The Rival Copywriter

Prologue

Slater Faust Chicago Headquarters

Five years ago

Campbell Porter will be the death of me.

The first time I heard his voice, I was perched cross-legged on an Eames chair in the Slater Faust lobby, waiting for orientation to start.

It blared from the elevator bay like some kind of warning.

Big and scratchy; less sexy rasp, more dust storm.

The sort of thing that obliterates everyone around it.

But Campbell’s voice was only his first infraction.

Then it was his desk, facing mine, the two of us set up outside our manager’s office like desperate gargoyles.

So close I could see the gold sweep of Campbell’s hair above my computer monitor—a hat I didn’t ask for, sitting atop every Word document I opened.

Then it was his knee. The way it bounces when he’s thinking. How he spent all summer rattling the floor beneath us.

Then his Vanderbilt Phi Beta Kappa mug. As if I didn’t already get it. The old money, the whiplash speed of Campbell Porter’s brain. No, he had to carry that thing to every meeting—palming it from the top like a heathen.

Then his eyebrows. Arching in reaction to anything I said.

His email response time. A millisecond faster than mine, without fail, on every assignment I wanted that he claimed first.

His ringtone, inexplicably “Moon River,” never once set to silent.

The way he says my full name, Mattie French. Like it’s a joke he won’t let me in on.

The lopsided tug of his mouth when he writes a line and it’s better than mine. The disorienting blond of his eyelashes, flicking like fool’s gold.

And now, worst of all: Campbell with his long fingers laced together like he doesn’t even have the decency to be nervous.

“Nervous?” he asks, that scrape of his voice. Campbell’s from a beach town in North Carolina and talks like he swallowed sand. His faint Southern drawl only comes through on the occasional, lingering vowel.

I cut him a look and he laughs.

“You should be.” He tips back in his desk chair, balancing on its wheels and the heel of one oiled loafer. Campbell’s always dressed like a prep school D.A.R.E. poster, but today he’s traded his usual polo for a patterned button-down and slacks. “I know you don’t have a backup plan.”

I narrow my eyes at him over the cluttered expanse of our conjoined desks. “Full send.”

It’s what we said back in June, at the end of our first week, when it had become abundantly clear we were both out for blood. Each other’s.

I’d spent four years studying communications at the only in-state school I could afford; Campbell graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt and then took a fifteen-month course in ad school.

A year older than me, with a portfolio I didn’t have.

But we’d arrived at the same threshold: the only two copywriting interns at Slater Faust. My dream ad agency—the best in the Midwest—and Campbell’s.

They told us right away that there was a single junior copywriter role available in the fall.

Whoever didn’t get it could leave or become the other’s intern.

Not me, I’d sworn to myself. Rising to my full height beside Campbell, which was every single one of his five feet and eleven inches. When we stood, our eyes were absolutely level.

I told him, that first week, that I wouldn’t be holding back.

He’d raised his eyebrows in reply. I could never quite tell if Campbell was surprised by me or challenging me when he did that: the vaults of his brows rising up his tanned forehead, the way his lips twitched into each other.

I hated how expressive he was, and I hated even more that after a full summer sitting two feet from him, I couldn’t tell what his expressions meant.

I only knew how it felt to be on the receiving end of them: infuriating.

Full send, he’d said. And when he stuck his hand out, I shook it hard enough to turn his palm white.

Full send, I promised. Fight to the death.

Campbell had laughed at that, but I meant it. I’d never been the type to let someone stand in the way of what I wanted—especially not someone in a polo shirt with embroidered sailboats on it.

“Should’ve at least put in an application at some restaurants,” Campbell says, now. “Hostessing? You’re good at telling people what to do. Where to go.”

“To hell, in your case.”

He holds up a hand, tipping his head like I’ve proven his point. He wears a gold signet ring on his pinky finger.

“What’s your backup plan?” I ask. Ava gave me a stress ball shaped like a broccoli crown at the start of summer, and now I squeeze it so hard the foam fissures and tears.

“Don’t need one.” Campbell lowers his chair onto four wheels and pivots toward me, angling around his monitor so we’re looking at each other head-on. “I’ll be working here.”

“As my intern.”

Campbell laughs, a grating sound I can’t wait to never hear again. “In your wet dreams, French.”

I make a face, reeling backward to gain space between us. “You’re the most disgusting person I’ve ever met.”

“Aw,” he says, smiling. When he stretches back into his chair, his shirt buttons threaten to burst open and reveal the last male torso I ever want to lay eyes on. “You don’t mean that.”

“I mean that so much.” I jab the refresh button on my email inbox for the millionth time and avert my eyes from the big, showy stretching routine Campbell is undertaking to prove just how relaxed he is.

Joaquin, our manager, said he’d share his hiring decision before noon.

It’s 11:48 and he’s still holed up in his office, avoiding eye contact with both of us through its floor-to-ceiling glass walls.

“You know he’s just going to come out here and get me,” Campbell says. “You don’t need to keep checking your email like it’s Ivy Day.”

I dig a fingernail into the rip in my broccoli crown. “What the hell is Ivy Day?”

Campbell yawns. Yawns. “The day all the Ivy League schools release their admission decisions.”

I make the mistake of meeting his eyes. “You are a caricature of yourself.”

“Whatever,” he says. “At least I’m not about to be unemployed and—”

“Campbell?”

We both spin at the sound of Joaquin’s voice. I want to laugh at the change in Campbell—how he wipes that smug look off his face and straightens his shoulders—but I feel too sick. It feels like the entire floor falls silent in the space before Joaquin speaks again.

He doesn’t look at me when he says, “Let’s chat in my office.”

Campbell all but leaps to his feet. I look at the broccoli so I don’t have to see his face, but I still hear him whisper, “Full send,” as he ducks past me.

Sound pours back in as I exhale, short and fast. The ding from the elevators, the chirped greeting of interns answering phones, the volley of voices as a conference room opens and expels a leadership meeting. My eyes dart to Joaquin’s office and away.

He’s going to break the news to Campbell first. It’s the kind thing to do, before celebrating with me.

Breathe, I tell myself. I bite my lower lip until it stings. Breathe breathe breathe.

I’ve worked so hard this summer—nights and weekends, reading advertising case studies on my commute, writing and rewriting and re-rewriting until my eyes blurred.

Ava doesn’t start teaching until next week, and she’s spent the past few months setting up our apartment basically on her own.

I’ve been too exhausted to even go to IKEA, and I love minimalist design.

But it’ll be worth it, when I win. When I get the job I’ve dreamed of for the better part of a decade and I see the look on Campbell Porter’s unreadable face. This time, I’ll know what it means.

My phone flashes on the desk beside me.

AVA: I’m dying???? Any updates?

I grab for it like a life preserver, glancing into Joaquin’s office again in spite of myself. I can only see the back of Campbell’s head and a third of Joaquin’s face. He’s smiling.

Joaquin just called Campbell in, I send back. Hasn’t talked to me yet. I can’t tell what’s going on but J is smiling at C

Letting him down gently, Ava replies immediately.

Totally, I agree.

Totally. I drum my nails on my desk, risking another look into the office.

Joaquin’s showing Campbell something on his computer screen.

My eyes rove away, landing on Campbell’s Vanderbilt mug.

In the glare of the overhead lights, I can see his ChapStick lip print from this morning.

If I lose this job to a man who leaves lip prints on things and speaks with the volume of a boomer at Disney World and wears boat shoes unironically, I’m going to—

“Mattie?”

I whirl around. My face is very, very hot. Joaquin’s expression is neutral, but the second he says, “Can we chat?” my gaze swivels to Campbell. I can’t help it.

And his eyes are absolutely glittering with mirth when he slides his hands into his pockets and mouths, Intern.