Page 1 of Never Landing

1

Everett

Iloved my job.

At least, that was what I kept saying to myself as I sat through the tenth meeting of the week.

What was quickly becoming my last-straw meeting.

Unlike most of them, it wasn’t one of those “this could have been an email” meetings. No, it was the big one. The one where we talked about all the work I’d done on the Crosslife account over the last two months. Eighty-hour weeks, every night and weekend consumed by research and art and writing. Crosslife was a trillion-dollar life insurance conglomerate, and I’d come up with their entire new ad campaign. The slogan, the storyboard, the art, it was all mine. All out of my brain, without a single bit of input or help from anyone else.

It was unheard of in the company. It was supposed to be a writer and an artist, every time. A team of creatives, working in concert. But my boss had told me he didn’t have anyone else to help. That he had faith in me. He believed in me, and when I finished and secured the Crosslife account, imagine the bonus. The credit. The money Crosslife would be giving the company.

And yet, somehow I was entirely unsurprised as I sat next to him while he smiled at the CEO of Crosslife, nodding. “Thankyou so much. It really is some of the best work I’ve done in years. I don’t usually get down in the trenches anymore, but for you guys, of course. And I guess Everett here just couldn’t handle the stress of coming up with something new. You know these young guys, always biting off more than they can chew.”

The CEO didn’t even glance my way. A woman to his right was looking at me, sad-eyed and knowing. Part of me wanted to see it as pity and lash out, but I recognized the look. It was empathy. Understanding. She’d been there. Probably thanks to the asshole next to her, who was eating up my boss’s ass-kissing and nodding along like it was simply his due.

I glanced across the table to my boss’s right, to Tom Smith, one of our most experienced writers, who’d agreed to sit in on the meeting despite not having even glanced at my work before the presentation. He’d told me a dozen times since I’d started that I needed to learn to play politics. I could hear his ancient, gravelly voice in my head in that moment, low and bored and so very tired of my dramatics. “Being in advertising is more about playing the game right than doing the job right, Everett. You need to learn finesse. Give the boss what he wants, and you’ll get what you want back.”

But that wasn’t how it had gone. I’d worked the eighty-hour weeks. I’d done the job alone when I was supposed to have help. I’d done it faster and better and more and...now I was getting nothing. No credit. Not even a glance from my boss. Fickle betrayal, thy name was James Warren.

Yeah, fine, Warren’s name was on the building and mine wasn’t. But that didn’t mean he ought to steal my credit. It meant he should be happy he’d hired someone who got the job done. Right?

Finally, after what felt like hours of meeting and being entirely ignored except when someone had to ask me a question because they were talking about my goddamned work whilepretending Warren had done it, the CEO of Crosslife stood up and shook Warren’s hand, then Tom’s, while telling them he looked forward to seeing them with the completed campaign plans in January. Then, ignoring me, he turned and walked out.

The woman who’d spent the meeting sitting next to him gave me a nod as she stood. “Good work, Mr....”

And fuck me, that was when I realized Warren hadn’t even introduced me. “Everett Bailey, ma’am. And thank you.”

She glanced down at my computer, then back up at me, and I couldn’t help but feel like she was trying to communicate something to me. The computer was in front of me, of course. It was my personal laptop—the company hadn’t even bought it for me, but required me to provide my own, since “you artists are always so picky.” It was the only computer on the table and had been connected to the overhead to project the plans to show the CEO.

That was probably how she’d known that the work was mine.

Fuck knew why her CEO couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to a little thing like that.

I slid the computer closer to me, and she nodded sharply, like she thought I’d understood her. Did she think I should hold the files hostage until Warren gave me credit? I was pretty sure that my employment paperwork said anything I produced on company time was company property. It wasn’t like I could go behind Warren’s back and sell it to them.

On the other hand, she didn’t even shake their hands. Just turned and marched out on her terrifying looking four-inch stiletto heels. In the hallway, she started talking to the CEO, who suddenly seemed more animated than he had during the entire meeting, waving his arms and smiling at her and looking...hell, almost fatherly. Wish I’d met that guy and not the one who’d ignored me.

Maybe it was just me. Everyone ignored me. Overlooked me. Stole my work and took credit for it. If I was the one who kept getting stepped on, didn’t that mean I had to be complicit in some way?

“Well then,” Warren said, sounding self-satisfied, leaning back and clasping his hands over his middle. “I guess lunch is cancelled. You’ve got a lot of work to do if you’re going to have final print ads ready for Crosslife by January.”

When I continued to just sit there for a moment, he turned and motioned at me, waving both his hands in a scat motion, like he was telling a dog to get off his couch. “Off you go, back to work.”

I unplugged my computer from the projector and left the meeting room in a daze.

That was it. He’d taken credit for the last two months of my life, now get back to work. Spend the next month working on something he’d already taken credit for.

I went back to my desk and sat there, unseeing, at my closed laptop for...well, I didn’t know how long.

Tom passed by, stopped, gave a deep sigh, and turned back to me. “Don’t make this a big drama, Everett. You did fine, now get back to it and finish the job. That’s what you make the big bucks for.”

Big bucks?

How the fuck much did he think Warren paid me? It wasn’t “big bucks,” that was for sure. It was enough to pay my rent and eat, but that was about it. If I hadn’t worked full time through college, my parents graciously paying the five thousand dollars a semester I still couldn’t afford while working full time, I’d have had student loans I couldn’t pay for on top of that.

Suddenly, I felt an icy wind flow over me. Grabbing my computer and holding it against my chest like it was the onlything I had in the world, I went to Warren’s corner office. The door was open and he was alone, so I walked in.

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