“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Simba,” Alex jokes.
“You’re both young and—forgive me—attractive, with perfectly typical day jobs, which I think our viewers will find endearing. We’ve featured chefs, professional athletes, TV personalities, Lin-Manuel Miranda, even a few politicians. But we’ve never had business professionals on the ‘One Day at Work’ segment.”
“I’m into it,” says Gus, Alex’s boss. “They can give our audience a behind-the-scenes look at the industry.”
I scowl at him. Gus Moskowitz comes second only to Alex in terms of flagrant spending. Bite the Hand was his idea, and he’s been heading up its mostly freelance editorial team ever since. When he interviewed me for Alex’s job, I’d been temporarily enamored with his big personality and disarming nature—but now, I’m flabbergasted I ever wanted to work for someone so fiscally irresponsible.
“Oh my God,” says Social Media Amanda. “They fit a totally untapped niche!”
My eyes widen and my heart rate spikes as I turn to Alex for support. Surely he’ll agree this is a terrible idea. When our eyes catch, I hold out hopes he’ll speak for the both of us. There’s a downturn to his lips, and his jaw looks tense.
But then he says, “I’m in if you’re in.”
Traitor!
I don’t even know where to start in rationalizing my forthcoming response of “No fucking way in hell” to the BTH project team.
First of all, what is Alex trying to accomplish here? Does he want to keep his enemy close? How can I justify appearing on a YouTube segment with him when that would be like welcoming him into the fold? It would signal that I’m okay with his presence here, which, to reiterate, I am not. Lastly, who in their ever-loving right mind could possibly think I’m interesting enough to hold my own through an entire YouTube video? And that’s not even to mention my childhood speech impediment, which still rears its head at the most inopportune moments.
“I’m not sure Don’s going to like this,” I say.
“We’ll be transparent with your boss about the time commitment,” Saanvi promises. “It wouldn’t go beyond normal work hours.”
Ha! Normal work hours. That’s a good one, Saanvi.
Everyone’s staring at me now. Waiting for me to agree. Because honestly, who’d pass up on the chance to be at the center of something new and fun and potentially career altering? After all, isn’t this what I wanted? Isn’t this why I applied for Alex’s job in the first place? To be a part of something that means something?
A grainy, sepia image of Mom floods my mind, the edges of her likeness blurred away after sixteen years. The problem with photographers is that they’re hardly ever in the picture, and whenever I hold her photos in my hands, I see what she saw.
I see everything but her.
Now, though, she’s clearer, and so are the words she spoke to me when I was six: It all comes down to what you leave behind.
It took me years to figure out what she meant. What she wanted so desperately to communicate to me on her deathbed. When I got older, I learned she was sick for a lot longer than either she or Dad ever let on. Years, in fact. Once I knew that, things started to click.
Mom saw death coming. She had time to think about it. Time to process what good could come from it. And for Mom, in the end, it was all about legacy.
It all comes down to what you leave behind.
I wrestle with that piece of wisdom a lot. Every day, probably. Because Mom has a real legacy, and so does Dad. They’ve both made works of art that are going to outlive them. But not me. There’s nothing I’ve ever done that might outlive me.
Maybe, though, this choice is the beginning of something that will.
“I guess I’m okay with trying.” My voice comes out softer than I mean it to. “Though honestly, I’m not convinced two business professionals bickering in a conference room will translate well on camera.”
“Of course it won’t, but I have a better idea.” Saanvi snaps her fingers, looking at nothing. Her focus comes back to us. “I’ll book a small video team. We’ll record a working lunch between you two to test this concept out. I’ll make some calls, see if we can’t reserve a back corner somewhere. Can you guys block off eleven to one o’clock on your calendars tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow?” I squeak. It’s like Saanvi knows that if she can’t make this happen in twenty-four hours, I’ll have time to come up with an excuse to get out of it.
Alex leans over. Low in his throat, he says, “I’ll send you a meeting invite.”
“I’ll send you a meeting invite,” I whisper back.
He clicks his tongue. “But you might forget to add me again.”
“Trust me, I won’t.”
Five minutes later, we exit the conference room, and I expel a heavy breath when I realize I accomplished the opposite of what my boss asked me to do. Instead of putting the brakes on the budget, I got roped into participating in our costliest platform.
I tap my foot, tug at my pink cashmere T-shirt dress as Alex and I wait for the elevator back to ninety-eight. He works here on thirty-seven, but he spends a lot of time traversing my floor, too. Right now, he’s leaning a shoulder against the wall, one hand loosely clutching a brown, leather padfolio (Alex never brings his laptop to meetings). He’s watching me with a perplexed expression, his eyebrows drawn together in thought.
“Look,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “I understand you’d rather jump out a ninety-eighth-floor window than be caught on video with me, but I’m committed to doing everything I can to get Bite the Hand up and running independently. Can we just … put aside our differences for one day to make this work?”
“It’s not that. It’s not you,” I say, belatedly realizing I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
His forehead wrinkles. “Then what is it?”
Now it’s Dad swarming my thoughts. Because it’s all still tied up in my head like this, memories that are one big slippery slope. Me, eleven years old. The fifth-grade talent show flyer Dad fished out of the recycling bin. I’d been sitting on the kitchen floor, organizing my savings into different coin piles to see if I had enough money for a pair of Sperrys, when he held up that flyer and said, “I’ve been waiting for this since you were born.”