She loved her life; she really did. It was quiet and predictable, and gave her time to fuss with her container gardens and read on rainy Sunday mornings. Her dating life barely existed, which meant she spent more time talking to Charlie the Cat than actual humans, but all in all, it was a good life.
It was all going to be okay, she told herself. Another ghostwriting job would come along any day now, and she’d be able to help her grandmother with much-needed repairs on her aging house, plus get caught up on her own bills. Gather a little breathing room.
But as she turned away, she glimpsed Why I’m a Winner, looking sad and lonely in the Aisle of Misfit Books, while Loretta’s shiny book dominated a nearby stand, and wondered if maybe she should start ghostwriting fiction, because she was getting awfully good at lying to herself.
Trent MacMillan looked out the twentieth-floor glass windows of his offices in Seattle at Get Outdoors Apparel, the eco-friendly outdoor clothing company he’d started right after graduating college. Back then, the business had been about finding a new way to support his passion for hiking, canoeing, cycling—basically anything that kept him in the fresh air and out of the confines of a building.
Beyond his desk, black-and-white orcas slipped through the deep, dark waters of Elliott Bay. Lazy sailboats wove their way in and out of the bay, their sails gleaming in the bright, crisp early spring sun. People dotted the walkways that meandered along the sound, their bodies snug in thick jackets that kept out the breeze. Trent leaned his whole body toward the view, as if he could hop through the windows and put himself on one of those boats, slip into a wetsuit and swim by the orcas, or camp along one of the wooded ridges that cupped the bay.
“You got a minute?”
The voice of his CFO drew Trent’s attention away from the world he loved and back into the canned air of his office. Get Outdoors Apparel owned the entire twentieth floor and had been designed to feel as much like being in Mother Nature as possible. Mossy-green carpet, pale-blue walls, communal work spaces with bright tables, and glass walls between the conference rooms and work spaces all gave the office an air of ease and space. A few skateboards were propped against the wall, flanked by bicycles and even a pair of rollerblades. The people he hired were as passionate about the outdoors as Trent, which was great, because they loved GOA like he did. The trouble was, they got to enjoy it while the boss worked long into the night. Again.
Trent pivoted back. “Sure. What’s up?”
Jeremy Richards, a tall, gangly man with bright-red glasses and a passion for road cycling, had been with the company from the start. In the office, he epitomized nerd, but outside of it, he was as competitive on the bike as Peter Sagan.
He’d grown up with Trent in the same middle-class, small-town neighborhood where everyone knew their names and what time their dads got home for dinner. Hudson Falls couldn’t have been more of a stereotype if it tried. Trent had left that town behind when he went to college and had never looked back. He loved the friendly vibe of Seattle, filled with so many people it kind of seemed like an endless gathering at someone’s house. Not that Trent knew anything like that firsthand, considering how long it’d been since he’d done anything other than work.
“Just need a second.” Jeremy headed into the office, trailed by Sarah Watkins, the petite, pregnant head of public relations. The two of them sat on the curved burgundy vegan leather sofa that formed the conversational corner in Trent’s office. Trent settled into the lone armchair, a replica of one he’d seen on a hiking trip through Tibet. The original chair still resided in a monastery nestled into the side of a mountain, so Trent had hired a local artisan to handcraft the wooden seat, using dowels to fasten the legs and back. The furniture maker had molded cushions to the back and encased them with thick, white wool sheared off Tibetan sheep. Just sitting here made Trent long for the winding roads and steep climbs he’d experienced there.
At the office, things were tense. Soon, they’d have their initial public offering, selling stock to outside investors for the first time. Get Outdoors Apparel had done well in its five years of existence, thanks to the support of a couple of eco-friendly celebrities and a well-targeted social media campaign. Going public with his company baby had Trent pacing the floors at night, worrying about whether he was doing the right thing. It could lead to a big expansion of the business—but then again, if investors were wary, it could mean trouble.
“About the IPO…” Jeremy began, and the room hung on Jeremy’s pause. Trent braced himself.
“What about it?”
Sarah was listening to the conversation but waiting until Jeremy had finished the fiscal conversation. Her baby bump sat like a shelf under her notebook.
“The numbers for last quarter were a little soft,” Jeremy said. “We expected Christmas to really bump up our sales, but that new line didn’t perform like everyone expected.”
Trent had designed a brand-new line of winterwear for the holiday season, but with record warm temps in the rest of the country this past winter, they’d had a higher-than-average number of returns and lower spring preorders as retailers tried to make their winter investment back. GOA had launched a fairly aggressive advertising campaign, but the needle hadn’t budged, which meant he’d spent more on marketing than he’d made in profit on that collection. Next year could be record snowfall and he could have a run on parkas, but that didn’t help this year. “How are the spring orders?”
Jeremy checked his notes and gave a little nod. “After a bit of a slow start, they’re going strong. Those windbreakers you designed are really pumping up sales. People love the pockets and versatility of them.”
Those were an idea Trent had had on a backpacking trip through Eastern Europe one summer. The weather had been warm but misty, and he’d wished for a flexible but light jacket that could carry his supplies of snacks and water.
That trip had been a solo one, after Trent and his girlfriend at the time broke up. He and Erin had only dated for a couple of months, and it was probably a good thing he hadn’t ended up traveling around the world with someone he didn’t know that well, but still…
It would be nice to have a girlfriend who loved the outdoors as much as he did. There had been one woman, once, in college, who he’d thought…
Didn’t matter. That was over. What he needed was someone like his PR person Sarah, who had gone on annual Appalachian Trail hikes with her husband until she’d gotten pregnant with their first child. Her face beamed with happiness about her future. A little flicker of envy ran through Trent.
Geez, he really needed to get outside more. This was crazy.
“Of course,” Jeremy went on, “we don’t have the returns in yet, so we won’t know how that impacts the bottom line for a couple more months, and the IPO is right in the middle of the third quarter of this year. However, to the investors, that bumpy few months doesn’t look good. We’re a startup who came out of the gate and exploded. They get uneasy about that nowadays.”