Page 64 of So Not My Type

“That’s unfair.” Sophie withdrew her hand and took a step back. Her voice no longer carried the pleading it did a moment ago. “I didn’t do it to hurt anyone.”

Of course Sophie didn’t. She was a good person who didn’t know the collateral damage from her actions that night. But that didn’t mean the logic in Ella’s brain could outrun the crushing betrayal in her heart. Jasmine’s cheating had shredded Ella—she’d balled up in a corner, stopped painting, refused to shower, she’d been destroyed. And Sophie, unknowingly or not, was a participant.

Ella needed to leave. But she couldn’t. Dammit. She had to go back into the office, pretend that nothing had happened, pretend that she couldn’t feel her insides breaking. The sweat bubbled up now, mimicking her tears filling her eyes, and she cried into her hands. “Fuck!” She stomped her foot, angry at herself for beingemotional, angry at Sophie, angry at herself for being angry at Sophie, and her shoulders collapsed.

A hand touched her arm and she whipped it off. “Please, just… please don’t touch me right now.”

What was she going to do? She needed to run. She needed to get away from here, and think, and paint, and exhale, and come to grips that the person she’d been falling for, really, whole-heartedly falling for, was half of someone who destroyed her. How did she reconcile that? Could she? Goddammit,she knewthese last few weeks were too good to be true. Life was cruel and punishing and unfair. And she was stupid enough to think that maybe this one time, things would work out.

Screw work. She had to get away, flee, go hide in a bunker, something. Anything to avoid facing Sophie, reality, this weight burrowing into her chest.

Sophie’s phone rang. Her lips pulled into a flat line. She exhaled through her nose, and brought the phone to her ear. “What’s up?”

Her face morphed from narrowed eyes to wide eyes, to an “oh shit” face. She nodded, hummed an affirmative, and then clicked off her phone. “We have to go back.” She reached out to touch Ella again, but then dropped her arm to her side. She released a heavy, shaky sigh. “Devil’s Doughnuts got back to us. They rejected the entire campaign.”

TWENTY-SIX

SOPHIE

Sophie thought Ella would follow her back to the office. Or at least hoped she’d follow her, but no. As Sophie rode the elevator solo to the top floor, she bit her shaky lips. Should she have followed Ella down the street? This was bad, so effing bad. But she thought after Malcolm called, Ella would push aside this terrible, awful, horrible moment and come back to the office to work on the campaign.

But Ella didn’t. She ran. Deserted Sophie, without letting Sophie speak, without a mention that they would talk later, without a hint that she was still her partner at work.

She was sick about this. She had no idea the woman from happy hour had been Jasmine. How could she? And what in God’s name were the chances? She wouldneversleep with someone who was in a relationship. Except that she had. But seriously, how the hell was she supposed to know?

No, no, no. This wasn’t really happening. All of this was some terrible nightmare, and she’d wake up in a second. Sophie chewed on her lip ring and watched the elevator floor numbers rise. Maybe Ella just needed to cool down. Surely, she would think logically about this situation, realize that Sophie had never meant to hurt her, and she would come to her senses. Becausethis, them… was not done. They had only just started and no way would Sophie let it slip away.

The elevator doors opened and even if Sophie wanted to wallow in the shithole of the last twenty minutes of her life, she didn’t have the luxury. The office energy mirrored the one on the sidewalk, but even more frantic. If that was possible.

As much as she didn’t want to, right now she had to push Ella out of her mind. “What the hell happened?” she called to Malcolm as she marched to her desk and flipped open the laptop.

“Can you gather everyone in the conference room in ten minutes?” He dug his phone from his pocket. “I’ll text George.”

“Got it.” Her fingers sped across the keyboard, adding names to a large group message.

“All hands on deck, Soph. Let the team know. We’re working through the weekend and might need to pull a few all-nighters if we have any hope of launching on time.” He was looking at his phone, his fingers tapping the screen at the same rate as his voice. “I’m grabbing the creative director from his three p.m. meeting, and I’ll see if George can get ahold of the VP.” He stuffed his phone and looked around. “Where’s Ella?”

Sophie swallowed. “She, um…”Christ.We had a fight and she took off, and I know it’s not cool, but it was a really big blow and…“She wasn’t feeling well. I got this.”

He nodded and stroked the dark hair on his beard as he left for the creatives’ desk.

Sophie blasted the message to everyone on the team:Urgent meeting in conference room G-1. She grabbed her water bottle and ripped the laptop cord from the socket. After bolting to the conference room to set up, she pulled out her phone.

Sophie:

It’s super busy, but it doesn’t mean this isn’t important. We need to talk. Call you after work?

She stuffed the phone in her back pocket and poised her fingers as the team funneled into the room. Squeaky chairs, animated conversation, and opening laptops sounded until she got everyone’s attention. “What do we know? Did anyone speak to the client on why it was rejected? Is this something small and fixable? Talk to me. Ideas on how to make it right?”

“This is bullshit,” a designer yelled from the corner. “We followed their creative brief to the tee. They cannot come back, this late in the game, and say they want it re-done.”

Sophie agreed, but they didn’t have a second to indulge in the time-honored group bitching bonding moment. “Is anything salvageable?”

“Malcolm talked to the marketing director. He should know the full scoop,” an editor commented from the back.

Sophie glanced at her watch. “Okay, he’ll be here in a few minutes. He was going to text George and brief him.”

Murmurs surrounded her, some more frantic than others, with tones of how hard they worked.

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