Chapter 1 · The Client's Unexpected Favor

My life is over. The culprit? A clumsy thumb.

I'd meant to fire off a rant about our client to my girlfriends. "Honestly, did this guy get his head stuck in a door or what? We've been through eight rounds of revisions and he still wants more."

I hit send, then lowered my head to take a sip of my iced drink. It was a smooth, silky vanilla milkshake with an extra-thick swirl of whipped cream on top.

The milkshake was as sweet and creamy as always, but my life was about to take a very sharp turn in the opposite direction.

When I looked back up at my screen, I realized the chat I'd sent the message to wasn't my friends' group. It was the BrightEdge And Fordwell Brand Upgrade Project Coordination Group.

And sitting in that very chat was Charles Bennett, the director of the client company.

Worse still, he was online. A tiny little "Read" receipt had already appeared under my message.

*****

My brain went numb for a second, and my thumb flew to hit "recall" as fast as humanly possible.

Then the screen told me exactly what I didn't want to see. "This message was sent over two minutes ago and cannot be recalled."

I stared at that line three times, because it meant I had been sipping my milkshake for over two minutes without even realizing it.

I flipped my phone over on the desk, closed my eyes, and tried to think back on all the wonderful moments I'd had at this job.

Not a single one came to mind.

My phone buzzed a moment later. I didn't want to check it, but I turned it over anyway.

There was a new message in the group, from Charles Bennett, our client's representative.

He wrote: [@Claire, stop trying to recall it. I already took a screenshot.]

Then he added a smiley face emoji.

I stared at that little yellow face, and it stared right back at me.

After locking eyes with an emoji for what felt like an eternity, I quietly opened a job search website.

I hadn't even typed in a keyword before my phone buzzed again.

This time it was my direct supervisor, Richard Lane.

His message was simple. [Claire, can you come out here for a second?]

I tried to take a few deep breaths to steady myself, but it didn't really help.

And when I stood up, the entire office went completely silent.

Emily Grant, who sits diagonally across from me, was in the middle of drinking water when she saw the look on my face and just froze with the water still in her mouth.

She mouthed, "What's wrong?"

I mouthed back, "I'm dead."

It only made her frown in confusion because she had no idea what I meant.

I didn't bother explaining and just started walking toward Richard's office.

The hallway was long enough that it took me about forty steps to get there, and with every step, I kept asking myself when the last time was that I had updated my resume.

It should be sometime last September, which meant I still hadn't added the recent Fordwell Group project to my experience section.

Not that it mattered anymore, since that project would almost certainly have nothing to do with me from now on.

I knocked on the door.

Richard's voice came through from the other side, his tone completely unreadable. "Come in."

When I pushed the door open, I found him sitting behind his desk with his phone in his hand, the screen angled toward himself so I couldn't see what was on it, though I had a pretty good guess that he was in that group chat too.

"Sit down," he said.

So I took the chair across from him, which turned out to be a little too low and forced me to look up at him slightly.

He put his phone down and gave me a glance that was entirely blank, and somehow that lack of any expression at all was more unsettling than if he had looked angry.

"Mr. Bennett gave me a call," he said.

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

"He said..." Richard paused. "Actually, never mind what he said. Let's just say he's not happy."

"Mr. Lane, I..."

"Let me finish."

I shut my mouth.

He tapped his fingers twice against the desk. "We've been working on this project for three months now, from the initial pitch all the way to where we are today. Eight rounds of revisions.

"You sat in on every single client meeting, and you handled every change they asked for. And with one message, you just undid all of it."

I kept my eyes down because he wasn't wrong.

Those three months had meant countless late nights dragging myself home after midnight and just as many times scrapping everything and starting from scratch.

And then today, I sent an accidental message, and every bit of that effort went down the drain.

"Mr. Bennett says he needs to reconsider whether we should keep working together," Richard said.

I felt my stomach drop.

"You know how much this contract is worth," he continued. "One point three million. If we lose it, how do you plan to cover that hole in the company's Q4 numbers?"

I didn't have an answer.

My monthly salary is four thousand. After they take out Social Security and everything else, I get less than three thousand in hand.

Even if I didn't spend a dime, it would take me a few hundred years to pay that back.

Chapter 1

My life is over. The culprit? A clumsy thumb.

I'd meant to fire off a rant about our client to my girlfriends. "Honestly, did this guy get his head stuck in a door or what? We've been through eight rounds of revisions and he still wants more."

I hit send, then lowered my head to take a sip of my iced drink. It was a smooth, silky vanilla milkshake with an extra-thick swirl of whipped cream on top.

The milkshake was as sweet and creamy as always, but my life was about to take a very sharp turn in the opposite direction.

When I looked back up at my screen, I realized the chat I'd sent the message to wasn't my friends' group. It was the BrightEdge And Fordwell Brand Upgrade Project Coordination Group.

And sitting in that very chat was Charles Bennett, the director of the client company.

Worse still, he was online. A tiny little "Read" receipt had already appeared under my message.

*****

My brain went numb for a second, and my thumb flew to hit "recall" as fast as humanly possible.

Then the screen told me exactly what I didn't want to see. "This message was sent over two minutes ago and cannot be recalled."

I stared at that line three times, because it meant I had been sipping my milkshake for over two minutes without even realizing it.

I flipped my phone over on the desk, closed my eyes, and tried to think back on all the wonderful moments I'd had at this job.

Not a single one came to mind.

My phone buzzed a moment later. I didn't want to check it, but I turned it over anyway.

There was a new message in the group, from Charles Bennett, our client's representative.

He wrote: [@Claire, stop trying to recall it. I already took a screenshot.]

Then he added a smiley face emoji.

I stared at that little yellow face, and it stared right back at me.

After locking eyes with an emoji for what felt like an eternity, I quietly opened a job search website.

I hadn't even typed in a keyword before my phone buzzed again.

This time it was my direct supervisor, Richard Lane.

His message was simple. [Claire, can you come out here for a second?]

I tried to take a few deep breaths to steady myself, but it didn't really help.

And when I stood up, the entire office went completely silent.

Emily Grant, who sits diagonally across from me, was in the middle of drinking water when she saw the look on my face and just froze with the water still in her mouth.

She mouthed, "What's wrong?"

I mouthed back, "I'm dead."

It only made her frown in confusion because she had no idea what I meant.

I didn't bother explaining and just started walking toward Richard's office.

The hallway was long enough that it took me about forty steps to get there, and with every step, I kept asking myself when the last time was that I had updated my resume.

It should be sometime last September, which meant I still hadn't added the recent Fordwell Group project to my experience section.

Not that it mattered anymore, since that project would almost certainly have nothing to do with me from now on.

I knocked on the door.

Richard's voice came through from the other side, his tone completely unreadable. "Come in."

"Sit down," he said.

So I took the chair across from him, which turned out to be a little too low and forced me to look up at him slightly.

He put his phone down and gave me a glance that was entirely blank, and somehow that lack of any expression at all was more unsettling than if he had looked angry.

"Mr. Bennett gave me a call," he said.

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off.

"He said..." Richard paused. "Actually, never mind what he said. Let's just say he's not happy."

"Mr. Lane, I..."

"Let me finish."

I shut my mouth.

He tapped his fingers twice against the desk. "We've been working on this project for three months now, from the initial pitch all the way to where we are today. Eight rounds of revisions.

"You sat in on every single client meeting, and you handled every change they asked for. And with one message, you just undid all of it."

I kept my eyes down because he wasn't wrong.

Those three months had meant countless late nights dragging myself home after midnight and just as many times scrapping everything and starting from scratch.

And then today, I sent an accidental message, and every bit of that effort went down the drain.

"Mr. Bennett says he needs to reconsider whether we should keep working together," Richard said.

I felt my stomach drop.

"You know how much this contract is worth," he continued. "One point three million. If we lose it, how do you plan to cover that hole in the company's Q4 numbers?"

I didn't have an answer.

My monthly salary is four thousand. After they take out Social Security and everything else, I get less than three thousand in hand.

Even if I didn't spend a dime, it would take me a few hundred years to pay that back.