Chapter 5
Allison
I sat back in my chair, staring at the giant computer display in front of me. The new app design was truly a thing of beauty. I jotted down some quick notes on asking about the size of the buttons, but our designers had done a fantastic job with the color schemes I’d provided. There were two final options, and all that was left, really, was to decide which one to choose.
We were so close to being one big happy company. Joshua’s leadership continued to inspire all of the employees, myself included. The way he’d trusted me to move forward with the app had benefits to more than just me—it had encouraged other innovations from employees at all levels. Even if the ideas weren’t great or usable right away, they went into what Joshua called an “idea bank” for periodic review. It was revolutionizing the way our office worked. We were more productive and more energetic.
There was one person who had refused, thus far, to use the idea bank.
Pushing down the button on my office phone for Jamie’s direct line, I half-hoped he wouldn’t pick up. But gone were the days when he flitted about through the marketing department. He’d stopped doing that shortly after I became VP. I thought, he’d been sulking at first, but if it was sulking, he could sure hold a sulk for a long time. Weeks. Now I realized it was more than that. His feelings were deeply hurt.
It rang once, then again. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. Maybe we could postpone this whole meeting…indefinitely. No, I thought to myself. Stop being a chicken. Those days are long past.
“Hello.” His voice was brusque
“Jamie, can you come to my office for a minute?”
He sighed, then hung up.
Man, he sure could be an asshole. Times like this, I wondered why I was even trying. But it was worth it to keep Joshua’s family together, and to get back a friend who’d stood by me even when I was unremarkable in every way.
He knocked softly on my door, maybe hoping I wouldn’t hear him and he could go away.
“Come in,” I said, pasting a smile on my face. It felt forced, because I was nervous.
Jamie stepped just inside the door, as if he was afraid of getting too close to me. “What’s up, Allison?” His voice was low.
“I was just wondering, um, how you’re doing.”
“Doing great, thanks.” He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up more than usual.
“Look,” I say, “you’ve just seemed upset lately. I miss our friendship.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “Even after my dad’s party?”
“I can move past that if you can. If you show me it’s something that would never happen again.”
“It won’t.” His hands were clenched at his sides. “It’s more than that, though.”
I stood up, taking a step toward him, but afraid to get too close. He’d been so angry lately. “Tell me about it,” I said, my voice quiet.
“It’s about you and your place here. When you were just…you, in your little cubicle, I could talk to you all the time and be friendly. I thought we had a connection.”
“We did,” I whispered.
“Was it romantic for you, though? Because it was for me.” His face flushed as the words left his lips. “I believed in you, and I saw your beauty from the very beginning. For once, I’d found something incredible before my brother did.”
His admission caused something to twist inside of me. It must have been painful for him. “I—I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry. My romantic notions didn’t last long. Because then you started dating Joshua, and I felt like you’d changed.”
“I didn’t change,” I snapped back. “I just got more confident. I learned who I could be, who I really was and I didn’t need to hide.”
“Either way, I was intimidated by you. At that party, I know it was the worst thing I could have done, but I just wanted you to be the old Allison, just for a minute. Shy and quiet.”
I clenched my fists in anger. “So you wanted to ‘put me in my place’? Is that how you treat women?”
“No, no, god no. I love women. And I loved you, or I thought I did. I was just messed up. For what it’s worth, I’ve started a program to help me with my drinking. I was just intimidated by you. I still am.”
I felt the tension fall from my shoulders as I stared at it. I knew it was hard for him to admit any of this to me. We had been such good friends and then all of this happened. “Are you saying you’re intimidated by me now, because of my position?”
“No, just, you seemed to change so fast. And once my romantic feelings were out of the way, it wasn’t just that I felt like you were too busy with Joshua to be my friend. It also felt like Joshua was too busy with you to be my brother. I know it sounds stupid…”
I took another slow step toward him. I felt like I was finally making progress with him. He was teetering on the edge—if I pressured him too much, he might just get angry again, and we’d have to start from scratch.
“I can see that,” I said. “It sounds painful.”
“Fuck yes, it’s painful. My brother cares more about you than me. When he used to not even know you existed, Allison, but I was your friend. And now you two can only see each other.”
“It might seem that way, but we’ve been talking about you a lot lately,” I argued. “We both miss you.”
He deflated a little at that—all that puffed up anger seemed to dissipate, and his shoulders bent forward.
“You’ve been talking about me?” The raw hope in his voice made my chest ache.
“Yes. We want to fix things.”
He nodded. “All right. Maybe we should, get coffee or something.”
“That’s a great idea. But first,” I said, “there’s something I want to show you. Come here.”
I gestured toward my desk, and he followed. I kept getting the impression that I was trying to connect with a skittish animal. With a deep breath, I turned my computer monitor so he could see it.
I watched his eyes as he stared at the screen. At first he was puzzled, trying to figure out what he was seeing.
“This is the app?”
“Yeah,” I said. “With some modifications. We wanted to give it more oomph.”
“Oomph, huh? That’s a technical term, isn’t it?”
Jamie’s face tightened as he continued to stare at the screen. “These are the colors I picked out,” he snapped. “This one on the left was my top choice, but the other scheme was one of mine, too. I shared them with Joshua. Did you steal my ideas?”
“What? No! Jamie, I know these were your ideas. You talked to me about them—”
He took a step back and cocked his head. His lips pursed as he fumbled for the right words. “Is that all you were doing just now with that bullshit about wanting to make up, to fix things? Trying to butter me up so I wouldn’t notice that you’d fucking stole my idea?”
“No way, Jamie. This has all been genuine!” I reached for him but he lurched backward toward the door.
Right on schedule, Joshua walked past. Jamie saw him out of the corner of his eye. “Josh, get in here,” he said. “You can’t tell me you’re going to let her just take my ideas and use them like this. These were mine. Tell me you remember.”
“Hmm,” Joshua said. “I don’t know…”
“Joshua, don’t tease him right now,” I said. “He’s upset.”
Joshua chuckled as he looked at Jamie’s flushed cheeks and clenched fists. “Of course I remember,” he said, and the playful tone was gone from his voice. “You gave me a stack of design ideas.”
“And they weren’t good enough for you then,” Jamie sputtered. “But now that she shows them to you, you what, think they’re just dandy, huh?”
“Jamie, it’s not like that at all,” I said. “Would you just listen and pay attention for a second?”
Jamie didn’t respond.
I moved my hand around on the screen, bringing my favorite of the two schemes into the larger view. I pointed out the lines and colors. “See, these colors wouldn’t have worked on the desktop site. They’re almost too young for that, and they’d be overwhelming.”
Jamie gave a grudging nod.
I pulled out my phone and brought up the phone-sized version of the mock-up. “But look, on a smartphone, they’re perfect. They’re subtle in small doses, on small screens. Not overwhelming at all.”
It took a moment, and my breath was held, but finally Jamie relaxed. “You’re right.”
“I know, see!” I said. “But this was all yours! I wasn’t going to take credit at all. These are exactly your color schemes, straight from that folder you gave to Joshua.”
Jamie shook his head. “I didn’t plan it like that,” he said. “Not with the app or on the smartphone. It’s not really my idea.”
“Shut up, Jamie, it is too,” Joshua said. “It even has space for the ads you suggested in your folder, and images on the different buttons to make it more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. Other than the fact it’s on a smartphone, it’s exactly the design you gave me.”
Rubbing his hand through his hair again, Jamie looked from Joshua to me and back again. “So you…you liked my idea?”
“Yeah,” Joshua said. “It’s awesome. Allison saw it and she thought it would be a great fit. She’s just been polishing it up for you.”
“And you both called me in here to show it to me?”
“We wanted your approval before we moved forward with it,” I said. “We were hoping you’d be the one to press the button to launch the new design.”
Jamie didn’t cry, but his eyes looked shiny with unshed tears. “Thanks, guys. I know I don’t deserve it after acting like such an ass, but thank you.”
Joshua pulled him into a hug. Over Jamie’s shoulder, my gaze connected with Joshua’s. We smiled at each other, pleased that our plan had worked. I felt completely warm inside, because now there was no longer this uncomfortable rift in the company, and Joshua had his little brother back.