Chapter Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Seven
Slater Faust Chicago Headquarters
Five years ago
“It’s only ten weeks.” Joaquin looks back over his shoulder as he leads us from the lobby. The Slater Faust offices are all glass and granite: nearly every surface in here is reflective. “Which may sound like a lot now, but trust me that this summer’s going to fly by.”
“Are we the only interns?”
I glance at the guy beside me. His rough, faintly accented voice is so loud that when he arrived for orientation this morning, I could hear him before I saw him.
He’d been hanging up the phone as he stepped into the lobby from the elevator bay.
Now, as we pass the office kitchen, the woman standing at the coffee machine looks at him.
“The only interns in my department,” Joaquin says. He’s a senior copywriter and younger than I expected him to be, for a manager: maybe late twenties. He looks between us, pausing halfway down a hall lined in offices. “Did you two get acquainted in the lobby?”
“Didn’t have a chance,” I say, in the exact same moment the guy points to me and says, “Matilda French.”
With the haziest touch of a Southern accent on the I in Matilda, his voice changes the shape of my name.
I lift my eyebrows. I don’t know his name, this other intern.
Only that he showed up exactly on time after I’d been waiting in the lobby ten minutes, hardly thirty seconds before Joaquin arrived to welcome us.
That he’s precisely my height. That his brown-edging-gold hair is too disheveled for the first day of a new job, and that his freckled face is just charming enough to be a problem.
And that, inexplicably, he’s wearing a dress shirt with a tennis racket embroidered on the collar.
When he meets my eyes, now, his grin is teasing. Far too familiar for two people who’ve just met.
“Name tag.” He taps his chest, and I remember that there’s a sticker with my full name on it stuck to my dress. He looks at Joaquin. “I didn’t have time to grab one. Campbell Porter, though.”
When Campbell turns back to me, his hand’s extended. He wears a gold signet ring on his pinky.
“It’s just Mattie,” I say when I curl my fingers around his.
Campbell smiles. “Mattie French, then.”
I glance at Joaquin, but he’s already turning to lead us down the hallway.
“You’ll be working together all summer,” he says as I drop Campbell’s hand to follow.
Through the floor-to-ceiling windows along the hall, people look up from their computers to watch us pass.
“Not on every assignment, but a lot of them. And we’ve got one full-time role open come August, so… ” His eyes light on Campbell, then me.
“So only one of us stays,” Campbell says.
Me, I think. I’d agonized over every word of my application to Slater Faust’s internship program.
We’d studied so much of their work in my communications classes in college that I practically feel like I already belong here.
Chicago is a city full of agencies, but this is the only one that matters to me. This one is the best.
“One of you stays if you earn it,” Joaquin says.
He raises his eyebrows, but he’s smiling good-naturedly.
When he motions us into his office, Campbell and I sit in the chairs at his desk.
I smooth the silky skirt of my dress under my thighs.
“The other will have the option to stay on as an intern, working beneath the new hire. We always need interns.”
I feel Campbell looking at me, but I only sit taller in the chair. Not me.
“I’m not telling you this to introduce competition,” Joaquin says. “We want you to work together. I’m just telling you so we all go into this summer with clear expectations.”
“Sure,” Campbell says, easily. He has the most unique voice I’ve ever heard: deep, and grainy as a timeworn film photograph. Before I can get a word in, he adds, “Understood.”
Joaquin taps the desk. “I forgot to grab your intern handbooks from the printer. Give me one second.”
When Joaquin leaves the office, Campbell turns toward me in his chair. He’s framed by Joaquin’s whiteboard: frantic handwriting skittered across it, a few printed graphics stuck up with magnets in the shape of the Slater Faust logo.
I’m trying to read what Joaquin’s been working on over Campbell’s shoulder when he says, “French.”
“Mattie,” I correct. I turn to face him and he gives me that taunting smile again.
“Mattie French.” He says it like a counter, like we’re negotiating something here. “Nice name.”
I know nothing about this person, only that it feels like he’s playing me somehow.
That when he smirks at me, I can see there are freckles at the edges of his lips.
And that no matter what kind of man he turns out to be, there’s no way I’m losing this job to him.
I look at the tennis racket on Campbell’s collar. Then I drag my eyes back to his. “Nice shirt.”
He’s grinning when Joaquin steps back into the room, his mouth open like he’s on the edge of a reply.
“Ready to get started?” Joaquin asks, glancing between us as he settles in his seat.
Campbell looks at me. We race each other to be the first to say it.
“Ready.”