Are you in, p.2
Are You In?, page 2
“I’ll leave you both to it.” Mei tapped the glass door of Annabelle’s office twice with her knuckles before turning on her heel and heading back the way we came.
Annabelle easily had at least a decade on Mei, making her at least seven years my senior. I could tell by the steely confidence behind each word she uttered that she’d been with the company for a while, and the industry possibly longer than that.
I also noted ruefully that she was dressed much more similarly to me in high-waisted army green capris that tied in the front, black ballet flats, and a white blouse. I even spied a matching green blazer hanging from a coat rack in the corner of her office.
We could practically be twins, I thought to myself with a grimace, suddenly feeling much older.
“Something wrong, dear?” Annabelle asked, tucking a strand of bright blonde hair behind her ear as she caught my expression.
“Oh yeah, sorry, I uh…thought I saw a spider on my pant leg but it turned out to be a loose thread,” I lied smoothly, offering her my best I’m a great employee smile.
Annabelle smiled warmly back at me then looked down to her large L-shaped desk where she began thumbing through stacks of paper and manila folders that littered the top. Everything in her office screamed modern, and the desk was no exception. A matte black tabletop floated above a set of cabinets and drawers painted to look like gray concrete.
I looked around the space, taking in the macrame wall hangers filled with greenery that seemed so at odds with the contemporary framed artwork hanging beside them.
Annabelle drew my attention when she plucked up a folder with a triumphant flourish. From where I sat, I could see the words WELCOME PACKET stamped in block lettering on the front cover, a sticky note with my name on it just below.
“I can show you to your new home here,“ she said with a tinkling laugh, already exiting her office. I had to move fast to catch up.
“We’ve got you set up with a laptop, dual monitors, charging dock, and all the accessories you should need,” she said over a shoulder as I followed her through the maze of cubes. After about three turns, she stopped at one just across from where Mei and the others had been sitting this morning.
That entire cube was notably empty now. The laptop screens locked, but still lit up, indicating their owners had only recently abandoned them.
“Here we are!”
I returned my gaze to Annabelle as she set the manila folder down on a desk I presumed was now mine. If anyone had been here before me, you wouldn’t know it. The cube area had been completely cleared out of any personal effects, left only with the standard-issue tools and accessories provided by Rabbit’s Foot.
“I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled in. Please make yourself at home,” Annabelle said to me, the same warm smile from her office still dutifully stamped on her lips. “I’ll be back in about fifteen minutes to do a quick tour of the office, and then we’ll get started with orientation.”
I smiled back at her, tearing my thoughts away from all the ways I’d like to decorate this empty space, and nodded my head once in understanding.
“Your computer login info is on a post-it note under your keyboard. There are a few forms in this packet—“ she paused to point to the manila folder, “we need you to fill out before you leave today. The rest of the HR stuff has been digitized and there should be a link to it in your inbox.”
Annabelle’s words were fast and well-practiced like she’d delivered the same spiel dozens of times before. But something behind her eyes made me feel welcome.
“Perfect, thank you so much.”
She gently patted me on the shoulder, giving it the tiniest squeeze before she turned on her heel and walked back to her office.
I took a large gulp of water from my tumbler and put my feet onto the side rails of the treadmill beneath me while it slowly powered down from my half-hearted jog.
“Calling it quits already, Maxwell?” Olivia asked from where she still jogged beside me, eyebrows drawn up. Glancing down at her treadmill, I knew she’d go for at least another mile if left to her own devices.
We were a pretty good pair, both in and out of the gym. I preferred lifting weights to cardio, but Olivia was one of the strongest runners I knew. We balanced each other out.
But when I had promised to meet her at the gym a few blocks down from our apartment after work, I had clearly forgotten how exhausting first days were.
My first eight hours on the job passed by in a blur of information overload. I mainly met with Annabelle as she explained to me the ins and outs of the business, how the marketing department worked, and introduced me around to some of the team and other key players in our office.
The rest of the day I spent holed up with Annabelle in a conference room, going through presentation decks, accountability charts, and recent reports, pausing only for lunch and a much needed coffee break in the afternoon.
It was already going on five o’clock when Annabelle dropped me off back at my desk for the day. Most of the cubes around me had already emptied out for the evening. I had to rush out of the building to meet Olivia at the gym on time and already felt like I’d run a marathon before we even started our workout.
I’d used the time in between nearly breathless sets to fill her in on my first day, and by the time we hopped on the treadmill, I had no wind left in me.
“Yeah, just not feeling it today. My body and my brain feel like anchors,” I said between gulps of water, my chest still heaving up and down in shallow breaths.
I watched in mild shock as Olivia powered down her treadmill, ending her run early in solidarity. She tossed her long brown ponytail over a shoulder and grabbed a towel that hung on the arm of her treadmill to wipe the sweat from her forehead.
I had to stop myself from glaring when I noticed she’d barely even broken a sweat.
“Come on, let’s grab some celebratory sushi and go crash on the couch,” Olivia said as she stepped down from her treadmill, and I immediately perked up at the thought of food and rest, thanking my lucky stars for having such a perfect friend in my life.
Chapter 2
Annabelle sat opposite me at the long, rectangular conference room table, her expertly filed nails tapping out a note on her laptop keyboard.
Mei sat beside me, her facial expression bored. Her laptop sat open in front of her, angled slightly away from me, the screen empty except for the Slack app—Rabbit’s Foot’s preferred program for internal communication. GIFs lit up the open group chat, but I couldn’t make out the names or faces of the senders from where I sat.
Mei’s outfit closely resembled her ensemble from yesterday—another vintage T-shirt, another pair of ripped jeans. This time her dark hair was pulled back in a claw clip, loose pieces flanking her face.
We sat here waiting for my first client to arrive, and I realized Annabelle still hadn’t told me the name of the band I’d be working with. Or what I’d be doing. It was only my second day with the company, but that didn’t feel normal.
The conference room was moderate in size with decor that matched much of the rest of the office. The table itself was made of a large piece of custom-carved oak, lacquered and polished until it reflected like a mirror. The wall behind me was made entirely of glass, offering a panoramic view of the city outside and bathing the room in natural light.
A clock hanging from the far wall of the conference room ticked loudly as we sat in silence, my anxiety climbing with each passing second. The whooshing sound of an email being sent echoed in the quiet room making me jump. Finally, Annabelle looked up at me with her usual professional smile and closed her laptop.
“I’m sure you’re wondering why we're here and what to expect from this meeting,” she said, reading my mind. “I don’t normally love throwing new hires in,” she continued, crossing one leg over the other under the table. “But you came highly recommended from your previous employers, and we have a very big and very urgent opening to fill.”
Flattery. Superlatives. This could not be good.
Mei let out a small snort when Annabelle paused, all but confirming my suspicions. Annabelle shot her a pointed look and Mei’s eyes returned to her Slack messages, her smug smile vanishing.
“I appreciate the bode of confidence…” I trailed off expectantly, wishing she’d just spit it out.
“One of our longest-standing clients is about to go on tour in a few short weeks. The tour is important in its own right, but its true purpose is to tease the release of a new studio album early next year.”
Annabelle paused, shooting a passing glance behind her at the clock on the wall before continuing. “We’ve been preparing a marketing strategy for this for close to a year now, and a lot of our campaigns promoting the tour itself have already launched… but to continue building buzz throughout the tour and leading up to the album’s release, our strategy leans heavily on an active social media presence.”
I nodded, hanging on to Annabelle’s every word. They want me to do social media? For a campaign that’s already in motion? Piece of cake.
“Unfortunately, the social media manager previously on this account…” Annabelle wavered for a moment, searching for the right words. “Well, she left to… pursue other endeavors.”
At this, Mei choked on another laugh, even louder than before, making it impossible to ignore. I shifted in my chair and craned my neck to look directly at her, eyebrows raised.
“What Annabelle means is she got a little too close to a client and, as these things usually go, it didn’t end well.” Mei leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, meeting my gaze defiantly.
My jaw fell open before I could help it. Was she insinuating someone slept with a client?
It was a huge no-no at my last agency, cemented permanently in the employee handbook. And judging by Mei’s smug tone and the annoyed look on Annabelle’s face, I guessed the label felt similarly.
“As you know, Mei, we deal in facts here at Rabbit’s Foot. Not idle gossip,” Annabelle said tightly, her expression and tone leaving no room for rebuttal.
Mei shrugged nonchalantly back at Annabelle as if to say, sorry, not sorry.
“The fact of the matter is, we are three weeks away from the first tour date and have no one to run the band’s accounts,” Annabelle continued, drawing the conversation and my focus back to the job at hand. “We need someone with experience in these platforms and who knows how to… handle client relationships appropriately.” She leaned back in her chair, tenting her hands in her lap, and glanced at the clock again.
My mind raced. On one hand, this was the biggest opportunity I’d ever been given. It was exactly what I wanted when I first applied for this job.
But was I ready for this? Did this mean I’d need to physically go on tour with… I remembered the name of the band still had not been disclosed.
“The first half of the tour only lasts six weeks, and then you’d be back here for a three-month break before embarking on the second half,” Annabelle said, once again reading my thoughts. Or some of them, at least.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a few long moments, my eyes drawn to the patterns and swirls of an abstract mural above Annabelle’s head as I pondered her words.
Six weeks. Less than two whole months. When put like that, it didn’t seem that huge.
My head swam with unspoken questions, so I latched onto the biggest, most important one floating around inside my brain.
“So who is—” I began to ask, but the words were cut off when Annabelle stood up, a wide smile plastered on her face that I immediately knew was reserved for big clients. Very Important People only.
I turned my head to follow her gaze, eyes landing on the now-open door. The doorway was filled with people I hadn’t even heard arrive.
Annabelle warmly greeted the first person to walk in, a man who looked to be in his late forties. He wore a tailored gray suit with a powder blue button-down underneath. He looked like he may have once been handsome, but deep lines in his forehead and a receding hairline echoed years of a high-stress job.
This was the guy who ran off the last social media manager?
I shot a confused glance at Mei who seemed to follow my thoughts. Just wait, she seemed to say, her eyes widened knowingly.
I refocused on the door to the conference room just in time to see a group of guys—definitely younger than the man in the suit, but still possibly early 30s—shuffling in slowly.
The guy in the front of their pack had hair cropped just above his shoulders, its brown hue so dark it looked almost black. He wore a plain dove gray T-shirt that stretched tight across his chest and hugged his arms just above his toned biceps.
He was muscular, but not in a way you get from spending hours at the gym. And he was tall, at least six-foot-three from the way his frame filled the open doorway.
I continued slowly taking him in— the sinewy arms completely covered in tattoos, the prominent collarbones sticking out from the top of his V-neck collar, the expression on his face that looked almost… bored.
And then his gaze met mine.
Like his hair, his eyes were so dark they were almost black in the natural light of the conference room, but as he held my stare I noticed they were actually a dark amber—like the color of expensive whiskey. My breath caught in my throat as recognition flared in my mind, the sound of alarm bells only I could hear ringing in my ears.
To some, he may not be conventionally handsome. But there was a ruggedness to his features, a striking clarity in his gaze. One that had drawn me in from the very first time I saw him on my TV screen almost ten years ago.
I knew that chiseled jaw, lined with stubble from at least a few days of not shaving. If his Wikipedia page was to be believed, he had just turned thirty this spring, but there was an air of boyish charm to him as he stepped gracefully into the conference room.
How many times had I watched those full lips stretch and pout around a microphone, belting out the lyrics that carried me through part of high school and all of college?
My assignment wasn’t just any band.
This band had been number one on my Spotify Wrapped every year for as long as I could remember. Because I listened to them almost daily.
My assignment was Olympus.
Mei must have seen the gears whirring in my brain because I felt her firmly kick my shin underneath the table, the sudden contact snapping me back to reality. The rest of the band shuffled into the room and settled in around us until we took up every seat at the eight-person table.
“Thank you for joining us in the office today,” Annabelle began as I fiddled with my laptop, desperately avoiding eye contact with anyone in the band, lest they sniff me out as a superfan. “As you know, Camila recently left us for another opportunity, leaving the social media role vacant for your upcoming tour.”
I risked a glance up and found the band’s frontman still staring at me, a mischievous smile playing on his full lips. I quickly tore my attention away from him and faced Annabelle fully, forcing myself to focus intently on every word she spoke.
“With the start of the tour quickly approaching, we had to move fast to find a replacement,” she smiled widely in my direction, lifting an exposed palm to me. “I’d like you all to meet Hannah. She came to us highly recommended from an agency specializing in communications and digital marketing, and has extensive experience in social media for clients of all sizes.”
Because I had no other choice, I inhaled sharply and plastered a smile on my face as Annabelle began introducing everyone seated across from me.
But I already knew each of their names. Intimately. In fact, the only new name was that of the man in the suit: their manager, Ryan.
Each man waved as his name was said aloud, offering me small, polite smiles.
“Zach—” Lead guitar.
“Angel—” Drums.
“Peter—” Bass guitar.
“Ezra—” Lead singer. His eyes met mine again, but he didn't wave like the others. Instead, he bowed his head slightly in greeting, amusement dancing in his eyes.
I could only watch as he broke our staring contest to take in the rest of me. His gaze felt warm against my skin as it roved over me, from the top of my head to the lowest point revealed above the table, and back up again. I felt my cheeks start to burn under the intensity of that stare, the sensation only growing when Ezra’s eyes rested on my lips for far longer than appropriate.
Right when I felt like I might pass out from sensory overload, Mei kicked me sharply underneath the table again, jerking me back to life. I turned back to my boss just in time to hear Annabelle and the band’s manager turn the conversation to planning and logistics for the upcoming tour and subsequent album release.
I knew I should be paying attention—they were essentially discussing what the next six weeks of my life would be like—but there was a quiet humming in the back of my head that prevented me from taking in any new information.
It was only at this moment I realized I was never actually asked if I wanted to take on this new client. To travel around the country for the next six weeks.
In the end, I guess it was never really a choice. That was the job.
“Wait. You mean to tell me that your first real assignment at your brand new job is to do social media for a band you’ve been low-key obsessed with for the last—I don’t know—decade?” Olivia’s eyes were wide as they pinned me over the half-empty boxes of Chinese takeout sitting between us.
She balanced gracefully on one of the rustic industrial bar stools that lined our kitchen island, one leg drawn up underneath her, gym clothes still hugging her athletic body.
I took a large bite of my shrimp lo mein and nodded, eyes focused down on my food as though the answer to life’s greatest questions lay at the bottom of the carton.
“And you want me to actually agree with you, to believe, this isn’t the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you—besides me, of course?” Olivia pressed, chopsticks still hanging midair on their way to her mouth.
