untitled

She felt relieved to finally be out of the conference room. She desperately wanted to shut down, to turn off, to go back to herself. Meetings like that were exhausting; she had to be on all the time. Had to be together and capable and organized and all-knowing. She had to have all the answers, and worse, she had to know the questions before they were asked. It made her head spin. She had never once felt a rush after a successful pitch; she always just wanted a nap.

“Hey, Aisling, do you want to grab lunch to celebrate?” Marc asked as she fell into step with him.

“I dunno, Marc, I’m feeling really drained right now,” she began. Marc could be…intense, to say the very least. Needy, was perhaps a better word to describe him. She was not in the mood to entertain anyone.

“Come on, Ash, it’s on me. We’ll get a big bottle of wine,” he prodded. She sighed.

“All right, fine. But, I get to pick the wine this time, and it’s going to be expensive,” she finished in a sing-song voice and laughed, “I’m going to let the sommelier talk me into something outrageous!”

Lately, her coworkers had taken to banishing her from the table when it was time to order the wine. There was a running joke in the company that she must have the word ‘sucker’ tattooed on her forehead because any time they entered a restaurant, sommeliers always zeroed in on her immediately. They never spoke to anyone else when she was at the table, as though they intrinsically knew she could be talked into trying anything. Her Uncle Daniel and Marc teased her mercilessly about it, which she supposed wasn’t so bad, considering they always paid for the wine anyway.

She liked to tell herself it was just that the sommeliers knew, on sight, that she had good taste. Although truthfully, she suspected it was because they could tell she went weak in the knees for an attractive man who could speak intelligently about wine. Probably because she looked at them all dreamy-eyed as they approached. She was powerless to say no. It had nothing to do with being a sucker. It had everything to do with being a smart, single female with a taste for fine wine and handsome nerds.

Rolling her head slowly from side to side, which elicited a dull cracking in her neck, she could feel the tension beginning to recede from her body. She continued laughing along with Marc. Then, only yards from the elevator bank, just as she was beginning to think she could relax, she felt a warm hand on her bare forearm. When the owner of that hand began to speak, she heard a voice she’d had more than enough of that morning. She was barely able to swallow the urge to curse as she turned to face him, the muscles in her shoulders drawing tight.

“Aisling,” he said, “wait. Before you leave, I thought I would give you one of these. In case, you know, you didn’t have one…So you can start your Jonas Brothers collection.”

Joe threw her what she guessed was his best smug, ‘aren’t I charming’ smile.

“I was a Hanson fan the first time, thanks,” she said and immediately regretted it.

The look on his face was crestfallen. Worse, even, than she would have expected. She’d meant it in a mostly playful way (mostly) but her tone of voice had failed her again. This happened every once in a while: the joke came out drier than she intended, too biting, too real. Sometimes the joke betrayed her. This was one of those times. On the inside, some part of her clearly did believe what she’d said.

In her own defense, Joe had been irritating her all morning. He’d spent her entire meeting joking around, a smart comment ready for every word she said, constantly trying to distract her from her work. She had enough of a challenge commanding people’s respect in a business environment on her own. She didn’t need help from some snarky teenaged pop-star. Her age and exuberance too often allowed people to believe her to be naïve and inexperienced. She was neither of these things.

Joe’s constant banter, his irritating winks and smiles, the wiggling eyebrows…they all indicated that he was not taking her seriously. The last thing she needed was for that attitude to spread to the rest of the band, or their staff, or the label.

“Ouch,” he said, softly, now looking away from her, his eyes desperately casting about for something else to focus on. She watched as the hand holding out the CD dropped to his side.

“Sorry, that was rough,” she apologized, but did not want to engage him in any further conversation. Marc was getting away from her. “I, uh…gottago, lunch meeting.” She turned unceremoniously on her heel and did not look back.

***

“No you did not,” Meg stared at her incredulously, mouth open, as she dug through the freezer for a veggie dog.

“Yes. I did,” she said, tossing the dogs on the skillet and taking a swig of her cider.

“What did he do?” Meg asked, twisting around completely and repositioning on the couch to face her in the kitchen.

“He looked at me like I’d just kicked his puppy off a cliff.” She dropped her forehead into her free hand, hip propped against the granite countertop.

“Are you going to tell Uncle Danny?”

“Oh hell no,” she looked back up at Meg, “no, that’d be inviting disaster. I mean, I can always hope that Joe keeps the whole thing to himself and no one is the wiser, right? If he finds out, Daniel will make me apologize…you know how he is about ‘treating every mistake like it’s nuclear.’” She made quote marks in the air.

In addition to being roommates, she and Meg were actually first cousins. Her boss Daniel was the youngest of five uncles (and one aunt) on their fathers’ side of the family.

“And if Joe doesn’t keep it to himself?”

“Then I treat the situation like it’s nuclear.”

“God, that is so priceless. I really wish I could have witnessed that…” Meg shook her head, a huge smile on her lips.

She and Meg had spent hours online the evening previous amusing themselves with research on the Jonas Brothers under the guise of preparing for her meeting. They were not impressed. Or at least, not as impressed as Joe would have hoped. To be frank, she knew Meg had not been impressed at all. Meg spent most of the night rolling her eyes.

She was a slightly different story, however. In all honesty, she had purchased their self-titled album on iTunes weeks ago and listened to it more than once. She now knew the words to That’s Just the Way We Roll. It had even almost grown on her, though she would never admit that aloud to anyone.

But her musical loyalties lie elsewhere. She had not been lying to Joe that morning. She had been (and still was) a Hanson fan. A big one. Almost as big as they got, really. Being a Hanson fan was, in fact, what she believed most qualified her to run the Jonas Brothers’ marketing team for this campaign (and in her opinion, well beyond this campaign). She knew their target market. Hell, she had been their target market once. And she also knew what didn’t work, why Hanson was unable to maintain the popular success that should have been theirs. She could use that. She could sell albums with that experience and she knew it. Her feelings about the band itself had nothing to do with that. This was about business, not affection.