Nudge 5 The Mood Board
The Mood Board
‘Aiden’s here,’ Pippa says as she hangs up her phone. ‘Will you collect him from Reception yourself, or shall I?’
‘No worries, I’ll go,’ I reply, ignoring her tone as I push back my chair.
I can see Gus staring intently at his screen, jaw clenched in an intense effort to stay neutral.
Pippa’s been so passive aggressive since the tour of Evie’s grounds and I can tell it’s grating on him just as much as it is me.
First there were the backhanded compliments, then the exclusion from daily coffee runs and, finally, the thinly veiled snipes about who is in charge.
Plus, she looks like she’s sucking on a lemon every time someone so much as mentions the Summer Splash.
It’s deeply uncomfortable for absolutely everyone involved, especially me – which is clearly the point.
But, unluckily for her, a good planner always has Plan B at the ready and I skipped a few letters to initiate Plan H the second Pippa started acting funny. Meeting Room H to be exact.
‘Just so you know, I’ve booked out one of the third-floor meeting rooms for the rest of the day,’ I say politely.
‘You’re not planning down here?’ she asks, gripping her coffee a little too tightly.
A voice interrupts before I have the chance to reply.
‘Where shall I sit?’
Pippa’s spine straightens at the intrusion, her fingers flying to her hair to oh-so-not-subtly let out her ponytail.
‘I was just on my way to come and get you,’ I say pointedly.
He opens his mouth to respond when Pippa interjects.
‘Aiden! Such a pleasure!’
‘Thank you . . .’
‘What do you think of the office?’ she asks, twirling her hair. ‘We should give you a tour before you two get started. Come, I’ll take you.’
I don’t know what’s more off-putting – the fact that Pippa is flirting or the fact that she’s flirting with Aiden.
Aiden is, I guess, objectively attractive, though his fresh trim and rich, spicy bergamot aftershave are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Plus, no haircut or flexed biceps can do anything to make up for his horrible mess of a personality.
There’s a part of me that wants to send him off with Pippa and have a few extra moments to myself while he suffers.
But she works fast, and never without an agenda.
Who knows what she’d say about me if I left her alone with him.
The last thing I need is Aiden Edwards having more ammo against me than he already does.
‘I don’t think we have time for that, Pippa. We really need to get started upstairs.’ I grab my bag and head towards the door.
Aiden follows me gladly before Pippa has time to object, but I can feel her eyes burrowing a hole into the back of my skull as we leave.
We stand in the lift in complete silence and I do my best to keep my eyes focused intently on the plain metal door ahead of me.
One time I do accidentally glance over and I catch his mouth opening as if to speak, but he snaps it shut just as quickly when he notices me staring.
It’s an agonisingly slow ride despite being only two floors, and I release my long-held breath the second we make it to the meeting room.
Aiden enters cautiously, circling the office slowly like he’s in some sort of a trance.
‘Are all your meeting rooms this small?’ he asks, squeezing around the table.
‘Only the ones that allow for recurring bookings.’ I wince, thinking back to Shirley from Office Administration glowering at my six-month-long list of meeting-room dates.
‘You know, no one books these rooms this far in advance but you,’ she said with a lipstick-coated scowl.
I know she resents me for it. The room allocation made that clear as day.
Meeting Room H is the drabbest in the building, reserved almost exclusively for disciplinaries and dismissal meetings.
It boasts about six feet in both length and width, and reeks of damp, desperation and despair, which is not made any cheerier by Aiden’s sullen face.
However, I refuse to let that derail me and spread an A3 sheet of planning paper across the table.
‘We have twenty-five weeks until the Summer Splash and you’re in the office two days a week.
The way I see it, we do weeks one to five fully in here while we curate the deck and finalise details.
For weeks six to fourteen, we move down to my department one day a week, as the team will be assisting more.
Weeks fifteen to twenty-four we meet in here once a fortnight, just to go over where we’re at and record progress.
Week twenty-five will obviously be entirely on site.
I’ve reserved this room for two weeks post-event in case of any loose ends that need tying. ’
‘Right . . .’ he says, staring at the newly annotated sheet soullessly.
‘What?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice calm.
‘I figured we’d just see how things go,’ he replies.
Of course he did. That’s literally all he does. He’s spent nearly three decades ‘just seeing how things go’ and he assumes that the rest of us can afford the same privilege.
‘That’s why I have a real job and you work for an influencer.
’ I recoil the second the words leave my mouth, my whole body going stiff with shame.
I didn’t even mean it – I genuinely respect influencer hustles, especially ones of the calibre of Evie Eesuola.
I’ve been following her for years. I have photos of her on my vision board. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s whatever.’ His tone is clipped. ‘So, should we get going or what?’
He plonks himself down in a chair, his knees pressing against my thigh as he shifts himself under the table.
This room really is tiny, especially with the two of us in it.
I’m a few inches away from being able to feel his breath.
I turn slightly and realise with a jolt of horror that I can see every pore on the side of his face closest to mine.
Perhaps Plan H isn’t the golden ticket I needed it to be after all.
I clear my throat. ‘I brought examples of some pitch decks we’ve done in the past, so you can get an idea of what a deck entails.’
‘I know what a pitch deck is,’ he says dryly. ‘Super surprising for a lowly influencer worker, right?’
He’s offended – I knew it. I don’t know why he wouldn’t be – if he said something like that to me, the FGA would have never heard the end of it. I am messing this up before we’ve even got started.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeat my apology a little louder.
‘I spend half my time going through brands’ pitch decks for Evie. And I have a degree in business management.’
‘You do?’ I ask.
‘First class honours. So, we can skip the “Pitch Decks for Idiots” segment.’
Fair enough. I just need to keep it calm and cool – work-focused and stripped of the personal. He can’t be mad forever – eventually we’ll get wrapped up in this enough to forget my bitchy comment.
‘OK, so did Evie choose the four countries she wants?’ I ask.
‘She’s leaving it up to us. The only one that must be there is Indonesia, because “Bali changed her life”.’
‘Cool. OK, first task is clear, then.’ I grab a fresh sheet of A3 and put it in the centre of the table. ‘Let’s start by brainstorming popular destinations on social media – they’re the ones her attendees will want to see the most. Then we can . . .’
Aiden leans over and I watch in horror as he grabs my orange highlighter, dividing the paper into quarters.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Evie’s Nigerian, so naturally that can be number one. Then we’ve got Indonesia for two; her most-liked picture is from Mexico – that’s three – and for the fourth one we can throw in something for us.’ He pauses. ‘You’re St Lucian, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I say, eyes fixed on his scribbles.
‘Me too, so that makes number four.’
He draws a line under his ugly scrawled writing, pushing it closer towards me so I can take in the atrocity in all its horrific glory. There it all is in bright orange, a colour not meant for writing, fresh from a highlighter pen clearly not made for notes.
‘How’d you know I’m St Lucian?’ I ask, trying to distract myself from the abomination under my nose.
‘My mum. She used to beg me, day in and day out, to make friends with “the nice St Lucian girl” from my class.’
‘You never did,’ I say.
He scoffs. ‘Yeah, ’cos I was like ten years old. Who lets their parents choose their friends at that age?’
I concede. ‘Fair enough. For the colour scheme, I was thinking—’
‘I’ve got the hex codes for each bag colour from her new range. I also think we should make a mood board.’
‘A mood board?’
‘Yeah.’ He doodles on the corner of the already disorganised sheet. ‘This perfume brand came to her with one once and she absolutely loved it.’
He digs out his phone from his pocket, scrolling quickly before revealing a shaky photo of the mood board. Evie was right – on top of being an aesthetic dream, it’s personal and looks like it required a lot more effort.
‘Mood board it is.’ I reach into my bag.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, face scrunched in disgust.
‘Writing all of this down.’
I’ve got some notebooks in front of me and a pen in my hand – it could not be clearer what I am doing.
‘You have two notebooks.’ He looks horrified.
‘Yes? The pink one for lists and the spiral-bound for jotting down meeting minutes.’
Two notebooks aren’t that outlandish. If anything, he’s the weird one for making it such a big deal. I straighten my spine and stare at him, solid in my convictions, but then I watch his eyes dart from my face to the third notebook poking out of my bag.
‘Fine. There’s two more.’ I ignore my burning cheeks. ‘My daily journal and my intention-setter. But they’re irrelevant right now.’
‘Your intention-setter?’ he asks.
‘Yeah, for my goals, aims, objectives. Professional, physical, five-year plan . . .’
‘Five-year plan?’ He has a judging look on his face.
‘I like documenting where I want to be in five years, every five years. It helps me stay motivated,’ I say, exasperated.
I don’t know why I’m justifying my notebooks to him; I know he doesn’t care. But I am not, and will not, be ashamed of having my life together, or at least trying to.
He mutters under his breath. ‘You haven’t changed one bit.’
‘And you have?’
‘I didn’t need to.’
I think back to my first day of secondary school and my determination to be a new, cooler version of me. That was, of course, until I got to my chemistry class and found none other than Aiden Edwards in the assigned seat next to mine.
‘Are you serious?’ his friends groaned, wasting no time.
‘Not this again!’ I heard another one wail as they guffawed behind us.
I couldn’t bear to look at him, or any of them for that matter.
I took my notebook out of my schoolbag, put my head down, and resolved to focus all my attention on the task at hand.
The new plan was to blend in – the less I was noticed, the better.
But Aiden made that impossible for the rest of my time there.
‘Problem?’ he asks, snapping me back into the present.
He knows he’s got me. He knows I’m upset, and the way his lip is curling only makes the whole ordeal worse. I could not think of anyone I would detest sharing this tiny room with more. Not Pippa, not Gus, not the devil himself.
I huff, trying to hide my distress. ‘Let’s just get back to work.’
I know he can sense it; his infuriating little smile says it all. ‘Of course.’
I can’t bear to look at it any longer or give him his twisted satisfaction; every second I stay here with him is another second I die inside.
‘What now?’
‘What now?’
‘Your tone.’
His eyebrows raise in shock.
All those years next to him and I never actually bit; I knew all his little comments and gestures were just bait. But I’m older and wiser now, and he’s at my place of work, and I cannot go on like this for the next six months.
‘You got anything else to roll your eyes at or can we actually get started?’ I ask, doubling down on my snark.
His head cocks to the side, tongue rolling in his mouth as he carefully formulates his next response, but then decides against it.
‘Sorry.’ He shrugs, smile changed but unwavering.
There’s a new light to it – it’s brighter – he’s finding this fun. It flickers over his face, softening each feature on its way. But it quickly ceases once he realises that he’s let down his guard. I feel a fizz of excitement at this new upper hand.
‘Am I good to continue?’ I ask smugly.
If only I’d bitten back like this in school.
He nods quickly, avoiding eye contact as he brings the scribbled paper back into the centre.
I pull out my daily journal and flip to a blank page, making sure he sees.
Countdown:
Days until the Summer Splash – 175
Days until no more Aiden – 189