7 Days to Christian Grey

Day 5: The Decision

I'm sitting in my office two days later, finally cracking down and getting some work done, when I receive an email from Mitchell. The message is just a teaser:

"Ms. Williams, I hope your day is going well. I've finally made my decision about the contract, but I'd like to discuss it over the phone. I'll be calling in about ten minutes." -Mitchell Benning, Grey Enterprises

I jump up from my chair and I scream out to the entire office. "HEY GUYS!"

Nina pokes her head in my door, and raises her eyebrows in question.

"Mitchell's calling in ten minutes," I tell her urgently, "Grab Damien and Nina!"

Moments later, my group of three pile into the office and around my desk. Nina holds up an enormous green bottle with a foiled top. "I've got the cheap champagne!"

"I've got the cups!" Zara squeals.

Damien rolls his eyes, but he's laughing. "You guys are ridiculous."

"This DOES call for a celebration Damien," Nina tells him, as she peels the foil off of the champagne. "We gonna' get PAID when we finish the Grey project. Bye, bye student loans!!" She tosses the foil in his face.

Damien laughs again, "You know, I think I'll actually kind of miss them when they're gone. They've been a part of my family for so long."

The phone rings. Mitchell is calling early.

"Everybody shut up!" I say, even though they aren't talking. I clear my throat, bend over my desk, and hit the talk button. I then put it on speaker, and give my team one more hand signal shush. "Hello?" I answer.

"Ms. Williams. It's Mitchell Benning, how are you?"

"I'm fantastic, and you?" I give my team a smirk.

"I'm well. As I informed you in the email I just sent, I've come to a decision about which design agency I'll be working with to create the brand new website for Grey Enterprises."

"Yesss....?"

There's a pause. I look up, and Zara has her eyes clenched tightly closed, with her fingers twisted and held up in the air. Nina tightly grips the cork of the champagne, and Damien is tense, standing stiff as a board with his hands in his pockets.

"Unfortunately, we've decided to go with Kilgore Design."

My breath leaves my body, and my stomach drops to my feet.

"It was a very difficult decision," Mitchell says, "The work that both of you submitted was..."

He goes off into an explanation, but I'm not listening. I can't hear anything. I train my eyes on the mahogany wood of my desktop, unable to face the looks on my partners' faces. I've failed. This is the biggest contract of our careers, and I've COMPLETELY failed them.

"....I hope you understand." Mitchell is ending the call. "Ms. Williams?"

I can barely speak, "I-I....I do understand. Thank you for you time, Mitchell."

"Best of luck to you, Ms. Williams." He hangs up.

The cork of the champagne bottle pops loudly. I look up to see Nina frozen, as a flood of sparkly foam cascades down her forearm.

"Why the hell did you pop it?!" Damien asks angrily.

"I figured we'd still need alcohol." She replies, with a guilty shrug.

With a sigh, he holds out his plastic cup. "It's open now, I guess."

"Well, this sucks!" Zara cries.

I look to each of them, "You guys I'm...I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault, boss." Damien replies, "Don't beat yourself up about it. We all did the best we could."

"I just wonder where we went wrong," Nina says, "Everything was perfect!"

"The color schemes were to DIE for," Zara says. "I worked forever on those!"

Damien takes a gratuitous gulp of champagne. "Maybe Kilgore's designs were just a lot a better."

"That's not possible!" Zara retorts, "I researched every single project they have up on the internet. The websites they've built are sub-par at best. They look like projects I did my sophomore year in college!"

Zara is right. There's no imaginable way that Kilgore's work was better than ours, and I remember clearly how Mitchell's face lit up when I opened my laptop to show him the prototype. He'd looked like a puppy whose owner had just come home from work. But deep down, I know that this decision wasn't made by him.

It was made by Christian Grey.