Chapter Twenty-Three
LACEY
No one wants to be the asshole who tells the customer success and sales teams that they’re going to lose their jobs, so we all behave like people who respect NDAs for once, and keep our mouths shut.
And since everyone’s used to seeing the Project Z team walk out of Gutenberg like our souls were being stomped on for the past hour, no one questions our sad faces and generally haunted demeanors.
“Are you telling Kate?” Trevor whisper-asks me when we’re back at our desks. “You need to tell Kate.”
“Absolutely not,” I say. “That’s Jude’s job, remember? It’s his company.”
I don’t mean to be smug. And I saw his face in that meeting, I know he’s freaking out right now. But his inability to do the right thing doesn’t mean that I need to step in.
I open up my laptop and look over the bug queue. The bug queue that hasn’t mattered in days, that literally does not matter at all now. Still, I add impact scores to the newly filed issues, change the severity on most of them because those QA guys think everything is the end of the world.
I prioritize things for ten minutes and then I stand up. Ugh.
“You telling Kate?” Trevor asks.
“No,” I say, and I march down to Jude’s office to remind him that senior leaders in his organization are going to find out, through gossip, that their departments are being eliminated, and maybe if he could get his head out of his own ass for a minute and behave like an actual leader, he might get ahead of it and let them know properly.
“He left,” Jonnie tells me.
“Of course he did.”
“You can be mad at him,” she tells me, “but don’t be mean to him. He doesn’t deserve that.”
I roll my eyes.
An hour later, I’m over with QA, bickering with them about the priority of a bug no one cares about, just for something to do. And because I’m right.
I look up as I see Jude walking across the office, the resigned slump banished from his shoulders.
He’s got purpose in his walk. I assume he’s finally heading to Kate’s desk, that he’ll bring her into a conference room and tell her the bad news.
But he keeps walking, all the way to the QA pod where I’m sitting.
“Hey,” he says quietly. Not sadly, not morosely. Almost… conspiratorially? And he’s not talking to me, he’s talking to my contentious friends here in QA.
“Question for you: do we have a green light on the release?”
“What release? We pushed three production bug fixes this morning.”
“No. The Roar release. Is it ready to go?”
“Mmmm. Could probably stand another round of testing, given the changes we’ve pushed over the last week.”
“Hmm,” Jude says.
I don’t know why he’s asking, and I’m still upset with him, but I stand up against tyranny when I see it happening.
“No,” I tell the QA guy who never wants us to push anything, ever. “That’s not true. Roar’s all fresh code, it’s not touching anything we’ve fixed recently.”
“We should at least put eyes on it,” he tuts.
“How long would you need?” Jude asks.
“Probably at least two hours.”
“Do it,” Jude tells him, and walks away.
“One,” I say to the QA guy, in my most threatening tone. I hold up a single finger. “You have one hour.”
And then I run to catch up with Jude, telling Trevor that he needs to come with me as I hustle past.
“Hang on,” Trevor tells Jude. He reads from his phone, “Can you see out of both eyes?”
“What?”
“Do you have a severe headache? How about numbness, specific to one side of your body?”
“I’m not having a stroke, Trev. I’m doing this. It’s happening.” Jude says, clapping Trevor on the back. He’s smiling, and not in a deranged madman kind of way. Not even like the Jude I spent weeks flirting with in a conference room. There’s a lightness to him that I don’t know I’ve seen before.
I sit down on the couch; I’m suddenly feeling a little dizzy.
“The LOI specifically calls out that we can’t release any new products without Corday Ford’s approval while the deal’s pending,” Trevor says.
“I know. But I decided I don’t care,” Jude tells him, spreading his palms wide.
“Bro.”
“Hi,” I say. They both turn to me. “A question about the consequences.”
“Oh, they’re bad,” Jude says.
“It’ll probably kill the deal,” Trevor adds.
“I thought you said they were bad,” I tell him.
“And then they’ll sue the shit out of Lettercat. And probably Jude, too.”
“You don’t care?” I ask Jude.
With zero hesitation he shrugs, and then smiles at me. “Fuck it. I’m a pirate.”
I smile back, because I can’t help it.
“I’ll be a pirate,” I say.
“Bros,” Trevor says. “What are you talking about?”
With Glenn still out on leave, Amber is the only other officer of the company in the building. Jude pings her and asks her to come into his office, where Trevor is fretting about his future reputation and I’m running through the once-abandoned launch day checklist.
“What’s going on?” she says.
“It’s probably a good idea for you to go home for the day,” Jude tells her. “I’m about to violate the terms of the Letter of Intent.”
“Oh, that’s great,” she says. “I’ll head out and go to Pilates. Good for you guys.”
Once she’s left the office, Jude, Trevor, and I walk out to the floor, where Jude smacks the gong repeatedly. As its sound rolls over the cubicles, heads lift from desks, AirPods come out.
Jude clears his throat, then looks around at all the people watching him, waiting for the next bit of bad news.
“I want to start by apologizing to all of you. I was supposed to be leading this company, and I was taking orders instead. You guys deserve better than that. Your work deserves better than that.”
No one’s disagreeing.
“So what we’re going to do now is, as soon as QA gives us the thumbs-up, we’re pushing the release that I canceled last week. This might not be the smart or responsible thing to do, but Corday Ford’s planning to rip the heart out Lettercat. I can’t let that happen, so we’re launching Roar today.”
There are some hoots, but honestly, lots of confused faces.
Jude tells them he’ll be available to answer questions in Gutenberg, but I tell the QA guy to stay put. And I ask the marketing team to queue up the emails and social posts we have drafted. I call Ella and tell her the website reskin needs to go live this afternoon.
“What exactly is happening down there?” she asks.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “But it feels like Lettercat again. And I love it.”
The release isn’t what you’d call the smoothest. Ingrid and Dave are busier than they should be with hotfixes, and the data team is in a panic and requesting a rollback.
“Do you not understand what is going on here?” Trevor asks Steve. “My boy Jude might have just blown up his entire career along with the Corday Ford deal, and whatever payout you and the rest of us might have made from it. And you’re looking for the Undo button?”
Steve agrees that he’ll try to make things work.
I’ve set Gutenberg up as a war room, with dashboards and monitors displaying performance, server load, website visitor data, and real-time sales tracking. Jonnie has brought in snacks. Kate put a Bluetooth speaker on the conference table and is streaming dance music. Trevor DoorDashed some beer.
The team buzzes in and out. Traffic is up on the website; people clap whenever someone starts a trial, which also prompts Ingrid to jump on her laptop and kicks off a batch process for something we didn’t fully automate. I don’t ask her what will happen with that while she’s sleeping.
It’s festive but hectic, and more things are wrong than probably should be. The numbers are what we expected for a soft-launch, but not the type to shoot off fireworks for. That’s okay. It feels like a win, like we saved the soul of Lettercat, if not its future.
Jude’s on the phone in his office for most of the day, but he comes in to check on things late in the afternoon.
“Have you heard from Edmund?” I ask him.
“No,” he says. “When I talked to him this morning, he might have mentioned that he’s flying to Greece this afternoon. I can’t be sure.” He smirks. Corday Ford’s workday was over when we pushed, and with Edmund on his way to Europe, we have maybe twelve hours until the shit hits the fan.
“What about Glenn?”
“He had a lot to say. But I think he’s proud of us. I’m proud of us.”
“Good,” I say. “I am, too.”
He checks his watch. “Listen, I need to get to a haircut appointment at five. And then I’m around two years late for a soccer game I have at seven.”
“Okay,” I say, aware that Kate, Dave, and the rest of the room have tuned in to what just became a personal conversation.
“Would it be okay if we talked after?” he asks me, like I’m the only person here.
“Yeah,” I say, a little breathlessly.
After he leaves, Ingrid asks me what I did now, and if I’m in trouble.
“Oh, she’s in trouble,” Kate tells her.
I don’t stay late. Well, not too late. I send an invitation to The Colony for a webinar where we’ll review and discuss the new platform.
I take the data highlights from the day— trials, new signups with the premium option, engagement from existing paid users —and put them into a message that I send out to all Lettercatters, because internal communication about product changes is just as important as external communication.
I’m shutting down the monitors in Gutenberg when Kate comes in.
“We really need to find you a hobby. Have you considered knitting? Witchcraft? Walking dogs from the shelter?” she asks.
“In my defense, this is the biggest launch of my career; I’m allowed to be a little obsessed with it,” I tell her.
I don’t tell her that I received an email today, that I haven’t opened, with an attachment and the subject line LACEY LANG - OFFER LETTER, along with a voice memo from Faith that I haven’t listened to.
It’s not denial keeping me from engaging, I’ve decided.
I’m just making room for today, letting this accomplishment mean something.
It might be my last launch day at Lettercat.
It could be Lettercat’s last launch ever.
“The biggest launch of your career so far,” Kate corrects. “What about Jude? Are you all good on that front?”
“It’s going to be,” I tell her. “I’m going to go with my gut.”
It’s not until I get here that I wonder if I’m a stalker.
I texted Trevor to see where Jude will be playing tonight, and then took an Uber to this soccer field in the middle of a neighborhood somewhere between Potrero Hill and the Mission.
There’s a very tall fence around the entire field, and the only people inside it are playing soccer.
It seems strange to go in there and watch, so I walk the perimeter until I find a cold and uncomfortable aluminum bench to sit on.
The light’s a little dim and the wind kicks in, and I start to feel like an unrequited high school crusher sitting here watching grown men run around in soccer shorts with red and yellow singlets on over their T-shirts.
The lights come on and the field is awash in color, and I can see Jude better.
He’s in red; fast and skilled, but he doesn’t take it too seriously. He cheers a lot when they score, yells like his heart is breaking when they don’t. He spends a lot of time laughing and shit-talking his opponents.
He’s more likely to pass the ball than shoot it, and he’s constantly running. He’s everywhere, but I don’t know that he’s seen that I’m here until he stops one time as he’s running past. He walks closer and grabs the fence in front, peering out to check that it’s me.
I wave, a little shyly. He walks backwards, running a hand through his hair.
“Hi,” he mouths. And then he runs off, looking over his shoulder to smile at me.
When the game is over, I walk to the gate where the players are all leaving, cleats slung over their shoulders, duffel bags in hand. I lurk to the side and watch as Jude says goodnight to his teammates before walking over to where I am.
Under his warmup jacket he’s damp with sweat; his hair— trimmed now, but still long enough to get into his eyes —is nearly wet with it.
“Is it weird that I’m here?” I ask when he stops, maybe ten feet away from me.
“No,” he says. “I like it.”
I take a breath and steady myself before I speak. “I want to apologize to you. I wasn’t very nice, and I said some mean things that I regret.”
“That’s all true for me, too,” he says. “I don’t know if there’s a worse feeling than knowing I let you down.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t have faith in you,” I tell him, “and I know I didn’t really have you in the first place, but if it’s an option, I would very much like you back.”
“Of course you had me,” he says, dropping his cleats and his duffel bag to the ground. “But you never lost me, not for a second.”
He closes all the distance between us, and then I’m in his arms, his mouth is on mine, and whatever’s going to happen tomorrow doesn’t matter.
Everything is a mess, but somehow, it’s still perfect.