38
ALEWIFE’S HEADQUARTERS WEREbased out of the second floor of an old mill in the Seaport neighborhood that had—like so many things in this area—been renovated and turned into shiny new offices that still maintained a hint of “character,” a nod to Boston’s never-ending cycle of new things springing up on top of the very old.
The decor was the cool, corporate version of farmhouse chic: Revived wooden floors glimmered, a sparkling relic of centuries past. Giant iron light fixtures hung from high ceilings, looming like thunder clouds over their open floor plan. The bottom floor of the building housed the Alewife tasting room, which had opened last fall to great acclaim.
I paced in their lobby, sipping an Alewife-branded bottle of water their receptionist had handed me when I walked in, fifteen minutes early. My mind should have been focused on the meeting, but all I could think about was the loon stuck in the pond with those swan boats, Mack puttering around the boathouse, Sam nestled under a giant stack of pillows, all my friends together, sipping coffee on the porch of Sunrise.
“Clara!” Amaya breezed through the door with her arms wide, beelining for me as her salmon-colored silk dress moved with her like a second skin. Behind her, assistant Abe lingered like always, double-fisting giant iced coffees.
“I am so sorry I interrupted your time off,” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders with a squeeze. “I hope you know I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t an utter emergency.”
Her eyes were sincere and regretful, and I knew she hadn’t purposely gone out of her way to sabotage this break she’d made me take. But that almost made it worse; despite her speech and her adamant insistence that I log off and focus on myself, Four Points was still expected to come before all of that. Before my own needs. Before me.
“I got a chance to check out the rundown you sent last night, and it looks great,” she said with a smack of her lips, freshly glossed in rosy, shimmery pink. “It seems like even just a little break got your creative juices flowing again.”
“Yeah, I think the time off definitely helped me figure some stuff out,” I agreed with a nod.
“Clara!” Lydia had arrived with the rest of our creative team, clad in a head-to-toe lime-green pantsuit and trendy platform sneakers. She clasped a hand to her mouth when she realized I was having one-on-one time with Amaya and made herself busy with Abe and whatever stack of handouts he’d brought for the meeting.
“Gabbie’s beyond excited.” Amaya kept chattering away as the receptionist waved for us to follow and then led us farther into the office. “I guess anytime I need you to nail a job, I’ll just send you away to the woods for a week. As soon as we’re done here, let’s talk about your role on the team, okay?”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” I agreed, trying to muster up some excitement about my future at Four Points. She was all but announcing that a promotion was in my future, and yet I couldn’t bring myself to care.
Thankfully, the sight of the conference room’s glass wall set my adrenaline off like a cocktail—shaken, not stirred. The rush of the pitch, the thrill of the sell; these things still drove me. There was nothing quite like knowing an idea you’d created, carved out of thin air and shaped into something special, had the possibility of being brought to life. This was the part of my job I still loved, no matter how burnt out on the rest of it I was.
Getting people excited about the magic of what could possibly be was what I did best. No matter what self-doubt I struggled with, I knew this in my bones. And judging by the confident, beaming smile on Gabbie Pereira’s face when we entered, Amaya had been right. This pitch was in the bag.
“Hello, Four Points!” she bellowed, chic silver bangles clanging on her wrist as she waved us in like I’d seen Oprah Winfrey do on old clips of her holiday episodes on YouTube. She had the confident, no-nonsense vibe of someone who grew up dealing with customers in her parents’ coffee shop—which was something she touted in almost every interview of hers I’d read. Next to Gabbie were two white dudes with practically identically groomed beards, just trimmed enough to be clean-cut but still long enough to appear rugged, like they could have just been casually chopping wood before walking into this meeting. They nodded their hellos.
“Thanks for having us!” Amaya shuffled around the table to greet Gabbie with a half-hug reserved solely for business acquaintances whom you’ve gotten drunk with a couple of times.
She slid into a chair directly across from me. “I’ll let Clara take it from here, since you’re already acquainted with her ideas for your Summer Ale launch.”
Amaya’s eyebrows knitted together ever so slightly, a flicker of something that looked like annoyance shadowing her face. Maybe the non-stale version of Clara hadn’t really been what she’d wanted, after all.
With a nod over to Delilah, who was hunched over her laptop, running the presentation, I stood and pushed my chair in, smoothing the creases in my skirt one last time.
“I’ve spent the last several days with old friends,” I said, delivering the words I’d written in my initial outline, practically word for word. “They’re the kind of people everyone deserves to have in their lives, the ones who have cheered me through my best moments and loved me through my worst. Sometimes we don’t talk for months or see each other for years, even. But when we’re together, the inside jokes come flooding back. The stories and memories we shared and made this last week—sometimes with Alewife beers in hand—had us laughing for hours, often to the point of tears.”
I motioned for Delilah to switch to the next slide, the photo I’d taken on our first night back at Pine Lake. My friends were blurry shapes around the campfire, the sun a distant memory behind the pines.
“At one point I thought to myself, ‘God, if only I could bottle this feeling.’ And that is exactly what Four Points can and will invoke with Alewife’s Summer Ale, if you hire our team to launch this exciting new product.”
“I absolutely loved that your inspiration came from your own life.” Gabbie rolled up the sleeves of her blazer and nodded along eagerly, as Amaya’s gaze flicked between the two of us, clearly pleased with how this was going.
“Yes, it all came to me after spending the week with dear friends.” I swallowed down the fireball of emotion that was trying to work its way out of my body. I was seated at a pristine table at one of the most influential companies in Boston, facing my dream client. The new account, the promotion—it was all about to become mine. Except I didn’t really want any of it. Not anymore.
Maybe I never had.
I just needed to get through the meeting. Then I could figure out my feelings.
One more hour.
I cleared my throat and tried to push forward, focusing on Gabbie’s keen face.
“We want to not just tap into that nostalgic summer feeling most of us have, but to offer the promise of new memories to come, with Alewife being the perfect catalyst.”
“Love that,” Gabbie said as she rested her elbows on the table, leaning in. “The play on friendship as a selling point feels very authentic, which is what we want.”
“Yes, it—”
My phone buzzed in my bag, causing me to jump.
“Sorry.” I bent down and grabbed my phone, swiping through to the message. “One second, let me just shut this off.”
Clara I’m in labor.
My hand shook slightly, head pounding. It was Sam.
For real this time.
“Is everything okay, Clara?” Amaya’s voice was soft but pointed, a more delicate and discreet version of, “Hey, pay the fuck attention to our client.”
“Yes! Yes. Let me just turn this on do not disturb real quick.” I fiddled with my phone as I searched for some way to turn off my alerts. My brain wasn’t computing. I’d done this a million times, but for some reason, I couldn’t figure out how to stop it from buzzing.
But then again, I didn’t want to.
I might not have known what I wanted for my future, but this was certain: I wanted to be there for Sam.
I’m on my way,I typed, before looking up at the room full of confused faces around me.
“You know what? I can’t do this.” The words came out clear and direct, fearless. Lydia twisted in her chair to look at me, mouth agape.
“Should we take five minutes?” Gabbie gently smacked her hands together, plan settled. “I could definitely use a bathroom break.”
I shook my head. “No. I mean, I can’t do this pitch, or work on this project. I’m sorry.”
“Clara.” Amaya’s voice was dagger-sharp, swiftly weaponizing my name as a warning.
“I think I’m quitting? Wait, why did I ask that like a question? It’s not a question at all. I am. I’m quitting. Amaya, I’ve loved working for you, but I think it’s time for me to move on.”
I expected panic, anticipated its acidic rise in my chest. Instead, an eerie calm settled over me. How had I not realized this before?
My work hadn’t been stale because I was floundering or bad at my job; it was stale because I didn’t want to do it anymore.
“If this is about making you come home early”—Amaya’s face was frozen in a smile, which I knew was a cover, her way of staying in control of the nightmare unfolding in front of a client no less—“we can obviously talk about extra vacation time. And I’ll expedite your promotion paperwork. I’ll have Abe get on that now.”
Next to her, Abe was already on his phone, typing away.
“I appreciate that. But I don’t want extra vacation time, or a promotion,” I said, shoving everything I’d laid out on the table back into my bag. “There’s nothing you can give me that will make me stay.”
“I am very confused right now,” Gabbie said, reaching for her glass and chugging it back in one swift motion. She dragged a hand across her mouth. “Are we not doing this?”
I looked over to Lydia, who offered me an encouraging nod of her head. “Gabbie, I’m so sorry. But this whole idea came to me because of how amazing it felt to be back with my oldest friends, who I hadn’t seen in years. Because I’d been so focused on this job, even time away felt like a distraction. But they’re not a distraction. They’re the people who truly get me, you know? Like even in the moments when I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing with my life. Like right now, maybe. This definitely might be one of those moments.”
“Clara.” The smile had evaporated from Amaya’s face, replaced with steely determination. “I’m counting on you. Gabbie’s counting on you. Lydia’s counting on you.”
“I’m actually not counting on you at all,” Lydia said, but Amaya didn’t even acknowledge her. She kept speaking, slow and deliberate. But a quick glance down revealed her fingers clenching the edge of the table, the tips almost white.
“We’re all counting on you, Clara,” she repeated. “You committed to working on this project. I think we’re owed that.”
“How about what I owe myself?” I said, my chair squeaking against the wood floor as I shoved it back. “My friend Sam needs me. She’s counting on me to be there for her. And that’s what I want to do.”
I turned back to Gabbie and her bearded henchmen. “I can either stand here and try to sell you on this idea of magical summers and everlasting friendships or go show up for the person in my life who embodies all of those things. Seems like an obvious choice.”
Lydia let out a shocked laugh and raised her hands in quiet applause as I stood.
“The plan we’ve come up with for your Summer Ale is solid, no matter who’s in charge,” I said to Gabbie. “And we have great people at Four Points. Amaya will set you up with an amazing team. Lydia could probably finish this pitch right now.”
“Oh no, not happening,” she said, taking one final swig of her water. “I’m going with you. Amaya, this can be my micro-sabbatical, right?”
She jumped up without waiting for Amaya’s answer and maneuvered around the table until she was close enough to loop her free hand through my arm, tugging me away from the table as Gabbie and Amaya sat and watched, stunned into a kind of horrified stupor.
“Thank you,” I said with one final look at my now ex-boss. “I think the time off really did help me figure some stuff out. But you should call it a ‘playcation.’ Something fun, if you want people to be excited about it. Micro-sabbatical is so formal and stiff.”
I grabbed my bag off of the chair—phone still buzzing inside—and pushed through the conference room door, practically skipping with Lydia down the path of open cubicles that led to reception. My heart pounded out a song inside my chest as we spilled out the front doors, back into the bustling Boston morning.
“You remember how I called you the other day and said you were a genius for going rogue and sending the creative to Gabbie?” Lydia said.
“Yes,” I said, still in a daze from what had just happened inside. “Why?”
She looked up at me, glowing. “I was wrong. That? Just now? Was genius. That was fucking going rogue.”
“Well, I probably should get out of here before I change my mind and go rogue on going rogue,” I said, digging into my bag for my phone. My fingers brushed up against something smooth and round and I tugged it loose, holding it up in the morning sunlight.
The medal.
I’d left it with Mack in his Jeep a few days ago; a peace offering, a sign that I believed in him, completely and unconditionally. And somehow he’d slipped it back to me, just like we’d always done. Except this time, I knew it meant something different. Or at least, I hoped it did.
I’m rooting for you.
“Clara?” Lydia asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said slowly, dropping the medal around my neck. “Actually, no, I’m not fine.”
“Wait, you’re not?” She winced in confusion.
“I’m great. I’m really great, actually. And I need to get to New Hampshire.”
“I can split an Uber with you back to your apartment,” she said. “Help you pack?”
“Yeah,” I said, thinking. “I just need to hurry because, you know, there’s a baby coming.”
“I can move fast,” she agreed, already tapping on the Uber app on her phone. “I’ll get us a car.”
“Hey, Lydia, let me ask you something,” I said, an idea twenty years in the making solidifying in my brain in real-time.
“Sure,” she said, glancing up at me expectantly, still in assistant mode even though I was no longer her boss. “What’s up?”
“Have you ever cut anyone’s hair?”