Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Slater Faust Chicago Headquarters
Five years ago
“Unfortunately, we’re in this together.”
Campbell’s voice makes me jump. When I look up from my laptop, he’s striding into the conference room with a fountain pen in one hand and his Vanderbilt mug in the other. I’ve known this guy a week, and he’s already got me categorized as unfortunately?
All right, then. I say, “Hardly,” and Campbell’s brows lift like I’ve surprised him.
We were supposed to collaborate on this presentation, our first as the only two writing interns, but when I told him I work better independently he looked relieved. That was Tuesday, not even twenty-four hours after we met.
“French,” he says as he sets his mug on the conference room table. “I’m kidding. It’s—”
“I’ll just present my slides,” I say, cutting him off, “and you present yours.”
Campbell’s quiet for a moment, but I don’t look up. We’re the first two in the conference room; I fiddle with the cord to project our presentation on the big screen.
“Mine are first,” Campbell says, slowly. I glance at him. He came back from the weekend tan as hell, and the bronze glow of his cheekbones is nearly offensive. His polo shirt has embroidered sailboats on it. “So I’ll just present my slides, and then you’ll present yours.”
My jaw stiffens. “Semantics.”
He grins. “Isn’t that what we’re here for?”
I take a sip of the extra-large coffee beside me, and Campbell tips his chin at it. “Tired?”
“A bit.” I uncap my pen to jot down one last thing I want to remember to say during my presentation.
Blue ink, same as always. Black for my wardrobe, blue for my words: an informal ritual that orders the world for me and that I’m more attached to than I care to admit. “I was up all night working on this.”
“You needed all night?”
When I jerk up, Campbell’s got both hands in his pockets.
Leaned back on his heels like he’s trying to gain distance between us, his expression curious and concerned.
My lips pop apart with the force of my surprise, with the audacity of this person who’s approaching this so casually he can joke about it.
I’m chewing up a retort when Joaquin, our manager, walks into the room with a couple other creative directors.
“Mattie and Campbell,” he says, sliding into a seat across the table. “Excited to see what you’ve been working on.”
I swallow, steadying myself. The assignment is busywork: ideas for a pitch next week that no one’s even going to use. But it’s the first test of the whole summer, and I’ve put so much pressure on myself to get it right.
“I’ll kick us off,” Campbell says. There’s an ease about him: the way he steps up beside me and clicks into his slides, the full frame of his body loose and relaxed.
I haven’t actually seen his stuff; he dropped it into the presentation right before this meeting.
But everything I know about him so far—his strange wardrobe, his incessant chatter, his clear lack of professionalism—indicates a particular brand of cockiness that won’t translate into good writing.
I stand up straighter at his side. This is my first chance to be publicly better than him.
But then Campbell starts to present. I’ve gotten used to the cadence of his speech, right across our shared desk space, how his voice pitches upward and gains speed the longer he talks. The way that, as a person, Campbell Porter feels like a runaway train.
But there’s none of that here. The Campbell beside me is calm and sure, and when he smiles it’s in this gentle, affecting way that bears no resemblance to the arrogant grin he lobbed at me just a minute ago.
His work is good. I see it; the creative directors see it.
They look so delighted that when Campbell hands the presentation over to me I actually contemplate crawling under the table.
The effortless, casual way that Campbell entered this room—the way he teased me so easily, like his mind wasn’t entirely wrapped up in what he was about to present—wasn’t because he doesn’t care. It was because he knew his work was good.
This isn’t going to be easy, my brain is shouting. Getting this job, beating him, starting my adult life. I’m actually entirely unsure, now, if I can do it at all.
Campbell holds my gaze expectantly. I clear my throat.
“You know, Campbell,” Joaquin says. My mouth snaps shut. “Sorry, Mattie, before you get started—I’m really intrigued by that second direction. I think it could even be activated as a video series; have you explored any scripting?”
Campbell’s about to speak, but something possesses me. Through the shock of finding out he’s actually good at this—potentially better than me—my ego has roared to life. Maybe he gets to be casual, and maybe I have to be stretched to breaking with anxiety. But I’m good at this, too.
“I have scripts,” I blurt. I flatten my shoulders and stand up taller. “I wrote two; I think you’ll see they complement what Campbell’s shown so far.”
There’s a beat of silence, everyone staring at me. Don’t blink, I think. Don’t cower.
“Great,” Joaquin says, finally. I can feel Campbell’s gaze on my face, but I don’t look at him. Unfortunately, we’re in this together. “Let’s see them.”
We walk back to our desks in silence. Not something Campbell’s typically capable of.
He’s rubbing his fingertips against the pad of his thumb, absent-minded, like he’s working something over.
I knew my scripts were good, but I didn’t expect the grin they’d pulled out of Joaquin.
The way he’d said Amazing work at the end of our presentation, and it’d felt like he meant it just for me.
Campbell had shocked me, but I’d shocked him, too.
“You know,” Campbell says, finally, when we reach our desks, “you could have warned me.”
I look up at him. He doesn’t seem angry, not even annoyed. Only surprised.
“About what?”
The cluster of desks closest to ours, where the design interns sit, is empty. Music blasts from down the hall, then quickly cuts.
“That,” Campbell says. He’s got one hand braced on the back of his desk chair, still standing, so I stay standing, too. “You’re a dark horse.” He’s searching my face, like there might be more I’m hiding from him. “I didn’t know you had that in you.”
It grates—all of it: that he gets to be joking and casual, and I have to be sleep-deprived and stressed. That I worked so hard just for us to come up equal in this. That he underestimated me.
“You assumed I’m dumb,” I translate, “because I’m not as loud as you.”
Campbell’s golden eyebrows rise. “Am I loud?”
“You are loud,” I confirm. Also infuriating.
Also, after this, maybe my nemesis. I’d thought we had potential to get through this summer—if not as friends, at least as collaborators.
But something inside me broke during that presentation, somewhere between You needed all night?
and seeing the looks on our creative directors’ faces as Campbell presented his work.
“I don’t think you’re dumb,” Campbell says. “I think you’ve been holding out on me.”
I’ve always preferred to move in silence, turning my ideas over until I’ve worn them smooth, gotten them right, before sharing them. Campbell vocalizes every thought that crosses his mind, so sure the world is dying to hear it.
I want to sit down, but I refuse to be shorter than him. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Campbell’s eyes narrow. A weird thing happens, when he does that—his blond lashes ticking over his dark eyes. It makes them glisten, changes their color into something nearly iridescent.
“Mattie French,” he says, slowly. It’s almost always my full name; a week in, I already know that. Sometimes just French. Never Mattie. “Why do I feel like you’re coming for me?”
“Because I am,” I say. Over the computer monitors between us, our eyes are exactly level. “Just because I’m quiet, doesn’t mean I’m holding back.”
His eyebrows hike again. Sun-golden against his tan forehead. “All right, then,” he says. When he stretches one hand into the space between us, I stare down at it. “Full send.”
I take Campbell’s hand and drag my eyes up to his. “Full send.” I squeeze hard enough that his lips part to let out the smallest gasp of an exhale. “Fight to the death.”
On Wednesday afternoon, I get to find out exactly what a capabilities checkpoint looks like. It’s Iris who warns me, during our morning work session with Dexter, that Lucia’s asked for both copywriters.
“Just an hour,” Iris says, like one hour with Campbell Porter isn’t enough time to ruin my life.
When I show up to the penthouse, a top-floor suite overlooking Aspen Mountain, Campbell’s already there. The hallway door is ajar, and when I step through it my mouth drops open.
“Mattie French with the detachable jaw again,” Campbell says from across the room.
Room is a nearly insulting description for what this is: a sprawling living space with four distinct seating areas, a wet bar, and floor-to-ceiling windows so seamless they don’t look like windows at all.
I can see the entire ski resort from here, its runs covered in grass and framed by yellowing aspens. “What animal does that? Snakes?”
“If anyone’s a snake here,” I say, absently, “it’s not me.”
“Ouch.” Campbell rubs his chest. He’s standing in front of a pair of rolling whiteboards by the windows, wearing a button-down printed with tiny horseshoes.
“Should’ve worn that on Monday,” I say, and he looks down at it.
“I think you’re the one who dressed inappropriately for that excursion. Want to borrow this next time?”
“There will be no next time,” I say, flinging away the image of me in Campbell’s shirt. “Where’s Lucia?”
“She actually won’t be joining us,” a voice calls from the doorway. Campbell and I turn in unison to watch Suni Ma step into the suite. She smiles. “Just the three of us today.”
Suni shakes my hand, then Campbell’s. I imagine, as Wicksteed’s communications director, she’s got the most invested in the two of us and our words. I wonder how often she gets to be here, living like this.