Page 128 of Derivation

Sarai nodded seriously before she stood and held out her hand for Gabi to take.

“Bra off, but leave your shirt on. I’m going to be reaching under it with my other hand.”

“I think I might be a bad influence on you,” she joked and obliged.

Six minutes later, she was still leaning over Sarai’s desk. Her shirt was on the floor. Sarai’s lips were on her back, and her hand was cupping Gabi’s breast. Sarai’s fingers were still buried deep inside her, and they were both breathing hard.

“God, that was good,” she said.

“Yes, it was,” Sarai agreed. “But now…” She pulled out of Gabi slowly and then smacked her on the ass. “I need to get back to work.”

Gabi laughed and suggested, “Quick shower?”

“What?”

“No sex. We’ll just clean up. It’ll help keep you awake. Then, back to work.”

“A cold shower will wake me up better.”

“Hot shower at first. Then, we can turn it to cold, if you insist. Come on, baby.”

“I like it when you call me that.”

“And I like it when you take me over your desk, so we’re both having a great night, I think.”

Sarai laughed.

CHAPTER 34

Sarai stared at the TV in the living room. They’d decided to watch the commercial in there instead of in the garage because of the large TV and the more comfortable seats. There was also more space in the living room, and since they had her intern, Mitchell, Clay, along with Stella, Gabi, and the four of them, they definitely needed that space.

Sarai was leaning forward in her seat on the sofa, watching, but not really watching the game on the screen because they’d opted to air their ad during a college sport and hoped that the plan would work. Since their product had many different uses, their strategy had been to go after students who could use help in their classes but also the ones who would soon be joining the competitive job market and looking for ways to differentiate themselves from other jobseekers, for whom being fluent or even able to understand another language and do so with ease could be a massive help. Their real-time translation functionality was more accurate than any of the ones they had compared their service to, so it should play well with the people who didn’t want to learn but still needed to be able to do a job where another language was required, and their learning element had a casual vibe to it that should appeal to travelers who wanted to understand the basics of a language of a country they were visiting and not necessarily learn it fluently, but once people got into the harder levels, they could really learn the language for work or life beyond a fun trip because Enya’s brain was remarkable, and she’d somehow figured out how to improve language learning science.

Sarai only hoped that her commercial, which would air nationally during a big college sporting event that was geared toward women, who’d been shown to be increasingly making purchasing decisions in the household, increasingly looking for legs up in the professional world, and still dominated the teaching and educational administration positions, worked, because those would be the people deciding to buy their app and browser version for their schools and districts.

It was a lot to ask from one commercial, but Sarai had thought that her thirty-second spot had managed to summarize things fairly well. There was a QR code that would show on the screen at the end, along with their website info. They expected to get a lot of clicks and views and knew that there would be a drop-off after that, meaning that if one hundred people viewed, only five percent of those might actually download, and they’d be lucky to get one percent of downloads to convert into paid subscriptions. Millions of people should be watching this game, though, so if she multiplied by that, they were looking for hundreds of thousands of views and hoping for a higher conversion rate than five percent.

“The campaign is a good one,” Violet said, pacing in the living room. “The social stuff you made is great, Sarai.”

“Huh?” Sarai asked, looking over at her friend.

“She’s a little out of it,” Gabi said to Violet, chuckling at Sarai’s side. “You okay there, babe?”

“What?” Sarai asked again, looking at her now.

Gabi smiled at her, and Sarai smiled back. Then, she felt Gabi’s hand move over her back, and Gabi could calm her in a way that no one else ever had been able to. She also had this way of making Sarai want to have more and be more for herself. This was a major risk, and if it didn’t work, it meant she would have next to nothing in her marketing budget for the rest of the year, but Sarai had realized something after staying up all night, reworking the thirty-second commercial along with the fifteen-second, shorter version that would air online. She knew that if they ran out of marketing money for her to spend, she could get creative. She could find ways to use social media and partnerships to do things for free or low-cost, and she didn’t doubt that she could come up with something that would get them what they needed. It would take more time, yes, but she could do it. In a way, Gabi had helped give her back her confidence, and Sarai knew that she loved her for that and for everything else Gabi had brought into her life.

It had been over a week since the commercial file had been submitted. The network person Sarai had been talking to about it had requested a fifteen-second version as well, telling her that they’d had a slot to fill on the streaming side, and they’d included it at no extra cost to the company, which had been a miracle until Sarai had found out later that they were supposed to include that all along. She had gotten that fixed with the network and had even gotten them a free website ad, which would show worldwide for one week post the commercial’s airing. It was like she’d gotten her marketing swagger back, which was amazing, but now, the commercial was probably seconds away from airing, and if it didn’t work, she’d be more than disappointed.

“I’ve got everything set up,” Arlowe stated once one of the computer monitors that she’d brought from the garage had been hooked up and sitting on the coffee table so that they could all see. “It’s going to track views, clicks, downloads, and subscriptions. Left line chart is views. The right one is clicks. Below that is downloads. I went with just a flat number there. Same with subscriptions next to it. Later, Sarai can put it in a fancy graph or something, but we can see it all happen live right now.”

Sarai got more nervous then. They’d all be staring at that screen, waiting and hoping that people clicked, downloaded, and started their trial, but if that didn’t happen, it would be like watching herself fail live in front of her best friends.

“I asked if you were okay,” Gabi said a little softer after leaning in closer.

“No.”

“It’s going to be fine.”