Six Weeks

Chapter One - Nora

She set the mug down harder than she meant to.

Three years at Whitfield & Cole. She'd come in as a summer intern at nineteen and talked them into keeping her before the fall semester she never went back for. Long enough to have opinions. Not long enough for anyone to ask.

She was picking the outfit before she'd finished reading. Sharp blazer. Sharper shoes. The black heels with the red sole, bought with her first real bonus, worn six blocks to the train that morning and worth every one of them.

The door opened. A man she didn't recognize came in with a portfolio case, unhurried, like the room owed him nothing.

"You must be Nora." He put out a hand. "Elias."

"I must be." His grip was warm. No crushing, no overcorrection. "You're the new Art Director everyone's been weird about."

"Weird how?"

"Impressed. It's very unsettling. People here don't get impressed easily."

Something in his face almost moved. "Good. I'd hate to peak on my first week."

He set the case down across the table. Not beside her.

"So." She pulled up the brief. "Hensley wants a full rebrand in six weeks. Priya wants it to look like that wasn't insane. You know anything about tequila?"

"I know I like it. Does that count?"

"It counts as a start."

They worked two hours straight. He let her ideas breathe before he pushed on them, and when he pushed it was never about being right. She argued harder than she needed to, just to see what he'd do with it. He didn't do anything. He just kept listening, which was worse.

"Okay. Actual pitch." She spun the laptop toward him.

"Hensley's whole thing is heritage. Family distillery, three generations, blah blah.

Everyone in this category does heritage.

So what if we don't. Make it new. A little reckless.

Something you order because the night's about to get interesting, not because your grandfather would've approved. "

He studied it. Didn't push back. Didn't agree either. Just thought about it, which she wasn't expecting and immediately wanted more of.

"I like it. Risky. Client's going to want the heritage somewhere. They paid a photographer to shoot the actual distillery."

"So keep it in the background. Foundation, not headline." She was already writing. "The headline's the feeling. The facts hold it up."

"That's good." A pause. "That's actually good. Write it down before you lose it."

"Already did."

He sketched fast on the whiteboard. A loose line, then another, and four strokes in it was a bottle. She watched his hand instead of the drawing.

"What," he said, without turning around.

"Nothing. You're annoyingly good at that."

"I get that a lot." He capped the marker and turned. "You're annoyingly good at the thing where you make everyone forget you're twenty-two."

She went still. "How do you know how old I am?"

"HR sends a welcome doc. Start dates on it." A pause. "Wasn't a knock."

"Felt like one for a second."

"I meant you don't perform young. Most people do, at your stage. You don't."

She didn't have anything for that. She pulled the laptop closer and reread a line she'd already read twice.

"We should get lunch brought in," she said. "Six weeks of this, I'm not starting it on an empty stomach."

"Deal." He was already texting someone. "Thai good?"

"Thai's good."

The whiteboard filled up slowly with a tequila brand that didn't exist yet. Under the table, out of habit, Nora crossed her ankles and tucked her feet back beneath her chair.