Page 41 of Daddy Next Door

Istaredatmycomputerscreen, my chest tight and hollow at the same time.

This couldn’t be happening.

The email from Vitality Juice sat open like a fresh wound, each word a twist of the knife. Three weeks of work. Three weeks of late nights and skipped meals and "just one more adjustment" until my eyes burned. All of it trashed in five brutal paragraphs that ended with a thinly veiled threat to find another designer. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, trembling, as if they'd forgotten their purpose.

The shock hit me in waves. First came the numbness, as if someone had injected ice water into my veins. Then the heat of embarrassment crawled up my neck and flooded my cheeks. My mouth went dry. The room seemed to shrink around me, the walls of my home office pressing closer.

"We find the concept fundamentally misaligned with our brand identity," the email read. "The color palette is juvenile and lacks the sophistication our customers expect. The typography choices appear amateurish at best."

Juvenile. Amateurish.

The words stung worse than if they'd called me incompetent outright. I scrolled back up to the top of the email, hoping I'd somehow misread it the first time. I hadn't.

"If you are unable to deliver a concept that meets our standards, we may need to explore other design partners who better understand our vision."

My stomach clenched. I pushed back from my desk, the wheels of my office chair squeaking against the hardwood floor. The contract with Vitality Juice represented almost forty percent of my monthly income. I'd turned down three smaller projects to focus on their rebranding, assuming the relationship would continue.

Stupid, stupid mistake.

I stood up, my legs unsteady. The room spun slightly as blood rushed from my head. I steadied myself against the edge of my desk and took a shallow breath that did nothing to calm the riot in my chest.

Was I really that bad? Had I completely misunderstood their brief? I'd sent progress updates throughout the process. They'd given feedback, sure, but nothing that indicated they hated the entire direction. In our last check-in call, their marketing director had even used the word "promising."

My chest tightened again. I forced myself to breathe. In for four, hold for four, out for four. The technique Ethan had taught me when I mentioned my occasional anxiety.

Ethan. The thought of him sent a complicated flutter through my stomach. We'd been seeing each other for almost a month now, ever since that day I'd stumbled upon his secret room. The memory still made me blush—both from embarrassment at my invasion of his privacy and from the unexpected thrill of discovering someone who understood that part of me.

My phone sat on the counter where I'd left it during my morning coffee. I could call him. He'd told me I could call anytime. "Day or night, little star," he'd said.

I picked up the phone, then set it down again. What would I even say? "Hi, a client hates my work and I'm having a meltdown"? How pathetic would that sound? He was a successful psychologist with actual patients who had actual problems. My professional crisis would seem trivial.

And what if he was with a client? I had no idea what his schedule was today. I didn't want to be the needy girl who couldn't handle her own business setbacks.

I walked back to my office, determination temporarily overriding panic. I'd fix this. I'd open the design again, figure out where I'd gone wrong, and create something so undeniably perfect they'd have to accept it.

The design file loaded, filling my screen with the vibrant color scheme I'd developed based on their "fresh, energetic, forward-thinking" brief. I'd incorporated elements of vintage fruit crate labels with modern, clean typography. The concept board included application mock-ups for bottles, promotional materials, and their website. The work was good. I knew it was good.

But now, through the lens of their rejection, I could only see flaws. That shade of green was too acidic. The font was trying too hard. The overall aesthetic was juvenile.

Tears blurred my vision, turning the colors into hazy smudges. I blinked rapidly, trying to clear my sight, but the tears kept coming. A drop splashed onto my keyboard. Then another.

"Damn it," I whispered, wiping my cheeks with the heel of my hand. This wasn't helping. I couldn't see the design clearly, let alone fix it, when I was crying like a child.

I closed the laptop harder than necessary and pushed away from my desk. My head throbbed with the beginning of a tension headache. I stumbled to the living room and collapsed face-first onto my couch, burying my face in a throw pillow. Maybe if I just lay here for a while, the solution would come to me. Or maybe Vitality Juice would send a follow-up email saying it was all a mistake, they'd meant to send that to some other designer.

I almost laughed at how pathetic that fantasy was. But I wasn’t laughing—I was crying. Tears ran freely down my cheeks and I sobbed, ugly, loud cries of anguish.

The doorbell rang, cutting through my spiral of self-pity. I lifted my head, momentarily disoriented. I wasn't expecting anyone. Maybe it was a package delivery that needed a signature. Or a neighbor with a misdelivered mail.

I dragged myself off the couch, wiping my eyes and cheeks, though I was sure my face still showed evidence of crying. Whoever it was, I'd get rid of them quickly and go back to my crisis.

I opened the door, and my heart stuttered.

Ethan stood there, tall and solid, holding two coffee cups from Bean Around Town, the café three blocks from my apartment. His smile, warm and easy, froze when he saw my face.

"Lily," he said, his voice dropping to that lower register that made my insides turn to jelly. "What's wrong?"

I opened my mouth to say "nothing," the automatic response I'd perfected through years of keeping my problems to myself. But my throat closed around the word, and instead, a small, broken sound escaped.

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