"Look, I'm not asking for your opinion here, Bryce."
Kelsey slammed the laptop shut harder than she meant to. The coffee shop went quiet for like two seconds before everyone went back to their conversations. Great. Now she looked like one of those people who can't handle their business in public.
"I'm just saying--"
"No." She held up her hand. "I don't want criticism. Not from you, not from anyone."
Three weeks earlier, she'd been riding high. The marketing campaign she'd pitched to Hartwell Industries got approved without a single change. First time in her four years there that happened. She was so pumped she bought herself those expensive boots she'd been eyeballing for months.
Then came Monday morning.
"Kelsey, we need to talk." Her boss Miranda's voice had that tone. The one that meant someone screwed up big time.
The campaign flopped. Not just regular flopped—like, spectacularly crashed and burned flopped. The kind where clients start asking for their money back and using words like "unprofessional" and "amateur hour."
"It's not that bad," Bryce said now, trying to sound encouraging. He was her work friend, the guy who always brought donuts on Fridays and remembered everyone's birthdays. Sweet, but sometimes he just didn't get it.
"Not that bad?" Kelsey laughed, but it came out more like a bark. "They moved me to junior accounts. Junior. I've been there four years, and now I'm handling mom-and-pop shops who want to spend fifty bucks on Facebook ads."
She opened the laptop again. The screen showed her latest project--a flyer for Henderson's Hardware Store. Comic Sans font because "it looks friendly." The whole thing made her want to throw up.
"Maybe they're just--"
"Don't." Her finger jabbed at the table. "Don't you dare say it's temporary or that they're testing me or whatever. I know what this is."
Bryce stirred his latte. The foam made that annoying squeaking sound against the cup. "So what are you gonna do?"
That was the question, wasn't it? What do you do when everything you thought you were good at turns out to be wrong? When your instincts betray you and your confidence gets shattered into pieces so small you can't even find them to put back together?
"I'm thinking about quitting."
"Kelsey--"
"I'm serious. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this. Maybe I should go back to school, learn something practical. Accounting or... I don't know, dental hygiene."
The words tasted bitter. She'd wanted this job since college. Marketing was supposed to be her thing, the creative problem-solving, the psychology of what makes people buy stuff, all of it. She used to stay late just because she loved working on campaigns.
Now even looking at the Henderson's flyer made her stomach twist.
"You know what the worst part is?" She was talking faster now, the words tumbling out. "Everyone keeps trying to help. Miranda sits me down for these pep talks about learning from failure. My mom sends me articles about resilience. Even Derek from accounting, Derek! comes by to tell me about how his cousin's business failed three times before he made it big."
Bryce nodded. He was good at that just listening without jumping in with solutions.
"I don't want to learn from this. I don't want to grow as a person or become stronger through adversity or any of that crap. I just want to be good at something again."
Her phone buzzed. Text from Miranda: "Can you have the Henderson revisions ready by 3?"
Kelsey stared at the message. Revisions. On a hardware store flyer. This is what her career had become.
"You know what's funny?" She wasn't really talking to Bryce anymore, just thinking out loud. "I used to give my little sister advice all the time. She'd bomb a test or mess up at her job, and I'd be right there with all this wisdom about how failure builds character and you learn more from mistakes than successes."
She laughed, and this time it sounded more real.
"Turns out I'm a complete hypocrite. The second I face-plant, I want to run away and hide under a rock until everyone forgets I exist."
Bryce finally spoke up. "Maybe that's okay though."
"What?"
"Being hypocritical about this stuff. Maybe it's easier to be wise about other people's problems than your own."
Kelsey looked at him. Really looked. Bryce had been at the company longer than her, but he'd never gotten promoted past his original position. Never complained about it either, just kept showing up with those Friday donuts and acting like everything was fine.
"Do you ever think about quitting?" she asked.
"Every day." He said it so matter-of-fact that she almost laughed. "But I figure... I don't know. Maybe tomorrow will be different."
Her phone buzzed again. Miranda, probably wondering about those revisions.
Kelsey sighed and opened the laptop. The Henderson's flyer stared back at her with its Comic Sans cheerfulness. Mr. Henderson wanted to add something about a spring sale. Fifteen percent off lawn mowers.
It wasn't the campaign that was going to win awards or get written up in industry magazines. It wasn't going to prove she was some marketing genius who'd just had one bad break.
But maybe that was okay. Maybe she didn't need to be brilliant right now. Maybe she just needed to be good enough to help Mr. Henderson sell some lawn mowers.
"You're right," she said to Bryce. "I don't want criticism. But maybe--" She paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard. "Maybe I can handle making this flyer a little bit better than it was yesterday."
It wasn't much. But it was something.
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