Page 38 of The Hard Launch

She walks to the whiteboard and picks up a marker. She scrawls FAST - CHEAP - GOOD across the board.

“Remember this thing?” she asks.

“Yeah, I know: pick two,” I say, as engineers meekly return to their seats.

“Two. And you’re consistently demanding all three.” She puts the marker down and pinches the bridge of her nose. “I’ll be right back, you guys. Go ahead and get started without me.”

And she walks out.

Dave begins describing why they were forced to make some of the decisions they did, and I try my hardest to focus on what he’s saying. Things like this happen with Lacey all the time. It’s just part of the process with her. Nothing to do with how careful I haven’t been.

And then the phone she left behind starts buzzing. On the screen she’s sharing to the huge monitor in front of us, we see the unknown call coming in through her Mac, too. And then it goes to voicemail, where there’s a handy feature that transcribes the message as it’s being left.

Hi Lacey, it’s Meredith at Tooity, the screen reads. We all pretend like we’re not looking.

Just calling to follow up with you about the product role here—

Ingrid claps the laptop shut. Eyes dart around the room, but Dave valiantly carries on. He even begins sharing his own screen.

When Lacey returns, it’s with a cooler head. She asks the engineers some challenging questions, and seems to be pushing them to find a better solution than what they’ve provided. Normally I’d be right there with her, trying to find something that works for everyone, but not right now. I don’t participate. I just sit here nodding like I’m listening, wondering if I’m the worst judge of character in the universe. If someone asked me a half hour earlier to make a list of which employees I thought would leave Lettercat, Lacey would have been the last one before my own name. Lacey, who I’d immediately nine-boxed as a high potential high performer after my call with Edmund.

I know it’s a team, not a family. I know people move on. But to Tooity?

She spent yesterday telling me I need to listen to Edmund and this morning questioning why I’m acting like the CEO of my own company. All while she’s talking to our competitor.

I’m alone in this, I realize. I want to get off the ride.

“I want to apologize,” Lacey says at the end of the meeting. “To Jude but to all of you who were here. It was uncool of me to snap like that, and I’m sorry. No excuses.”

I just nod. I don’t know what she wants from me.

“Can you hang out for a second?” she asks me as everyone leaves.

I don’t want to. I want to disappear, I don’t want to have another difficult conversation or hear all the ways I wronged her into wanting to work somewhere else.

And I don’t have to. Kate pops her head in the door.

“We gotta go, chica. Kyle from the AI chat company is meeting us in five, and it’s a ten minute walk.”

Lacey looks at me.

“I’ll skip lunch. You don’t need me on that project, and I have things I need to take care of,” she tells Kate.

“But Kyle is single and said he likes smart women,” Kate whines.

Lacey flushes. “I’m staying here. And you might want to rethink your vendor selection process.”

“No,” I tell her. “Go ahead. We’re done here.”

“Right answer!” Kate says, leaning into the room conspiratorially. “I’m doing some matchmaking.”

“Great,” I say, picking up my laptop. “Good luck, Lacey.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LACEY

When Kate accuses me of bringing bad vibes to lunch, she’s one hundred percent correct. In my defense, I do not want to be here. I just made a giant mess back at the office, and I need to be back there, cleaning it up. Not having lunch with a stranger.