Chapter 18

EIGHTEEN

ELLA

Six shampoos later, and the glue still would not come out of Ella’s hair. She tangled her fingers through the brittle pile of burned ends, her scalp raw from scrubbing. Shaking out her aching arms, she exhaled, and scrubbed one last time.

Not that she was surprised this had happened, of course. Ever since her first seizure, she’d had twice-yearly EEGs to monitor her brain activity. But the glue sucked. Tacky, flaky, and nearly impossible to remove.

The timing of her doctor appointment the previous evening wasn’t ideal. She’d skipped the final meeting to make it to the doctor’s office on time, and Sophie was mostly MIA for the evening. Ella had sent her a few text messages after the appointment and received delayed, brief responses, which frazzled her nerves. Later in the evening, Sophie finally shot a quick message that she was spending the evening with her parents, and Ella calmed.

After confirming she looked respectable, she hopped down the stairs to the kitchen and pulled out a yogurt parfait. One bite in, her father’s heavy footsteps sounded around the corner.

“What’s up, kid?” he asked, straightening his tie and reaching for a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

Kid . She tried hard not to roll her eyes. “Nothing.” She may not have rolled her eyes, but the annoyance was thick in her tone. He didn’t mean the things he said, like calling her kid. But that was the crux of their relationship—well-intentioned, but horribly executed, dialogue.

He lowered his phone and stared at her, his eyes folding with concern. “You okay? Did you have an episode I don’t know about?”

“I’m sure with the secret service level of monitoring you have from my smartwatch you would’ve been informed already.” She grinned and rolled the spoon over her tongue. “No, I’m good. I just had all that gunk in my hair from my EEG last night and it took me longer to get ready than I hoped. And right now, we don’t have a second to waste.”

How did her dad do this, day in and day out, with a smile? Not only a smile, he thrived on the intensity. A level of excitement was attached to the chase, for sure, but the stress was so much. She didn’t want to admit to Sophie or her dad, but she’d been sleeping pretty terribly lately, plagued with nightmares of being in the wrong building, or that they pushed an ad out without the proper legal sign-off and she’d single-handedly bankrupted the company.

“And the results were fine, I assume?” her dad asked as he twisted the lid on his to-go mug. When she nodded, he patted her on the shoulder. “Good. Why don’t we head in together today, then?”

Ella grabbed an apple for the road and followed him to the car.

The office buzzed more today than was typical. Ella wasn’t sure if it was because she was fifteen minutes later than usual because of the glue debacle, or because they were getting close to sending the creative to the clients. As Ella rounded the corner, Sophie’s face lit up, and Ella’s breath halted sharply in her chest.

“Morning, sunshine,” Ella whispered as she slid into her seat. “I can’t believe it’s Thursday already. I feel like the week flew by, but also like we must be in July by now.”

“Same. I’m so done.” Sophie reached into her bag and handed Ella a teal cupcake with edible pearl sprinkles. “For you.”

Ella opened the compostable container and inhaled. “Smells amazing. What’s this for?”

“I had so much nervous energy this morning, so I stopped at a bakery by my parents’ house. Figured I’d load us up for the day we’re about to have.”

“I know. I’m a little nervous to be honest.” Ella dipped her pinkie in the frosting and licked. “I keep refreshing my email to see if something came in overnight, but nope.”

Yesterday, they had multiple meetings with the creative leads to do internal final approval. And not surprisingly, but also not welcome, they asked for a few tweaks before they sent it to the client for initial approval. The team had worked themselves to the bone and created some pretty cool images and copy. But. And Ella would never tell anyone, especially since this was the first ad she’d ever worked on, something wasn’t landing with the images. But she was a PM, not a creative, and Sophie mentioned so many times to trust the team.

“Do you think we should pre-set a meeting with the client?” Ella asked.

Sophie’s head tilted side to side. “It’s always so hard to know. When Malcolm gets in, let’s see if he thinks we should do a placeholder. It looks terrible if we move the placeholder because we couldn’t get our shit together, but would be equally as terrible if we couldn’t get all the right people in a room because we were delayed.”

“Got it.” Ella bit into the cupcake and murmured an approval. “Love your outfit today. You look amazing.”

Sophie’s face screamed “swoon” as she patted the frayed-edged, scissored neckline of her David Bowie sweatshirt. “Ah. This old thing?”

Within an hour, voices boomed around Ella, as the team forwent a formal meeting space and resorted to shouting across the open workspace.

“Insta and Facebook updated and sent.”

“Banner ad, initial approval. Sending to our contact in legal for a quick peek before the meeting.”

“Conference room changed for an increase of team members.”

“I’ll send the agenda if you want to recap for the web team the digital-display update.”

“Web producers approved dimensions. Sending ticket over now.”

Ella’s head spun, but the energy was intoxicating. This modern-day Mad Men-type feel, where caffeine flowed and heels stomped, and the pinging of instant messages became a symphony in the background. She stole glances at Sophie, marveling at the way her lips pouted when she was in deep concentration, how her fingers typed at rapid-fire speed, and how she peeked up and did a quick scan of the room, then winked at Ella, who melted under the split-second motion.

Clap, clap, clap. Her dad’s signature palm smacking broke up the chatter and folks quieted. “All right, guys, we’re getting close to the finish line here. The leads are knee-deep in presenting to the VP right now.” He stomped over to Sophie and checked his watch. “Sophie. Burning the midnight oil—er, the mid day oil, I see.”

Sophie sat upright. “Yep.”

“I told the program manager to circle back with you right after the meeting concludes.” He pivoted on his heels and pointed at the lead producer. “Joel! Can I get…”

As he thumped to the nearest table, his words became lost in the oblivion. Ella leaned toward Sophie. “I gave him that one.”

Sophie’s nose scrunched. “You gave him one what?”

“For the bingo card.” Ella took so much pleasure in Sophie’s jaw dropping she was inclined to take a picture. “I told him to work in the words ‘circle back,’ ‘finish line,’ and ‘synergies.’ Two out of three isn’t bad.”

A red stripe raced up Sophie’s neck. “I, um, not sure what bingo card you’re?—”

“Like he doesn’t know.” Ella cut her off with a smile. “He’s known about this game forever and made it a personal mission to drop as much business jargon as possible. We used to google things he could say, or when we watched a workplace movie and a good one came up, he’d jot it down in his little notebook. I think it’s like his contribution to the office shenanigans.”

Sophie’s mouth remained open before her lips lifted into a smile. “Your dad just became one of the coolest leaders, ever.”

Ella had appreciated this trait in her dad, thinking it took a lot of humility to essentially be the butt of a five-year-long joke. Her dad may have the emotional intelligence of a ferret, but he took his work seriously. He wanted to keep up morale in the way that he knew how. Even though he fell flat sometimes, he at least tried.

Two hours flew by, coffee was drunk, refilled, drunk, and refilled again. Knuckles popped with the fatigue of typing. Ella nearly broke out in a sweat with the fevered pitch. She wasn’t even sure when they ate, until she realized a half-eaten slice of pepperoni pizza was on her desk, and she vaguely recalled a manager tossing them some food on the way to a meeting.

When the leads rejected a headline for not being “punchy enough”—whatever the hell that meant—the whole room groaned, and some seriously creative spins on the f-word funneled through the air. She booked an emergency working- session conference room while Sophie literally jogged down the hall to knock on the door of the legal team.

The time clicked away, three o’clock ganging up on them. Her heart thudded in her chest. Landing this today was critical. If not, they were in serious danger of not executing on time, and the real possibility occurred of Sophie and the other team members not going on the cruise. She glanced at Sophie, her cheeks red, her lip ring tucked firmly between her teeth, all lightness and warmth gone as she dashed to and from group to group, with her laptop tucked under her arm.

Malcolm burst into the room and cupped his hands. “Approved!”

Approved? Like approved approved?

Sophie slumped in her corner, her face like she finished a marathon. She gripped Ella, her fingers fanning across her arm. “It’s done. Oh, thank the sweet baby advertising angels for looking down upon us during our time of need.”

The energy in the room shifted from scowls and groans to cheers and sighs. “Approved?” Ella glanced at two creatives hugging each other, and Malcolm patting a guy on the back. “But what does that mean?”

Life filled back in Sophie’s face. “That means we wait for the client approval and then we’re good to go.”

Nice. After all the work, time, and preparation, they were inches away from the finish line. From the first week of training, she remembered after client approval, which usually took a few days, they’d typically request minor tweaks, send back to legal for approval, and then prep the producers to code on the website. The running, the chase, the marathon was complete, and a lightness that Ella hadn’t felt in so long filled her. “So now what?”

Sophie leaned toward Ella. “Now we celebrate.”

Celebrate. With Sophie? Every part of this sounded intriguing. “Any ideas?”

Sophie’s eyes dashed across the space and her lips curved into a grin. “Yes, I do.”