Home is Always You

Back to Reality

Jade woke up early, as she's planning on stopping by Flour, the local bakery where she gets her favorite breakfast bagel- smothered with a bit of honey and cheese and savory honeycured bacon in between. She also gets her cappuccino to go with her bagels. Her apartment is a fifteen minute commute from the The Century Holdings building, which houses The Century PR on the 8th floor.

Since she has meetings and probably a shoot, she wore a straight cut navy cotton pants and a muted peach dress shirt tucked in and her trusty white Prada platform brogues that she finds comfortable walking in all day, despite it having a 4-inch rubber sole. Before leaving her apartment, she picked up her navy blazer and red mini Balenciaga city slingbag from the couch.

After getting her usual breakfast from Flour, Jade arrived at her building at 7:50am and decided to go straight to her office to eat and catch up on a few emails before her 8:30 meeting. After finishing her cup of coffee and checking a few emails, she headed towards one of their meeting rooms just across the hall of her own office. It was 8:15 and no one was there yet. She sat at the left side of the medium sized long table, and placed her phone and planner there. Thoughts about what the meeting is about and the urgency of it piqued her interest as this caused her to come to work earlier than expected and cut her vacation leave short.

By 8:20, her boss and members of their team arrived. She was surprised to see Matt Ruiz, the VP for publishing, there as she thought this was just going to be about an event for a client.

This must be a very important client and an urgent event to have Matt here.

After exchanging pleasantries, Veronica signaled for their meeting to start. Jade looked confused as everyone immediately looked towards her direction. "Well, you might be wondering why I had to have you here. Sorry that your leave was cut short but the client asked for you." Veronica said, matter of factly.

Jade looked even more confused. She knew she really has established a good relationship with every client, but this is the first time that she is requested by a client to handle whatever this meeting was for. She didn't know what to say. Only an "oh" escaped from her mouth. She opened her planner and as she was about to ask her boss about the client, Matt beat her to it.

"You see, this is a very big client and we have worked with them in the past. But this is different, well, different people under the company. We have a representative from them and they're currently coming up and will be here by minute. Don't be nervous. You know you're the best here, it's no wonder why they asked for you."

Jade just gave Matt a shy smile and she lowered her head. She thought about scribbling on her planner or checking her phone. She knows everything Matt said is true. She has been working hard, that's why she had been promoted to Senior PR Manager in just three years. Still, she couldn't stop being nervous. As she was about to take her phone to check on her email, the conference room door opened.

She immediately looked up and got the biggest surprise of her life.

"Hello, Jade. Nice to see you again."

To say that Jade was stunned was an understatement. It took a moment for her to compose herself and extend her hand and a faint "Hello. You too." was heard from her.

It threw everyone in the room off. They, too, were surprised that Jade and the guy that came in already know each other.

Matt broke the awkward silence by saying "Okay, we didn't know you've already met. So for everyone who's not familiar, this is Eric Park. He is the manager of one of the biggest bands from Apex Records."

Before Matt could continue, he was suddenly interrupted. Shelly, Jade's Junior stylist, gasped loudly and asked "Are we going to be working with the band Cryptic?"