Unbreakable

by Ashley Blake

  I climbed into bed around 11:00 and was just drifting off when my phone dinged letting me know I had a new email message. I grabbed it off of my nightstand and quickly glanced at it just in case it was about my meeting the next day.

  Been thinking about you.

  Lucas

  I quickly sat up in bed and read it again. How did he have my email address? I thought for a minute and assumed he must have found it on my website. I snuggled down in my bed and smiled to myself as I realized that he took the time to search for me. He’s thinking about me. It was the perfect way to end my day.

  The next morning Gigi was still sleeping when I left for my meeting. I grabbed a coffee at Starbucks on my way to the bus, smiling as I thought about Lucas’s email. Even though I had turned him down, and even though I didn’t know when, I couldn’t wait to see him again.

  I was a little bit nervous about my meeting because a deal like that could really take me to the next level. I arrived at the Glitz offices on Michigan Avenue a few minutes before 9:00 and a cute girl gave me a huge smile from behind the receptionist desk.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m here to see Cheryl Jordan and Stephanie Cooper.”

  “Your name?”

  “Sophie Night.”

  She picked up the phone to let them know I was there.

  “They will be right with you, Ms. Night. You can have a seat in the waiting area behind you.”

  I smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  A few minutes later two very stylish women came out to greet me.

  “Sophie?”

  I stood up and smiled. “Yes.”

  She held out her hand. “I’m Stephanie and this is Cheryl. It is so nice to finally meet you.”

  I shook her hand, still smiling. “Yes, it’s nice to be able to put a live face to the names.”

  “Why don’t you follow us to my office so that we can talk a bit.”

  We walked down the hall to Stephanie’s office and if I could design my dream office, this was it…minus a closet. It had a deep pink wall on one side and an azure blue wall directly across from it. The other two walls were white and her desk was silver. She had five huge, almost six feet tall armoires filled with jewelry samples and I think my mouth started to water when I saw those. There were framed pictures of magazine articles featuring Glitz jewelry lining her walls and to finish off the office, she had a gorgeous rose pink leather office chair and two matching white leather chairs on the other side of her desk.

  “Have a seat, Sophie.”

  I sat in one of the white leather chairs and Cheryl sat next to me. Stephanie pulled out a huge binder with pictures and sample drawings of different kinds of jewelry.

  “We have been following your numbers and your blog has been doing really well. Your Alexa ranking is really high and that is exactly what we like to see. We wanted to make sure that traffic translates into sales before we approached you with this idea, and from what we have seen in our payments to you, that is exactly what is happening. So we would love to collaborate with you on a bracelet line. You can design the bracelets, they will have a Sophie Night for Glitz tag, and we will manufacture them. What do you think?"

  What did I think? Were they serious?

  I couldn’t hold back my smile but I did have to ask about money. “How will we divide the earnings of the bracelets?”

  Cheryl chimed in. “We would take 50% and you would take 50%. Even split down the middle. What do you think?”

  That’s just what I wanted to hear.

  “I think it’s a fantastic idea! Thank you so much for thinking of me!”

  “Absolutely! Well this is good news, I’m sure we will all be very happy with the results. We’re going to set up a meeting with our design team so that you can bounce ideas off of them and we can get going on this.”

  I looked at Stephanie. “How soon did you want me to get started?”

  “We were thinking of setting up a meeting in two weeks, that way you will have time to create story boards for us and kind of walk us through how you came up with whatever fabulous products your are going to show us.”

  Uh, no pressure there. I took a deep breath and discreetly slowly let it out to calm the nervousness in my belly. I smiled at both of them and agreed that two weeks would be fine. We nailed down a date and I quickly put it in my phone.

  “Sophie, I hope you know we don’t expect you to have everything done by then, we’re just looking for a good starting point to make sure that we’re on the same page. We want your bracelets to match our brand. After our initial design meeting we’ll all have a better idea of what to expect, going forward. Sound good?”

  “Absolutely. I already enjoy working with you in the advertising capacity and I am really looking forward to working with you to create beautiful bracelets! I’m sure my readers will love the idea.”

  We all stood and walked toward the door. “Wonderful, that’s what we like to hear. If you have any questions along the way over the next couple of weeks, feel free to reach out to us.”

  “I will. Thank you again.”

  They walked me to the reception area and we said our goodbyes.

  As soon as I got outside I jumped up and down like a little kid, getting crazy looks from people walking by. I was going to be a jewelry designer! I couldn’t wait to tell my parents and Gigi my good news.

  When I got back to our apartment, Gigi was running lines for her play. Opening night was the following Saturday and I was really looking forward to seeing it.

  I waited until she was done with her sentence and then interrupted her. “Hey, can you take a break for a sec?”

  “Sure, if you help me run lines for a little bit afterwards.” She raised her eyebrows up and down at me in a totally goofy way. She knew that she could always count on me to help her run lines, I had been doing it since our freshman year of college.

  “Of course I’ll help you. So, guess what?” I couldn’t hide the excitement in my voice and I’m sure that it showed on my face.

  “You look like you’re bursting at the seams, something really great must have happened. What’s up?”

  “I am going to be collaborating with Glitz on a bracelet line! I’m designing the bracelets!”

  “What?! Oh my gosh Sophie, that is so amazing! So your name is going to be on the bracelets?”

  “Yep, it’s going to say Sophie Night for Glitz on the tags! I am totally freaking out, I can’t believe that this even happened!”

  She gave me a huge hug and couldn’t stop smiling. “I am so happy for you!” And then in true Gigi fashion she pulled away and looked at me. “I’m going to get free bracelets, right?”

  I started cracking up, she was so silly.

  "Of course you're going to get free bracelets, you're going to be the first person to see all of my ideas so I'm going to need your totally, brutally honest opinion about the stuff that I show you, deal?”

  “Deal! So how soon do you have to get started on this?”

  “They want ideas and storyboards in two weeks. I will be meeting with the design team so that we can make sure that we’re on the same page with my vision and what they want for their jewelry company. I’m nervous and excited at the same time. I have to come up with something fabulous!”

  “You will Sophie, I have total faith in you.”

  “Thanks. Okay, let me put down my stuff so we can run some lines.”

  I didn’t tell her that Lucas emailed me the night before because she hadn’t mentioned Dex, and I didn’t want to add any salt to her wounds. I was really hoping that Dex would call her later that day because I knew that she really liked him.

  I ran lines with her for a little over an hour and then I started working on my stuff. Around 3:00, Gigi burst in my room with a huge grin on her face.

  “Dex called!”

  I stopped typing and smiled at her. “See, I told you he’d call.”

  “Yeah, he said he was in a painting zone and when that happens he d
oesn’t let anything stop him. He said we’re still on for tonight but I turned him down.”

  “Gigi, why? You’ve been sulking about him all week!”

  “Because he can’t just disregard me like that. I don’t care if he was in some sort of weird artistic painting zone, he can’t just ignore me. He told me that he would call me by yesterday and he didn’t, it’s just rude. If I let him treat me like this now, before we’ve even started, can you imagine the way he would be treating me much later on? Other girls might let him do this to them, but not me. If he wants to see me, then he will learn to call me when he says he’s going to call me.”

  Another thing I loved about Gigi was that she demanded respect from guys. No one ever walked all over her. I know that when I was with Steven it drove her crazy that I let him treat me like dirt, but I learned better…eventually. I was nothing like the person I used to be when I met him. I was becoming more like Gigi, with a lot of help from her, every day.

  “You know what? You’re right, good for you. So what are you going to do tonight? Are you still going out with Jacob?”

  “Yeah, I never canceled with him and he’s nice, he’s cute, and he’s fun, so we should have a good time. Now that I’ve seen that Dex is inconsiderate, he’s going to have to really work for it if he wants to be with me. If he doesn’t, that’s fine, there are other fish in the sea.”

  “You are absolutely right. I bet you anything that Dex will be chasing after you now that you’ve shown him you’re not like every other girl that he’s probably dealt with. You’ll have fun tonight and who knows, maybe you’ll end up really liking Jacob and forget that you ever met Dex.”

  She shot me a smirk. "Not likely, Dex is sexy as hell and it's going to take someone really special to push him out of my mind. But I’m not saying that it can’t happen, you never know. I’ll leave you alone now, I know you have a lot of work to do.”

  “Hey, since we’re taking a break, can I put together a couple of outfits for you to put on so that we can go take some quick pics for me to upload my blog?”

  “Sure!”

  “Okay, thanks. Give me like five minutes to put some stuff together for you.”

  “Okay, just yell when you’re ready.”

  A couple of hours later I was uploading the awesome pics we took when my phone dinged. I glanced at it and saw another email from Lucas.

  Sophie, I would really like to talk to you. What is your phone number?

  Lucas

  My heart jumped when I read that and I didn’t know what to do. Gigi told me she thought that I should give him a chance, and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to see him again.

  Gigi was getting ready for her date but I had to get her opinion on what to do about Lucas. She was doing her hair when I walked into her bathroom. She looked so pretty.

  “You look gorgeous, Gigi. Jacob is going to be drooling.”

  She winked at me. “That’s the plan.”

  I felt sorry for guys around her, they really didn’t stand a chance because they always ended up as putty in her hands. Even though she was super into Dex, I had a feeling that he was going to be the exact same way, a big ball of gooey putty.

  “So, Lucas emailed me.”

  She whipped her head around and almost burned herself with her flat iron.

  “What?! I knew he would figure out how to find you. He likes you Sophie. So what did he say?”

  “He wants to talk to me and he asked for my number.”

  Exasperation filled her voice. “Did you give it to him?”

  “No, not yet, that’s why I’m talking to you.”

  “Well you know what I think. Email him your number.” She turned back around and went back to flat ironing her hair. It was her way of telling me that there was no room for discussion with this.

  “Okay, I will.”

  She looked at me in her mirror and smiled. “Good.”

  I brought my laptop out to our living room and plopped down on the couch, trying to think of something clever to say. I decided to just be straightforward and send him my number without a message. Twenty minutes later my phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi Sophie.”

  I smiled into the phone.

  “Hi Lucas.”

  “So I guess you’re giving me a chance?”

  I was silent for a minute to add just a bit of doubt in his mind.

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I’d like to see you. Are you free for dinner tomorrow night?”

  I actually was free, Sundays were usually pretty low key for me. My first instinct was to turn him down but I really did want to see him so there was no point in playing games.

  “Yes, I am free tomorrow night.”

  “Great, do you like Thai food?”

  “I love it.”

  “Okay cool, there is a great Thai place in Lakeview that I’ve heard about. How does that sound?”

  “Sounds great. I think I know the place you’re talking about, I’ve been dying to go there.”

  “Perfect. I will pick you up around, say, 6:30?”

  “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, have a good night.”

  “Thanks, you too.”

  I hopped off of the couch and ran to Gigi’s room. She was putting on her lipstick and turned to look at me.

  “How do I look?” She put her hand on her hip and gave me a mock sexy pose.

  I couldn’t help but giggle, she was so silly sometimes.

  “You look really pretty. What time is he picking you up?”

  “He’ll be here any minute. What’s up? You look like the cat who ate the canary.”

  “I’m going to dinner with Lucas tomorrow.”

  She gasped and her eyes were like saucers. “You’ll have to tell me everything afterwards!”

  I laughed at her reaction. “Don’t worry, I will.”

  Our phone rang and Gigi grabbed her purse.

  “That’s probably Jacob, I better go downstairs.”

  “Okay, have fun tonight. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, please.”

  I made a quick dinner and was getting ready to settle in on the couch to watch a movie, when panic set in. What are you doing, Sophie? You have no idea what you’re wearing tomorrow night!

  I combed through my closet and found a pair of satiny black skinny pants, a pretty pink sleeveless shirt, and a pair of Louboutins completed the look. It was casual but sexy so I was happy with my choice. Dinnertime the next night couldn’t come fast enough for me.

  The next day Gigi had a date with a new guy at the same time I was having dinner with Lucas so we were getting ready at the exact same time. She was doing her makeup in my bathroom while I flat-ironed my hair. She gave me the once over when I was done and paused to smile at me.

  “He is not going to know what hit him tonight. You look super hot Sophie.”

  “Thanks, so do you. Which guy is this tonight?”

  “Mark, remember I met him at Whole Foods last week.”

  “Oh, right. Do you think he has potential?” I already knew the answer before she told me.

  “Maybe, he’s really cute and seemed pretty cool.”

  “Uh huh, but not Dex cool, right?” I raised my eyebrows at her and waited for her answer.

  “Ugh, no. But I can’t think about him.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “No, but he’s left messages.”

  “Gigi, maybe you should give him another chance.”

  “He has to learn to respect me Sophie, I’m not like all of the other girls he’s been with and I don’t know if he’s learned that yet.”

  “How can he learn anything if you don’t communicate with him?”

  “I’ll talk to him eventually.”

  “What if he stops calling?”

  She gave me a wicked grin. “Oh please, not gonna happen.”

  I had to give it to h
er, she always knew how to get guys right where she wanted them.

  Our phone rang and it was Lucas who was waiting for me downstairs.

  It wasn’t until that minute that I felt nervous flutters in my belly because I had been so preoccupied talking with Gigi.