Chapter 27

TWENTY-SEVEN

SOPHIE

Maybe Ella’s lack of response since the blowup on the sidewalk was a blessing in disguise. Because for the last seventy-two hours, she hadn’t gotten home earlier than eleven. Last night she didn’t even have the energy to floss.

Seven days. They had exactly seven days left to execute a campaign. The team threw everything they could on the wall—changing graphics, updating copy, crying, swearing. Coffee overflowed along with a few frustrated tears, and everyone was exhausted.

Her heart hurt over Ella. But the ache started morphing from pain to anger, splashed with resentment. For someone who was sooo supportive of one-night hookups, creating an ad for herself to find a no-strings-attached relationship, and so open with her sexuality, Ella held that night against Sophie this much? It wasn’t like Sophie had tried to hurt Ella.

But her heart hurt for something else. Maybe it seemed ridiculous, but now that it was so close, she wanted this cruise so bad. She needed sleep and rest and to see the ocean. Her entire life, she’d dreamed about having a vacation like this, and dammit, she deserved it. She’d have to save up for a year to do this on her own and burn through a week of vacation time. Her dream was being flushed away because the team couldn’t generate some goddamn proper images of doughnuts. She dug her knuckle into her eye as her spirit cracked.

Unfair. Everything was unfair.

7:00 a.m. of the final forty-eight hours arrived early, but she was not the first one in the office. The design team were unloading their backpacks, all ponytails and sweatshirts and makeup free, looking like they’d barely showered.

Sophie grabbed her phone. One last-ditch effort before she’d be considered a full-on stalker.

Sophie:

Can we please talk?

Her breath hitched and stuck in her throat when she saw the bubbles arise. Thank God . Hopefully Ella could wait for a week, though. Right now, she didn’t have a free second.

Ella:

No

No? No? Was she actually serious right now? Sophie exhaled through her nose and pulled in two more cleansing breaths. Okay, enough. Later, they’d clear this mess. Right now, she couldn’t. The internal stress-level barometer reached a fever pitch. She missed Ella, and wanted to know her girlfriend was okay.

But another layer added to the stress. So much work surrounded her. She was getting lost in approvals and documents and asset refreshes and headlines, and she needed Ella to help manage the project.

Her lips trembled. This was all too much. Everything was too much. She slumped, and rested her head in her arms on her desk. She wasn’t sure how long she lay like that, but the room increased in volume.

“You feeling all right?” Malcolm’s voice sounded behind her.

She snapped her head up so quickly she got a head rush, then pressed her thumb into her temple to stave off the impending headache. “Yep, I’m good.”

Malcolm’s mouth twisted, then he pointed to his office. “Come with me, please.”

Oh boy. That was definitely Malcolm’s stern dad/manager voice. She prayed he wasn’t about to give her a lecture on how workplace relationships jeopardize the ability to run a project effectively. She couldn’t handle that conversation right now. At this point, she could barely handle staying awake. She scraped at the remaining polish on her thumbnail and followed him to his office.

He shut the door behind them, definitely another terrible sign as he always liked his door open. She sat down with her shoulders hunched like she was called into the principal’s office.

“Ella is gone for an indefinite period.”

His voice was devoid of all playfulness, and she desperately wanted him to break this moment up and show pictures of his baby. “Wh… what does that mean? Indefinite?”

“Exactly how it sounds. George called me late last night and let me know.” He sat down and propped his elbows on the desk. “She will not be back to help finish this campaign.”

Christ . Taking a few days to reel from the whole Jasmine situation was understandable. But taking more than a week off because of what happened with them was over the top. The devil and angel sat on her shoulder, playing a hearty game of tug of war. Sophie was heartbroken and dealing with what this information meant. However, being a professional, she should know taking a week off was not feasible.

Her anger shifted, quickly and furiously, to anxiety. All her nail polish fell to the ground, and hot tears sprung to her eyes. “I can’t do this, Malcolm. I can’t.”

He put his palms in front of her on the desk. “You can, though. You absolutely can. And… you don’t have a choice. It’s too late to train anyone else.”

“It’s too much! I didn’t even get half of what I needed to do last night and I was here until midnight. I am totally fried. I’ve got nothing left to give… I just…” She started crying now, and buried her face into her hands. She was mortified she was crying in front of Malcolm. But she missed Ella, and God, she was so fucking tired. The only thing that made this situation less humiliating was the look of panic crossing Malcolm’s face.

He handed her a Starbucks-coffee-stained napkin from under his coffee cup. “I’ve ruined everything.” She wiped her nose with the napkin and her eyes with her sleeve. “We won’t get it done on time, and everyone is going to lose out on the cruise, and now Ella is not coming back, and it’s all my fault.”

Malcolm’s chin jutted to the side, and his eyes narrowed. “Ella not being here has nothing to do with you.”

How could Malcolm sometimes be the smartest man in the room and also so totally clueless? She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Yes, it is. I mean, I didn’t mean to upset her and everything, and I don’t know how to make it up, but it’s one hundred percent my fault, and I wish I could fix it so she could be here with me”—she coughed—“to finish this campaign.” The tears bubbled again, and she hiccupped. “I ruined everything.”

Malcolm ran his fingers over his tight curls and interlocked his fingers above his head. He exhaled a slow, steady breath. “Look. Ella’s gone because of an HR-related issue, and we don’t know when she’ll return. But I can assure you that you had nothing to do with it.”

What in the hell is an HR issue? “What do you even mean?”

“I’ve already said enough, and this is a sensitive topic. But you don’t have to do this one hundred percent alone, okay? Give me an hour to readjust some schedules. I can pitch in, we can see if George’s EA can book the rooms, I can have a junior designer upload the assets instead of you. I’ve got you.”

Sophie nodded and stood, her chest allowing a bit more air in than when she arrived this morning. But still, what was an HR issue? George and Malcolm both assured them that dating in the office was okay since they were peers. Sophie checked her watch. A few minutes remained before her next status meeting and she decided to do something bold, ballsy, and something she’d never done. She went to George’s office.

“I know we are not supposed to pop by like this,” she started as she stared at a heavily annoyed executive assistant who was juggling ringing phones and instant message pings firing on her computer. “Can I please talk to George for like just a minute.”

“He’s not here.”

Of course not. Even in the midst of the deepest shit show, he was MIA. Although, after learning more about him lately, Sophie wondered if maybe he thought his presence was too much additional pressure. For once, though, she wished he were hovering. “When is he going to return?”

“I don’t know,” she said, without looking up from her computer.

“Well, where is he?”

The executive assistant looked up now and ceased her typing. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”

That’s fair. “Can I please schedule something?”

Her lips pulled into a tight line. “Listen. He’s gone, probably for a few days?—”

“A few days? We have this campaign and we’re going to?—”

“I will send him an email letting him know you stopped by.” She flicked her hands in a dismissive wave. “If that is all, I need to finish this.”

Sophie turned without response. The EA was George’s gatekeeper and doing her job well, but she needed to talk to him. Fine . But she had to figure out how to talk to him later. The buzzing of her phone in her pocket was like a yellow jacket. Instant messages and texts hit her at the same rate as her heartbeat. She scrammed back to her desk with more voices clamoring.

“Assets need to pop more. Increase the shadowing on image two.”

“Rework bullet one from the copy.”

“Where we at with round three and four?”

“Team A and B are working on copy level one and two. Team C and D are joining forces. Going to swap A and C with B and D for a second iteration.”

“Send this to legal, see what needs to change. I’ll set a teleconference with Devil’s team for noon.”

Like soccer players in the championship, they scrammed, hurried back, adjusted, and iterated. Sophie went old-school, nearly sprinting between war rooms, grabbing papers and sketches, and hand delivering to the other room.

The moment she’d make an update in the spreadsheet, a new update was sent her way.

Malcolm poked his head in the war room. “Devil’s approved the background. Main image and copy still needs work.”

Thank God. A small win. She ran back between war rooms, breathless with a grin to relay the message.

The afternoon melted into the evening. Notes, and whiteboard scribbles, people kicking off shoes and eating pizza. She ran, room to room, barking messages, failing to hold a smile. Her throat burned, and her limbs were on fire.

Come on, we can do this . They had exactly one more day. Absolutely no more. Today and tomorrow, to make this work if they had any hope of coding and going live.

6:00 p.m.… 7:00 p.m.… 8:00 p.m.… The sweat at Sophie’s hairline temples now felt like a permanent part of her. She ran her hand against her scalp, prickling her palm, and tried to catch a breath. The team around her, with dark-circled eyes, yawning and grumpy, slogged against the keyboards.

“Lead message is approved!” Malcolm’s voice cut through the tapping, and a small cheer erupted. “Sinfully Angelic was the winner.”

Of all the copy, they chose that one? Clean, simple messaging, which made sense, but was also different than the original direction. It wasn’t her place to judge, though, and she said a quick gratitude prayer that she could check this item off the list.

Everyone enjoyed the one-minute celebration, then dove back into the work. With the new copy, the designers need to flip the graphics and create more imagery because of the new blank space. They used what they had, and tried different fonts, colors, and shadows. Edits and scrolling, and swapping images continued through the night. 10:00 p.m. crept up on them. The Devil’s team was no longer responding, and Sophie needed to call it an evening.

Twenty-four hours left. Not a second more. No more contingencies, no more breaks.

But Sophie was scrappy. A fighter. And she refused to give up—on anything. She would not let her team down. And she wasn’t giving up on Ella.