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That made me shake my head. Ian really was a little too literal for his own good.
“It’s just a generic term for a woman in her twenties, like a Karen for older women. That’s irrelevant.” Faith impatiently waved her hand at him. “My point is, while trying to not be gender specific, the logo is too generic, too limiting. Let’s be bold and sexy.”
“You’ve mentioned sexy a lot,” Dylan said. “Are we really that unsexy at the moment?”
“A little bit,” she said, making a face, like she didn’t want to offend us. “You could definitely be sexier.”
“I think she’s talking to the rest of you,” Dylan joked.
I kept my mouth shut. Not touching it. Any of it. Not touching her. I was respecting her boundaries if it killed me.
We werefriends.
I was her boss.
“Maybe there’s a better word for it,” Malcolm said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re not putting the word on the logo. I think we all know what Faith means. Let’s do a test study. We can create a new concept and then do an A/B test with a consumer polling service. This isn’t a shift we can achieve overnight if we even want to consider it. Faith, get a preliminary concept in place. Get with Malcolm to discuss the budget. Now let’s move on to the rye launch event in two weeks. Are we all set for that?”
The conversation needed to shift to the guest list, the press release, and catering details. We needed to be off sexy. No more sexy.
Faith gave me a smile. “Thank you,” she said.
I nodded.
It wasn’t enough, what she and I had now.
It was going to have to be enough.
I had to respect what she wanted. Which was to focus on her new job, not dating.
From crush to hookup to boss to friend zone.
I’d plummeted from great heights. Fallen off a cliff. Been shoved out of an airplane at fifteen thousand feet. I should have called it at crush status. Never gone any further.
Of course, I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t trade one second of the nights I’d spent with Faith.
Friend it was.
These meetings were all recorded on video. As both her boss and her friend, I felt compelled to guide her in her career with some professional advice before the event Friday night.
Faith and I needed to have a little talk about thrusting.
Faith
I groaned to Shawna and hit myself in the face with my pillow in my bedroom repeatedly. “I'm a mess. Look at this video I’m going to send you.” I copied and forwarded it to her, then took a screenshot of what MacKay had written when he’d sent it to me.
Shawna’s face disappeared briefly while she looked at the video. She reappeared laughing. “Faith. I’m dead. You really are getting into it with the hand gestures.”
“You mean the part where I say cold hard steel thrusting into a hot barrel?” I groaned again. “Did you see what MacKay wrote?”
She nodded. “He wrote, ‘This is you trying to be nonsexual at the office? You might want to tone down the euphemisms. Just a suggestion from the boss.’”
“Why would I say all of that? Why?” I hit myself with the pillow again.
“Because you were caught up in your idea. Which was brilliant by the way. Everything you said was spot on. You just sounded a little D in the V thirsty while you were saying it.”
I rolled around on my bed dramatically. “I can’t help it. It’s all I can think about when I’m around MacKay. I’m wearing clothes two sizes too big, I’m pulling my hair up, not wearing makeup, and refusing to sip straws and he still looks at me like he wants to destroy my vagina.”
