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“Exactly what I was thinking,” he said.
I pulled back and slid up just high enough to kiss him. The kiss heated up as usual, and just when I was about to straddle him, his phone rang. I froze. My first thought was wife, girlfriend, or booty call. I pulled away from him, expecting the worst.
“Hey, where are you going?” he asked while reaching for his phone.
“Who would be calling you this late?”
He showed me his phone screen. It was the head of marketing.
“Oh,” I said, deflating with relief.
Jon answered. “Mark, this better be good.”
I lay on his shoulder and listened to the one-sided conversation. I could tell by the way he had stiffened it wasn’t good news. We were all supposed to be off tomorrow. I had a feeling that was just canceled.
“I’ll be there by noon,” Jon said and ended the call.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Something I should have expected,” he said. “I hate to say it, but I need all hands on deck tomorrow. Do you think they’re going to hate me?”
“Who?”
“The people upstairs I promised would have the day off,” he answered.
“I think they’re going to understand if you need their help,” I told him. “We’ll all be there. What’s going on?”
He quickly told me about IT issues and the advertising having the launch date. The launch was supposed to be Friday. It was going to happen tomorrow. I didn’t even have personal experience with the launch, but even I could tell it was a big deal by the amount of emails and reports I’d been filtering through all week.
I kissed him again. “We’ll all be there and it’s going to be great.”
“I should change the flight,” he said. “The launch goes live at nine. Shit always hits the fan. I won’t be there to handle it. I have half the damn team with me.”
“And the half you have back at the office is very capable, just not at Office Olympics,” I said with a smile. “It will be fine. We’ll go straight to the office from the airport. We’ve got you.”
He kissed my forehead. “Thank you.”
38
JON
“I’m so sorry, everyone,” I said over our quick and easy breakfast. “I really wanted you all to have this day to recover. I’ll find a way to make it up to you.”
Everyone assured me they didn’t mind cutting their mini-vacation short. Something always happened when it came to launch day. Although this was a new one.
Rolling out a week early was going to tax us. We were going to be scrambling to keep up with our usual work, along with the sales side of things. I just hoped the website didn’t crash. Been there, done that, and we had hopefully installed enough backup features to avoid that disaster again.
We headed for the airport, and thankfully, our flight wasn’t delayed. We probably looked like a bunch of assholes while we waited for our flight to board. No one had brought laptops, which meant we were all on our phones doing what we could from the airport to help out our team back home.
Macy was on the phone pacing as she talked to one of the distributors. I was half-listening to her conversation while I worked to settle the very ruffled feathers of one of the retailers we used. Everyone was pissed the new line was going live online. It was a mild disaster, but it couldn’t be avoided.
“Our flight’s boarding,” someone said.
I was on the phone until the flight attendant demanded I get off. I shut off the phone and let out a long breath.
“It’s going to be fine,” Macy assured me. “We’re good. We’ve promised a slight discount on the next launch. We’re spinning the surprise launch to be a calculated event. Only the people that are devoted customers are going to know the line is live on the website. It’s going to increase demand because from what the online sales manager tells me, we have a limited stock. Everything has already been sent out to the retailers.”
I nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “You handled this like a pro. I am so glad I have you on the team. No matter how much we plan, something always goes wrong. One of these days, we’re going to have a perfect launch.”
