One Mad Night

by Julia London

  There was silence; Chelsea caught her breath. It was brilliant. Really brilliant.

  “That’s a great idea,” Jason said.

  “But that kind of ad only works with a team,” Ian said. “You know what I’d do if I were sitting at this table? I wouldn’t give this account to just one of us. It’s too big. I would give it to both of us.”

  “Ian,” Chelsea said, and she stood up. “You don’t have to do this. It’s okay—”

  “No, no,” Brad said, waving her off. “He’s right; it’s a great idea. You’re both talented; you’ve both got great ideas. Tell you what—we’ll mull this over,” he said, looking to the other partners for agreement. “We’ll have a decision by the end of the day.”

  Ian looked pleased with himself. He walked to the door and opened it and then waited for Chelsea, a faint smile on his face. She walked out and Ian shut the door quietly behind them.

  Chelsea whirled around to him. “What the hell are you doing? You have the account, Ian! You didn’t have to do that for me—I’m okay.”

  “I didn’t do it for you.” He pointed to the door. “That was the right thing to do. It was the smart thing to do.”

  “So just like that, you give them your best idea? You didn’t even take a moment to think through how something like that would work.”

  He leaned closer. “I didn’t give them my best idea. I’m keeping that one right here,” he said, tapping his finger to his breast. “What’s the matter?” he asked, smiling. “Don’t you want to work with me?”

  “Oh, Ian.” She smiled wearily. How could she explain to him that she would give anything to work with him but wouldn’t? That she wanted to see where they could take this, what they could make of it, but it would never happen? “Listen, whatever happens…thank you.” She moved to step around him.

  “Wait, that’s it?” he said to her, incredulous, as she began to walk away.

  “For now!” she called over her shoulder. Because if she didn’t keep walking, she would lose her resolve. She would give in to her desire for Ian and let Grabber-Paulson have the best of her, all for a guy.

  ***

  It was ten to six when Jason called Chelsea into his office. He was sitting behind his desk, his feet propped on the edge, tossing that damn Nerf ball through the hoop. “Chelsea!” he said cheerfully. “Chel-chel! Girl of the hour!”

  “Where’s Ian?” she asked, expecting them both to be brought in.

  “Hey, I wanted to talk to you,” Jason said. “You were good today. Really good, Chelsea. But I wasn’t surprised.”

  She was not going to listen to this. “Did you make your decision?” she asked.

  Jason laughed. “Girl’s got fire in the belly,” he said cheerfully. “Yes, we’ve made a decision, and you’re going to like it. You’re going to like it a lot. We’ve decided to accept Ian’s idea and give this account to both of you. Isn’t that great? Sort of like co-chairs, right? But not really co-chairs, because someone needs the authority to sign off on stuff. We gave that to Ian. Which means you have all the time to work on creative. Nice, huh? It’s a great idea. It’s great teamwork. We’re about teamwork here.”

  “Are we?” she asked skeptically.

  Jason laughed and tossed the Nerf. Chelsea caught it and wadded it into a little ball. Jason glanced at the ball in her hand. “You can keep it,” he said uncertainly. “I’ve got more. So. You and Ian can work out the office situation.” He laughed. “We decided not to get in the way of that! Wish we had more than one, but, you know, space is limited. I’m going to reassign some of your accounts so you’ll have plenty of time to work on Tesla. We’re taking the final pitch to them next Tuesday.” He grinned at her. “Aren’t you going to say anything? You’re Tesla, just like you wanted!”

  Chelsea actually laughed at that. “Aren’t you at least going to let me accept it?”

  “Of course you accept! Why wouldn’t you? It’s a win-win for everyone!”

  “I see why you’re so good at ad work, Jason. You can spin absolutely anything. By the way, my answer is no,” Chelsea said.

  For once, Jason didn’t seem so glib. He blinked, almost as if he hadn’t heard her. “What?”

  “I said, no thank you. It’s been great, but I’m a big fat no.”

  “Why not?” he cried, suddenly coming to his feet. “What are you doing, Chelsea? You don’t want to blow this. If you blow this, you won’t get another big account—”

  “Blow it? I never had it! You lied to me, Jason. You always lie to me. Grabber-Paulson lies to me! You’ve been lying all along just to get what you wanted, and now, Ian was kind enough and wise enough to consider all the work I’d put in on this account, and you and the partners are going to dress up his idea and call it ‘teamwork,’” she said, making invisible quotes with her fingers. “But the joke is on you because I am done with Grabber-Paulson. I’ve given you six great years but I won’t let you walk on me anymore. I quit!”

  “You can’t quit!” Jason cried.

  “Ha! Watch me,” she said, and she turned around and walked out of his office.

  “You have an employment contract!” he shouted at her.

  “So sue me!” she shouted back, and she started for her cubicle. She was startled by the number of heads above their cubicle walls, having been lured out of their holes by the shouting. “Cheerio, guys! Have a nice life.” She hurried to grab up the things she’d already packed and donned her coat. Only one coat—there was no time to bundle.

  As she made her way to the front of the office, people were speaking to her. “Are you serious, Chelsea? Way to go, Chelsea! Did they fire you?”

  But Chelsea didn’t answer. She couldn’t answer, for fear of losing it. And besides, she saw only one face in that crowd, and it was Ian’s. He was standing in the hall just outside the partners’ offices—of course Brad had been the one to tell him—with one hand on his waist, his head down, watching her.

  She smiled.

  He didn’t. He looked very unhappy.

  But Chelsea kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept forcing herself to stand up for her.

  It was the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life. Not leaving a good paying job or leaving Grabber-Paulson, no—that was the easy part.

  The hardest thing she’d ever done was leave a guy like Ian behind before she’d ever had a chance with him. That was the gut-wrenching, dizzy uncertainty, heartbreaking part.

  Chapter 10

  Chelsea didn’t change out of her yoga pants and hoodie for a week. She ate pizza and chocolate, TV-binged on classic movies and real housewives, and did absolutely nothing about finding a job. She had enough money put aside to coast for a while and her parents, thank God for them. Her father said, “You do what you need to do, honey. We’re here to help.”

  That made Chelsea feel better, but in truth, she didn’t feel very bad at all. She felt proud of herself. She had a firm belief that in standing up for herself, something good would come her way. She didn’t know when or how she would find it. But she believed it with all her heart. Once she’d said no to Jason, once she’d admitted aloud what everyone knew, she’d felt nothing but relief. She’d felt as if she’d been completely honest with herself for the first time in years.

  Not that it wasn’t scary to walk out after six years—it was terrifying. Almost as terrifying as trusting her instincts and abilities. But nothing would ever change if Chelsea didn’t take this stand; she was more certain of that every day.

  She took a few calls that week—one, interestingly, from Huntson-Jones. News in advertising traveled fast, she supposed, and she had tentatively agreed to talk to them next week. But she wasn’t very excited about it. The man who had called her had been effusive in his praise of her talents, had assured her that she would be a valued team member at Huntson-Jones. It sounded to Chelsea like more of the same.

&
nbsp; She also heard from Marian Zarin.

  “Girl, you’re crazy,” Marian said to her. “Everyone’s talking about it. You got the Tesla account, Chelsea! Sure, you had to share it with Adonis, but still they gave it to you. Now everyone’s saying you’re a diva.”

  “But I didn’t get the gig, Marian,” Chelsea said. “They gave it to Ian and let him bring me along. They had already decided he was getting it, and he was the one who came up with the idea that I should work with him on it. People in the office are going to talk no matter what. If the partners had given it to me straight up, people in the office would say I was aggressive. If the partners hadn’t given me anything, they’d say I don’t have the same charm as Ian. No matter what, they’d have something to say.”

  “So?” Marian demanded.

  “So, I deserved the account on my own merits. But they were never going to give it to me. And they are never going to give you a big account like that, either. Name one woman in charge of a major account in that office. Just one.”

  Marian groaned. “Don’t depress me! I already have to smell Hadeetha’s lunch every day.”

  In the second week of unemployment, Chelsea actually changed out of her yoga pants and cleaned up the empty cartons of noodles. One afternoon she got a text from Farrah: We got Tesla account. They gave Bob your cubicle.

  Bob? She groaned, thinking of Star Wars characters in her cubicle. But Chelsea was not surprised. She could picture Ian carrying his gym bag and a few files into his new office. She could see him leaning to the right to see the corner of Gramercy Park.

  Two weeks to the day that Chelsea had quit, she awoke with renewed determination. She surfed online for jobs and found a couple that looked promising. Before she began submitting resumes, she decided to go for a run. She hadn’t actually run in about six months, but it seemed as good a time as any to start up again. New life, new job, new fitness routine.

  She pulled her hair into a ponytail, donned some running clothes, and jogged down the stairs of her brownstone walk-up apartment. Outside, she paused at the top of the stoop to stretch. She folded over, touching her fingers to her toes, limbering up. When she rose up again, her heart stopped.

  Ian was standing at the bottom of her stoop. Why? How long had he been there? She looked up the street, almost expecting Jason to come running behind him. Or for him to hand her a manila envelope with termination papers to fill out. When he did none of those things, she said uncertainly, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Ian said. He shoved his hands in his back pockets, and she realized then that he was wearing jeans. It was the middle of the day, and he was dressed in jeans and sneakers and a wool coat.

  “How did you…” She gestured to the brownstone and her apartment.

  “Oh. You know Belinda in admin?”

  Chelsea nodded; Ian shrugged.

  “I see. So…why are you here? Did you come to tell me you got Tesla?”

  He blinked. And then he smiled. “No. I came here to tell you I gave Tesla to Zimmerman.”

  “You what?” she almost shouted.

  Ian stepped up onto the bottom step. “I didn’t take it, Chelsea.”

  “But why?”

  He stepped up on the next step. “Because some things are more important than big accounts.”

  Her heart skipped. She had told herself the very same thing. “No they aren’t. I mean, yes, they are, but in this case—my God, Ian, why would you do that? Don’t say because of me, please don’t say that.”

  “It wasn’t because of you,” he said, coming up another step closer. “It was in spite of you. I quit because I agree with you, Chelsea—I don’t like the way they do things.” He took another step closer, and another, until he was standing on the stoop with her.

  He looked so good, and Chelsea’s heart began to pound in her chest.

  “Can we talk about this inside?” he asked. “It’s freezing.”

  “Sure,” she said absently, and she turned around and opened the door to her apartment building. Seeing him here, so unexpectedly, was overwhelming her. It was impossible to believe that the man who had haunted her dreams and her waking thoughts for the last two weeks was here and had quit because of what had happened. That he’d stood up for her too.

  That happened in fairy tales, not real life. Chelsea had never had a guy do anything so heroic for her.

  He followed her up to her apartment. She walked inside her small space and turned around to face him as he closed the door behind them.

  “I can’t believe you quit,” she said.

  He chuckled and ran a hand over his head. “Yeah…neither can I. But I didn’t like the way that went down. Left a bad taste in my mouth, you know?”

  Oh yes, she knew.

  “And it was fairly obvious to me that we are better together than apart.”

  She wanted to believe that, her heart ached with wanting to believe that. But Chelsea was cautious with something as delicate as her heart. “You came to that conclusion after one night?” she asked skeptically. “It seems so sudden.”

  “I don’t know,” he said with a helpless shrug. “How long is it supposed to take? I really like you, Chelsea. Maybe I am misreading the whole thing, but I had one of the best nights of my life.”

  Chelsea thought her heart had stopped altogether. Her lungs certainly had stopped working; she felt short of breath. No one had ever done anything like this for her. No one had ever felt this way about her.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Did you, maybe, feel something too?”

  She nodded. “I felt a lot of things. I did. But I don’t know how to take this in, you standing here, you saying these things now. It’s…it’s a lot.”

  “Right,” he said, and he glanced down. He shifted his weight, looking a little uncomfortable now.

  “But I know this,” she said. Ian’s head came up. She could see the hope in his eyes and it stirred something very deep inside her.

  “What’s that?” he asked softly.

  “I have never, in my whole life, been more turned on than I am right here, right now.”

  Something flared in his blue eyes. What was that passing between them, a lifetime? Love, happiness, family, adventure—everything a girl’s heart yearned for? Chelsea didn’t know—maybe she was confusing fairy tales with reality—but she didn’t have time to think about it. She lunged for Ian at the same moment he reached for her.

  He lifted her off her feet with one arm as his mouth landed on hers. He turned them around and around again, until he’d twirled them to her unmade bed. He dropped her roughly on top of it, and together, frantic, they tore at each other’s clothes until they were sufficiently unclothed for what came next.

  His hands found her breasts; his tongue found her mouth.

  Chelsea’s hands were on him, too, on warm skin, hard planes, and soft patches of ears and throat. His hands stroked every inch of her, sliding into crevices, running over her skin, and leaving streaks of lightning. He devoured her with his kiss.

  “I have wanted this so much,” he said as he moved down her body, settling in between her legs.

  “Me too,” she breathlessly agreed, and she floated away with him on a cloud of pure sensation as his tongue dipped into the flesh between her legs.

  It was just as good—better—than that night in the conference room. The man was a master. He knew how to read her, knew what she wanted before she knew it herself. She shamelessly moved against him, her body having surrendered to the desire he’d shown by finding her. She sank into sexual bliss with him, shuddering with the force of it.

  He slid into her then, lifting her leg up and moving deep, pushing them both to eruption.

  They lay together afterward in a tangle of arms and legs, their breathing ragged. Chelsea managed to pull her hair from his mouth and rolled onto her back. Ian’s hand found hers, and he wrapped his
fingers tightly around it.

  This was what hope felt like, Chelsea thought. She had no job, but she had never felt so hopeful. If she sat up, she was certain she would see bluebirds flitting outside her window. She giggled and looked at Ian.

  He was smiling too.

  “We’re unemployed,” she said cheerfully, and for some reason, both of them burst into laughter.

  Chapter 11

  “You don’t get it,” Chelsea insisted to Ian, who was patiently listening, one hip on the desk, his hands clasped before him. “She’s awful. She’s never without her phone; she forgets important details—”

  “But she’ll work for what we can pay her,” Ian calmly pointed out. “We can’t do better.”

  Chelsea frowned at him. He was right; he was alarmingly always right. And he was going to win this one. He knew it as well as she did. For extra insurance, he put his hand on her swelling belly, where their baby—highly unexpected and highly anticipated—was growing.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he assured her.

  “You always say that,” she said crossly.

  “Have I been wrong?”

  Chelsea looked around at their little storefront office in Park Slope. “No,” she admitted, and she teasingly punched his shoulder. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She pushed his hand from her belly so she could move closer to kiss him.