By the Book (Meant to Be #2)(2)
She looked around as they walked down the halls, and her eyes widened. There were books everywhere here. Being surrounded by books like this had been her dream since she was a little girl. She couldn’t believe she’d gotten here.
Rachel gestured to a cubicle. “This one is for you,” she said to Izzy. “Marta’s office is right there.” She pointed at the dark office down the hall from Izzy’s desk.
Just then, a white guy with lots of dark hair, glasses, and what even Izzy could tell was a very well-cut blazer walked by.
“Oh, hi, are you Marta’s new assistant?” he asked her.
She nodded and smiled at him. “Yes, hi! I’m Isabelle Marlowe, nice to meet you.”
He looked over his glasses at her and smiled. “I’m Gavin Ridley. I sit right over there,” he said, pointing to a desk not far away. “I was Marta’s assistant up until recently; I’m an assistant editor now.”
“Oh wow, congratulations!” Izzy said.
“Thank you,” he said. “And really, feel free to ask me for any advice about working here. Happy to help.” He waved at Izzy as he walked toward his desk.
Izzy smiled to herself. People were so nice here.
Rachel patted a stack of papers on Izzy’s desk. “There’s some paperwork here, along with a temporary badge and a few fun gifts for your first day—why don’t you go through this and then you can come find me and we can get your picture taken for your ID badge and all that good stuff.”
Izzy nodded as she sat down at her desk. “Sounds great. Thank you!”
She took her favorite pen out of her purse and diligently filled out all the paperwork sitting on her desk. Once that was done, it was time for the fun stuff. She picked up the bulky Tale as Old as Time tote bag and beamed at it. A new tote bag! She could just see herself taking this bag with her to the park on the weekends, her notebooks and pens and laptop inside, and working on that novel she’d started writing last month.
She reached inside the bag. A water bottle, a coffee mug, and…oh my God, a copy of It’s My Favorite Part! She’d been dying to read it, and they just gave it to her? Had she entered a wonderland of free books?
She grinned as she got up to go find Rachel. She couldn’t wait for her new life to begin.
Izzy walked into work on Monday morning, flashed her badge at the security guard, and made her way into the elevator. She glanced down at her phone. Thirteen more emails had popped up, just during her walk from the subway to the elevator. Five of them were from Marta. Those could wait until she sat down at her desk. Preferably after she’d downed at least half the large cup of bad coffee she was holding, but that might be asking for too much. She sighed as the elevator stopped at her floor, a sigh echoed by at least three other people in the jam-packed elevator.
She pulled her hat off on the way to her desk and shook her long braids loose. The hat had only been partial protection from the freezing-cold air outside. February in New York was so depressing. It should feel better, shouldn’t it? Winter was almost over! But instead it was cold and dreary and endless, despite being the shortest month of the year.
Her friend Priya Gupta waved at her as she walked by. Priya was another editorial assistant—she’d started at TAOAT just a few months after Izzy and she worked for Holly Moore, one of the other big editors at the company. During Priya’s first week, there had been an editorial meeting where one editor had waxed poetic about how diverse their books were that season. Of the twenty-five books in their imprint, there were three whole authors of color, none of whom were Black. She and Priya had locked eyes from across the room. They’d been friends ever since.
“I cannot WAIT until we’re in California next week, can you?” Priya said.
Izzy closed her eyes and let herself smile. “California. It’s going to be warm, and we’re going to take books out to the pool, and relax on lounge chairs in the sun, and let our skin get browner. Aren’t we?”
Priya nodded. “Oh yeah, definitely we are.”
They both knew this was mostly just a fantasy. They were going for a conference, so they’d be running around carrying boxes full of books or stacks of name tags or escorting authors from place to place nonstop. But it was nice to dream. Plus, editorial assistants almost never got to go to conferences like this. Izzy and Priya only got to go because their bosses’ most demanding authors were going to be there, the ones who basically needed a door-to-door escort in every situation. Sure, she’d be dealing with huge egos all week—even more than usual—but she was grateful for the short break from the office.
She also needed a few days away from her parents, whom she was so very sick of living with. She loved them, she did! But they always talked to her first thing in the morning and asked so many questions at all times of day, and she felt like she had to text them when she was going to be out late. It all made her feel stifled, frustrated.
Izzy got to her desk and sighed. Another stack of books had appeared there overnight. Great, more books for her to deal with. She pushed them aside.
She spent her first hour doing all the work she always started her week with—checking her own email, skimming through her boss’s email for any manuscripts that had come in overnight or fires she needed to put out, checking sales numbers for their releases from the previous week, reassuring authors and agents that yes, Marta would get back to them eventually (that was…mostly true), the usual.