Nudge 25 The Meeting
The Meeting
I got home OK. Thanks for a fun night x
I cringed as I sent it, but I felt like it had to be done. Then I woke up in the morning and there was no reply, and I deeply considered breaking into his house just to delete the message.
Still nothing. No response, no meaningless emojis back, just radio silence for two more days.
On the sixth day, I heard the buzz and flocked to my phone to find a singular sign of life . . . He’d reacted to my first message with a thumbs-up emoji.
A thumbs-up emoji. After six whole days.
Day seven and I have moved on and decided that we’re simply no more. Blowjob-Beg Benji is now a figment of my past and I have made a promise to live in the here and now.
‘Aiden!’ Pippa screams his name, barrelling towards him as Gus and I follow slowly behind.
She throws her arms around him, swaying back and forth while she traps him in a tight hug. At first, he looks startled, but then he accepts his fate, swaying along with her.
‘Long time, no see,’ he says jokingly.
It might be the funniest thing she’s ever heard in her life, the way she throws her head back and screeches.
I can’t help but roll my eyes at the whole ordeal, but I make sure that it goes unnoticed.
At least, it almost does. I can see Aiden catch it out of the corner of his eye and smirk. I have to smirk right back.
‘Nice dress,’ he says to me.
‘Gee, thanks,’ I reply, matching his sarcasm.
‘I was being serious.’
‘Oh. Well, thank you, then,’ I manage to say, surprised by his sincerity.
I look down at the short satin skirt of my dress, sat a risky few inches above my knee.
When I first tried it on, I was ready to storm out from behind the partition and tell Anika it was too short for a workday.
But she twirled me in front of the mirror and I marvelled at the way it pinched at my waist and flowed at my hips, landing perfectly mid-thigh.
I hoped the stunning embroidered detailing, dotted about the fabric, would be enough to distract from the scandalous length.
Up until this moment, it has, but the longer Aiden’s eyes linger, so does another beadier, more calculated set.
‘It’s weird seeing Maddison dressed up, isn’t it? She’s always so businessy at work,’ Pippa says. ‘Or at least, she tries to be!’
She links his arm as she says it, tapping him playfully as if they’re sharing some private joke at my expense. He doesn’t go along with it. Instead, he looks at her, confused, dulling her bravado with one awkwardly long silence.
‘Aiden, my man!’ Gus uses the opportunity to sandwich himself into the conversation.
Aiden goes in for a handshake. Gus goes in for some form of ‘fist-bump, high-five, turn, pose’ combo. It’s incredibly cringey and deeply hard to watch, and I desperately need us all to go inside.
‘Where’s Evie? Has she already gone in?’ I ask him, praying it’s enough to end this outdoor charade.
‘Yeah, she’s already in there. So are Oliver and Maxwell,’ Aiden replies. ‘I came out to get you.’
I sigh with relief, using the moment to lead us inside and leave the desperate attention-seeking behind in the street. The others follow, Pippa upping her stride to ensure she enters first, smile plastered on her face ready to greet our bosses.
Clients are often reluctant to do the Abbingtorn midway check-in, insisting it ‘should just be an email’, but Evie welcomed the opportunity with open arms. Her one stipulation? We ‘avoid the stuffy boardroom’.
I figured that probably meant a meeting round hers, but then she booked us in at one of the most prestigious sushi spots in the city. A-list prestigious. Bodyguards-at-the-door prestigious. Strict-formal-dress-code-even-at-one-in-the-afternoon prestigious.
The waiter leads us across the unbearably dark dining-room floor and through a deep-red curtain to a private room. Within it stands a large, emerald circular table, seating Oliver, Maxwell and an impeccably dressed Evie.
‘Oh, my God, you did it, you wore the dress!’ Evie cheers, bypassing Pippa and rushing towards me. ‘Anika raved about it after your fitting and I was oh-so hoping that I’d get to see it in person.’
She grabs my hand, twirling me so she can get a 360.
‘Hi, Evie,’ I say as she continues to examine me.
I also do my best to throw Oliver and Maxwell a silent ‘hi’ and a welcoming wave to where they stay sitting at the table.
They wave back, observing mine and Evie’s closeness with pleasant surprise.
If I still had hope, I would pray that this would make them put me face to face with clients more often.
‘Oh, my God, Evie, I love your jumpsuit.’ Pippa creeps closer to give it an unwelcome stroke. ‘Is that Prada’s Spring collection?’
‘It’s custom, actually,’ Evie answers, doing her best to subtly shuffle away from her. ‘Shall we get seated?’
Evie and Gus sit first, moving towards the back of the booth and leaving one more space near them and two closest to the front of the room. Pippa hovers by the front.
‘After you!’ She waits for me to sit and leave her next to Aiden.
‘Doesn’t it make the most sense for me and Maddison to sit up front? We’ve got the presentation,’ Aiden says.
It’s so satisfying to watch Pippa’s face fall in real time that I almost forget where I am and break into a smile. But I don’t. Instead, I swallow my glee and do my best to nod nonchalantly. She hesitates for a moment, but eventually whacks on a smile, reluctantly sliding in next to Gus.
Evie insists that we do not begin presenting until everyone has sampled at least one bite of each dish.
She ordered the special tasting-menu before we got here and says that we have not lived until we’ve had a bite of their truffle gold-crusted salmon sashimi.
Naturally we obey, spending almost an hour picking at everything and exchanging light-hearted pleasantries.
‘Question . . .’ Aiden whispers, lips pressed to my ear. ‘How does Pippa eat sushi with her mouth so busy kissing everyone’s arse?’
I choke on my tuna roll, rice attempting to fly from my nose as I stifle the laugh that’s rolled up my throat.
The entire booth goes quiet, concern washing over everyone’s faces as they turn to watch me suffer in high definition.
I can feel my cheeks burning, which only makes the sushi in my mouth fight harder as I attempt to swallow it down without incident.
It’s not working. I start to choke some more.
I take one long, forced swallow and give a reassuring thumbs-up, hoping it’s enough to keep everyone’s eyes off me again, but I can see Aiden smirking deviously out of the corner of my eye.
I make a mental note to not dare look at him again until my food is safely down my throat.
‘You need to stop,’ I hiss once we’ve both calmed down and the conversation around the table has moved on. ‘You are going to get me in trouble.’
‘You could use a little trouble.’ He pops another roll into his mouth.
Eventually the chopsticks clatter and the plates get swept away, and Evie excitedly gives us the floor.
We run through everything, from on-the-day details to our PR plan, to how we’ve managed to still remain in budget, complete with printouts of spreadsheets, further mood boards, my meticulous timelines and Aiden’s brilliantly annotated diagrams. The room fills with chatter as Oliver, Maxwell and Evie praise the detail with which we’ve approached everything.
‘This is top-notch work – well done, you two!’ Oliver says.
Maxwell nods. ‘That’s what we expect from an Abbingtorn girl!’
I can practically see Pippa’s skin turn green as they speak, but she tries to brush it off with a quick, telling flick of her hair.
‘Yes, it’s super impressive,’ she says, her tone sickly sweet. ‘I’m so proud of you, Maddison. I’ve been training you for a moment like this!’
Of course she’d try to take the credit for this when she has done absolutely nothing, training or otherwise. Maxwell and Oliver are eating it up, but I can see Evie’s unimpressed face.
‘That’s so interesting, Pippa,’ she says, much to Pippa’s shock and excitement. ‘Tell me, what have you done to get Maddison to this level? I’d love some tips, manager to manager.’
Pippa’s face freezes in terror. It’s so cartoonish that even Gus is purse-lipped, struggling to keep it together. We make eye contact for a moment, subtly sharing a nod of solidarity.
‘Erm, well, I – it’s kind of a mix of everything,’ she stammers. ‘I just feel like where she’s been under my wing, she’s managed to pick up quite a lot over these four years.’
‘So, you’ve led on an event this big before?’ Evie asks plainly, already knowing the answer.
Pippa’s cheeks are growing redder by the minute. She keeps taking sips of her cocktail but all that’s left are the dregs, and each fake sip makes that fact even more obvious.
‘Well, Abbingtorn’s never really had an event to this scale . . .’ Pippa answers eventually, unable to meet Evie’s narrowed eyes.
‘And, Maddison, you are doing an amazing job handling the company’s first one,’ Evie says, giving me a warm smile.
It is a takedown of beauty – classy from start to finish with the kind of cut that goes deep without too hard a strike.
Oliver and Maxwell are stunned and Pippa, bless her, is still too stressed out to realise just how hard Evie’s shut her down.
Evie is everything I want to be and more, wrapped up in beautiful, pristine packaging.
I wanted the job before, but now I need it, more than I need to breathe.
‘So next steps,’ Evie continues, clapping her hands together and snapping everyone back into business mode. ‘How rigid are these timelines?’
‘We can certainly make amends if you think they’re needed,’ Aiden answers.
She nods in acknowledgement, carefully flicking through the printout and hovering over a selection of dates.
‘I’m going away just before the Summer Splash. Aiden – cancel the house-sitters for that first weekend. I want you two to schedule an overnight.’
‘An overnight?’ I say.
‘By the time of the event, I need you two to know my house and the grounds better than you know yourselves. I’ll get two of the spare rooms made up, you can go up Friday night and Aiden can spend Saturday and Sunday getting you better acquainted.
I’ll stock the fridges and pantries – I want you to feel like you’ve lived there.
It will make the event run better and have my guests feel more at ease. ’
It’s wildly unorthodox, but so is Evie, and, somehow, it makes perfect sense coming out of her mouth.
‘Aiden’s house-sat for me before – he can assure you there are no ghosts or anything of that sort,’ she adds in jest. ‘Does that work for you?’
‘Yeah, I can fit that in,’ I say, mentally flicking through our timeline.
I feel a flutter first, and then a stampede of butterflies kick at my poor, sushi-filled stomach. My breath hitches, but I vow to remain in control, grappling for the folder on the table and zeroing in on our notes.
Aiden’s hand slides over the one I still have under the table as he gives me a small, reassuring pat on my clenched fist.
‘Chill,’ he whispers. ‘The diary can wait. We’ll rearrange things together after this meeting.’
It doesn’t help anything. The butterflies grow more ferocious from the moment his skin touches mine.
‘I’ll handle the overnight expenses, of course,’ Evie says, head flicking between Oliver, Maxwell and Pippa. ‘So, are we done?’
We all nod because everyone knows by now that if Evie Eesuola says we’re done, then we are definitely done.