When she shoots me a harsh glare, I know my attempts have failed. “We can easily fix that,” she says. “This is just so we agree with a concept.”
“Like I said, I don’t hate it,” Garrett concedes. His phone buzzes and after a slight struggle getting it out of his very tight jeans pocket, he looks at the screen. “Shit. Gotta answer this email quickly. Talk amongst yourselves.”
With his attention elsewhere, I turn to Mina, speaking quietly. “Is this what you were doing yesterday?”
She doesn’t look directly at me. “And a little bit on Saturday.”
“Before the party? Why didn’t you mention it to me?”
“You didn’t want to talk about it!”
“You could have at least given me a heads-up that you had an idea.”
“Why? So you could shit all over it?” She turns to me then and I am momentarily silenced as her wild honey eyes lock on mine. I remember how much I liked looking up at them when I was on my knees in front of her. I drop eye contact so I can defend myself.
“I’m not shitting all over it. It’s a good idea. I just don’t know if it’s the winning idea. That’s what this meeting was supposed to be all about.”
“We don’t have time to brainstorm or whatever else you were planning on. It takes days to get the copy right and even longer to prep the boards. Neither of us can work on this full-time so I just wanted to give us a head start.”
“Us? Or you?” I level at her.
She pouts at me and it only draws my attention to her lips, lips I really did enjoy kissing on Saturday night.Fuck. Focus, Charlie, focus!“I told you I wanted this lead. I told you I was going to work hard to secure it. That’s exactly what I’m doing,” she says.
I want to protest that we can work hard together. I want to tell her that that should be easy now we have something like a friendship between us after Saturday night. I want to remind her that we still have one more family function to navigate together this weekend and so competing at work will hardly help that go smoothly.
But I don’t say any of this because Garrett audibly breathes in so he can slide his phone back in his pocket and then he asks to see the rest of Mina’s presentation.
It’s good. I can’t deny it. Mina’s worked hard and her art and design skills means that it’s all very visual already. Should this be the concept we go with, she’s essentially already got a draft ready for a pitch deck and converting it to something more polished and cohesive with HNO’s template would take a day or two at most. But the concept doesn’t grab me. It’s hard to discern if it’s because it’s Mina’s idea, an idea she worked on all weekend without telling me despite us spending all of Saturday night together, and I’m feeling threatened, or if it’s because the concept itself is lacking.
“Thoughts, Charlie?” Garrett decides to put me on the spot once Mina has finished her presentation.
“It’s impressive. Mina’s worked hard on it. I think it meets the target audience and has a strong message,” I say cautiously.
“But?” Garrett once again proves he’s not as disinterested as he often looks.
“But I think we can do better,” I reply.
Mina groans. An actual groan. An actual groan that sounds like a distant cousin of some of the moans her mouth made when my tongue was inside her. Blood and heat thickens my dick and I have never been more grateful to be sitting at a table.
“Go on,” Garrett prompts.
I cough, clearing my throat. “Well, it’s just so… predictable, and not very original.”
“Predictable is good,” Mina jumps in, her eyes on Garrett. “Status likes being a reliable, consistent brand, we know this from the previous pitches we’ve done for them. They’re not big risk takers. And as we all agree, this hits the audience right on the nose.”
“But it’s what all their competitors are doing.” I wave my hand at her laptop. “They’re not going to stand out.”
“Charlie has a point,” Garrett says.
“I’m not saying we start from scratch because as you say we don’t really have time. But maybe we could just, I don’t know, fine-tune this concept a bit.”
“If you think you can do better, go ahead.” Mina shuts her laptop with a loud clap.
“I didn’t sayIcould do better, I saidwecould come up with something more original, more attention-grabbing.”
Garrett pulls my attention toward him as he stands with a big huff. “You guys have two more hours, then I need this meeting room for a client meeting with Pedigree.”
“Ah, are they bringing dogs in again?” I sit up straighter, eager to know the answer.
