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MACKENZIE
Thunderrumbledoverhead,andthe light had a gloomy quality to it. When the doorbell rang, I took a deep breath and walked to open it.
It was a Saturday, and Troy and I had decided to come together to discuss a change Elecoms had sent us in the project.
“The weather is crazy,” Troy said when he saw me. The wind blew in erratic gusts. “I think it’s going to be a hell of a storm.”
“Weird time of year for it,” I said. “And it’s rougher than usual.”
Troy nodded and stepped into my apartment, looking around. It was a modest apartment, nothing incredible—nothing like his fancy mansion—but I did well enough and the apartment was in a good part of town.
“This is nice,” he said. “I expected…”
“What?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, something else.”
Right.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I asked.
Troy shook his head. “We should just get started.”
I nodded, and we walked to the living room, where I’d already set up my laptop and my research for the project. Troy set up his laptop, too, and it gave me a chance to study him without it looking like I was staring.
He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt—normal, casual attire—but his jeans hung from his hips like he was doing them a favor, and the T-shirt stretched across a perfectly chiseled chest and muscular arms.
I’d seen him naked—I knew what was under that shirt and that it was as drool-worthy as it looked.
He glanced up at me, his blue eyes locking on mine, and I glanced away.
Thunder rumbled again, followed by a crack of lightning and more thunder. The lights flickered for a second as the power surged. I’d switched them on when the weather had turned.
“We’re in for a ride,” Troy said.
“It looks like it.” I hoped the storm wouldn’t get much worse. I wasn’t a fan of thunder. When I was a kid, I used to hide under the bed during storms, and Rachel had to come find me to tell me the sky wasn’t falling apart.
It’s a conversation, she used to say.The lightning has something to say, and the thunder talks back. It’s nothing to be scared of.
“We should consider this,” Troy said, turning his attention to his laptop. He turned it to show me a proposal he’d drawn up. “I think if we take this approach, we can really turn some heads, and that’s what we want.”
“Turn heads, how?” I asked, looking at the work. Troy suggested we relate diamonds to ice and snow. “It’s so cliché and not within our target market at all. We’re in LA.”
“To draw attention,” Troy said. “And that’s the point. It’s exactly our target market because here, no one gets snow and ice all the time, so it’s magical, fantastical.”
“It’s unrelatable.”
“Magic isn’t supposed to be relatable. No one buys shit because they canrelateto it.” He clenched his jaw and that only made his already-squareGQ-magazine-worthy face more prominent.
I narrowed my eyes. “You still need to create a form of homeliness, something that’s not outside of anyone’s comfort zone. That’s the point of marketing, making someone feel at home enough that they feel they can’t live without it.”
Troy shook his head. “Haven’t you ever wanted something because it was unique or rare, because youcouldn’thave it?”
“I don’t think we should advertise Toussaint’s jewelry as something peoplecan’thave,” I said dryly.
“That’s not what this is at all. It’s not the jewelry we’re making unreachable, it’s the concept of having something fantastic.”
“I’d rather see it as something Icanhave. Isn’t that what this whole project is about? Making people feel like they can have it so they’ll come get it. Not the other way around.”
