- Chapter 6
The next morning when Liz heard her alarm going off she couldn’t even open her eyes. The jet lag had officially set in. Her whole body felt like she had only slept one hour. Not the seven that she had actually slept.
She tried to get into the shower to wake herself up, but it was minimally effective. Liz dragged herself down to the lobby and grabbed her large cup of coffee.
Ricardo laughed as Liz moved slowly across the lobby toward the car.
“It appears your jet lag found you.” He said as he opened the door for Liz.
“Yeah and it brought a baseball bat.” Liz smiled.
They sat in silence as Ricardo drove them to the office. Liz felt her head pounding with every bump they went over.
“How late did you stay last night?”
“After midnight. But I finished the Australian skyline.”
“Wow. Pretty impressive. Now just do two more in the next four days.” Ricardo joked.
He knew how much work the next few days were for Liz. It had taken her almost a month to perfect the original mock up for Australia. He didn’t know if she could do the other two in just four days, but he had to push her to get it done. The whole campaign relied on her getting these finished.
For the next four days, Liz worked harder than she ever thought possible. Luckily the specifics about the two other campaigns were easier since the first one was finished. But Liz still ended up working fifteen to eighteen hours a day as she tried to get the project done by the end of the week.
Ricardo was great during the week. Constantly encouraging Liz bringing her coffee and food. He made sure to get her to go for a walk every now and then and helped push her to leave at the end of the night.
Ricardo didn’t go home early any other night. He decided Liz would need him so he stayed and worked on the other parts of the campaign while she did the design work. This was all just the mock up for the bigger campaign and Ricardo knew it could all end very poorly if the CEO didn’t like Liz’s work.
Liz tried to call Harrison at the end of the evening on a couple nights, but he didn’t answer his phone. While she worked, she kept her phone turned off so she wouldn’t get distracted and of course Harrison would call her during those times. She hated missing his calls, but she knew he would understand how important her project was to her.
She plugged away right up until the deadline and walked into the meeting on Friday afternoon with the three finished mock-ups.
Liz sat in the meeting exhausted and let Ricardo take over with is charismatic personality to show off the three designs. Liz hoped the CEO would like them, but at this point she was so tired she sort of didn’t care if he didn’t like them. There was nothing more she could do, Liz had put everything she had into finishing those designs.
The CEO sat there looking over the designs with a flat, expressionless face. Liz tried to figure out what he thought about them but just couldn’t read his expression at all. He handed the designs around the table to the others and then stood up from his seat.
He walked over to Liz and reached his hand out to her.
“Very well done young lady.” He said to Liz.
“Thank you,” Liz answered as she looked at Ricardo, who gave her two thumbs up.
They finished the meeting and when the executives left the conference room Liz couldn’t help but jump up and down from excitement.
“They like it!” She screamed as Ricardo came over and gave her a hug.
Liz hugged him back. It was amazing to know she had worked so hard and they had really liked her work.
“You did great Liz,” Ricardo said as he hugged her again.
This time the hug seemed more than just a celebration. Ricardo looked down at Liz and kissed her.
Liz was in shock at first and didn’t push Ricardo away. She even kissed him back. The long hours and hard work she had done was finally over. Then Liz came back to reality and realized she was kissing another man.
“Oh, I can’t,” Liz said as she pushed Ricardo away a little.
“I’m sorry. That was my fault. Totally out of line.”
“No. It’s fine. I just have a boyfriend.” Liz said as she started to gather her things.
“A boyfriend? Well, I didn’t know that. Sorry.” He said again.
“No, really, it’s alright.”
Liz and Ricardo awkwardly gathered their things and he drove them back to the hotel. They tried to make some small talk, but it was pretty uncomfortable. As Liz exited the elevator on her floor, she stopped and put her hand in the elevator door.
“It’s my fault. I should have told you. I’m sorry. It really is alright.” Liz smiled at Ricardo and let the door shut.
She didn’t want him to feel bad about kissing her. It was her fault. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t brought up that she had a boyfriend in the entire week they had been working together. All those long hours, walks, lunches and she never thought to mention Harrison. Liz felt so guilty about that.
Why hadn’t she mentioned her boyfriend?
Liz thought that she might have purposely not mentioned Harrison because she liked the way Ricardo flirted with her. But then she thought maybe she had just been too busy and it was an innocent mistake. But whatever the real reason, Liz felt like she had betrayed Harrison.
She knew she hadn’t really betrayed him. Liz did stop kissing Ricardo and she did tell him about her boyfriend. But the feelings of guilt weight hard on her as she got ready for bed.
Liz was exhausted as she hit the Skype call to check in with Harrison. She hadn’t gotten to talk to him since the beginning of the week and she wanted desperately to see his face. Not that she would tell him about what happened with Ricardo, but she did hope just talking to Harrison would help her guilt feel better.
The phone rang and rang and Harrison didn’t answer. It had been four days since she had talked to him and Liz now felt worried.