15. Side Quest Accepted #2
I take a sip of my water and ask, “You said you want kids,” I ask after a few bites. “Is that like, soon?”
“Not before I get through these weddings,” she laughs. “Eventually, yes. Holden and Shawn definitely want them. Carter and I haven’t ruled it out, but probably not. He already has a daughter. Jeremiah and Ethan are sure they don’t want biological children.”
“And you can make that work? In the same house?”
“I’m sure we can, but we will fully figure out what it will actually look like when we decide to take out the IUD. Living with a baby isn’t the same thing as agreeing to become a father. There will probably be some role definition there.”
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”
“It’s easy to say we’ll figure it out when it happens. Harder when figuring it out means nobody’s sleeping and someone thought they’d have a very different life.”
The server drops off our food.
As she picks up her sandwich, she adds, “I’d prefer to have at least some of those discussions while I’m rested and not super hormonal.”
“Ambitious.”
“Possibly delusional.”
I smile, but I’m thinking about how often I picture the future for us as our house, exactly as it is, with everyone a little older. Same rooms. Same work schedules. Same Thursday nights.
As if loving what we have means none of it will ever need to change.
“What about work? When you have a baby?” I ask. “Will you keep working?”
“I’m sure I’ll take maternity leave. How long, I don’t know yet, but I want to be able to take some real time off.”
“No answering emails with a baby in one arm?”
“Preferably not.” She smiles. “Getting my bosses to support the leave is probably the easiest part.”
I narrow my eyes knowingly at her. “You work with four of them.”
“I do.”
“You did not say bosses.”
“I’m the Director of Marketing. Jeremiah is the CEO, and Ethan is the CFO. Carter and I work together a lot because he’s over sales. And then Shawn is on the technical side.”
A fry stops halfway to my mouth. “Alexis.”
“What?”
“That is a substantial amount of information to leave out.”
She laughs. “You were having a bad night. Explaining the org chart didn’t feel urgent.”
“So that just leaves Holden.”
“He’s a physician, an intensivist.”
“Right. Somebody had to diversify.”
That gets a startled laugh out of her, and I finally eat the fry.
“Does everybody at your job know? About your dynamic?”
“Yes,” she pauses, seeming to contemplate how much to share.
“We went through legal and HR before we told people. It was actually a major company announcement, not just a casual memo posted by the coffee machine.” Her smile thins slightly.
“And it didn’t mean everyone suddenly was accepting or behaved themselves, as you know. ”
“Yeah.”
Then almost as if she’s talking to them and not me, she adds, “I didn’t get a master’s degree and work my way up the ladder so people could decide my qualifications were who I’m sleeping with.”
For a moment, neither of us says anything. Then she nudges the basket with a few fries left toward the middle of the table.
“Anyway, what are you working on right now?”
I tell her about a client who wants better engagement but keeps rejecting anything that sounds like a person might have written it.
“He asked me to make it more authentic and personable,” I explain, “then replaced ‘help’ with ‘facilitate.’”
She rolls her eyes. “Of course he did.”
“At this point, I think he wants the company to sound like a printer gained sentience.”
Alexis laughs so hard she has to put her sandwich down.
I’m halfway through describing another account when she asks, “Can I see?”
Confusion must color my expression.
“Your work.”
“Oh.”
My hand goes to my laptop bag, then stops.
Showing somebody a finished post is one thing. Showing the marketing director of an actual corporation work I assembled at two in the morning while waiting for a client to send the right logo feels considerably less casual.
“It’s mostly small businesses. Independent contractors.”
“That’s fine.”
“Their budgets aren’t—”
“Cami,” she practically scolds. “I’d like to see what you do with the budgets they have.”
Well… fuck.
I move my sandwich basket and open my laptop.
The first account is a local business whose owner finally agreed to appear in her own videos after months of insisting nobody wanted to see her. I pull up the public page, then the reporting view I’ve already cleared to use in my portfolio.
Alexis leans closer.
“This one did well,” she says, pointing at a video.
“For views, yeah. But this is the one I’d do again.
” I scroll to a much less impressive-looking number.
“She’s answering a question people actually ask before they book.
We used a separate link, and the booking form asks how they found her.
It’s not perfect attribution, but this one brought in far more appointments. ”
“Was there paid support?”
“Not on these.”
“And you wrote the scripts?”
“Talking points. She sounds like she’s being held hostage if I give her a script.”
Alexis smiles, but her eyes stay on the screen.
She points at some earlier posts. “What changed here?”
“We stopped opening with the logo. Stopped explaining who she is before giving people a reason to care. And I asked her to save the questions she gets from customers instead of guessing what they want to know.”
She scrolls back and compares some things. Then asks more questions.
Then she pulls a small notebook out of her purse. “What do you charge for this?” she asks.
I tell her.
Her pen stops.
My stomach drops.
“That includes the strategy, content, reporting, and the emails?” she asks.