Risky Business

This is bigger than any other reputation rehab I’ve ever tackled, by far. But I feel compelled to do it. For Carson. He deserves the best.

He deserves my best.

And I didn’t give it the first round.

I’m mad at myself for not coming up with this idea sooner. Admittedly, the multi-faceted approach we’ve been using has been working, building traffic to the social media, creating a positive buzz around the Americana Land name, and restoring Carson’s reputation.

But I pride myself on seeing beyond the standard approach. My innovation and creativity are what make me uniquely good at what I do. And this rehab needed a swing for the fences knockout, which is what I should’ve brought to the table from the get-go but am only now offering.

Was I too blinded by Carson, the man, to help Carson, the client?

I follow him down the hallway to his office. His strides are quick and long, leaving me behind several paces as I struggle to keep up. He holds the door open for me to enter but then shuts it behind me with a sound of finality. He sits down on the couch, and I sit beside him, scanning for hints of his thoughts.

Given the hard line of his jaw right now, I think he’s disappointed that I didn’t come up with this idea sooner too.

Straightening my back and ready to take my lumps, I say, “I’m sorry.”

For some reason, at the same time, he mutters, “I’m sorry.”

We look at each other, matching confusion in our eyes. “What?” we say in unison again.

“Ladies first.” Carson holds his hand out, giving me the floor to speak.

I scoot several inches closer to him. This is going to be hard enough to admit. I don’t need to shout it from the rooftops too. I notice that I’m twisting my hands and force myself to still them, laying them in my lap, one over the other.

“Jayme?”

“Hang on . . . I owe you an apology, but I’m working up my guts.” I glance up from my hands to find him fighting a smirk. “I don’t do this often, so I want to do it right.”

“Of course, you definitely want to do it justice,” he says agreeably.

Frustrating man, trying to make it easy for me to admit that I fucked up.

I take a fortifying breath, meet his eyes directly, and begin. “I’m the best at what I do for a reason, and I bring my A-game to every assignment. Every client deserves that—”

“Especially me,” Carson adds.

“Especially you,” I echo. “But I got us halfway down a path that was more about easy than innovation, and it wasn’t my best. To make matters worse, I brought up the festival idea with the whole team instead of doing it privately. You deserved the opportunity to hear the idea first, have time to tweak it with me and then present as a united front. Instead, I got overly excited and ran with it in the moment, and that was unprofessional of me. I’m sorry, Carson.”

It all comes out in one long breath, leaving my chest aching and my lungs burning as I run out of oxygen. Carson’s stoic reaction, or non-reaction, I should say, doesn’t make me feel any better.

“You done?” he asks.

I’m ready for anything. At this point, he has every right to yell, to be disappointed in me, or even to fire me and hire another PR representative to help him and Americana Land. It’d serve me right for being blinded by him to the point of distraction. “Yes. Let me have it.”

A shudder works its way through his shoulders, and he pins me with the fire in his gaze. “I would very much like to. However, about the matter at hand . . .”

Wait, what did he just say? Is he flirting at a time like this? Whiplash shoots through my nerves. Maybe he’s not mad?

But no, the snapped responses during that meeting made his feelings explicitly clear.

“The festival idea is . . .” He’s searching for words, never a good sign. “Brilliant. I do wish we’d thought of it sooner, but every new idea comes from a spark, and that spark happened in real time today. We got to see it develop into a flame, and it was beautiful to watch. You were beautiful to watch as your mind raced, considering and rejecting ideas on the spot, planning possible ways to make it work and getting everyone in the room dedicated to this crazy idea of yours in a matter of seconds. It was stunning.”

“I’m . . . you’re . . . uhm, what?” I’m stumbling over my words because my brain isn’t able to make the least bit of sense from what he’s said. I feel like I’ve got puzzle pieces from a Sesame Street ten-piece and a thousand-piece Impressionist painting puzzle and I’m trying to slide them together. But they do not go . . . at all.