‘Aiden! Such a pleasure!’
‘Thank you. . .’
‘What do you think of the office?’ she asks, twirling her hair. ‘We should give you a tour before you two get started. Come, I’ll take you.’
I don’t know what’s more off-putting– the fact that Pippa is flirting or the fact that she’s flirting withAiden. Aiden is, I guess, objectively attractive, though his fresh trim and rich, spicy bergamot aftershave are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Plus, no haircut or flexed biceps can do anything to make up for his horrible mess of a personality.
There’s a part of me that wants to send him off with Pippa and have a few extra moments to myself while he suffers. But she works fast, and never without an agenda. Whoknowswhat she’d say about me if I left her alone with him. The last thing I need is Aiden Edwards having more ammo against me than he already does.
‘I don’t think we have time for that, Pippa. We really need to get started upstairs.’ I grab my bag and head towards the door.
Aiden follows me gladly before Pippa has time to object, but I can feel her eyes burrowing a hole into the back of my skull as we leave.
We stand in the lift in complete silence and I do my best to keep my eyes focused intently on the plain metal door ahead of me. One time I do accidentally glance over and I catch his mouth opening as if to speak, but he snaps it shut just as quickly when he notices me staring. It’s an agonisingly slow ride despite being only two floors, and I release my long-held breath the second we make it to the meeting room. Aiden enters cautiously, circling the office slowly like he’s in some sort of a trance.
‘Are all your meeting rooms this small?’ he asks, squeezing around the table.
‘Only the ones that allow for recurring bookings.’ I wince, thinking back to Shirley from Office Administration glowering at my six-month-long list of meeting-room dates.
‘You know, no one books these rooms this far in advance but you,’ she said with a lipstick-coated scowl.
I know she resents me for it. The room allocation made that clear as day. Meeting Room H is the drabbest in the building, reserved almost exclusively for disciplinaries and dismissal meetings. It boasts about six feet in both length and width, and reeks of damp, desperation and despair, which is not made any cheerier by Aiden’s sullen face. However, I refuse to let that derail me and spread an A3 sheet of planning paper across the table.
‘We have twenty-five weeks until the Summer Splash and you’re in the office two days a week. The way I see it, we do weeks one to five fully in here while we curate the deck and finalise details. For weeks six to fourteen, we move down to my department one day a week, as the team will be assisting more. Weeks fifteen to twenty-four we meet in here once a fortnight, just to go over where we’re at and record progress. Week twenty-five will obviously be entirely on site. I’ve reserved this room for two weeks post-event in case of any loose ends that need tying.’
‘Right. . .’ he says, staring at the newly annotated sheet soullessly.
‘What?’ I ask, trying to keep my voice calm.
‘I figured we’d just see how things go,’ he replies.
Of course he did. That’s literally all he does. He’s spent nearly three decades ‘just seeing how things go’ and he assumes that the rest of us can afford the same privilege.
‘That’s why I have a real job and you work for an influencer.’ I recoil the second the words leave my mouth, my whole bodygoing stiff with shame. I didn’t even mean it– I genuinely respect influencer hustles, especially ones of the calibre of Evie Eesuola. I’ve been following her for years. I have photos of her on my vision board. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘It’s whatever.’ His tone is clipped. ‘So, should we get going or what?’
He plonks himself down in a chair, his knees pressing against my thigh as he shifts himself under the table. This room really is tiny, especially with the two of us in it. I’m a few inches away from being able to feel his breath. I turn slightly and realise with a jolt of horror that I can see every pore on the side of his face closest to mine. Perhaps Plan H isn’t the golden ticket I needed it to be after all.
I clear my throat. ‘I brought examples of some pitch decks we’ve done in the past, so you can get an idea of what a deck entails.’
‘I know what a pitch deck is,’ he says dryly. ‘Super surprising for a lowly influencer worker, right?’
He’s offended– I knew it. I don’t know why he wouldn’t be– if he said something like that to me, the FGA would have never heard the end of it. I am messing this up before we’ve even got started.
‘I’m sorry,’ I repeat my apology a little louder.
‘I spend half my time going through brands’ pitch decks for Evie. And I have a degree in business management.’
‘You do?’ I ask.
‘First class honours. So, we can skip the “Pitch Decks for Idiots” segment.’
Fair enough. I just need to keep it calm and cool– work-focused and stripped of the personal. He can’t be mad forever– eventually we’ll get wrapped up in this enough to forget my bitchy comment.
‘OK, so did Evie choose the four countries she wants?’ I ask.
‘She’s leaving it up to us. The only one that must be there is Indonesia, because “Bali changed her life”.’
