Make Up Break Up

by Lily Menon

  Annika stepped into the elevator and checked herself in the mirror. The blood vessels in her eyes were a bright crimson, standing out in stark relief against the whites. In spite of her heavy hand with concealer, there were purple shadows under her eyes, but that couldn’t be helped. She took a breath and faced forward, checking her phone for a message from June or the hospital. Or Hudson. Nothing.

  Since it was such a small pool of contestants, they’d all been given an individual time slot and strict instructions not to arrive early. This was apparently to keep them from seeing or intimidating each other. It had seemed a silly rule when Annika had first learned of it, but she was immensely thankful for it now. She couldn’t handle seeing Hudson again, not so soon after they’d broken up, not when her father lay in a hospital bed, not before the pitch.

  Annika emerged from the elevators and walked across the hotel foyer down a carpeted hallway to wait in a small room that was outfitted with frond-y potted palms and small leather armchairs just outside of conference room A. She wondered whether Hudson was in there right now, just a few dozen yards away from her, and pushed the thought out of her mind again. She couldn’t think of him, not while her heart felt so pulverized and raw. But sitting here, in the quiet, wasn’t good for her, either. Her mind kept turning to things she wanted to keep locked away.

  Luckily, she only waited two more minutes until a diminutive man in a mint-green suit and purple glasses stepped out of the conference room and called her name.

  She entered through the open conference room door, her head held high and her shoulders back, looking—she hoped—more energetic and confident than she felt. There was a small headache starting behind her eyes, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

  This was it. This was her chance to save Make Up. She couldn’t afford to fuck it up.

  * * *

  Conference room A was large and corporate looking, like any conference room in any big hotel in any city anywhere in the world. The windows were hung with garish gold drapes, and fake potted plants decorated the room’s corners. A projector screen hung on one end of the room, next to a wooden podium. The panel of angel investors, seated behind a large burgundy-tablecloth-covered table on the opposite side, was all male—three of whom were white and one Latino. Lionel Wakefield sat in the center. He was a sixty-something-year-old white man, with a head full of woolly hair the color of snow, a mustache that was still mostly salt-and-pepper, and a known propensity for brightly colored ascots. Today, he was wearing a canary-colored striped number, at which Annika had a hard time not staring.

  “Thank you, gentlemen, for taking the time to let me pitch you today. Mr. Wakefield, I’ve been a huge fan of your many philanthropic ventures for a long time now.” Annika forced herself to smile brightly and walked to the podium to set up her PowerPoint. It was cold in conference room A, as if to keep the contestants from sweating themselves into messy puddles.

  No one said anything, but Lionel Wakefield nodded solemnly from behind the table. She’d been hoping for friendlier, but that was okay. She wasn’t feeling too bubbly herself right now. Maybe they’d be less apt to notice.

  Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, Annika pulled up the first slide, which simply stated the name of the business and their slogan. “My name is Annika Dev, and I’m the founder and CEO of Make Up. Our motto is Happily Ever After, Redux because that’s what we believe in—second chances at true love.” She forwarded to the next slide, which was a picture of June and her in the Make Up office, in the middle of a discussion. “We are a woman-owned business that wants to do good in the world. We’re not about short, snappy solutions to problems. We want people to make meaningful, long-term connections. We want them to see that how they’ve been living—pining away for a relationship that doesn’t work anymore, sleeping in separate beds because they’re just so tired of fighting—doesn’t have to be the end of the story. We want them to see that happily ever after is within their reach.

  “Let me introduce you to OLLI—the Original Love Language Interface. OLLI is the cutting-edge AI we’re training with the use of deep-learning techniques over an artificial neural network.” She forwarded the slide to show a ten-second video of the app and OLLI in action, narrating what they were seeing while the video played while wishing she could fast-forward through it all. “Users interact with OLLI to teach it about themselves—their communication patterns, the cadence and pitch of their voices—and once OLLI learns all of this information, it can communicate to the user, via the app, when they need to rephrase what they’re saying, how to steer the conversation back on track, etcetera.”

  Dammit. There was supposed to be a joke there that she’d completely glossed over. She couldn’t even remember what it was now, to weave it in later. Oh well. Keep moving, Annika. Just deliver the pitch and get back to the hospital. She took a breath. “There’s also a component that hooks up to the user’s smartwatch and monitors their biometric data to look for spikes of anger or anxiety. But as intimidating as that might sound, as you can see, my developer and I have worked hard to ensure that the experience is both user-friendly and user-engaging. We’re working to increase the app’s scalability, which will allow users to train OLLI from the comfort of their own homes…” She advanced through the rest of the slides, keeping an eye on each of the four men.

  They had to be the most stoic men in the history of stoic men. The first one, David Smith, may as well have been asleep or dead. He even sneezed without changing expression.

  The second guy, Jim Hernandez, had his eyebrows raised the entire time, which Annika at first took to mean he was interested or surprised by what she was saying. It turned out his eyebrows were always like that.

  The third guy, Lewis Stenton, took a lot of notes—a copious, frenetic amount. He barely looked up from his notebook, in fact. Annika wondered if he was writing a book. What a Pitch: Hilarious Tales from a Not-So-Angelic Angel Investor.

  Lionel Wakefield seemed the most sympathetic. He made eye contact and even smiled at Annika encouragingly when she stopped mid-sentence for a second, losing her train of thought before continuing. But she shouldn’t have done that. She could feel the other investors taking note and docking her points.

  David Smith was the first to speak, slowly and deliberately, as if he’d finally woken from his deep slumber. His voice was very baritone for someone so short and slender. “So, Ms.—” He consulted a clipboard on the table. “—Dev.” Really? He’d already forgotten her name? “You stated that you began prototyping back in September, but that you’re still not done. What’s taking so long?”

  “That’s right,” Annika said confidently. “Our tech is really very innovative, and no one’s done what we’re trying to do, so we’re blazing a completely new path. As such, we’ve overcome many novel challenges in the area of deep learning with neural networks that we didn’t previously foresee. There’s also a compelling future predictor feature we’re working on and hope to have release-ready soon—”

  “Thank you,” David Smith said, sounding bored.

  Rude little annoying—

  “And how many are on your team?” Jim Hernandez asked, still looking as astonished as if he’d just learned an alien bug colony had taken up residence in his nose.

  “Two right now,” Annika said, weariness threatening to drag her down. She hadn’t slept at all last night. Not even a catnap. It was a wonder she could string coherent sentences together. She tamped down her urge to check her smartwatch again. Her heart was at her father’s hospital bedside, not here with these cold, soulless men who would decide the fate of Make Up, an app built around love and passion. She wanted to save her business desperately, but her father took precedence over everything else. “My developer, June Stewart, and me. Of course, we do have plans to expand, but knowing how many new businesses go under by expanding too quickly, we’re biding our time in that arena. Having just the two of us makes us nimble and adaptable, which we feel is important in this economy. When
June needs extra assistance, we hire developers on a freelance basis.”

  Lewis Stenton finally looked up from his notebook. “You said the idea came to you after learning your parents’ love story.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Annika attempted a smile, though she could tell it wobbled. She took a deep breath and added, “My father—” Her voice choked up on the word “father,” but she rushed on, hoping she wouldn’t break down completely. “—used to tell me stories about their time together instead of reading me books at bedtime. Their love story became my lullaby. My mother died when I was very young, and them not being able to have their second-chance romance inspired me to found Make Up.” She sniffed at the end, in spite of her best efforts. Actually sniffed. Dammit. She was completely fucking this up.

  Lewis Stenton leaned forward. “So, you might say you have a very emotional connection to your business.”

  Annika wasn’t sure what to make of his glinting eyes, which were reminiscent of Mr. McManor’s. “Yes. I believe most people who launch start-ups are emotionally invested in their businesses.”

  “Hmm.” He sat back. “But perhaps some more so than others. And perhaps emotions of that level don’t have a place in business.”

  “I think emotion is what makes a business more than just a job!” Annika said hotly. She wanted to grab her laptop, wrench the door open, and go back to the hospital. How dare this random jerk imply she shouldn’t be emotional about her father, who lay unconscious in the fucking hospital? Instead, she took a deep breath and said more composedly, “Emotion is what makes it a calling.” She didn’t want to piss this guy off, but she also didn’t want the last message she gave to be that she was an emotional train wreck or whatever he was trying to imply. Too bad her voice trembled, cutting back on the effectiveness of her message. She wanted to tell them the truth: Her heart wasn’t in this. Her father was hurt, and he was all she had in this world, and she really, really needed to be with him. But she was afraid she’d lose all credibility if she did.

  “Ms. Dev,” Lionel Wakefield said. She turned to him, bringing her attention back to the present. “I, for one, absolutely love the creativity and the personal connection you’ve brought to your business. The blend of old and new, the idea of a second-chance love story for those who need it most … all of that really resonates with me. In the world we live in, we could use every bit of happily ever after we can get.”

  Annika managed a smile. “Thank you, Mr. Wakefield,” she said, trying to infuse some ebullience into her voice.

  Wakefield paused before adding, in a more somber tone, “It does concern me that you have such a small team. Just two people? I’m not sure how sustainable that is. And since you haven’t yet launched the app, Make Up has no track record of profitability.” He sat back and regarded her frankly.

  Annika tried to force her brain to come up with a pithy rebuttal to his concern, or even just a way to assuage it, but her mind was blank. Something about being … nimble? But she’d said that already. Before she could say anything at all, though, another investor was speaking.

  “Yes, well, that brings us to time,” David Smith said, stifling a yawn. “Thank you. Please leave your financials outside with Tori.”

  “Thank you all for your time. I really appreciate it.” Trying not to rush, Annika gathered her laptop and her bag and walked to the exit quickly.

  * * *

  She sat by her father’s bedside again, her blazer hanging on the back of the hospital chair. It was a tremendous relief to be back here with him, to be able to see him and touch him and talk to the medical staff anytime she wanted. “So there was no change? None at all?”

  “No. I’m sorry.” June stood beside Annika, rubbing her eyes. “He slept peacefully the whole time.”

  “Thanks for staying with him,” she replied, keeping her eyes on her father. “I got back as quickly as I could.”

  “Of course.” June squeezed her shoulder. “So … the pitch went okay?”

  Annika let out a breath. “It could’ve been better.” She looked up at June. “I’m sorry. I messed up a couple of times and my heart just wasn’t in it. I’m pretty sure they could tell. Wakefield seemed impressed by the idea, but I’m not sure I gave him anything to really hold on to.” When she looked down, a few tears dripped off her eyelashes. “I think we’re going to lose.” And Break Up would win. She would’ve felt worse about it, but she’d hit the limits of negative emotion.

  June wrapped her arms around Annika and gave her a quick hug. “Let’s just wait and see what the results come back like tomorrow. Anyway, you did the best you could with what you had. That’s all anyone can do, sugar. That’s all anyone can do.”

  “Thanks, June.” Annika pulled back and looked at her friend’s drawn face, her eyes puffy and red, her expression slightly dazed. “You should go back to the hotel, though. Get some rest.”

  June frowned. “What about you?”

  “I’m going to take a nap in this chair. I can’t go back to the hotel; I won’t be able to sleep.”

  After a moment, June nodded. “Okay. But text me the moment something changes? I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

  Annika managed a thin smile. “Sure.”

  * * *

  Once the nurse took her father’s vitals, Annika slumped down in the chair and closed her eyes. Her body began to sink into sleep almost immediately, the craving for rest becoming too much for her conscious mind to handle. Images and thoughts began flashing through her mind, the precursor to sleep: her father, smiling at her and handing her a glass of mango juice; Hudson gathering her into his arms, smelling like the ocean; the investors’ blank looks as she tripped and fumbled her way through the pitch.

  And then, finally, there was darkness as she slept fitfully, pieces of her broken heart rattling in her chest.

  “Ani.”

  Her eyes flew open before her brain fully processed what was happening. The clock on the wall said she’d been asleep for about two hours. “Daddy,” she gasped, rushing to his bedside.

  His eyes were open, eyelids fluttering. His gaze roved her face. “What—what’s happening?”

  Annika pushed the nurse’s call button. “You were in a car accident,” she said, her voice wobbling. Tears streamed down her face as relief coursed through every muscle, every nerve-ending, every artery in her body. He was awake. He was speaking. Her father was here with her. “You’ve been unconscious almost a full day.”

  His face was uncomprehending, though he winced, as if he were in pain. “An accident?”

  Annika rubbed his arm, hating how her normally robust father looked so confused, so frail. “Yes. You’re in Napa, Daddy. You rented a car and then a truck hit you. But you’re okay. I’m here.”

  The nurse rushed in, took one look at Annika’s father, and said, “I’ll get the doctor!” before rushing back out.

  Her father watched the nurse go. “The doctor?” he said. “I think that’s supposed to be me.” He grinned at Annika. That’s how she knew he was going to be okay.

  chapter twenty-one

  Because her father was her father and was able to articulate eloquently and at length why he would thrive getting care closer to home, the doctors agreed to transfer him to Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where he’d practiced for decades and felt more comfortable. His brain swelling had completely subsided, as far as the doctors could tell. The only symptom of the injury to his temporal lobe was short-term memory loss. His spleen would recuperate perfectly as well. In other words, he’d gotten massively, massively lucky.

  “So, are you going to sue the drunk driver who hit you?” Annika asked. She and June sat beside her father’s bedside, watching him eat minestrone soup while propped up against the pillows. Suing was something she and June had talked about, but of course, it was ultimately her dad’s decision.

  He looked up at her, his poor bruised face contorting into a small smile. They’d given him glasses because he’d made a quip that he liked to see the food
he was eating, even if it was hospital food. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Ani. They tell me the poor man had been sober for twenty-five years and fell off the wagon because his only daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor.” He took a deep breath, shaking his head slowly. “I suppose we all have our burdens to carry in this life.”

  “How did you find that out?” Annika asked, frowning.

  Her dad grinned and continued to eat his soup. “People tell you all kinds of things when they find out you’re a doctor.”

  Annika shook her head, smiling. “Hey,” she said to June. “You should go to the hotel and get packed. Our flight’s in a couple of hours. I’ll meet you there in a bit.”

  Her father would be using a medical transport since he was still a little weak from all the time he’d spent unconscious, but since he was doing so well otherwise, he’d told Annika to fly home with June separately.

  “Okay.” June hopped up from her chair, slipped her phone into her pocket, and pecked Annika’s dad on the cheek. “See you on the flip side, Dr. Dev.”

  “Bye-bye, June.”

  After she was gone, Annika’s dad turned to her, his expression serious. He set his spoon down. “Annika, I need to say something.”

  “What is it? Do you need me to call the nurse for pain meds?”

  “No, it’s nothing like that.” He took a deep, steadying breath. He was still attached to an IV, but most of the other machines had been removed. “I’ve just been thinking about a lot of things these past couple of hours. Almost dying in a car accident will do that to you, I suppose. I feel like I’ve gained more perspective now than I did in fifty-six years of being alive.” He smiled before continuing. “I am so proud of you for following your heart. I know I haven’t been the most supportive, and I’ve been trying to change that as of late, but … you’re an incredible woman, Ani. And I’m so happy you’re pursuing your dream. Your mom would be so proud.”