over me, I was asking them to do it more. Maybe I still didn't deserve it—maybe no one deserved it—but as long as I continued to allow it, it was going to keep happening.

I sat up, opening my laptop and logging into my email. Beatrice from HR had sent me an email the day before warning me that due to a new company policy, if I didn't take my three weeks of vacation before January, it was going to be gone. Vacation wasn't going to roll over anymore, so I'd start the new year with none, and nothing to show for all that accrued vacation time.

I'd ignored it at the time. I'd been busy, working on the Crosslife account. I'd had enormous dreams of dollar signs. Tom said when he'd secured a big mutual fund company account in the nineties, he'd gotten a five-figure bonus. I'd imagined what I could do with a five-figure bonus, and no vacation could be worth more than that.

But there was no bonus, and there never would be.

But legally, there was vacation. Three weeks of it. And with just under four weeks left in the year, which included some pretty major holidays, I had just about enough to get me to January.

So I opened an email to Beatrice, sending her a long, flowery professional email thanking her for pointing out my oversight, and informing her that I'd be taking all the vacation I'd accrued, starting with a half day today, and that I'd see the folks at Warren Advertising after New Year's.

It was less than ten minutes before a clearly shocked Beatrice sent me a response, saying she was happy to be of help and hoped I had a lovely vacation and had plans with my family.

No reason to tell her that my parents were probably somewhere in Switzerland, living what they were calling their "SKI"—spending kid's inheritance—life, spending every last dime they'd accrued in their lives, and I hadn't seen them since the day I'd graduated college. Not that they were bad parents or I begrudged them their happy retirement, but we didn't really talk much.

The only other family I'd ever had and known personally, my mother's mother, was gone.

But what she'd left me? I still had that. An old three-story colonial house in the small town of Cider Landing, four hours' drive from the city.

My phone rang: Mr. Warren.

"Bailey," I answered by rote.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Bailey?" My boss growled down the line.

I smiled, a half-mad, feral kind of smile, but I knew he couldn't see it, so I shook myself and answered. "Beatrice from HR said I need to use my vacation or lose it. So I'm using it. I'm sure you're not calling to try to illegally coerce me into not using my job benefits, Mr. Warren."

There was silence on the line for a moment, then a deep sigh. "I'll postpone the Crosslife meeting as long as I can, but you'd better be back in the office the second your vacation is done, and I expect utter perfection this time."

Of course. He was expecting me to work while on vacation. The jackass.

I didn't answer, just hung up.

A moment later, Tom called. This time I was already speaking when I accepted the call, "I'm not playing this political bullshit, Tom. I wanted to do my job and get paid for it, and apparently that's not an option. He told me I'm not getting a bonus for the Crosslife account. You want the account? Have it."

Without waiting for him to respond, I hung up. Then I turned my phone off. I wasn't required to answer my phone. I was on vacation.

I threw casual clothes into a duffel bag, then thinking about three entire weeks away from my apartment, filled another as well. One bag in my left hand and another slung over my shoulder, I paused on my way to the door, and looked at where my computer was still sitting on the couch.

My computer, with every bit of work I'd done for Crosslife on it, and not backed up on a company server or in the cloud, because Warren didn't approve of clouds of information he couldn't see and control. A grin on my face that probably would have gotten me shoved in a straitjacket and padded cell in some places, I snatched the thing up and stuffed it into one of my bags.

If James Warren wanted Crosslife ads, he could make new ones himself.

Fuck that guy.

I was on my way to my grandmother's old house in Cider Landing, and no one could stop me. No one was there to step on me, and I was fucking done being stepped on.