Take the Leap

Chapter 1

one

“What’s the worst that could happen?” asked Ava, my business partner, who also happened to be my best friend.

I pulled my lips in between my teeth and bit down. She knew better than to ask me that question. Did she not know just how loaded that question was? I mean, where do I even start?

“Sadie?” Ava prompted. “We’re going to be late.”

“Right.” I nodded. I knew this. Being punctual was kind of my thing. It was not Ava’s. She was the friend I usually lied to and told her an event started an hour later than it actually did. She’d probably still end up late, but I certainly tried. But today, she’d been the one to constantly remind me of the importance of being on time. Being late today was not an option. This meeting was a make-or-break moment for Savie Media, the marketing agency Ava and I owned.

She waved her arms in front of her, urging me forward. “Can we get on the elevator, please?”

I hedged. The simple answer was, yes, of course we can get on the elevator. But with me, nothing was ever simple. I ran a hand through my shoulder-length brown hair, and prayed Nashville’s early spring humidity hadn’t already done its frizzy sorcery. “What if we get stuck?”

“Then we call for help. That’s what these are for.” She held up her phone and shook it.

Ava knew me better than anyone. She knew about my dislike for elevators—and planes, snakes, crowded spaces, rollercoasters, cruise ships, and a dozen other random fears—but I’d never shared this specific fear with her. Or any of my wildly imagined fears, and believe me, there were plenty of them.

Ava stared expectantly at me. I let out a sigh. I might as well just tell her. She was stuck with me. Besides, after twenty years of friendship, she wasn’t exactly a stranger to my quirks, as she called them.

“Let’s say we’re in this elevator, and it stalls at the exact moment the world ends. Cell phone towers are down. Phone lines are down. We have no way to communicate. Everything is in chaos out there, but we’re stuck in here without a clue. No one is coming because everyone is busy dying or saving other people. We’re just trapped until we die in that tiny, cramped box.”

Ava locked her gaze on my face. “Sadie, sweetie. Is that plausible?”

“No. But try telling my brain that. It’s already worked out every imaginable terrible scenario in which the apocalypse happens while we’re stuck in the elevator. So, according to my brain, it is completely possible.”

Ava narrowed her green eyes as she studied my face. “So, this has nothing to do with the fact that we’re about to ride up to the forty-fifth floor to present the biggest client pitch of our lives? This hesitation is solely because you’re convinced the world is on the verge of ending, and we’re going to get stuck together and die in an elevator?”

I didn’t bother answering her question. Yes, this pitch was a big deal, but so was the impending apocalypse.It was hard to decide which had me more nervous.

“Well, then let’s go get trapped in an elevator and die in there rather than getting eaten by zombies or whatever the apocalypse is bringing.”

I hesitated for a moment, then leaned forward and pressed the up button on the elevator. “At least we’ll die together, I guess.”

“Thank heavens for small mercies.” I didn’t have to look at her face to know she was rolling her eyes.

I followed her into the elevator. As the doors closed, I took a deep breath and held it. Panic started to creep into my veins. It started with a tingle up my spine and was followed by a quickening of my pulse. I tried to shift my thoughts to the pitch we were about to give. But the panic only spread. I clenched my fingers into a fist and squeezed. To further distract myself, I said a silent prayer that the elevator did, in fact, get stuck, and we missed the pitch and had to reschedule for a much later date—a date after I’ve had more than a few hours of sleep and had plenty of time to practice. I added in a caveat that the apocalypse could wait. We only needed to get delayed for an hour or so. My cell phone was charged, and I always carried emotional support snacks and water with me. So, at a minimum, we’d be fine for an hour or two. But the elevator completed its required task in record time. A strange sensation of both relief and disappointment washed over me.

The doors opened to the lobby of Take the Leap, an adventure planning company that specialized in planning thrilling (terrifying) group excursions. The floors were so shiny that the sun bouncing off the reflection nearly blinded me. A slate grey couch and complementing chairs created a barrier around the front desk, which was built to resemble the edge of a cliff. Just looking at it gave me intense vertigo. I paused at the elevator doors long enough for Ava to turn and give me a very pointed look. Move , she mouthed. I nodded and stepped into the lobby.

“Hi, we’re here to meet with Tripp James,” Ava said. “Ava Reed and Sadie Barnes with Savie Media.”

The blonde receptionist barely glanced up at us and nodded before her eyes scanned the space behind us as if she were looking for someone more impressive to gift her attention to. “Have a seat. I’ll let him know you’re here. Can I get you a water or coffee?”

I started to ask for water, but Ava answered for us. “No, thank you.” She grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the sofa. “You have your water bottle, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said with a sheepish grin.

“Sadie,” Ava whispered as she leaned in close, “what is going on with you today? You’re starting to scare me.”

I shrugged in an attempt to appear nonchalant. “Nothing.”

“Bull. I know you, Sadie, and I can tell when you’re lying.”

“I’m just nervous, okay? This pitch is a big deal.” It was more than that. Savie was at a crisis point, and if we didn’t land this client today, we’d both be looking for a job within the next few months. We’d known leaving our comfortable corporate jobs to start our own marketing agency was a risk, but Ava had convinced me it was a chance worth taking. I’m about as risk averse as any one person has any right to be, but I trusted Ava. I knew we worked well together and that we had what it took to run our own company. For the past two years, we’d done a pretty good job at it, too. Then we had two major clients get sold off to bigger companies who had their preferred marketing agencies. Never mind that the only reason they’d even been on the radar of their investors was because of the work we’d done for them.

“Can you try to get it together in the next two minutes?”

“Yes.” I nodded. I closed my eyes and allowed my brain to run through every worst-case scenario … we bomb the pitch, don’t sign a new client, go bankrupt, close our business, lose our life savings, foreclose on our house and office space, end up living in an old refrigerator box, and resort to selling feet pictures on the internet to be able to afford a fast-food value meal. Then, I did what I’d learned in therapy, and tucked every last one of those fears into an imaginary metal box, closed the lid, and shoved it into the back of my mental closet. I wasn’t going to let fear win today. No, today, I was going to channel my inner badass and we were going to land this client. Tripp James and the Take the Leap team would have no choice but to sign us as their agency of record. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Ava clapped her hand on my shoulder and said, “Did you shove all your fears in the metal box?”

“Sure did.”

“Good. Now, hand me the key.” I pretended to hand her a key and she dropped it into her purse.

“Ms. Barnes and Ms. Reed.” A deep voice interrupted us. I leaped to my feet and found myself staring straight into the coral polo-clad solid chest of Tripp James. We’d researched him ahead of the pitch, so we knew all about his blue-grey eyes and rock-hard pecs, but no Google image search could’ve prepared me for the mountain of a man that stood in front of us. I also knew that he happened to be single. Not that that was necessary information to have for this pitch.

“Mr. James,” Ava said and extended her hand. “I’m Ava and this is Sadie.” She elbowed my side. I took a step back and held my hand out as well. He shook Ava’s hand first and then took mine in a firm and confident grip. His hand was rough, as if he spent as little time in the office as possible. I hoped he couldn’t feel all of the nervous energy that had sweated straight into my palm.

“Call me Tripp,” he said with a broad smile. The warmth of his smile surprised me. Every picture of him online showcased his chiseled jaw and intense gaze. He rubbed his hand over his scruffy beard. “The team is ready for you. Though, I will warn you, we’ve been listening to agency pitches for going on six hours now, so I hope you’ve brought some circus tricks or something to keep us awake.”

I laughed nervously and said, “Ava did you remember to bring the trapeze?”

“Darn! I knew I forgot something.” She snapped her fingers to convey the missed opportunity.

“Oh, well. I guess we’ll settle for a killer presentation.”

No pressure. I’d never had a potential client be so blunt. Normally, they never mentioned the competition or just how many pitches they’d suffered through before ours. At least Ava and I weren’t big on the normal slideshow presentations, so we wouldn’t bore them to tears with an hour-long pitch filled with graphs and charts.

Tripp led us down the bright orange hallway and directed us into a conference room with a giant mural of the entire team skydiving. Looking around, I matched the faces of the people at the table with the smiles on the wall. No one appeared to be over the age of twenty-one, except Tripp. I knew from my research that he’d just celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday, making him a little over a year older than me.

While Ava connected her iPad to their screen, I introduced us to the room. “Thank you for hosting us today. I’m Sadie and this is Ava, we’re the women behind Savie.” I pulled the box of homemade chocolate chip cookies from my bag and placed them in the center of the table. “We know our work speaks for itself, but we’re also not above appealing to your stomachs and your sweet tooth.”

A handful of people chuckled politely, but as soon as I opened the container and the scent of fresh-baked cookies hit the air, every hand around the table reached for a cookie.

“We know you’ve just sat through a lot of presentations, so we’ll do our best to not bore you to tears or put you to sleep. We know it’s been a long day for everyone,” I said and nodded toward Ava.

She started the video we played before every pitch. It was a thirty-second highlight of the work we’d done over the past two years: the social media launch of a new haircare brand, a rebrand for a local restaurant chain, and a few other campaigns we were proud of. When it finished, she leaned forward and launched into the first part of our pitch.

I stood beside her and kept a neutral smile on my face. During Ava’s part, it was my job to read the audience because my specialty was thinking on my feet. If I got the sense that we were losing them, I’d pivot from our original plan. I took in the faces of our audience and tried to gauge their level of interest. Every single one of them looked bored out of their mind. The only person who kept their gaze locked on us in rapt attention was Tripp. We were most definitely losing the room.

Our original idea was to highlight our analysis of everything Take the Leap was doing right and where they could improve and respond to threats from competitors. We had a full plan developed to tackle this in a way that aligned with the company’s brand and mission. But as soon as the red-haired boy seated to Tripp’s right yawned and caused a chain-reaction yawn around the room that, thankfully, died before it affected Tripp, I knew that plan was the wrong approach.

I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth to signal the shift to Ava. She nodded quickly and stepped back to allow me to take over.

“Now is the part of the presentation where, I’m guessing, everyone walked you through the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing Take the Leap. But I won’t bore you with the details you already know. We’ve done the research, and I’m assuming you have, too,” I said. “Let’s face it, Take the Leap is losing its hold on the market. With the rise of adventure-based businesses like escape rooms and zip-line parks, what used to make Take the Leap unique is what makes it run-of-the-mill now.”

Ava shifted nervously behind me. I was supposed to launch into a spiel that praised Tripp and his company for being groundbreaking. I tossed her a look that I hoped portrayed confidence. I had the room’s attention now. I just had to keep it.

“But,” I said, raising my voice, “what makes Take the Leap special is the exact thing that you’ve pushed to the back burner. Your adventure matching app.”

Tripp sat up straighter. “How do you know about the app?”

I smiled. “I have my ways.”

“We haven’t launched the app yet.”

“No, but you should.” I took Ava’s iPad and pulled up the email from my twin brother that included my results from the app’s quiz. “I beta-tested the app last week. I hope you won’t hold it against Seth, but my brother needed someone who might break the quiz algorithm, and I was the perfect candidate.”

I turned to make sure my quiz results were on the screen. The profile photo my brother had uploaded wasn’t my most flattering photo, but it wasn’t the worst either. My brown hair was pulled into a messy bun, and my hazel eyes looked directly at my brother, who was behind the camera. The smirk on my face was the half smile I reserved for my twin that usually communicated my lack of amusement at whatever lame joke he’d just told. At my feet, his dog, Tommy Pickles, laid on his back with his paws in the air, begging for belly scratches. A blank results screen appeared next to the picture. It didn’t even have the decency to say no matches found . It was just empty.

“Whoa.” A murmur of surprised whispers echoed around the room.

“Right? No matches.”

“It shouldn’t do that,” Tripp said, shaking his head. “There is supposed to be a suggestion for everyone.”

“Unless you’re scared of your own shadow,” Ava said, “like Sadie. Look, you’ve cornered the market on thrill seekers and risk-takers, but what about everyone else? The people who retreat from the mere thought of adventure?”

“Those people aren’t exactly our target audience,” joked a blond kid sitting at the end of the table. “We don’t pander to scaredy cats.” A few other people around the table snickered. Tripp shot them each a quick warning glance before clearing his throat and nodding back to us.

“Why not?” Ava asked. “Isn’t your slogan an adventure for everyone ? The company’s mission statement is all about taking the extraordinary and making it available for the ordinary.”

“Sure, but I guess I’m not following where this is going,” Tripp said, sighing. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. Now, we were losing him, too.

Ava shot me an apologetic look. My stomach twisted in a knot. She was about to pivot big time, and I wasn’t going to like it.

“So, let’s take someone like Sadie who would never even dream about jumping out of a plane and make her the focus of the social media campaign. We set up a weekly challenge and film the process, teasing a bit each day, before we launch the episode on Friday on your video platform. We show ordinary people that they can do these things.”

“Why someone like Sadie?” Tripp asked. He raised an eyebrow and shifted his gaze between me and my quiz results on the screen behind me.

“Because someone like her is the perfect candidate. You saw the results. There isn’t an ounce of adventurousness in her bones. Her idea of thrill-seeking is driving five miles per hour over the speed limit.”

“No, I get that. But why not her?” I wasn’t a fan of the tiny hint of excitement in his voice. What was he plotting?

I laughed. “Because that’s a terrible idea,” I said before I could stop myself.

“No, it’s brilliant,” Ava said. “Sadie would be perfect. She’s approachable and relatable to the average person. And we’d be able to keep the budget in check by using in-house talent.”

I scoffed at being referred to as talent . The idea was almost as preposterous as my fear of being caught in a malfunctioning elevator during the apocalypse. But judging by the looks on the faces of everyone else in the room, I was the only one who saw the obvious flaws in this plan. I was outnumbered. Tripp clapped his hands together as if to signal he’d come to a decision. A tiny smile quirked at the corners of his mouth.

“I love it,” Tripp said. “Send over the contract and let’s do this. We can let the lawyers hammer out the details. I’d like to get started as soon as possible.”

“Wait, what? Don’t you want to review with your team? Take some time to go back over the pitches. I mean, we didn’t even go through our pitch.”

“I don’t need to. You two are the first ones to truly understand our purpose. We’re more than just a company catering to bachelor parties and finance bros trying to one-up each other. I think I can speak for the entire team when I say, welcome aboard Savie.”

A round of applause and cheers erupted from the room. “Let’s do it!” Ava said, feeding off their excitement.

I gritted my teeth and glared at Ava as she shook Tripp’s hand. This was not at all how I’d seen this day going. I’d never been the face of a campaign before. What if I ruined everything? What if I caused the demise of two businesses—Savie and Take the Leap? My stomach twisted in knots the more I thought through just how terrible of an idea this was.

But, as Ava had asked earlier, what’s the worst that could happen ?