Page 5 of Willowbrooke
“Yes,” I replied without thinking.
A retainer!? I didn’t have the experience to expect one, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.
“I’ll email you the contract right now. If you would like to further negotiate the proposed rates before signing, let me know. How soon can you start?”
“I’d like to give two weeks’ notice—would the first of September be okay?” I hoped my quick math was correct on the date.
“Yes.”
“Leo,” I said before he could hang up, “thank you—I won’t let you down.” I smiled.
“I’ll see you in two weeks,” he replied before the call ended.
I pulled up my email and refreshed it until the contract email appeared. I scrolled through the legal disclaimers until I made it to the rates.
I gasped at the numbers. Surely they couldn’t be correct. He had to have misplaced a decimal.
What he considered market value was high for a seasoned designer. The retainer was even more impressive. I thought about the student loans I still had to pay off and tried to do some quick math to calculate how much faster I could do so with this salary.
It was all happening so quickly.
Without needing another moment to think, I completed the contract through a link in the email.
It was done. I was an interior designer. I had booked Willowbrooke.
I took a deep breath, then immediately hit redial. “Mina—I got the job!”
CHAPTER 2
It Begins
My last two weeks at the firm were filled with a mix of agonizing days, counting clocks, and waves of anxiety.
It’s odd how time can seem to take forever to pass while you’re in the midst of it, but afterward feels like it elapsed in the blink of an eye.
I tried to make the best of the time I had because I knew once I started working with Leo at Willowbrooke, things would never be the same. I had taken the leap of faith and was hanging midair, waiting to see if I would land on solid ground or plummet to the depths below.
My parents took the news betterthan I expected. I had nightmares about doors slamming and lamps being thrown—not that they were prone to physical outbursts. I knew going into the meeting I had scheduled they could tell something was wrong, as I had never requested a meeting like this before.
“Did Adam propose?” My mom asked, eyes twinkling, looking well put together in a matching navy suit.
“No.” My face fell. Why on earth would they think I would call a business meeting to tell them I was engaged? I was pretty sure they would have preferred Adam as a son instead of me as their daughter. “I’m leaving the company,” I said quietly.
My dad’s brow furrowed, and his hands dropped from the table. “Leaving to go where?”
“I got a job working as an interior designer—it’s a huge opportunity—”
“Sweetie,” my mom interrupted. She sounded as though she thought I was making it up. “You can’t leave us in the lurch like this—what brought this on? We adjusted your salary last year when you hit your ten-year mark with the firm.”
Ignoring the fact that it had been over two years since the paltry raise, I slid a paper across the table. “This is my letter of resignation—and my two weeks’ notice.”
I tried to remain resolute. I could hear Mina in my head: “Don’t let them take this from you,” she told me.
“I appreciate everything you have done for me, and I’vegained a lot of experience working at the firm, but it’s time for me to move on and pursue my own career.”
My father shook his head and tried to hide his annoyance. I wasn’t a teenager and this wasn’t a phase, but they didn’t seem to realize that. “Two weeks?” He pursed his lips. “You’re blindsiding us like this, and you can only be bothered to give us two weeks to find and train a replacement?”
In a rare moment of courage, I felt compelled to speak my truth, knowing that my life was becoming untethered from my dependance on them. “I’ve put my dreams on hold for over a decade to help the firm. I wish you would consider supporting my choices and be proud of me for trying to become more independent.” I tried to maintain eye contact for as long as I could.
