AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As he left for his meeting, someone from marketing reminded him of the presentation we were supposed to do right before lunch. He stopped and pivoted on his heel, smiling at me.
“Why don’t you help them set up?” he asked. I still had my defenses up, but it seemed like he thought I might actually enjoy it.
“I’ll show her how,” the woman from marketing said.
I saw on her badge that her name was Laine Hudgens and she seemed stiff and formal as she showed me how to set up a laptop to the high-tech whiteboard they had in every conference room. As usual, when Eli sent me to do something in another department, he thought he was doing me a favor and the other department usually thought of it as a chance to take a break while the newbie drudge filled in. Ms. Hudgens was no different and, as soon as she gave me the instructions, she took off.
It was easy enough and done in a few minutes, so I sat there scrolling through the presentation. Even though I had my qualms about working for Eli, going back and forth between wanting to throttle him and straddle him, I absolutely loved working at the magazine. For fun, I switched a few of the slides around and rewatched them in that order. I actually thought it flowed better, but knew I was probably getting too big for my boots from all the praise Eli had been giving me, so went to switch them back.
Before I could, Ms. Hudgens stuck her head in, looking frantic. “Violet, can you help us, please.” She hurried off, shouting to someone to be careful.
I raced after her, wondering if someone was hurt, but it was a delivery of giant fake palm trees that a couple of the other employees were struggling to keep from knocking anything in the small office over.
“These belong on twelve,” Ms. Hudgens said, shaking her head in exasperation. “They’re doing that sunscreen ad today.”
“With these horrible things?” one of the guys who was being slowly crushed by the fake palm asked. I hurried to grab part of the trunk to take the weight off his shoulder and he smiled at me gratefully.
“They’re going for kitsch,” another employee said. “It should look great when it’s all put together.”
“Just get them where they belong,” Ms. Hudgens snapped. She nodded to me. “Is the presentation ready?”
“Yes, but…” I didn’t want to admit I tampered with the layout. There was still time for me to help with the props and get back to change it, so I didn't confess.
“Go, then,” she told me.
After I helped them get the trees up the stairs since they were too big for the elevator, we stood around cursing the delivery company for a while. On my way back up to the conference room, I met Jed heading toward the elevator.
“Hey stranger,” he said. “I can’t believe our offices are less than fifty feet apart and I barely see you.”
“I’ve been so busy,” I said, happy to see him.
His bright smile told me he was eager to catch up, but I told him I had to hustle to get back before the presentation. He got off on that floor with me and we chatted until we got to the conference room doorway, where I saw Eli and Ms. Hudgens looking down at the laptop. My stomach turned over and I gave Jed an apologetic smile.
“I really have to get in there,” I said, frantically hoping they hadn’t noticed. Eli looked over, glanced at Jed, then settled a glare on me. My hope vanished.
“Hey, have dinner with me?” Jed asked. “It’s Friday, we could catch a movie after if you wanted…” He looked hopeful under his casual tone and if I wasn’t so scared about getting in trouble I would have been a lot more excited about the invitation.
“Yes, okay, that sounds fun,” I said.
We arranged to meet in the lobby after work ended and he squeezed my arm as he left. I watched him go, wishing I could be properly happy about getting asked on a date for the first time in a long while. Then I got irritated because Eli was once again intruding on my well-being. I forced myself to calm down. He’d been nice lately.
“Violet, did you change the layout of this presentation?” Eli snapped as soon as I was an inch in the room.
“I was going to change it back but…” I trailed off, knowing there was no excuse.
He shook his head and Ms. Hudgens sighed. “Eli, it’s—” she started, but he held up his hand in a halting motion. She halted and put her chin down, clearly not wanting to see what happened to me. So much for him being nice lately.
“You shouldn’t have done anything other than set up the laptop. That was your only task. Do you know how many people spend hours making these presentations exactly the way they want in order to impress advertisers? Every prop in every picture is there for a reason. Every slide in that presentation is exactly the same. What if we’d lost the account because of this?”
I felt my cheeks burning and what was worse, tears stung my eyes. If he hadn’t stopped being a jerk to me, I would have been used to this, but I made the mistake of thinking we’d gotten past that. I blinked them away and nodded.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. I won’t do anything like that again.” I couldn’t even feel righteously indignant about it not being a big deal, because it clearly was, and I shouldn’t have done it. I felt like a kid on her way to the principal’s office, knowing she deserved the detention.
There was a hubbub outside the room and Ms. Hudgens clapped her hands. “They’re here. Let’s do this.” As if she hadn’t just witnessed my awful humiliation.
I sat in my corner, ready to take notes and as I watched Eli run through the presentation, I got over myself a little bit. He really was charming and good at this sort of thing. The prospective advertisers hung on his every word, their eyes darting between him and the board as each new, exciting picture portrayed how they might be shown inNew York Style and Lifeif they decided to fork over the big bucks.
I was as rapt as they were, especially when it got to the part in the presentation that I changed. And I saw that it was still changed. I knew they’d seen it because it wasn’t twenty minutes ago that I got chewed out for it. And yet, they kept it. Ms. Hudgens was probably trying to stick up for me and Eli barreled right over her to let me have it anyway. So much for getting over anything, now I was full of righteous indignation, all of it deserved.
