Page 33 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
He ignores me in the hallways and sends me one-sentence emails, refusing to look me in the eye ever since the night he sent me out of his office.
It’s effective. It’s professional.
And it’s pissing me off.
“He’s doing it again,” I mutter, staring at the empty chair at the head of the conference table.
“Doing what?” Sarah asks. She’s setting up the projector, her blue hair pulled back in a messy bun held together by a pencil. She’s wearing a t-shirt that says CSS is Awesome inside a box that is overflowing the borders.
“Bailing on his own meeting,” I say, checking my watch. “It’s 10:05. The strategy meeting was supposed to start five minutes ago. I have four different mood boards to present, and if I have to stare at this empty leather chair for one more minute, I’m going to scream.”
“He’s in a mood,” Owen says, spinning his chair around. He’s wearing a charcoal suit today, looking devastatingly handsome and completely relaxed. He catches my eye and smiles. “The beta testers found a bug in the geolocation feature this morning. Ethan is currently in his office threatening to defenestrate his computer.”
“Defenestrate,” I repeat, fighting a smile. “Throw it out the window?”
“He likes big words when he’s angry,” Owen grins. “It makes him feel superior. Also, he thinks it scares the interns. Which, to be fair, it does.”
“He is superior,” Asher’s voice comes from the corner of the room.
I jump. I still haven’t gotten used to the way he seems to materialize into rooms. Asher is sitting in the shadows, his hoodie pulled up, tapping away on his tablet. He doesn’t look at me. He rarely looks at me directly anymore, as if he’s afraid of what might happen if our eyes meet.
“He’s not superior,” I argue, organizing my notes on the sleek glass table. “He’s late. And my time is billable.”
“Technically, you’re salaried,” Owen points out, stealing a donut from the tray in the center of the table. “So he owns your time. And your soul. It’s in the fine print of the NDA.”
“He pays for my time,” I correct, snapping my notebook shut. “He doesn’t own it. There’s a difference.”
The door slams open. Speak of the devil.
Ethan stalks into the room. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a month. His white dress shirt is wrinkled at the elbows, his tie is loosened, and his hair is a chaotic mess of dark waves that suggests he’s been running his hands through it repeatedly. He radiates tension like a furnace radiates heat.
He doesn’t apologize for being late or say hello. H walks straight to the head of the table, dropping a heavy stack of files with a loud thud and glaring at us.
“We have thirty minutes,” he barks. “The investors moved the Series B call up to noon. If we don’t have a finalized marketing strategy by then, we look like amateurs. Go.”
He sits down, crossing his arms over his chest, his cold, unyielding eyes locking onto mine.
I force the dryness from my mouth. This is it. The big pitch. I’ve spent two weeks building this campaign. I’ve analyzed Asher’s user data, I’ve brainstormed with Owen, I’ve interviewed Sarah’s design team. I know this strategy works.
But looking at Ethan’s face—tight, angry, and dismissive—I have a feeling he’s not in the mood to be impressed.
“Okay,” I say, standing up. I smooth down the front of my pencil skirt—my professional armor against him—and pick up the remote. “Let’s talk about intimacy.”
Ethan flinches. It’s subtle, just a twitch of his eye, but I catch it.
“The current brand voice is focused on efficiency,” I continue, clicking the remote. The projector screen behind me lights up with a series of graphs. “We market Mosaic as a tool. ‘Find your tribe faster.’ ‘Optimize your social circle.’ It’s clean. It’s tech-forward. It’s exactly what a venture capitalist wants to hear.”
I click again. The screen changes to a mood board I built—images of people sitting alone in coffee shops, staring at phones in dark rooms, looking out rainy windows.
“But it’s wrong,” I state. “People don’t use Mosaic because they want to be machines. They use it because they’re lonely. They use it because they feel invisible.”
I press the button for the next slide. Three distinct profiles appear on the screen.
“I built three user personas based on the raw session logs Asher pulled for me,” I explain, walking toward the screen. “We tracked deletion rates—how often someone types a message and then erases it because they’re afraid to hit send. It happens three times more often between 10 PM and 2 AM.”
I point to the first profile. “First, we have ‘The Drifter.’ He’s twenty-eight, works remotely, and moves cities every six months. He has five thousand Instagram followers but no one to help him move a couch. He’s looking for grounding.”
I point to the second profile. “Then, ‘The Burnout.’ She’s thirty-two, has a high-powered career, and works eighty hours a week. She doesn’t have time for hobbies or small talk. She needs people who speak her language, but she’s too exhausted to find them.”
