Chapter One
One
“Mattie!” Ava’s voice is muffled through the wall between us. “Can you hit the pipe for me?”
From my bed, Pancake lifts her head with muted curiosity.
“Nothing to see,” I assure her, reaching for the wrench on my nightstand and clanging it against the painted-over pipe that tracks up my bedroom wall into the ceiling. The sound echoes through our apartment, and Ava shouts a thank-you before I hear the shower turn on.
“What was that?” Dexter asks. His face looms larger on my laptop screen, like he could peer around the corner of it to see the rest of my room.
“We have a curmudgeonly water heater.” When I hold up the wrench, Dexter’s mouth drops open. “Sometimes you have to whack the pipe to get the hot water to work in the morning.”
“Matilda.” His expression darkens. “Please tell me you’ve reported this to your landlord.”
“My landlord lives in Boca Raton and could not care less about the state of this Lincoln Park hovel.”
“Is this why you’re always exercising at the office?” Dexter and I have been on video chat since five thirty, nailing down our slides for a client presentation this morning. “So you can use a functioning shower?”
“My shower is functioning,” I say, primly. I spin the pen I’m holding—blue ink—between two fingers. Pancake hops to the floor and stretches in the patch of sun arching in off of Halsted Street. “I exercise at the office because it’s free.”
Dexter shakes his head. “I feel like we’re good here, do you? You’ll intro the concepts and I’ll jump in to present design?”
“Indeed.” I pinch the back of my neck, trying to alleviate my tension headache. “I’ll see you in an hour.”
“I’ll bring Downpour,” Dexter says, and I groan in pleasure. “Least I can do for someone without a functioning shower.”
“Iced caramel latte with extra syrup,” I say, leaning toward my screen and grinning at him. “Please.”
“Yes, yes, I know your order.” Dexter flaps a hand at me and, in the background, Krishna passes through their kitchen.
“Morning, Krishna!” I call, and he raises a hand as he reaches for the coffeepot.
“He’s mad at you,” Dexter says, his voice dropping an octave. “Says he never gets back to sleep when you make me wake up early to rehearse like this.”
“The early bird catches the worm, Krish.” I can practically feel him rolling his eyes at me from the pixelated depths of his and Dexter’s kitchen. They moved in together last fall in River North.
“See you soon,” Dexter says, now. I wave, and the meeting window zips shut.
Knuckles rap at my door, and then Ava pokes her head in. She’s in a towel, her red hair wet and wavy over her shoulders. “Were you on the phone? It’s barely seven o’clock.”
“Dexter,” I say, as Pancake saunters over to Ava. I drop my pen into the jar on my desk. “We have a presentation at nine.”
Ava makes a little hum of understanding, then pulls the towel tighter around herself. Her engagement ring catches the light from the window. “You want a smoothie? I have bananas left over from that bread I made this weekend.”
“Sure,” I say, smiling. Without Ava, I’d be living on Downpour coffee and fun-size chip bags from the kitchen at work. “Ready for the first day?”
Ava grins, her eyes crinkling. “I’m so excited. I started crying while I was brushing my teeth, just thinking about their little faces.”
I laugh and stand from my desk. “Well, it doesn’t take much.”
Ava’s quick to cry—quicker over something happy than something sad. When I step into the hallway I tower over her, 5’11’’ to Ava’s 5’2’’. She smells like the peony bodywash from our shower.
“I’m too soft for this job,” Ava sighs.
I drop a hand onto her shoulder as Pancake circles my ankles. “You’re perfect for this job.”
The truth is that sometimes when I’m stressed, I imagine myself as one of Ava’s kindergarteners. Small and safe in her sun-dappled classroom in Wicker Park, learning the alphabet from the kindest human being I’ve ever known.
“Thanks,” she says, smiling as she nudges Pancake with one foot. “Maybe they’ll even help me narrow down the reception flatware.”
“Kindergarteners,” I say. “Famously opinionated about dessert forks.”
Ava’s getting married over her spring break next March.
She met Lev the day we moved to Chicago, the miraculous sort of serendipity they’ll tell grandchildren about one day.
He was the herald of her new life, its next chapter.
We’d only been out of our tiny Central Illinois college town for nine hours when he intercepted her hoisting Jewel-Osco bags up the L station stairs and offered to help.
I like Lev. There’s no one in the world who could ever deserve Ava—my best friend since elementary school, my roommate all through college and these five years in Chicago as we’ve learned to be grown-ups.
And before, when we were teenagers and my parents split and I lived at Ava’s house more than my own.
She’s my family, and Lev is new. I still think of him that way, after five years: Ava’s new boyfriend.
But Lev is unoffensive—a pharmacist who carefully set up his fish tank in our living room when he moved in four months ago and always remembers to ask how my day’s been.
Who loves Ava in a visible, unfaltering sort of way.
Her kindergarteners call him “Mr. Ava.” They’ll buy a house together after the wedding, somewhere far away and suburban, which is something I don’t think about if I can help it.
“We’re not stressing about the wedding today,” I remind Ava, and she nods obediently.
Lev’s shift at the pharmacy doesn’t start until noon and he’s still asleep, which means it’s only the two of us in the August-blazed sunlight of the apartment.
“You’re going to have a perfect first day with your kids, and then we still have seven months to figure out the details. Right?”
“Right,” Ava confirms, though she sounds about halfway sure. Ava is warm and wonderful and everything I love most in a person, but she is not—has never been—organized. Watching her plan a wedding has been like watching a cat try to play chess. Not enough thumbs, or something.
“I’ve got to shower,” I say, and she steps back to let me pass her in the hallway. “We’ll get takeout to celebrate tonight?”
“Deep dish,” she says, pointing a finger at my face. “Sausage.”
“Half-sausage,” I counter, and she crouches to pat Pancake. I cast one backward glance at them before making my way to the bathroom, and shove down the thought that our mornings like this are numbered.
Dexter’s waiting for me in the lobby, which is abnormal.
The Art Room—the agency where I’ve worked for nearly five years—rents part of a floor in a high-rise on the lake, and the lobby is the fanciest part of the entire deal.
The Art Room is small and scrappy and, frankly, perfect to me.
But the marble-walled lobby with its glistening fountain and dark-suited doormen is a serious mismatch for the office itself, where every wall is painted with a mural and half the meeting rooms have beanbag chairs instead of conference tables.
“Hi,” Dexter says, thrusting a Downpour cup into my hand. He’s been my art director partner for years, and I can read his moods like weather. Now, he’s on edge. “Did you see Greg’s email?”
“What?” I dig into my bag for my phone as we make for the elevator. “No.”
“There’s some big pitch he wants to put us on,” Dexter says, in the tone one might use to share they’ve been diagnosed with a terminal disease. “He wants to talk before our presentation.”
I check the time, 8:03, and the email notification, whose subject line reads Big opportunity, let’s discuss.
“It’ll be fine,” I tell Dexter, following him into an empty elevator. “We don’t even know what it is yet.”
“Mattie.” Dexter jabs the fourteen button. “He wants to talk about it before working hours, before a big meeting he knows we’ve been killing ourselves to prepare for. That does not say fine to me.”
Dexter hates pitching new business, but it’s always given me a rush. The condensed timelines, the spec work, the presentation itself—meeting someone for the first time while doing what I’m best at. The pressure of it.
“Krishna’s already on my case about the nights and weekends and”—he shoots me a look—“early mornings. Says he didn’t move in with me just to feel like he lives alone.”
“That’s not fair,” I say as the elevator doors slide open. “You were out half of last week when his parents came into town.”
“Yeah, and I was still answering emails at eleven p.m. because Iris couldn’t get another art director to cover me on that Peabody campaign.”
“Doesn’t Krishna go to bed early anyway?”
“Mattie.”
I pull open the glass door from the elevator bay and finally look over at Dexter. His brow is scrunched. “That’s not the point,” he says.
“No, I know.”
“Do you? I’m sick of everyone here acting like we don’t have lives outside the Art Room. I’m trying to be a good boyfriend, and, like, exercise sometimes, and, I don’t know, sleep? These are normal things to want, but this place makes me feel like I’m ridiculous for wanting them.”
We stop when we get to our desks, side by side. Dexter’s is littered with Pantone swatches and felt-tip markers, and he shoves everything aside to make space for his coffee. “I don’t want to be on a pitch right now.”
I drop my bag onto my desk, which is empty save for a laptop stand and a jar of my favorite blue pens. Then I reach for Dexter’s shoulders and turn him to face me. He’s slight and beautiful—pale, dark-featured, a few inches taller than I am. He’s an incredible designer.
“You are not ridiculous,” I say, digging my fingertips into his shoulders.
He exhales through his nose and blinks, long and slow.
“You are a good boyfriend. And you are amazing at this job, and the Art Room is lucky to have you.” I shake him a little, and he opens his eyes to meet mine.
“I couldn’t do this without you, okay? I’ve got your back. ”
He sighs again. Dexter’s always one bad email from quitting. “Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”
“We’ll figure it out together, whatever it is.”
“I know,” he grumbles, dropping the Myopic Books tote from his shoulder into his chair. He slides his laptop out and plugs it into his monitor, not looking at me when he adds, “We always do.”
A voice carries across the empty floor. “Dream team.”
I glance toward Greg’s office, where he’s poking his head through the door.
Greg’s in his mid-forties, with a shelf full of glossy awards and a résumé hefty enough to knock out an elephant.
He came over from OverComm as executive creative director a couple years before hiring me, and has turned the Art Room from a quirky little creative shop into a real competitor. He scares Dexter.
“Let’s talk,” Greg adds, and ducks back into his office. Dexter groans, audibly, and I loop my arm through his to lead him away from our desks.
“Chin up,” I whisper. Truthfully, I’m shimmering under the skin from Greg calling us dream team. “Let’s just listen.”
“Obviously, I’m going to listen,” Dexter hisses, pulling his arm out of mine. He takes a long sip of coffee and motions me into Greg’s office ahead of him.
“Morning,” Greg says. He doesn’t keep anything on his desk, just like me. “Have a seat.”
Dexter clears his throat and crosses his legs. I glance at Greg’s computer, where his email inbox is pulled up against the desktop photo of his kids on a boat.
“We’ve got something exciting coming in,” Greg says. “I heard from Lucia Perez last night, head of marketing over at Wicksteed Resorts. We worked together when I was at OverComm.”
I know Wicksteed, of course: the luxury hotel chain notorious for hosting business meetings at their resorts and flying everyone out.
OverComm has been their agency of record for years, leading all of their marketing and advertising.
Greg won an award for the last campaign he developed for them before coming to the Art Room.
“They’re considering a new agency of record.”
I lean forward in my seat. Next to me, Dexter reaches for his coffee and asks, “Would they really drop OverComm?”
Greg rests his elbows on the desk. “Well, that’s the question. But Lucia seems unsatisfied with the creative. They’re too comfortable. She’s looking for something fresh.” He looks at Dexter, then me. “Remarkable.”
“How many agencies are pitching?” I ask. I reach up to nudge my nose ring, a nervous tic I haven’t been able to kick from my muscle memory even though I took the gold hoop out nearly six months ago. I turn the motion into a surreptitious scratch.
“She’s only requesting proposals from three,” Greg says. “Keeping it tight. There will be a first-round pitch here in Chicago in a couple weeks. Then, the final two agencies go to Wicksteed for immersion. They’ll pitch the final round from the road.”
“Traveling for a pitch?” Dexter asks, and I know this is the last thing he wants. The last thing. But it’s already swelling up in me, how badly I do want it.
“For a month,” Greg confirms. I can’t look at Dexter—I know he’s miserable at the thought.
“A little unorthodox, but Wicksteed’s always worked this way.
They want you on-site, and the timeline here’s condensed because they need a new campaign by the holidays.
” His gaze tracks from Dexter to me. “It’ll be a sprint, but this one’s worth investing in.
You’d work from the road. Mostly on the pitch, but still supporting your clients here. Like a satellite office.”
“Do we know who the other agencies are?” I ask. Greg turns back to his email, scrolling.
“OverComm, of course,” he says. “And…” He keeps scrolling, then finally lands. “Your old friend at Slater Faust.”
I swallow. “I don’t have any friends at Slater.”
Greg’s eyes flick back to his email. “They’ve already picked their team—they put that guy on it who won the Cannes Lion last year. Senior copywriter.” I feel Dexter turn to look at me. The air goes very still. “Campbell Porter.”