Smart Girl

by Rachel Hollis

  As I greet the last member of their team with a kiss on each cheek, Landon throws me a questioning look. I smile and try my best to appear casual, but I feel terrible. I’ve never been late for a meeting before. I’ve never been this unprepared either. Riverton is a huge client of ours, and it was an incredible coup to have landed their business when our firm was still so new. This is not something we can afford to lose. This is not a situation I can afford to screw up, and if I do, it won’t just be my livelihood I’m messing with but Landon’s too.

  “We’re very excited to see what you’ve pulled together for us, ladies,” Diego tells us in his thick accent. He has to be at least fifty, but he is a caricature of the suave Latin lover. When I first met him years ago, I thought he was a super creep for trying to flirt with me. Then I realized he uses that same tone and persona with everyone he meets, both men and women. I’ve come to recognize it as a lure. He seems charming and laid back, but underneath all that affability is a sharp businessman with laser focus.

  Casidee enters the room and smiles. “I’m so sorry I forgot to drop these off with y’all earlier,” she says, putting a stapled packet of information down in front of each person. Using bubbly southern charm to ingratiate herself with the clients is something she learned from Landon. Throwing herself under the bus to save me face is a characteristic that’s all her own. We really should give this girl a raise.

  “We can’t wait to take y’all through this,” Landon tells them with her usual enthusiasm. “We have so many cool ideas.”

  I give Cas a grateful smile when she sets down my packet and then turn it up to ten when I look back at Diego. This is a pitch meeting, so enthusiasm is everything. I hurry to play my part.

  “The party space is great too. It really lends itself to that Old World charm you’re hoping to impart. Plus, downtown is so trendy right now. Your guests are going to love it.”

  Landon’s brow furrows. Diego looks up from the paperwork in front of him.

  “Downtown?” he asks me. “I thought the venue is on the Westside.”

  I glance quickly at Landon, expecting her to come to my rescue and explain to Diego that he’s confused about which area we’re producing this in. It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. Landon’s smile is just as big as mine, but her brow-frown has gotten deeper. I keep the smile glued to my face while inside I’m screaming every curse word I know. She appears to be trying to read something in my face and then comes to some kind of conclusion.

  “Oh, we know.” She waves his question away breezily. “But everyone’s using the term downtown now. Downtown Burbank, Downtown Hollywood—”

  “So the Armory is in Downtown Santa Monica?” Diego asks.

  “That’s exactly right.” She turns back the cover page of her packet at a precise angle. “Now if you open your proposal to page one, I’ll take you through some of the installations we’re considering, and then Miko will show us her design schematics.”

  I should be elated that she just covered for me like that. Instead I’m in full-blown panic mode. The Armory? When did we change the venue to the Armory? My palms are sweaty, and I wipe them down the front of my jeans. Last I heard we were holding the party in an old empty bank in downtown LA. I designed all three parties to fit within those specifications. Oh gods! I am so dead. This is a killing offense for sure! Diego is going to torpedo this project and the three others we’re scheduled to do for him as well. I dart a look at Landon, who’s happily chirping about the options available for break-dance troops to perform at their party. She’s in her element. Totally polished and fully prepared. I cannot screw this up for her!

  I quickly think through the parties I’ve designed for this presentation. The specs aren’t exactly right, but I doubt Diego and his team know either space well enough to realize I planned the proposals for a different venue. Maybe if I describe it in detail, they won’t pay as much attention to what’s on the paper. I run through each party design in my head again, looking for ways I can expound on what they’re seeing.

  Landon looks at me. “Miko, you want to show them what you’ve been dreaming up?”

  Time to put up or shut up. I pull up the first design on my computer and spin it to face them all. I don’t need to look at Landon to know that she’ll immediately recognize the leather-studded bar that’s a signature of the original venue. I just do my best to spin it into the pitch.

  “So first of all”—I grin at each client in the room—“how amazing would it be to create a custom bar like this?”

  Despite my being wholly unprepared, Diego and his team love the designs and end up choosing the one I sketched out last night on paper. We shake their hands and promise to send over the contract and details before the end of the week. We make it all the way back to my office and close the door before Landon turns her fully incredulous face in my direction.

  “What just happened?”

  The sound of knuckles popping precedes my answer. “Um, our client just picked out a design for their next event?”

  My voice sounds only slightly hysterical.

  She wore a pretty baby-blue dress today for our client meeting, but it does nothing to soften the stink eye she gives me. “Girl.”

  Landon uses that one word in a thousand different ways. I never knew one word could be a question, an encouragement, or a statement of fact. In this case it’s got the full implications of Tosh’s favorite who-you-trying-to-kid look. She doesn’t wait for me to answer.

  “How could you not know the event venue? I sent you at least three emails about this right before I left for the holiday. They’re putting the executive staff up at Shutters, and Diego wanted the venue to be closer by.” She searches my face for some kind of recognition. “Remember the email? I mentioned that they’d added on a huge order for gift bags?”

  I vaguely remember an email about Diego and gift bags. I’d gotten it the morning after that first night with Liam, and I’d been too upset to pay attention. I had meant to go back and read through those old notes, but I ended up at Liam’s house again the next day and I’ve basically been distracted ever since.

  I walk around the edge of my desk and pretend to sort out the materials on top of it. Really I’m just stacking them in nonsensical piles to have something to occupy my hands and buy me some time. I’ve never done anything like this before. I might be a little messy and disorganized, but I have always taken client relations seriously, even when I’ve worked for other companies and the clients weren’t my own. We’re in a consultation-based business; if we don’t take care of our clients, we won’t have a business anymore. This is really, really bad of me. I give up on the paper tower I’m building and fall into my chair desolately.

  “I am so sorry, Landon. I don’t even have a good excuse. I’m just—” Even though I told her I didn’t have one, I search for one just the same. I got nothing. “I’m just sorry.”

  She sits down in the chair across from me and stares like she’s trying to figure me out. I doubt she’ll be able to. She has always been so focused on her career. In fact, if anything, Landon is the opposite of me in this situation. She struggles with not putting her career in front of everything else, and her relationships have suffered because of that. Now here I am screwing up both our careers for a relationship that’s not even real. I have to fight myself to keep from crying.

  “Hey,” she says softly. “It’s OK. You pitched the heck out of those design concepts. It all worked out.”

  Did it all work out? It feels like my life is just as messy as my desk. Everything is getting more jumbled by the day; nothing is becoming clearer. I nod just to appease her.

  “Hey, let’s call it, OK? Let’s just acknowledge the elephant in the room. You screwed up. It happens to the best of us. Remember last summer when I forgot to order enough pens for the silent auction bid sheets?”

  God love her for her lame attempt to make me
feel better. We were down eleven pens, so we borrowed some from the hotel’s front desk—it wasn’t any kind of a crisis. She is one of the most organized people I know, and her troubleshooting list is typically three pages long. She doesn’t screw up, not like this.

  “Oh yes.” I sniff miserably. “The pen crisis of 2015.”

  “Girl, it’s fine. You’ve had a ton on your mind lately. I should have double-checked to make sure you were clear on the details.”

  “And now you’re trying to shoulder responsibility when you are in no way to blame.” I sigh. “Your being virtuous is not helping me feel any better.”

  “Well.” She fluffs her bouncy blonde hair. “I can see that you’re determined to castigate yourself regardless of what I say. Can we go get a latte at least? I’m going to need caffeine if I’m going to be forced to watch you wallow.”

  “Yes.” I nod. “And I’ll buy you a baked good too. It’s the least I can do.”

  Her eyes light up. “How about a Milky Way cheesecake brownie with fleur de sel?”

  I can see the plan already forming in her head. It’s a ridiculous idea, given the amount of work I still need to catch up on, but I play along.

  “But Landon,” I say with the affected innocence of a silent-movie ingénue, “there’s only one place in all of Los Angeles that makes that dessert, and it’s all the way in the Valley.”

  “Oh come on.” She bounces up from her chair. “You know we do our best work when surrounded by food, and the Flour Shop totally has Wi-Fi.”

  Just the idea of playing hooky and stealing espresso all day already makes me feel better. I smile in agreement. “I’ll text Max and tell her to reserve our table.”

  We take seats at our usual table in the corner. All around us Max’s bakery is alive with happy activity. A few customers are finishing up treats or working on laptops just like Max wanted it when we designed this space. The only thing she’d asked me at the time was that I find some way to preserve some of the raw and broken elements. Since I knew that the request had everything to do with her emotional journey at the time—that she was trying to find the beauty in the broken parts of her—I spent weeks and weeks making sure I paid homage to that. The floor, for instance, is the exact same stained concrete it was when she got the place. I had it polished and buffed until it shined. The seating area is a mix of large and small tables that Taylor made just for her. Each table is whitewashed reclaimed wood—again, an opportunity to give something new life. The white marble countertop is the anchor of the entire space, and it’s topped on one side by a glass display case housing baked goods that I know from personal experience are good enough to make you cry. We found a way to marry a little rough industrial with a sort of French country kitchen, and the results turned out beautifully. The serving pieces themselves, from the vintage cake stands to the mismatched teacups, are all from a flea market. Everything in here got a second chance when the bakery opened, especially its owner.

  “You look like hell,” Max says.

  She sets a lavender-and-honey latte down onto the table in front of me, served in one of the giant flea market coffee mugs she knows I love so much. She also slides a platter filled with glazed doughnuts towards us. They are covered in a brown-butter glaze, and I know from experience that they will be warm from the fryer. She knows from experience that Landon and I always want treats whether or not we order them.

  I run a hand down one side of my mane to try to smooth it out, but there’s no hiding the wildness in it today, in spite of the general calm I usually feel when I come here. The conversation with Liam, the mistakes I made with the client, the discussion with Landon—that drama is playing out in every single hair follicle to make it twice as big as it should be.

  “It’s not a great hair day,” I grumble.

  Max settles herself gracefully into the seat next to Landon. She’s wearing one of the cool hipster aprons we sourced for the staff here, and her pixie cut is being held in check by the vintage scarf she wrapped around her forehead. She looks beautiful but suspicious, which for Max translates into concern. Naked concern shows too much vulnerability for her to display openly, so when she’s worried about someone, she channels it into anger instead. I can guess why she’s immediately hostile too.

  “I hadn’t even gotten around to checking out your hair. I’m more concerned about the dark circles under your eyes. What’s going on?”

  She actually gets super pissed off if she thinks one of us isn’t taking proper care of ourselves, since health is such a driving force in her own life.

  “Oh Lordy, too many things to count.” Landon’s accent gets more pronounced the harder she’s trying to sell you on something. “Work’s been crazy busy. And Thanksgiving took it out of her—isn’t that right, Miko?”

  I nod like a dutiful ventriloquist dummy. If she wants to try to save me from probing questions, I’m not about to stop her. I take a sip of my latte and focus on the joy of that rather than the awkwardness of this conversation. This caffeine tastes like I’m getting a hug from an angel while standing in a sunny field of lavender. They should totally put that description on the menu.

  “And then there’s, um . . .” Landon is still stumbling along under Max’s knowing glare. “Um, that new POV book.”

  “POV?” Max asks.

  That was the opening Landon needed. “Oh, it stands for point of view—”

  “I know what it stands for, Landon. I’m not an imbecile.” She stops to smile at the mother who’s just walked into the bakery with a toddler in one hand and an empty stroller in the other. “Hi, guys! Back for more cookies?” Max asks this question with the joy of a first-year kindergarten teacher.

  My eyes fly to Landon, and we stare at each other in shock. The little girl wiggles loose from her mother’s grasp and runs headlong to our table.

  “Miss Max,” she greets enthusiastically. Her lisp turns the s’s into th’s, which is the flipping cutest thing I’ve ever heard. “I got new braids today.” She leans her little head closer to Max for inspection, making her tiny waterfall of braids swing against each other. “Do you like my beads? Some of them are stars.”

  “So pretty,” Max tells her with equal enthusiasm. “Can I touch them?”

  “Of course, silly,” the toddler says, shaking her head and making the colorful beads dance.

  “Ooh, the stars are my favorite shape so far. Much better than the butterflies from last time.” Max plays with the ends of the braids reverently. “So which colors did you choose today, Claire?”

  As she starts to recite her colors, the little girl’s mother wheels the stroller up to our table. Max smiles and waves her away. “Mike will help you get your order together, Sasha. She’s fine.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely,” Max tells her over the sound of Claire reciting red for the fourth time.

  Max introduces us to the little girl, but that seems to make her shy, and she turns back to regale our friend with stories of something that happened at preschool yesterday. Landon and I watch in stunned silence while Max carries on an animated conversation with the toddler until her mother comes back. She wishes them well and then turns back to us without having missed a single beat.

  “I know what POV means, Landon. I’m just not sure what that has to do with Miko looking like she’s in the third stage of mono.”

  “There are stages of mono?” I wonder aloud.

  Landon can only stare at Max; every emotion she’s feeling runs across her face in quick succession. She jumps a little when my foot connects with her shin under the table, and she has to clear her throat twice before she can resume speaking. There is absolutely no way we can comment on what just happened. Later, when it’s just the two of us, we will laugh and scream and rejoice over how far our friend has come. But doing that now will only embarrass Max and make her self-conscious.

  Right now we have t
o act like nothing important happened. Like we didn’t just see something incredible. And it is incredible. A year ago she wouldn’t even have been able to look at a small child, let alone interact with one. For the first year I knew her, I just assumed it was because she didn’t like children. It was only after learning the gut-wrenching story of how she lost her own baby that I realized how painful it was for her to see other parents with theirs.

  I marvel again at the effect that Taylor has had on her life; it’s been amazing to watch. They might have started out a little rocky and unsure, but they are nearly inseparable now, and not inseparable in that creepy way that some couples are. They hang out all the time because they are genuinely best friends. Because they were friends first, she was able to learn to trust him in a way she hadn’t with any other man. And eventually she trusted him enough that she could recognize the love that had been there all along. It’s as if by allowing him to love her, she was able to love herself. And by loving herself, she’s been able to grow into the best version of herself she’s ever been.

  I look down into my half-empty cup and slowly let the air out of my lungs. That’s what a relationship is supposed to do. That’s what the right relationship is supposed to do. The right relationship certainly doesn’t leave dark circles under your eyes.

  I bat that unwanted thought away and focus instead on what Landon’s saying.

  “—is when an author rewrites a popular book from the male POV. It really upsets Miko.” She takes a demure sip of her latte. “Gets right up under her craw.”

  Max leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “Seriously, how can you even keep track of the amount of things that upset Miko?”

  Landon casually rests her chin in her hand. Each nail is perfectly painted in ballerina-pink polish. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I’ve gotten so good at keeping track of all the things that upset you, that keeping up with Miko’s emotional dependence on literary fiction is just par for the course.”