Chương 1: Chapter One Pt 1

Tuesday October 4th Have you ever had a moment in time that changes the entire course of your life? I had a moment like that, and it wasn't the change I would have prepared for in a thousand lifetimes. A moment where I'm sitting in a beige room staring at HR, getting fired for something I didn't do and somehow, that is not the moment that changes my life.

It was the one between those moments when I heard a voice that no one else could, where reality fell back on itself while giving me the big 'ol double middle finger. Let me back up a second, the rest is important too. The coffee maker was committing an assassination attempt. I know how that sounds, but trust me, when you've been through what I've been through–anything is possible. That, or I was just strongly addicted to caffeine, but that's splitting hairs.

So there I was standing in my kitchen before dawn on a Tuesday in nothing but an oversized t-shirt shaking the machine that supposedly had a lifetime guarantee. The machine struggled, gurgled and managed to choke out a very sad, very thick ¾ of a cup of coffee before making a sound that I assume is what a dying seal sounds like and giving up entirely in a hiss of steam.

"Come on," I muttered. The stupid machine came with an app that was triggering some kind of error that wasn't at all helpful: Contact Customer Care K8ACV'What the hell is a K8ACV?' You may be asking, and or 'why is that important?' Maybe even, 'Where is this story going?' I promise, just note it down or remember it, it'll come back around eventually. I threw back the lukewarm, thick mud that was somehow both too strong and thick while also tasting nothing like coffee at all. I gagged.

This was definitely not going to get me through the morning. I tapped the contact customer care link, and I got stuck in an unhelpful loop between that screen and the next, 'R3P 33K'. Giving up, I stomped into the bathroom, where I brushed my tongue and teeth twice. Even so, the horrible chalky, gritty mud still lingered in the back of my throat.

I jumped into my shower taking 'deep calming breaths' which amounted to little more than sighing into the steam and muttering under my breath about Omozan's 2-day delivery on a new coffee maker which was long enough barring it didn't hit a mysterious delay, or show up broken or just a box of bricks. I'd have to stop at the coffee shop on the way in. I was hoping to get in early, but at least I could grab Kate a bear claw on the way in.

My apartment was what a millennial might call 'modern and minimalistic' or 'single guy chic'. The walls were a neutral grey that the landlord painted to appeal to the lowest common denominator. My couch and the rest of my furniture looked like they were fresh out of a magazine, mostly because they were. They were also incredibly uncomfortable, the drawback to not actually going out to sit on furniture at a store.

The only pictures and decorations were ones my best friend, Kate, put up as a joke, trying to strong arm me into replacing them.

"Hello Cowboy", "Just Whisk It", and three different framed, matted photographs on Nicolas Cage donned my dining room. We were in a standoff, each of us confident we could outlast the other. The only thing that I actually had sentimental attachment to was an old, raggedy cream-colored blanket thrown over the couch, that may or may not have been white a decade ago. My mother called my apartment, and my life depressing, and clucked her tongue before loudly declaring she should just give up on grandchildren.

Since I was going to be 30 next year, that apparently meant that I might as well hang up a sign on my ovaries that said, "Nothing left but dust and sadness." I got out of the shower and toweled off, glaring at my closet. The contents were mostly black, grey and navy with an occasional foray into 'dark green' and 'slightly blacker black'. This was another of Kate's points of contention, and she sometimes snuck clothes into my closet, "just in case" I was "ready to stop looking like I was in witness protection".

If I were being honest, I wanted to be the kind of person who could just jump into something and look like a movie star, but I was tall and ginger and kind of awkward. I wasn't trying to stand out anymore than I already did. In my field, standing out made you competition, and that meant people to fight me. Instead, I liked to come in and quietly decimate the competition before they even knew there was a game being played. I picked black pants and a gray blouse because today was already starting out bad.

I added small earrings and checked my reflection. I frowned. Professional enough to not get fired. If only I could've known. The commute was the usual nightmare. I lived in the kind of neighborhood that was technically 'walkable to public transit' but the lack of sidewalks made it impractical in anything that wasn't hiking boots. So I drove, like everyone else in the city, sitting in traffic and listening to audiobooks about protagonists who actually had people and events worth listening to in their lives.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. I was listening to the latest in my favorite series for the third time. An embarrassingly risque chapter began a little too loudly, and I quickly bumped the volume down a few notches. I was imagining what a strong, dark faerie king might look like. His broad, muscled shoulders and arms wrapped around me tightly, fingers beginning to explore my… HONNNNNNNNNK! A horn startled me out of my fantasy. Oof. How long had that light been green?

The guy in the Prius cut around me and gestured wildly as they passed. I gave him it back double. Whatever dude, don't be such a twatwaffle. By the time I'd pulled into the H&S Design parking garage, I'd finished the chapter and my coffee was cool enough to drink. The faerie king of the dawn, Careon, had begun his redemption arc, and Aurora, the main character, was standing in the ruins of her life.

The Fae king of shadow, Malikai, and my favorite was conveniently nowhere to be found, allowing Careon to swoop in and try to win back the heart of Aurora. I wouldn't listen at work. I was always afraid my headphones would die right in the middle of the climax–of the story, and the ensuing prose would be streamed from my phone's speakers for all to enjoy. I rubbed at my eyes as I hustled into the building, trying to pull my thoughts from fae smut to professional work mode. My department was on the fourth floor.

The building wasn't anything to write home about. All glass and steel and hard corners. It oozed out-of-touch corporate synergy from every open floor plan and isolation pod. H&S was a family business. They'd started in print and now did everything from ads to web design to full-on social media campaigns. I was very dedicated to my work. I graduated from college with three different offers and took the one that would help me grow my career, to make a name for myself so that I could start my own design business.

I went to work early every day and stayed late almost as often. My current project was a branding overhaul for a leading supermarket chain, AllMart. Their old logo looked like it had been designed in 1997 by someone's nephew, and their brand identity consisted of only one font and one color. My job was to drag them into not only this century, but this decade without scaring their board of directors, who were apparently allergic to anything that looked too "modern" or too "woke" or too "controversial."

This was exactly the kind of project I was good at, and this was my biggest client to date. If this went the way I'd been hoping it would, my portfolio could just about take me from over-worked and underpaid senior marketing consultant to an over-worked and underpaid self-employed senior marketing consultant. I was particularly proud of the design. I'd refreshed the color palette and logo. The palette had that clean, sleek, and sexy feel with just enough of an uptick in saturation to make it pop.

It was familiar enough that customers wouldn't be overwhelmed (here's looking at you, Cracker Barrel), but modern enough that other grocery stores would feel the need to emulate it so as not to be left behind. This was the kind of subtle work that clients never consciously appreciated but always responded well to. Kate said that was my gift, taking something mediocre and making it quietly excellent while making everyone in the meeting feel like it was entirely their idea.

To find that sweet spot between 'fresh' and 'familiar'. I'd been working on this presentation and rebranding for six weeks. The final presentation was in two days. I'd never been more excited for a presentation in all my life. The elevators opened on four, and I stepped into the chaos I usually avoided by being early. The exposed brick and adjacent moss wall were supposed to show clients that we were creative, but professional. Mostly, it made me want to sneeze.

People were buzzing around the espresso machine in the breakroom. The line was probably ten deep at this point. Glad I stopped for coffee. I was sneaking over to my cubicle when I heard, "Good morning Sam," from behind me to my left. I whirled and saw a woman misting the moss wall with the kind of tenderness usually reserved for newborns and kittens. That was Julia, our office manager, no matter how early I was, she was earlier.

She had a forty-minute commute and twin toddlers, which made the whole thing more impressive. I suspected she was secretly a Cylon.

"Good morning." I answered, trying my best to sound chipper.

"My coffee machine died so I had to call in for backup." I shook the coffee holder at her.

"I sure hope you get it back up soon." She said with a smile.

"Oh! Daniel was looking for you." I stopped.

"Daniel? He never gets in before me."

"Oh, not this morning, last night. He texted something about what time you usually got in and left. Figured it was for your big presentation Thursday."

"Oh yeah, probably." Daniel Park was technically my direct report; he was a junior designer that I'd been assigned to mentor about three months back. The CEO, Greg Harrison Jr., actually personally requested me to take him on. Apparently, he was a fan of my work and wanted tutelage. His portfolio was impressive, and he was hungry for success. He would spend an uncomfortable amount of time sitting behind me and quizzing me on things I knew that he could do.

I would always try to shift to the softer skills like reading a client or knowing when to push back, or how to fold without appearing like you were giving up. I was fairly proud of his progress. It was weird though that he hadn't just asked me what time I'd be getting in. He had my number after all. Well, whatever the case, I would catch up with him after consuming my weight in coffee and a bear claw. I popped over to Kate's desk. She wasn't in yet, and I sighed. Typical.

Kate couldn't be on time for something if someone's life depended on it. I set her coffee and bear claw on her desk and stole a Post-It from her drawer, writing her a little note before returning to my own desk on the other side of the office. I was running through everything one more time. Changing font weights or adjusting padding size by a pixel. I was certain that I could take this project from phenomenal to out of this world, and the drive to do so had made me a little single-minded.