Page 13 of The Weight of Love

“Maybe.”

“Rude.”

“I can’t believe investors eat out of your hand, and you genuinely spend no more than three minutes on any presentation. Yet, you talk, and it’s like they’re hypnotized.”

She’s giving me a patented You-Should-Be-Prepared look.

“What can I say? It’s a gift and a curse.”

I make the ‘Redrum’ finger motion from The Shining, and she cracks a smile.

“Ah yes, the Shine is strong with you, or just the gift of bullshitting, but since it pads our revenue, I’ll take it. So, sore from leg day yesterday?”

In so many ways, more than one…

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“I can’t wait to hear this over lunch. I have so many questions.”

We head into the conference room, and Steve thankfully greets me with one coffee in hand and two more at my table.

“You’re an angel, Steve. Emily, he should have a raise.”

Steve looks excitedly at Emily, only to be met with a deadpan, blank stare.

“Doesn’t count, Steve, you know that. Nothing she says before at least 4 cups of coffee is to be taken even remotely seriously.”

I slam the first cup of coffee and hand him back the mug with an innocent shrug. At least my team knows my flaws well and has learned how to roll with them. Emily hired Steve as my minion when I was getting overwhelmed.

He is an eager young college intern with aspirations of becoming a project manager. He lives to anticipate my needs and currently works for peanuts. What more could I ask for?

Him to master the art of a quad-shot espresso? A translation tool for teens? The energy of an eight-year-old? A young, sculpted adonis to bend me over the table and have his way with me in every way imaginable…Definitely all on the list.

“Stella? You with us?”

My attention snaps back from the delightful daydream of Clark bursting in mid-meeting and taking me on the table in the conference room, audience and all.

Emily is looking at me with an expression mixed with amusement and maybe the faintest of irritation.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, caffeinating now.”

“Please excuse our CEO. She’s got a bit of a caffeine addiction. She was up all night putting in a lot of hard work on this presentation.”

Oh, I was putting in work, alright, just not on this.

I meet her eyes and smirk at the glint in her eye.

I quickly work through the additional two coffees, passing them back to Steve absentmindedly as I pull up the “carefully prepared pitch deck” I put together with AI in about three minutes. The coffee is starting to touch my soul, and at least a few rational thoughts are swirling around the surface now.

Show time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. We are thrilled to showcase our next application and see if we can align our collective goals. I’ll keep things as brief as possible.”

The eyes turn towards me, and I can feel their attention snapping into place. It’s an art form that I’ve perfected over the years. Getting a room full of people who don’t want to do something to agree. Capturing people’s attention is easy; keeping it was where I really did have a magical power.

As usual, I launch into the presentation and pull statistics out of thin air. They’re most likely going to fact-check them. I am confident in my analysis, though. My accuracy has always had Emily wondering how I did it.

Within the first two minutes of the meeting, I have the group of investors eating out of the palm of my hand, and Emily gives me a knowing look that tells me we’re going to nail another round of funding from them.

---