Bet On It | H. Styles

xix

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Present Day

Why is it that whenever I seek out to plan something, it never goes the way I intend? It doesn't matter the situation, but whenever I make a plan, it tends to backfire in my face.

For instance, I have my big meeting that determines my future in just a few minutes, but here I am, running around my office like a madwoman screaming most specifically at Sarah, my assistant, to get my things in order before I lose my mind permanently.

"Sarah! Where are my sketches?"

"On your desk, Wendy. I think you need to take a breather."

"There is no time for breathing right now, Sarah. If they like my ideas, I'll be put into fashion week, and I need to have my designs showcased this year. If not, I might as well drop everything and find a cardboard box to live out of," I seethed, putting my hands on my hips, giving Sarah my nastiest look.

To the average person, it would seem as if I dislike Sarah a great deal, which in hindsight she isn't my most favorite person, but really I'm just looking nasty to get my point across that this meeting makes or breaks my fate and I didn't need her calm aura to try and calm myself down. I scurried over to my desk, rummaging through the endless supply of papers to find my sketches at the bottom of the pile. Through the glass of my office I saw Sarah hurry over to the elevators signaling someone was coming up. I began panting even more as time ticked down to the moment I've been anticipating for the past couple of months.

Sarah led the man and woman to the conference room down the hall, immediately making her way over to me to inform me of their arrival.

"Wendy," she hissed pushing open the glass door, "They're here."

"Do they look happy?" I questioned having a mini panic attack.

"Honestly, they seem like they've had better days," Sarah spoke sheepishly, sending me her best apologetic look

I stood up straight, hiking my blue pantsuit pants up a bit on my body. This morning I woke up later than I wanted so I had no time to fix my unruly hair. I tried taming them as best as I could but my curls were just as stubborn today, if not even more so, compared to any other day.

"Let's do this," I stated, tilting my chin up, ready to dominate this meeting.

"You'll do great! Knock 'em dead," Sarah called after me as I made my way to the infamous conference room.

I sauntered into the conference room, noticing the pair studying the material on the mannequins that I had set up in there last night.

"Good afternoon," I smiled, placing my sketches and other papers onto the table.

"Miss. Kane," they both said curtly, sitting down at the table across from me.

---

"Thank you, again, for everything," I say, leading the two back to the elevators.

"Please, have a wonderful evening, Wendy," the woman genuinely smiled, giving a slight squeeze to my shoulder before joining her companion on the elevator.

As soon as the metal doors shut, I let out a deep breath I've been holding in for the past half hour. I had sent everyone else in the office home early as I couldn't deal with any distractions. But right now I was really grateful I did that because I just started shedding tears. Tears of joy or sadness I really couldn't determine, but I just needed to get this out.

"How'd it go?" Sarah came rushing over, handing me a tissue.

"I don't know. They said everything was 'truly exceptional' but they could've just been saying that to spare my feelings," I shrugged, making my way over to my office to collect my things to go home. Maybe I would run myself a nice hot bath and just down a bottle of wine. Sounds like the perfect evening.