I’m not surprised when Remi doesn’t show up. I’m not surprised when Remi pulls deeper into herself and keeps me out of the loop when working on the Spine project.

I’m annoyed, but I’m not surprised.

It’s a tough position to be in. On the one hand, I need Remi to help keep the whole team together. She’s the lynchpin of this whole operation, and so far my strategy seems to be working. Everyone seems happy, or at least there aren’t any overt whispers of mutiny.

The jobs keep flowing, work is good.

But I can’t risk letting Remi cut me out of this Spine project. I feel like a lot is riding on it, and she’s basically taking full control. I’m on the outside looking in on a project that could determine my future, and it’s a really bad feeling. I want to trust her to handle it completely, but I’m not so sure I can.

Which is why I want her to come work with me more closely. Whenever I try though, she pulls back, makes some excuse, ignores a call or email, that sort of thing. She doesn’t have any obligation to come work at the bar with me after hours, of course, but I wish she would anyway.

And maybe there’s another reason I want to keep her close. I’m not really admitting it to myself, but that bikini shoot changed something for me. There’s always been a vague attraction there, even when we were kids, although that was more confusing than anything else. Now it’s distinct, almost intense, and every time I see her walking around the office I have the urge to pull her into a back room, strip her clothes off, and spank her until she begs me to make her come.

It’s fucking distracting as hell and I don’t know what to do about it.

In the end, I decide to keep pretending like everything is okay and there’s nothing to worry about. I let Remi work on the project more or less without any supervision. I keep sending her my ideas whenever I can and asking her to come go over some of her materials, but she just keeps on ignoring me.

I have to just trust that she has something, because after a month of barely making eye contact in the halls, Blair wants to come in for a pitch meeting.

“This is important,” I say to Remi, cornering her in her office. “Are we ready for it?”

She nods, her face impassive. “I’m ready.”

“She wants to come in at the end of the week. Can you get it all together in time?”

“I can handle it.”

“I’d feel a lot better about this if you’d just show me what you have,” I say.

She shrugs. “I don’t care if you feel better or not. This is my project.”

I bite back a retort. She’s being so petty and frustrating and I just don’t know how to break through her icy exterior.

“Fine,” I say, voice clipped. “I’m trusting you.”

“Good.” She turns back to her laptop.

I hesitate a second, lingering in her door, but I quickly walk away. That’s an average interaction these days.

The week passes slowly, molasses and honey. I check in with Remi daily, but she keeps blowing me off.

There’s nothing else to do but wait, and when Friday finally rolls around, I’m on the edge of my fucking seat.

I’ve never felt this nervous at work before. Blair shows up in the morning, right on time. I expect her to appear with an entourage of company people, but she’s alone like always, wearing all black and peering out at me through her bangs.

“Hello, Justin,” she says in her strange, flat voice. “I’m looking forward to the meeting.”

“Good. Remi has some really great stuff for you.”

She nods once. “Let’s go.”

I take a deep breath and lead her back toward the conference room. Remi’s been in there for a half hour setting up, so I have to just assume that she’s all prepared and ready to go.

I’ve never put so much control in someone else’s hands before. It’s actually kind of terrifying. If Remi screws this up and it goes poorly, Blair could walk and my new job may be dead before it really gets going. I wish I could be more actively involved, or at least aware of what’s going to happen today. Instead, I’m as much in the dark as Blair is, and it’s terrifying.

We step into the conference room and Remi smiles what I think is the first genuine smile I’ve seen from her in at least a month.

“Hi, Blair,” she says as we shuffle into the room. She glances around and gives me a pointed look, and I just shrug: It’s only her today.

The conference room is clearly set up for a whole team, but Blair doesn’t seem to notice. “Hello, Remi,” Blair says, sitting down in a chair up toward the front of the table. There are bottles of water, a little spread with bagels and cream cheese, and some cracker snacks, but Blair ignores it all.

Remi takes it in stride. “I’ve got some great ideas for you today,” she says. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said, and I hope I can make Spine exactly what you want it to be.”

Blair nods a little. “Okay. Show me.”

Remi clears her throat. I sit down next to Blair. It’s fucking game time.

Remi launches into her presentation. “When people think of Spine, they imagine immersive, incredible worlds…” She clicks a button and the projector shows a still shot from one of the Spine games, a large, expansive lake region. “They think of magic, mystery, immersion. They want to be there.” She clicks another button, more beautiful landscaped.

“But Spine products exist in the real world, too. I don’t think you need to sell your virtual worlds. They sell themselves. As soon as someone steps into the Spine world, they’ll see what all the hype is about. What we need to sell is the Spine hardware itself.”

Remi clicks a button and a picture of the current hardware appears. It’s mostly black plastic, plain and simple, almost boring. It’s clunky, clearly not streamlined for aesthetic purposes. In short, it’s utilitarian. It’s boring.

She clicks another button without a word, and mockups of the hardware start to appear. It’s sleek, smooth. It comes in all different colors, shapes, sizes. It has personality, the kind of stuff people would want to actually wear out in public, if this stuff weren’t the sort of thing you kept in a closet or in your bedroom.

“Beautiful objects sell better,” she says finally once she’s done. “Blair, I want to make these a reflection of who you are and who your company is, but I don’t want you to be the face of it anymore. I want to show your beauty, everything that’s interesting about you, through your products. Once we accomplish that, we’ll branch out into other areas and bring the Spine brand into every single home in the country.”

I sit there, completely stunned and horrified.

Remi starts to flip through her presentation, talking the whole time about media buys and brand strategy. She talks about more traditional ad agency roles and activities, but I’m too busy thinking about that intro.

Advertising agencies don’t redesign a company’s product. We just don’t. We take that product and we spin it, we sell it. We make people see how amazing it is.

But we don’t redesign it. That’s just so far beyond our normal scope, and I can’t believe Remi would ever suggest something like that.

I glance at Blair but I have no clue what she’s thinking. She’s inscrutable, as always, and she listens patiently. Meanwhile, I’m freaking the fuck out, because Remi just suggested something absolutely insane.

She either lost her mind or she’s trying to sabotage me. Either way, I think we’re fucked.

Remi finally gets to the end of the presentation. There were some good ideas in there, the insane opening aside, but I could barely pay attention. I’m sweating bullets. If I had known about this, I would’ve put a stop to it.

Obviously, this is why she hasn’t been including me in her plans.

“And that’s it,” Remi says finally. “That’s the whole strategy, start to finish. I know it’s a lot, and it’s aggressive, but I believe in what you’re doing, Blair. I believe we can make it even better.”

Remi smiles at her. Blair slowly stands up.

“No.”

One word. Blair says one word, and Remi’s whole face slowly collapses.

“I’m sorry?” Remi asks.

“No,” Blair repeats, with a little shake of her head. “Try again.” Without another word, she turns and heads for the door.

I jump to my feet and follow her. “If there’s an issue, we’ll fix it.”

“Try again,” Blair says. “This time, you must be involved.”

That stuns me. “I was… I was involved.”

“You weren’t. This is all her work. I can taste it.” Blair strides through the office. Remi lingers in the doorway of the conference room, watching as we leave.

I don’t know what to say. Clearly, she’s smarter than she appears. “I’ll do my best,” I say finally.

“Try again.” She nods at me once and steps into the elevator. The doors slide shut, and she’s gone.

I have no clue what just happened. I turn away from the elevator, trying to figure it out as I slowly walk back to the conference room. Remi’s back inside, cleaning everything up.

“I guess she didn’t like it,” Remi says.

I softly shut the conference room door before turning to face her. “What the hell were you thinking?”

Remi raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

“Redesigning her products like that? Are you insane? We don’t do that. She didn’t ask for it.”

“She asked for a new vision for her company,” Remi says softly. “I gave her that vision, and she didn’t like it.”

I clench my jaw. “Because you did it alone.”

She shakes her head. “No, because she’s insane.”

“Remi,” I say more forcefully than I meant to. “Stop.”

She stops fussing with her laptop and looks at me, mildly surprised.

“You went way over the line,” I say to her, anger getting the better of me. “I get it, you hate me, you think my family ruined your life, whatever. I can’t even argue with that. But if you want to work here and you want to stay on this project, no more bullshit. No more ignoring me, keeping me away from everything. You’ll work with me, or you won’t work here at all.”

I stare her down. She blinks.

“Is that what Blair said?” she asks finally.

“She knew I didn’t have anything to do with this,” I say. “She saw through it all.”

“I don’t know how that’s even possible, unless you told her.”

“I didn’t. I was way too embarrassed to admit something like that. She just knew.”

Remi shakes her head. “I can’t do it.”

“You’re going to do it. I’ve been letting you jerk me around, but that has to stop now.”

She hesitates, watching me silently, before a little smile passes over her lips. “I’m almost impressed,” she says. “I didn’t think you’d stand up to me.”

I sigh and walk closer to her. “No more of this bullshit. You took your shot and you missed. Blair’s letting us try again, which is more than we normally get. No more messing around.”

She watches me, chewing her lip again. For a second, I forget how pissed I am at her, and wish I were the one chewing that lip.

“We’ll see,” she says, picking up her stuff.

“No, Remi. You have a choice to make.”

She watches me silently, and I can’t read her expression at all. I have no clue if she wants to stay here or if she’s still set on storming out of this place. I don’t know if she hates me so much that the thought of working with me overrides her desire to succeed at this project.

I have no clue what I’m doing, but my fucking god, I want her so badly it almost hurts.

“We’ll see,” she says again, and leaves the conference room.

I’m left standing there, so angry. I want to follow her back to her office, push her skirt up over her ass, and spark her skin red.

Instead, I grab a bagel and head back to my desk, fuming the whole way.