I was actually kind of bummed that I’d agreed to a lunch date with Cam and Ritchie actually. Which made me immediately feel guilty since I really loved Cam. And, well, he loved Ritchie.
I didn’t want to make it sound like I hated Ritchie. I didn’t. I loved him for making Cam happy. I just… I never understood the appeal, I guess.
Cam was driven, intelligent, cultured, and put-together.
Ritchie was the antithesis to everything Cam was.
He was a little lazy, dull, slovenly, and really only interested in his TV shows and manga.
I just always figured that they were a real-life example of how opposites do, indeed, attract.
They’d been together forever. And I figured that maybe Cam had changed over time to become the man I knew him to be, someone who was no longer as compatible with his old flame, but he loved him, so he was going to make it work.
Then, well, then the whole advertising shitstorm happened.
I had always been very careful never to mix my work and business life. I didn’t hire friends.
But Ritchie had all but cornered me one time and talked for almost an hour about how he could do something great for my company.
I normally didn’t feel a lot of guilt for turning people down. When you ran a company as big as mine, you had to crush dreams almost on the daily.
But this wasn’t just anyone.
This was Cam’s somebody.
I’d actually agreed before even discussing it with Cam, who’d looked absolutely horrified when I’d explained the situation to him.
At the time, I thought maybe the horror had been because his boyfriend had been so inappropriate with his boss.
It wasn’t long, though, until I realized the true reason for it.
Because Ritchie didn’t know a damn thing about advertising or marketing. It had been a horrendously underwhelming ad that would have actively hurt the brand instead of brought positive attention to it.
But I hadn’t been the one to pull the plug on it. I’d felt trapped in that situation, not wanting to hurt Cam by hurting Ritchie, not wanting to strain our relationship.
It had been Cam who’d walked into my office, sat down across from my desk, and let out a hard exhale.
“We can’t run Ritchie’s campaign,” he’d declared. “It would be PR suicide. We have to fire him.”
I’d never been more uncomfortable with a business decision as I had been that next day as we both waited for Ritchie to make his way into the office, excitedly spouting off about new—even more awful—ideas he had.
I couldn’t even clearly remember what I’d said to him since I’d been trying so hard to be gentle. But I was pretty sure it was about needing to go in a more traditional direction, about the brand being a little too young still to take big, risky moves with the advertising, that we were not as advanced as he was yet.
That kind of thing.
He’d seemed to take it well.
And Cam had never made a comment to suggest otherwise.
So I’d never brought it up again. I figured it was a buried issue. But I also did notice that there were fewer outings with the three of us.
In fact, now that I thought about it, there hadn’t been any, save for a corporate dinner party that he’d attended.
So I was excited to see that we were making some progress toward things going back to normal. Especially since he and Cam had to be thinking about rings and vows soon. I had to be on good terms with my assistant’s husband.
Lunch was going to be good.
Though I did find it mildly odd that it hadn’t been brunch, which was much more my and Cam’s style. But who was I to judge? Maybe Ritchie didn’t like breakfast foods and endless mimosas.