The Checklist by Addie Woolridge (color ebook reader TXT) 📗

“It is interesting you say that; before we got on the subject of managing up, I was going to mention some of the steps he has taken at my suggestion.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It was difficult to get time on his calendar but well worth the wait. He . . .” Dylan’s eyes ran roughshod around her office, looking for a lifeline to throw herself. Landing on the tabloid-size note on her desk, she shrugged. “He is delivering thoughtful handwritten notes to key employees, along with beverages.” Using her shoulder to hug the phone to her ear, Dylan reached up to massage her temples. She prayed the “thoughtful handwritten notes” hadn’t made their way to the internet yet. Otherwise, Charlie would be in her office with a cardboard box for her things in the next five minutes.

“Good step in the right direction. What’s your timeline for the other changes?”

“We are still working on that. I’m trying to take it in manageable chunks with Tim.”

“I hate to break it to you, but you need a concrete timeline. Empower yourself.”

“I feel pretty empowered working with Tim to get things done on Technocore’s timeline.” The silence on the other end felt like a long-distance stare-down with Jared. She imagined his face turning the same shade as his favorite salmon-colored sweater.

“Good.” Jared’s tone suggested her response was anything but good. Dylan decided to go for the W, as Nicolas would call it.

“I think a good source of information for your meeting would be my daily progress reports. Feel free to ask me any questions as you read through them.”

Dylan used this long pause to begin mentally identifying her savings accounts and their balances in case she needed them at five o’clock.

“Could you forward them to me so I don’t have to search my inbox?”

“Of course.” Dylan hoped he could hear the screw you in her client-is-always-right smile. “Since I have you here, I wanted to check and see when you might arrive in Seattle. We are almost three weeks into the project, and since I need your approval to move forward, I just thought some sense of your timeline might be helpful.”

Jared coughed into the phone. “We’ll have to connect on that another time. Right now, I need to head to the conference room for the partners meeting.”

“No problem.” Dylan didn’t bother to point out that earlier he’d said that he needed the information for a call. No need to push the issue with him. “Good luck with your meeting.”

She waited for the call to be disconnected before slumping back into her chair and throwing her elbow over her eyes to think through her options. She didn’t want to get fired from Kaplan. Usually, she liked her job, and consulting was a small world. She would have a hard time getting hired somewhere else.

She could quit. The thought made Dylan queasy. She had worked hard to stay on the junior-partner track. The idea that someone who thought empower yourself was an acceptable phrase could destroy her career was too much. She didn’t want to start over somewhere new.

A rumble in her stomach made Dylan aware that the nausea-and-headache combo she felt might not be entirely Jared induced. Slowly standing up, she decided to grab a store-brand diet pop for caffeine’s sake and pulled an emergency granola bar from her desk drawer. The cubicle jungle was starting to come alive as she reached the staff kitchen and plucked an only slightly cold pop from the shelf. Dylan waited until she was on the damp patio before allowing herself the satisfying hiss-click of a freshly opened can of not-Coke. Crunching into her granola bar, she attempted to button her coat with the free fingers of her granola bar hand.

Finally accepting that her buttons were not a priority, she polished off the rest of the granola bar in four big bites and began planning Nicolas’s visit. Stacy might have been wrong about his picky eating, but she was right about his absence. It was a little weird. His visit would be a good chance for him to get to know her less obvious past. Dylan secretly suspected that most people thought she made up stories about her childhood. But she wasn’t that lucky. Or creative.

After taking a final sip, Dylan dropped her empty can into the recycling bin and decided she was ready to think about Technocore again. She reached for the cold metal door handle in time to startle Deep, who was pushing on the other side.

“God, girl. Do you enjoy scaring me?” Deep said, clutching her collarbone and walking backward into the office.

“Maybe a little. What’s up?”

“Just thought I’d get some air.” Catching the look on Dylan’s face, Deep added, “Fine. After I saw the picture, I thought you’d need moral support.”

“What picture?”

“You haven’t seen it yet?” Deep said, her eyes shifting around the office, as if willing someone else to come by and show Dylan “the picture.” “You were out there so long I thought—”

“Deep, show me the picture.”

“I hate doing this. I thought I was going to bring comfort, not be the grim reaper of consulting photos,” she said, her neon-orange nails tapping lightly on her phone screen. As she waited, Dylan wondered how Deep could pull off that color when she herself could barely wear sparkly yellow on her toes. Then Deep handed her the phone.

“Oh.”

It was all Dylan could manage while staring at a photo of the knockoff pops with Tim’s gracious note. The caption read: A love note to my office from our CEO. Presented without comment. Which would have been true, except for the delightful hashtags #TechnoTool and #GunderpantsStrikesAgain. The person had been thoughtful enough to tag the location of the photo, in case any of the 173 people who had already liked it were unclear on where this individual worked.

“Guess Brandt wasn’t fast enough to get all of the notes,” Dylan said, blowing air past her bottom lip. Looking back down at the photo, she paused, incredulous. “You liked this?”

“You have to