The Reunion(2)

Larkin Novak is one of a kind. I hired her four years ago, and I’ve given her significant pay raises every year just to keep her. She’s efficient, incredibly intelligent, vastly organized, and can anticipate what I’m going to need before I even know it. She’s such an integral part of this company and my day-to-day that I don’t know what I would do without her.

“Do you ever sleep, Larkin?”

She pushes her ice-blonde hair behind her ear. “Who needs sleep when there’s so much to do?”

“You need sleep.” I stand from my desk and walk up to her. Carefully, I take her precious tablet from her hands. “Go home. I’ll wait for the mock-ups.”

She eyes the tablet in my hand and then looks back up at me with those intensely blue eyes. “I get plenty of sleep. A solid eight hours every night.”

“Then you need a life. Go home.” I chuckle and walk past her to her desk, where I slip her tablet in her work bag, pick the bag up by the strap, and drape it over her shoulder. “Go, Larkin. We have a strenuous month ahead of us with the rebrand and the anniversary party. Have a second to yourself before you’re forced to be at your boss’s side for precisely every second of every day for twenty-nine days.”

The rebrand is the first business-altering project I’ve taken on since my dad retired, and I’m spending every waking hour working toward perfection—if there’s something I never want to do, it’s let my dad down, especially after everything he and my mom have done for me, for my siblings.

“You do paint an awful picture of what’s to come. If that’s the case, I’m going to go grab some dinner, which will be ice cream, and drown my sorrows in my one and only night to myself before I’m inserted into apparent hell on Marina Island.”

“Yeah.” I grip the back of my neck. “Are you prepared to be around my family? They can be a bit much.”

“You act as if I haven’t met them before.”

“But you haven’t been in the same space with all of them together.”

“Nervous I’ll quit after a week?”

“Yeah.” I let out a dry chuckle. “I am.” Folding my arms across my chest, I lean against the doorframe of my office and take a second to relax. I’m constantly wearing the CEO hat, and it can be exhausting after a while. Larkin and I have a good enough relationship that she knows when I need to “kick my shoes off” and take a second to breathe.

“It’s going to take more than your family to drive me away. You know I can’t find a benefits package quite like yours anywhere else.”

“Ah, the true reason you stick around,” I joke.

“You had me at four weeks’ paid vacation and bonus structure.” She lets out a familiar chuckle.

“At least I know what will keep you around now.” I sigh deeply. “Okay, I should finish up some work before we head out tomorrow.” I push off the doorframe and head back into my office.

“Can I order you anything for dinner before I leave?” she asks, tailing after me.

I shake my head. “I have a protein bar in my desk drawer that’s been begging to be eaten all day.”

“Thrilling.” Her sarcasm seeps through, which it seems to do more often after hours. “I have a car coming to pick you up tomorrow, eight in the morning. I’ll have a breakfast burrito waiting for you.”

“You’re perfection. Thank you.” I wake up my computer by moving my mouse around. “See you in the morning.”

“Bye, Ford.” She takes off, and I turn to my computer, focusing on the emails in my in-box. The worst part of the job is sitting in front of me: answering questions from department heads. Oddly, I prefer the mundane tasks like numbers and projections, and I’m good at them.

So good at them that we’ll be opening fifty new stores in the coming year, which is the direct reason for the rebranding. We’ve stuck with the same storefront, color blend, and aesthetic ever since we franchised. Walking into one of our stores, you get a sense it’s slightly outdated, with its oak timber logs, forest-green linoleum floors, metal bracket shelving, mustard-yellow accents, and outdoor adventures from a photo shoot nearly fifteen years ago. The stores are successful, but they’re not capturing every consumer . . . like the young crowd. In order to keep up with the competition, which dominates the Gen Z market, we need to make sure we’re keeping the stores fresh. We have the funds to do so, but we need to make sure we have the right research and development in place to appeal to our customers and make them not just enjoy what they’re buying from Watchful Wanderers but to enjoy the experience as well.

Because if anything, the young crowd is always about the experience, something Larkin has been drilling into me since the moment we started the rebranding process.

After I’ve made a decent dent in my emails, my phone buzzes with a text message. Mom.

When I was seven and Cooper was five, our biological mom overdosed and our grandma became our legal guardian. We lived with her for a few months until she couldn’t physically take care of us anymore. At that point, we were placed into foster care. We bounced from house to house for a few more months until we met Peggy and Martin. The minute I met them, I knew—I knew we were going to be a family. I felt it in my soul. And after a year of living with them on Marina Island, a small island off the coast of Seattle, they sat us down and asked if we wanted to be a part of their family permanently.