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I guess Mr. Chester had found it to be too empty.
I sat down at my desk and pulled my laptop and phone from my bag. My phone showed unread messages—one was from Tori asking when the paper would be sent over for her, and the other was from Ollie.
OLLIE: Did you get it finished yet?
ME: Almost. Mocking up the draft and handing it in today. Just got to the office.
OLLIE: Brilliant. Still good for today?
ME: Leo bounced into school this morning.
OLLIE: Don’t tell the others, but he’s my favorite kid.
ME: I bet you say that to all the moms.
OLLIE: Only the one I kiss ; )
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. Darn it.
ME: Go and do something useful. I have to work.
I put my phone face down on the desk and opened my laptop. I wasn’t too good with design, but I knew enough about Photoshop that I could use Tori’s templates to move text and add images.
In theory.
In reality, it was a whole lot harder than you’d think.
“Oh, go away!” I snapped at the computer, tapping at the trackpad. “No, no, no! I don’t want you to do that!”
The text box I’d been painstakingly trying to get in the right place flew across the screen and disappeared.
“Oh, bollocks!” I yelled. “Come back! Undo, undo!”
Two knocks sounded at my door and one of the young interns poked his head through. “Are you okay, London?”
I smiled, embarrassed. “Technology,” I said by way of explanation.
He grinned. “Do you need a hand?”
“No, no, it’s fine. I’ll just turn it off and back on again.” Jesus, I sounded like my grandmother.
“Are you sure.”
“If I yell again, I’ll need help.”
He closed the door as he laughed, and I scowled at the laptop.
What did I do to deserve this technological insolence?
I shut the program down and restarted it again, but it didn’t work. My trackpad was sticking for some reason, and I didn’t have an external mouse here, so this wasn’t going to work right now.
I picked up my phone and dialed Tori’s number. It rang three times.
“What’s up, buttercup?” she sang down the phone.
“Hey. Can I send you drawings of the layout?”
She giggled. “Aw, are you having a domestic with Photoshop again?”
I groaned. “My trackpad and clicky key is sticking. I need to get it cleaned out. I think Leo ate at it when he played Minecraft last night.”
“Bleck, kids. Yeah, draw it out on some paper and send me photos. Might be easier than trying to decipher your graphic design anyway.”
“Rude,” I replied.
Rude, but not wrong.
“All right. I have a client call in a couple so I gotta go. Are you sending tonight?”
“Yeah, you have everything else, don’t you?”
“Sure do.” She hung up on that note, and I blew out a long breath.
Well.
I was out of things to do.
I supposed I could read through the interviews I’d already done. They’d been through two rounds of edits in-house, but I was waiting for the layout to be ready before I did so.
Looked like that was my mission now, so I opened one of my documents and got stuck in.
Three knocks sounded at my door half an hour later.
My God, it was like a merry-go-round in here today.
“Yes?” I called.
“These just arrived for you.” A different intern pushed the door open, holding a bouquet of flowers.
Oliver!
“Oh, okay, thank you. Can you just put them there on my desk, please?” I motioned to the spot where the first bouquet had been put. The intern carefully put them down and then left, once again closing my door behind her.
Right.
I reached over for the card. These flowers were beautiful, but I didn’t recognize any except the lilies—they were pink and orange this time.
London,
Congrats on being done! You worked hard on this. I hope you steal Ebony’s job.
Ollie
Xx
I burst out laughing. I couldn’t believe he’d written that in a card, and I hoped nobody else had read this before it was delivered here.
Oh, my God, I would be in so much trouble if they had.
I reached for my phone to message Ollie and stilled. There were nineteen missed called, six voice messages, and eight texts. My heart thundered against my chest as I fought to unlock my phone, but I mistyped my pin code three times and had to wait thirty seconds to try again before I finally got it right on the fifth attempt.
They were all from my aunt and my cousins. I didn’t need to check the voice messages because the texts told me everything.
HOLLEY: Answer your phone!!!
IVY: Where are you????
AUNT JASMINE: London, are you at home?
IVY: LONDON PICK UP!!!!
HOLLEY: OMG ANSWER
AUNT JASMINE: Sweetheart your grandma has been taken to the hospital, we’re on our way there now, can you meet us there? We’ll be at the ER.
My heart stopped.
Grandma was in hospital?
When were these messages sent?
