“So this deck is to convince them that we’re the best?”
“Well, this deck and fifty thousand dollars or so.”
“Whoever bribes them the most gets the best rating?” He shot her a cynical look.
“You can’t bribe them, per se. The money doesn’t buy you a rating. What it buys is a ‘partnership,’ and part of the partnership is a bunch of benefits no one cares about, but the important bit is that the partnership gives you the right to brief them on your product once a year.” Because it was turning out that everything she’d always thought was earned could actually be bought.
His eyebrows creased.
“You’re paying to have them consider you,” she laid out. “It’s a protection racket. If you don’t pay to brief them, they might happen to overlook you on that year’sMagic Waveor whatever report.”
“Huh.” He thought and then laughed bitterly. “Now that’s the business model I need to get into. Go around rating all the wish givers your plane has access to. Demons, genies, angels—pay up or we’ll forget to tell the humans you give wishes.”
“Not angels,” she said, shivering.
His lips quirked a little. “If demon workplaces suck, and human workplaces suck, I wonder what angel workplaces are like?”
“Awesome and terrible, in the old sense of inspiring awe and terror, I’d bet.”
“Fill out this report in triplicate or I shall smite thee.” He snorted. “The fire’s always brighter on the other side of the fence.”
“I know Brad’s being a dick to you,” she said. “But at least he can’t do anything to you physically.”
“Yeah, that part’s definitely better here,” he agreed. But the Slack notification sound from his laptop made his shoulders hunch the same way his bracelet notifications did.
They chipped away at their respective tasks. She controlled herself, only glancing at him once, when she came to the competitive analysis slide. GreenField UnLtd. was still out there, looming, but they’d barely had time to breathe while drowning in a sea of Brad-related tasks. She already felt bad for him. They’d talk, tonight. Although she’d promised herself that every night this week so far, and every night they collapsed at the end of the day, exhausted, to feed Luke’s newfound addiction to Hallmark movies. It was easier to debate the impracticalities of pursuing dreams like ‘Christmas ornament decorator’ or ‘pumpkin farmer’ than plan future moves that had to acknowledge reality. Still, that conversation was definitely not happening in the office. Morgan slipped into a fugue of adjusting font sizes, which was strangely soothing. It wasn’t until she hit the last page that she realized her neck hurt and Luke had wandered off at some point.
“Where’s the intern?” Brad stalked through the office. “When you see him, tell him he doesn’t need coffee, he needs to be in my office.”
Rix raised his head from his paws and whined. Morganstroked his ears, careful to avoid where she knew the spines must be, and he settled.
“Hey, marketing girl,” Brad called through the open door as he passed.
“Morgan,” she reminded him.
“Morgan,” he repeated. “I took a glance: good job on the pitch deck for the analysts. Dropped in some comments.”
The wash of pleasure shocked her. When was the last time someone had said she’d done a good job? Some time in school, maybe. Not at work, or at home. She didn’t like or respect him, and yet she hungered to hear it again. How sad was that? And it had only happened because of Luke—she wondered if somewhere, there was another shoe waiting to drop to balance this out.
Where was Luke, anyway? She glanced at his laptop screen, flooded in a sea of Slack messages from Brad. She might be in the CEO’s good graces, but poor Luke was very much not. Her stomach twisted in guilt.
She faked a stretch and then grabbed her empty mug. It made a good excuse to do a little walkaround. She didn’t want to lead Brad straight to Luke if Luke didn’t want to be found. She ambled her way over to the kitchen, trying to keep the fact that she was looking around from being too obvious.
The double-decker chocolate-chip-cookie/brownie bars she’d brought in had been thoroughly decimated. She snagged one of the remains that someone had cut unevenly into pieces while she waited for the Keurig machine to fill her cup with Decaf Caramel Bacon Popcorn Toast Extra Dark.
“Those cookie things are like, totally extra,” Vijay said, refilling his maté gourd from the hot water tap. “I think Ronaldo ate, like, half of them.”
“I’m carb-loading,” Ronaldo said defensively as he rummaged through the cabinets.
“I thought you were doing keto,” Morgan said, raising an eyebrow.
“That was two weeks ago, I’ve got a big race this weekend.” He found the protein powder he’d been looking for. “Vijay’s right, though. You should go on one of those baking shows. Make some big bucks.”
Morgan couldn’t think of anything she wanted to do less than try to build a five-layer cake, with at least three different mousses sculpted to represent her childhood, in four and a half hours. If nothing else, she didn’t know how to make a will-o’-the-wisp or a hostage situation out of buttercream. “I think the marketing’s working out for me, thanks.”
“If you say so.”
Nettled, she shot back. “What, you’d abandon the glamorous startup lifestyle for reality TV?”
