Thirty-Eight Arya
thirty-eight
Arya
What do you think?” Arya asked.
Carley twirled her pen between her fingers.
She and Arya had gotten manicures that morning, and her fingers sparkled with glittery purple polish.
Arya had picked a metallic gold for his.
So far he’d never gotten the sense Mr. Holbrook was homophobic, and it would suck to find out now, but Arya always felt his best when he had a fresh mani-pedi.
“It looks good. A-plus, no notes.” Carley spun Arya’s iPad back toward him.
Tuesday morning, Mr. Holbrook had called Arya out of the blue and asked if he was available Thursday for a meeting with the Holbrook Labs events department.
Arya had been too stunned to speak. First, a meeting was way more than he could have hoped for, especially with the fiscal quarter getting ready to close out.
He and Mitchell would have to make a decision soon.
Second, some ungenerous part of him had expected Ben to poison Mr. Holbrook against him. But apparently that hadn’t happened.
Arya should’ve given Ben some credit.
Neither of them had been at their best that day. In vino veritas, Arya had told himself in the moment, but honestly, who hadn’t been a bit of a dick when they were drunk? (Well, maybe not Ramin. Wine just made Ramin super sentimental. It was kind of adorable.)
Regardless. He was here now. His presentation was ready.
“How do I look?” He stood and did a little twirl, in a navy-blue suit that he always secretly thought of as his lucky suit.
Not only for business but also for hookups.
Come to think of it, he’d been wearing it the night he met Ben.
Thankfully the stains—soil and grape juice and cum—had all come out at the dry cleaner’s.
“C-plus, B-minus. Needs improvement,” Carley scoffed, but her eyes twinkled. “You look nice, bossman. Ready for this.”
Arya straightened his tie, a black one with gold boteh—he refused to call it paisley; Persians had invented it, after all—and smoothed his creases.
“Right. Here goes nothing.”
Arya swiped to the final slide.
“So, as you can see, Mitchell Murphy Events is the perfect partner for Holbrook Labs. We’ve got the experience, the infrastructure, the reliability, and the vision to bring your events to life, from regional sales meetings to national conferences to live streaming, and everything in between.”
Arya reminded himself not to hold his breath as he studied Mr. Holbrook’s face. Next to him, he thought Carley was holding her breath.
Mr. Holbrook was unnervingly still. He’d never been super expressive the times Arya had seen him in the past, but he’d still done normal human things like smiling, frowning, and laughing.
But he might as well have been a statue today. He’d barely even acknowledged that he and Arya had met before, had shared wine with Ben and Diane on a sunny day.
It was unnerving. It must have been a business tactic. It couldn’t be that he hated Arya now, could it? He could’ve just not asked Arya in for a meeting if he was pissed off.
Mr. Holbrook stayed quiet, seeming to consider, but Arya thought he caught the tiniest of nods in the direction of Gina, their senior VP of marketing and head of their events department.
She was a petite woman with brown hair, a winning smile, and the most thorough questions Arya had ever fielded.
But he’d answered them all, well he thought, and there hadn’t been any follow-ups.
Finally she asked, “What’s your availability like in May next year?”
Arya blinked. Imagined their calendar. None of their current clientele had any big events in May. “We tend to have a lot of high school graduations at Municipal Arena,” Arya said.
“Those are all handled through our crew at the convention center, though,” Carley added. “We have a separate events team that handles most of the business that comes through the city’s facilities.”
Arya nodded. “Beyond that, we’re wide open.”
“Good. Our annual meeting is May eighteenth. We’d like to work together on that. And we’ve got some smaller events the rest of this year and into the next we can discuss, too.”
Arya felt like the clouds had parted and crepuscular rays had shone down on him. Angels sang in heavenly chorus.
Fuck. They’d said yes!
He smiled and nodded. “We’d love to.”
Mr. Holbrook stood. “Glad to be working together,” he said, still expressionless, though with the tiniest hint of warmth in his voice. He shook Arya’s hand and then Carley’s, nodded at Gina, and stepped out of the office, taking care to close the door softly behind him.
Arya was so stunned, it took him a moment to realize Gina had asked him something.
“Sorry, I was just internally celebrating. What was the question?”
Gina gave a twinkly laugh. She, at least, was easier to read.
“I asked if you wanted to talk logistics now.”
“I’d love to.” Arya unbuttoned his suit coat, shared a nod with Carley, and sat, swiping over to his note-taking app. “What do you need?”
“Fucking finally,” Carley said as they drove back to MME. “I feel like we haven’t had any good news in at least a year.”
“It hasn’t been that long,” Arya said. “We got the city to renew their contract, didn’t we?”
“If by we you mean you, then yes, but that’s just medium news. This is fucking good news.”
Arya sighed. “It is good, isn’t it?”
If it had been a little later, he might have swung by Aspire for a quick champagne toast, but it was still too early for happy hour, so they just drove back to the office. For the first time in a long while, he was actually happy to see Mitchell’s lights on.
While Carley got dragged into a conversation with Val about an event they had next week in Tucson, Arya knocked on Mitchell’s door.
“Come on in.”
Arya swung in and said, without preamble, “They said yes.”
Mitchell looked up from his computer. His readers had slipped down to the end of his nose, and his eyes looked relatively clear for a change, which was nice to see.
Maybe he really was working on himself. Maybe he was trying to change.
“Who said yes?”
“Holbrook Labs.” Arya swanned in and landed in one of the chairs across Mitchell’s desk. “They said yes.”
“They did?”
“Their contracts department is looking over things, but they signed the MOU today. It’s already in our inboxes.” Arya was nearly vibrating. “Five million dollars over the next three years. At least. Maybe more.”
Arya had never signed such a large contract in his life.
This wasn’t just good news. This was saved the company news.
They were going to be all right. They wouldn’t have to lay anyone off, wouldn’t have to sell their building, wouldn’t have to say yes to every single scrap of business that came their way to keep the lights on.
They were working with one of Kansas City’s biggest companies.
They were good.
He’d done it. He’d fucking done it.
Arya waited for Mitchell to congratulate him. To tell him what a great win this was for the company, how much his hard work had paid off, how their financial problems were solved.
Hell, even just a well done or nice job or cool.
Instead, Mitchell started clicking around (he still used a wired mouse after all these years). He must’ve found the memorandum, because his eyes started scanning as he read. He bit his lip.
While he read, Steve entered without even knocking, carrying a coffee mug, but Arya could smell the booze in it from across the room.
Fuck.
“Mitch, you wanted—”
“Later,” Mitchell said without looking up.
“Okay, babe.” Steve backed out again, leaving Arya shocked. Triply shocked.
One, Mitch? No one ever called Mitchell Mitch.
Two, babe? Please, please don’t let Mitchell and Steve be fucking.
There was a gap of at least thirty years in their ages.
Arya wasn’t a prude about age gaps, but thirty years was a lot, especially given that Mitchell was Steve’s fucking boss!
Mitchell had always liked having a twink around as office eye candy, but he didn’t actually go around fucking them. Usually.
This was just asking for a lawsuit.
And third, he’d been wrong. Mitchell wasn’t changing, was he? That mug had smelled like nothing but vodka. He was surprised the finish on Mitchell’s desk hadn’t started peeling from the fumes. He wondered if the air had turned flammable.
He certainly had. It felt like fire was creeping in his veins, up into his neck and face. When he was really, truly angry, the top of his head turned a rusty red that showed through his brown skin.
“What—” he began, but Mitchell raised a hand and continued reading.
Arya was too mad to speak.
What the fuck? He wasn’t some… some schoolboy to be told to shush. Or some dog ordered to be quiet.
Mitchell’s lips pressed together. “We’ve got to make some changes to the MOU before we can move forward.”
“We what?” Arya spat, seeing red. Suddenly he understood Madeline Kahn’s character in Clue a lot better, because the flames were on the sides of his face now. “What kind of changes?”
“Cool your cooter,” Mitchell said. “We—”
“No, you cool your cooter.” Arya wasn’t sure when Mitchell had picked that phrase up from Carley, but he lacked any of the charm she put into it.
They had bigger fish to fry right now, though.
“It’s our usual terms, better than our usual terms, in fact.
They agreed to a million-dollar deposit on signing!
Way more than normal. They’ll cover subrentals at a hundred percent.
They’ve committed to getting fucking catering for our crew breaks, and business-class airfare for our crews.
None of our other clients are doing that. ”
“That’s all good, yes, but with a little negotiating—”
“No, you are not fucking renegotiating the deal I already negotiated. Their lawyers will look it over, and they will sign it, and then we will sign it, and then we’ll be in business. End of story.”
“Arya,” Mitchell began, voice dripping with concern, but Arya wasn’t having it.
“Don’t Arya me. I’m your fucking partner here, Mitch.”
Mitchell frowned. “You know I hate when people call me that.”
Arya did know, but he was pissed off and feeling petty. They were on the cusp of saving the company, and Mitchell was risking it all on some… some ego trip!
“Then why is your babe Steve using that name? Why was he bringing you vodka in the office? It’s two in the afternoon.”
Mitchell’s face turned stormy. “I told you—”
“No. I’m telling you. If you’re fucking your assistant, you need to stop. And if you’re drinking at work, again, you need to stop. And if you’re even thinking of messing with my deal with Holbrook Labs, you need to stop.”
“This is my company.” Mitchell’s face was turning blotchy. “And if I say your deal isn’t good enough, it’s not.”
The fire in Arya’s belly turned into a volcano.
He’d never been so mad in his life. Mad at Mitchell, mad at the world, mad at his parents, mad at Ben, mad at himself.
He was Arya Fucking Nazeri, and he was in charge of his own life. Not the other way around.
“It’s our company, and I say it is.”
“It thirty-five percent is,” Mitchell said. “I’m done talking about this.”
“I’m not done. You don’t get to just disengage when you don’t like the conversation.”
“Actually, I do.” Mitchell swiveled his chair away.
Fuck that shit. Mitchell didn’t get to turn his back on Arya. Not like that. Not after all they’d been through, all they’d built together, all Arya had done for him.
“Fine then. I fucking quit.”
Mitchell just laughed. “You won’t quit. You can’t.”
“Watch me.”
Arya stood so fast he knocked his chair over. He didn’t bother picking it up as he stormed out of the office; blew past Carley, who had a look of alarm in her eyes; threw open the front doors like fucking Aragorn in Helm’s Deep—though not as sexy—got in his car; and took off.
He was so fucking over Mitchell.
He was over everything.