mind, or she didn’t know as much as she let on. It left Christina to wonder
 
 how anyone could accurately assess risk for funding when they didn’t know
 
 the ins and outs of the actual business side of things. “Yes, well, please let
 
 me know.”
 
 “I will.” Christina hadn’t known much about managing a project like
 
 this either, but she knew enough from sitting through proposal after
 
 proposal and pitch after pitch, from reading through file after file and
 
 assessing business models, and plans, that she’d had to do fairly minimal
 
 research when it came to helping Taylor out with her project.
 
 “Thank you.” Michelle left Christina to finish packing her things into
 
 her tote. She grabbed her water bottle from behind her desk and looped the
 
 silver clasp through her purse strap. She hefted everything onto her
 
 shoulder and walked out of the office.
 
 It was warm outside. The sun was out, and it was almost hard for her to
 
 believe that this was the first week of October. New York could be quite
 
 cold in the fall. Blustery snow squalls weren’t unheard of. That was one
 
 thing that Christina wasn’t going to miss. The
 
 cold weather. She thought it
 
 might be strange having a brown Christmas, but she was sure she’d get over
 
 that. She’d never liked the holiday much anyway.
 
 Once she jumped in her car, Christina turned her thoughts away from
 
 how she was going to let her dad and brothers down by telling them she
 
 wasn’t coming home for the holidays because she was too busy with work
 
 — even if she wasn’t, she was going to tell them she was— back to the
 
 building that she was going to check out with Taylor.
 
 Taylor had approved the changes to her business model on the first go-
 
 round. Just about everyone had pitched in to fine tune it and Taylor was
 
 more than impressed. She waited patiently for her funding. Up until then,
 
 Christina had settled for calling and emailing. It struck her that Taylor
 
 didn’t really like her, though she wasn’t sure why.