Worth It

Chapter Eight

Katarina

"Send it over to Tina, and she'll go over it. Yeah, we'll be ready for print by midnight. Of course, yeah. Don't worry about it. I told you I'd stay up all night if I had to. No, it's not a problem, but as you know, anyone that didn't send in their blog and work over to me by yesterday won't have a spot.

I don't know what to tell you—Megan's rules. I know. She blasted him for this shit two meetings in a row. He obviously doesn't care about his job. Yeah, look, I gotta go. I need to finish the last-minute edits and speak to Xavier about the photos."

I hung up, and Tina walked into my office with more paperwork. She plopped them down on my desk with a loud thud.

"Tina, I need you to sift through my work emails, see who didn't send in their work, and write their names on a list for Megan. Secondly, I need you to take this."

I handed her a different file.

"Go through the edits I made, type them out, and then email them to me so I can proofread them once more. Thirdly, head to Xavier's office and show him these photos." I set another file in her hands. "And ask him one last time if he's sure about his photo picks. I won't have a repeat of last month."

"You got it, boss."

She ran out of my room, and I worked through the paperwork on my desk. I ended up kicking off my heels and lifting my hair into a ponytail to be comfortable as I worked another late shift. It felt like that's all I'd been doing lately.

Staying up late, working harder, and pushing myself to be even better at my job. The mountain of a pile decreased languidly, but as I combed through the paperwork, I was determined to finish it all tonight.

I returned to my computer, opened the tabs of every magazine paper, and focused as I read every line. Megan dumped everything on me before jetting off to Venice for a wedding. It's not like she left me with everything last minute since she did sit down and talk to me about it.

She wanted to give me more responsibilities and urged that I was up for a promotion, and I needed to ace this last-minute publishing to get the job. I never thought about being editor-in-chief, and I guess it was a good thing since I was only going up the ladder.

I sounded ungrateful, but I wasn't. I was ecstatic when she told me, but it felt so sudden, and I felt the nerves and pressure immensely. I edited a few words and images and ensured the theme was consistent with every page when Tina returned with the photos from Xavier.

I took them from her hand and flipped through them as she told me his thoughts, and I nodded, then set them down, handed her the paperwork I had already worked through, and told her to file them.

"When you're done, you can go home if you want," I told her.

"I'm with you until you leave. You've been overworking yourself. You didn't even take a lunch break all day. You sure you're okay?" She speculated.

"I'm fine. Maybe get me an energy drink from the breakroom if you don't mind."

She made a disapproving hum but nonetheless walked out of my office. I pulled up the photo folder for the magazine on my computer and double-checked that they were the photos that Xavier wanted and chose.

I was getting a lot of work done, but I could admit I was getting tired. My neck hurt, as did my eyes from staring at the screen for too long. I rubbed the back of my neck and groaned when I realized it hurt more than I admitted.

I stood up and stretched out my limbs as I walked around my office while simultaneously going over edits and ideas in my mind. It's like I couldn't shut off my brain, which was expected when it came to deadlines and us printing out the final batch of the magazine.