#i know way more about startups than I want to thanks to my husband's job

[pierrotwrites-hc]

Oh yeah. Lupert is industrial grade lube definitely sold by the barrel

YES. all their ad money goes to TikTok influencers and office party cocaine.

[desertno3]

everything comes back to you (sean wallace x fem!reader)

Sean Wallace is the love of your life and had been ever since you were both sixteen. This is why, in the aftermath of his father’s murder, you do everything you can to make sure no one lays a hand him.

5.4k words.

A/N: To think this all came from me watching this scene of Joe from Volume (2012) and thought… I need to write about bb Sean. There’s also this post which is mostly what was in my head when I wrote this. Also, I was going to say Sean being soft around the people he loves is my own personal headcanon but like… it is actual canon, lmao. It’s so easy to forget because the man is cold most of the time. Anyway, I clearly have too many thoughts about this character. Enjoy. (also formatting on tumblr is shit so if you want to read this with the formatting I intended, head over here to AO3)

prologue.

“What the hell are you up to?” Sean demands as he watches you bustle around your shared bedroom, effectively turning it upside down as you stuff your belongings into a travel bag.

“Business,” You say, hardly pausing to look at him.

“Business?” He scoffs like he doesn’t believe you. You don’t blame him. Finn died mere days ago and every day since then you’d been acting strange. Between consoling Sean and helping the Wallace family with the funeral arrangements, you’d been answering calls at random hours of the day and going off to meetings even though nearly all business operations under the Wallace Corporation had been halted. Sean had been too caught up in everything to question it but now that you’d just told him that you were flying off to god knows where for alleged business, he was suspicious.

“You know something, don’t you?”

You don’t reply.

“Tell me.”

When you remain silent, you see his jaw clench in anger but that’s not what makes your heart squeeze painfully in your chest. What gets to you is the hurt you can see in his eyes, hurt that his fiancé of all people is keeping things from him. You know it’s unfair to be doing this to him right now but you had no choice.

You walk up to him, taking his face in your hands.

“You just have to trust me on this, Sean,” You say softly. “Please.”

“I can’t trust anyone right now, y/n.” He says it like a plea. He needs you to be the one person he can trust one hundred percent, wants to be able to put you apart from the rest of the world who seemingly had it out for his family right now. He can’t do that when you’re acting like this.

The statement doesn’t hurt you in the slightest. You understand where he’s coming from, understand why he can’t even trust you, but still, you wish he did.

“You can always trust me,” You tell him but you know it won’t be enough. That’s confirmed when his gaze goes steely and he pries your hands from his cheeks.

“If you step out that door, don’t bother coming home.”

You step back like you’d been burned by the ultimatum. “Sean, don’t-”

He shakes his head.

“Whatever you’re doing, I hope it’s worth it.”

_________________________________________________

one.

“It’s just so annoying, you know?” You huff, falling back onto Sean’s bed and pressing the heels of your palms into your eyelids. You’re sixteen and in the throes of teen angst, irritated by the confines of your parents’ demands regarding what you currently could and couldn’t do at that age.

“Yeah, I know,” Sean replies in solidarity from where he stands near the window.

You let out a sigh, the anger that was bubbling in your chest starting to dissipate now that you’d finished venting about it.

You’re so lost in your own thoughts that you don’t realise Sean has moved from his spot across the room to the bed beside you. The mattress dips a little as he sits and slowly lies back so he’s parallel to you.

You move your hands away from your eyes and your heart jolts when you crane your neck to look at him and realise how close he is.

“Thanks for listening to my ranting,�� You murmur, starting to feel guilty that you’d come over to hang out only for it to end up being just him listening to your tirade.

He lets out a small chuckle. “Anytime.”

You smile gratefully, your heart rate accelerating as you continue to stare into his eyes. God, you like him so much. You have for a while now. As he inches closer, and you don’t know whether it’s deliberate on his part or not, you wonder what it would be like if you just kissed him right there.

“Y/n…” He says hesitantly, his gaze flicking down to your lips for a fraction of a second. “Can I-”

“Ooooh, Sean and y/n,” Billy sing-songs obnoxiously from the doorway - the doorway that both you and Sean had forgotten was wide open.

Sean leaps up from the bed and growls at his brother, who continues to tease him unfazed.

“Fuck off, Billy!”

He slams the door shut and everything descends into silence once more. You sit up and watch as Sean remains at the door, his shoulders tense. You get up and make your way over to him, feeling bolder than you ever have in your life.

“Sean,” You say softly, grabbing his attention.

He turns to you, the look in his eyes hesitant, and you use that opportunity to press your lips to his. You pull away just as quickly, gauging his reaction, but then he pulls you towards him again and this time the kiss is deeper, needier. Your hands steady yourself against his chest as his own move up to cup your jaw.

You’re both breathless when you pull away, sporting matching shy smiles as you look at each other.

“I really like you, y/n,” Sean confesses and your heart feels like it could burst.

“I really like you, too, Sean.”

~

When you and Sean get accepted into different universities, it worries you more than you let on. It would be the furthest away you’d ever lived from him and you were worried about what that meant for you both. You’d spent your last years of high school falling deeper and deeper in love with him and you weren’t ready to let him go. Not now, not ever.

“Hey,” He murmurs, noticing you’d spaced out again. “What’s wrong?”

You shrug it off but he’s not buying it. He shifts on the couch so that he’s sitting facing you and takes your hands in his.

"Talk to me.”

You end up telling him everything. How you don’t like that you’re not going to be able to see him as often as you do now, how you’re worried that the distance might put a strain on the relationship, how you really, really don’t like the idea of breaking up with him.

You half expect him to brush it off or to tell you that you’ve got nothing to worry about but he doesn’t.

“I don’t like it either,” He admits. “It’s going to be awful being so far away from you but it’s only a couple of years, yeah? We can do that. And then I’ll start working for my dad and you’ll start working for some cool startup and we can move into a flat in London. You and me.”

While your boyfriend’s vision of your future together warms your heart, you’re still hung up on the ‘couple of years’ you were going to be a good distance from each other.

“Babe,” He says, bringing your attention back to him. “We’re going to be okay.”

You nod, finally relenting and agreeing with him. There was no point in letting yourself get eaten alive with worry, not when he clearly loved you just as much as you loved him. It was going to be okay.

“I love you,” You tell him and he smiles, pressing a kiss to the back of your hand.

“I love you too.”

~

Sean’s vision of the future wasn’t too far off. You manage to secure a flat just before you both graduate and by the end of the summer, you’d moved in. Sean starts working immediately alongside Alex at the Wallace Corporation and you spend about eight months working for a new tech startup on the other side of London before Finn Wallace offers you a job. It goes over with Sean just as well as you expected it would - which was not well at all.

“Are you really going to throw away everything you’ve worked hard for? To be my dad’s fucking assistant?”

You sigh in exasperation. “I’m not throwing away anything, Sean! Do you think I’m that stupid? I’m going to use more of what I learned at uni as Finn’s assistant than I am now at that fucking sad excuse for startup and you know it!”

Sean knows you’re miserable where you currently work so you don’t know why he’s so against this.

“You don’t want me working with you, is that it?”

He sighs, palms pressing against his eyelids in frustration.

“No,” He says eventually. “No, it’s not that. It’s just… I don’t want my dad having a hold on the both of us. You’re supposed to be free from all the Wallace Corporation shit, out doing your own thing.”

Oh.

You step towards him and he instinctively wraps his arms around your waist. You press a light kiss to his lips, your fingers ghosting over the facial hair he had recently started sporting.

“Sorry to tell you this, Sean, but your dad’s had a hold on the both of us the moment we started dating. Maybe even before that. I’m sure if he didn’t approve of me, I would’ve been out of your life a long time ago.”

Sean grumbles at the realisation but he knows it's true.

You lovingly run your thumb over his cheek. "Nothing in London is out of Finn Wallace's reach."

You’re not a fool. You know Finn offered you this job for a very specific reason. If you were going to continue being with Sean, and at this point, everyone knew that was absolutely going to be the case, you were going to have to know how the company worked. And you weren’t against it. If Sean was to be the CEO one day, you refused to be the kind of wife who was oblivious to their husband’s dealings.

~

Gone is the youthful innocence of the lanky boy you fell in love with when you were sixteen. Sean is filled out and a lot more serious, trying to be more than what he is for his father’s sake. You suppose you're the same, too. It's not easy, being primed to eventually take over a multi-million dollar organisation (connected to an insidious underground one to boot) and Finn put just as much pressure on you as he did his son.

“It’s not my blood,” You mumble when Sean walks into the bathroom to find you soaking in the tub, the water around you a deep red. “Mostly.”

Wordlessly, he comes over and drains it before filling it back up with fresh water. You don’t move as he does so, still shaken and borderline catatonic from having just killed somebody for the first time. Sean doesn’t have to ask, he can just tell that’s what you’ve come back from. As he silently washes the blood from your skin, you look over to see his lips set in a tight line. You know he’s mad. Not at you. At his father, maybe. But there’s nothing he can do now. There’s no going back from this.

~

Everyone thinks you’re the power couple of the Wallace Corporation, steely and unfeeling, and you suppose in many ways you are but you also know that in other ways, you’re still the teenagers you were before, still completely and utterly smitten with one another.

“Hey,” Sean greets you, kissing your cheek before pulling out a chair and sitting beside you in the empty boardroom.

You look at him in surprise as he starts digging into some pre-packaged salad. “Hi. What are you doing?”

“Thought I’d have lunch with you.”

“It’s three in the afternoon.”

“The meeting ran overtime.”

You give him a sympathetic look and he rolls his eyes. “It’s fine. C’mere.”

You shuffle closer to him and let him tuck you under one arm while he forked salad into his mouth with the other.

“What have you been up to, hm?”

You let out an exhale, resting your head against his shoulder. “Meetings, same as you.”

You’re interrupted when Alex pops his head in with an apologetic look on his face, knowing he was disrupting a rare moment between you and Sean. Usually, the both of you would be so busy you’d only see each other in passing at work.

“Finn’s looking for you, y/n,” He tells you before disappearing again.

You sigh, getting up but not before kissing Sean on the cheek.

“I’ll see you at home.”

“Mm, see you.” He mumbles, swallowing his mouthful of salad before his hand shoots out to grab your wrist. “Wait, give me a proper kiss.”

You smile and comply, laughing when Sean pulls you back in for another and another.

“I have to go, Sean!”

“Alright, alright,” He says, letting you go. “I’ll see you later.”

~

"What's all this?" Sean asks when he comes home one night to find you in the kitchen looking like you’re in the middle of making a more elaborate dinner than usual.

"Just something to celebrate you finishing up that contract," You say, smiling when his arms circle your waist and his lips press a kiss to your cheek. "I was also thinking now that the contract's done, you've got all the time in the world to fuck me."

You all but squeal when he picks you up and carries you to the bedroom without a second thought.

"The food, Sean!"

"The food can wait," He murmurs, dropping you onto the bed. You giggle when he moves to hover above you, his lips brushing against yours. "I've got to take care of my fiancé first."

~

It’s those memories of your relationship with Sean that flood your mind as you lean against the brick wall of a Soho back alley, the hand pressing against the wound on your side not doing much to stop the blood seeping from your body faster than you would like.

Dread had filled you the moment you heard about Finn’s death and it had less to do with what happened to him and everything to do with the man you were engaged to, the one who was set to take over the company in his father’s wake. Despite Sean being the clear successor to the business, you knew Finn’s death would still leave a power vacuum in both London’s corporate and criminal worlds. You knew people would be out for Sean, trying to off him so that they could step up and take Finn’s place. And so, since the day Finn had died, you’d done everything you could to ensure Sean wouldn’t be harmed. Even after Sean’s heartbreaking ultimatum, you’d left and had been all over the country and London trying to stop the people that needed to be stopped. This last job you’d just carried out would have been it. It would have sealed the deal and would have kept Sean safe for good. Too bad you were probably going to die because of it.

You wince as your back slides further down the wall, your legs giving out and leaving you to drop unceremoniously onto the concrete. Each inhale felt like a billion knives entering your side and you knew you weren’t going to last much longer.

It was worth it, you think to yourself. It’s the last thought you have before your eyelids get too heavy to keep open, Sean’s last words to you echoing back in your mind. It may have cost you your life but was worth it if it meant you’d just ensured Sean would keep his for a long while.

_________________________________________________

two.

Despite the number of people crammed into your hospital room, the only sound to be heard is the steady beeping of the machines that had been attached to you. It had been a hell of a night for all of them and one that wasn’t over yet. Jacqueline’s frantic call to Sean about seeing you get wheeled into emergency surgery had cut short the tense discussion the Wallaces and Dumanis were having around the dining table. Sean had all but sped to the hospital, everyone else trailing behind him. Despite everything that had just been revealed to him that night, it all became secondary in comparison to the fact that Jacqueline had told him you were practically dying.

Everyone but Sean looks up when Ed steps back into the room, shoving his phone into his pocket.

“That was Jevan,” Ed announces to all of them. “Things have changed.”

“What things?” Marian asks, the tone in her voice still bitter. It’s a wonder neither she nor Sean have kicked the Dumanis out of the room but it was because there was still so much to be discussed - especially now that you were back in the picture and what happened to you remained unclear.

“The investors now want to keep Sean alive.”

A silence settles over the room at Ed’s revelation. It was mere hours ago that Alex had revealed it was the investors who wanted Sean dead.

“She knew,” Sean mutters, finally speaking up. His eyes raking over your nearly-lifeless face as you lay unconscious on the hospital bed and his mind thinks back to the last conversation he had with you. Business, you had told him then. Now, he had no doubt you had something to do with the investors’ most recent decision. “She knew they wanted me dead.”

“How?” It’s Alex who asks, vocalising the same thought Sean had been turning over and over in his mind. “How did she know where to find them? Who to talk to?”

No one has an answer. The machines beep steadily, filling in the silence until Ed sighs, a realisation dawning on him.

“Finn,” He states like that alone makes the answer clear. “She would’ve known through Finn. Think about it. When she was his assistant, he made her go with him to nearly every meeting he had.”

Everyone in the room was aware of the latter, of course. It was part of your job. It had even been a point of contention between Sean and his father at one point, why you were let in on meetings that he should’ve been in on too if he was going to take over the company one day. "She’s just there to make the coffee, son," Finn had laughed but that wasn’t true in the slightest. You were the one who took down the minutes, noted down anything of importance, kept tabs on any and all of Finn’s dealings with everybody. That was your job and through it, you ended up knowing more about the business than anyone else and you didn’t even realise it. You didn’t realise just how much you knew, how much knowledge you could use as leverage, as blackmail, until Sean’s life was on the line.

After Finn died, you did wonder whether he knew what he was setting you up for when he hired you, wondered if he always knew Sean would eventually need protecting and knew that you would do it without hesitation if you had the capability to do so.

It’s Ed, here in the hospital room, who comes to the realisation that he absolutely did.

“She knows more about Finn’s dealings with the investors than all of us in this room combined,” He continues. “Because he never actually needed her to be his assistant. He needed her to be someone who would know how to talk to them. To protect the company and its successor from them if need be.”

“Successor?” Marian asks. “You mean Sean?”

Ed nods and everyone jumps as Sean suddenly throws his fist against the bedside table in anger before whirling on the older man.

“You knew about this,” He seethes. “You knew he was doing this and you just let it happen.”

“I didn’t know this was his reasoning behind it, Sean, I promise you. But it makes sense. As his son, protecting you was a priority. Through her, Finn made sure you’d be kept safe.”

"Fuck that.” Sean spits in anger. “Fuck that. She's a priority too. You hear me? She needs to be kept safe too because if she's not alive I may as well be fucking dead."

_________________________________________________

three.

“I should’ve fucking realised that’s what she was up to. I should’ve fucking known,” Sean mutters as he looks at you, still lying there unconscious. “She risked everything for me.”

“Are you surprised?” Marian asks him. It’s just the two of them in the room now.

She, for one, isn’t surprised in the slightest. Having known you most of your life, she knew you had it in you. Maybe Finn saw that too, since it was what he ended up priming you for.

Sean sighs. He’s not surprised either. What he mostly feels is anger - at his late father for putting you in that position to begin with - and shame. He’s ashamed that while you were bending over backwards to try and keep him alive, he was doing fuck all for you. He'd even broken your fucking heart in the process. He’d regretted it the second you’d left the flat but he couldn’t get into contact with you afterwards. Either you’d changed your number or you weren’t answering his calls. He’d even hired a fucking private investigator to find out where you’d gone and what you were up to but they hadn’t come back with anything solid enough that could lead him to you. It was like you’d disappeared off the face of the earth.

"She paid you off,” Sean says bluntly the moment the PI enters the hospital room. It’s not a question. After everything that had surfaced in the last twenty-four hours, it clicked into Sean’s mind the reason the private investigator couldn’t find anything on you.

"She did,” They confirm.

Sean swears under his breath. He curses that fact that you were too good at this and curses the fact that it was probably Finn that taught you how, the same way Finn taught him. He should’ve fought harder to stop you from accepting his dad’s job offer. All those years ago.

“She paid me off,” The PI says. "But that doesn’t mean I didn't do my job."

Sean is handed a folder full of notes on your movements and a flash drive full of photos they’d snapped from a distance.

"You are a very lucky man, Sean Wallace. To have someone like her in your life."

_________________________________________________

four.

To say you’re surprised when you open your eyes to a sterile hospital room is an understatement. You were so sure you had no chance of getting out of that alley alive. Still groggy, you briefly wonder if it was the investors who managed to get you here in time - the strange puppet masters that they were - but your train of thought is halted when you realise Sean’s sister is in the room with you, sitting beside your hospital bed.

“About time you woke up,” Jacqueline says softly, a kind smile on her face. “How’re you feeling?”

Her question brings your attention to the relentless ache you feel all over your body.

“Like shit.”

She hums. “Well, you’re lucky you aren’t dead. You gave us all a scare getting wheeled in here the way you did.”

You shift a little, trying to get yourself in a position that would ease the pain somewhat. “How’s Sean?”

Jacqueline has to stop herself from rolling her eyes because of course that’s what’s on your mind right now. You coming back from the verge of death asking about Sean ran in a similar vein to the way Sean had been adamant about not leaving the hospital since you’d been admitted. Like two peas in a pod, she thinks. Always have been.

“He’s just out in the hall, actually,” She informs you. “On the phone to mum. He’s not going to be pleased he wasn’t here when you woke up.”

“But he’s okay?” You ask her.

“He’s okay.”

You let out the breath you didn’t realise you were holding, your head sinking further into the pillow.

“Good,” You say, shutting your eyes in relief. “That’s good.”

Only a few seconds pass before you hear the door open and shut and a heart-achingly familiar voice break the silence.

“How is she?”

Again, Jacqueline has to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Her brother would always ask that same question every time he returned to the room, no matter if he was gone for an hour or for just a couple of minutes. At least this time, she was glad to give him an answer other than ‘she’s the same as she was when you left’.

“She’s awake.”

Your eyelids flutter open and your heart jumps when your gaze lands on Sean.

“I’ll leave you both to it,” Jacqueline smiles when she looks between her brother and yourself. She comes over and rests her hand on yours. “I’m really glad you’re alive, y/n.”

You give her a grateful smile and watch her leave before your eyes flicker back to the man standing at the door. He looks healthy, you note to yourself. Exhausted, but healthy.

“Sean,” You whisper, breaking the silence.

“Hey,” He says softly, approaching your bedside. You slowly sit up and tears start to pool in your eyes at the sight of him here, so close to you. Safe and alive. He notices and reaches out to wipe away the stray tears that had rolled down your cheeks.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” He murmurs and you have to hold back a sob.

"I did it for you, Sean," You can barely get the sentence out, your voice catching as you start to get choked up by emotion. "Everything I did-"

"I know," He says, cupping your face tenderly. His eyes are glassy too. "I know."

“I couldn’t let them hurt you. I couldn’t-”

You stop as your tears start to flow uncontrollably. You’d kept so much of your emotions at bay as you dealt with everything and now that it was all done, they were spilling over in waves. He gently pulls you into his embrace as you cry, mindful of your injuries. One hand strokes your hair comfortingly as you cling to him, soaking the front of his shirt with your tears. You keep muttering apologies into his chest and he has to tell you to stop because you have nothing to be sorry for. He should be the one apologising, he thinks. No matter what he does for you for the rest of his life nothing would come close enough in magnitude to what you’d just done for him.

You sniffle as your sobs finally start to subside but you don’t let go of him just yet.

“I want to come home, Sean,” You say quietly, your cheek still pressed against his chest.

“You are home,” He assures you, his arms affectionately squeezing you ever so slightly. "You're here with me. You're already home."

_________________________________________________

epilogue.

Sean barely leaves your side while you recover - not for business, not for anything.

“The company needs you, Sean.”

He shakes his head. “Alex has it covered. You need me.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Believe me, I know. But still. In sickness and in health, right?”

You snort. “We’re not married yet.”

His arms wrap around your waist.

“But we will be,” He murmurs. “I would’ve married you a long time ago if I had it my way.”

“My mother would’ve murdered you.”

Sean chuckles, all too aware of it.

It was about a year and a half into your university lives that Sean decided he genuinely wanted to marry you and, of course, he had run it by your mother.

“I’ll give you my blessing, Sean,” She had told him. “But only if you promise me you’ll give it a few years until you propose.”

“Just trust me on this, okay?” She said after Sean had frowned and asked her why. “I know you love her and I know she loves you but there’s no need to rush.”

Sean had agreed reluctantly but now, years later, he understands where she was coming from. At the time, he had naively been sure there was nothing the two of you couldn’t handle. You’d both handled being at different universities so well, after all. Now, he cringes at the fact that that was his metric but he figures he couldn’t blame himself. At that age, he definitely never anticipated having to deal with all the shit life had thrown at you both in the last few months alone. He’s somewhat grateful your mum told him to wait because now, after everything, he’s more sure than he ever was about the fact that he wants to spend the rest of his life with you.

~

You’re finally back home, in your own bed, lying on your back because it’s the only comfortable way you can lay down with all your stitches and injuries yet to fully heal. You turn your head to look at Sean and you smile. He’s on his back as well, the both of you craning your necks awkwardly to look at each other.

“What?” He asks.

“This is very familiar.”

He snorts, knowing exactly what you’re referring to. He props himself up on his elbow and looks down at you.

“At least this time I’m not scared to do this.”

Your eyelids flutter close as he leans down to press his lips to yours. You reciprocate, leaning up to deepen the kiss before pain shoots up your side, making you hiss.

“Sorry,” He murmurs, pulling away.

“It’s fine, just the stitches.”

His thumb grazes over your cheek. “Rest.”

He smiles at the way you huff. You never did like staying still.

~

You let out a content sigh, sinking back in your office chair. It had felt like a lifetime since you’d been in here and finally being back felt like you were putting in the final piece in the puzzle. It was the last thing you needed to feel like everything was starting to go back to normal.

A knock on the door grabs your attention, Sean popping in to check on you. “You ready?”

You nod, gingerly getting up and following him to the boardroom for the family meeting.

~

“So you know Alex and I have been talking,” Sean says to you once everyone had filed in and taken their seats. “About what will be best for the business going forward.”

You nod.

“Things have settled down and we’ve managed to broker temporary agreements with everyone to keep them in line. However, we need to guarantee they won’t act out in the future. So we need someone heading the company who they will listen to, someone who they trust. Alex wants to continue doing the finances and I’m better off sticking to making the buildings so… we were wondering if you would be the CEO.”

Your expression goes slack in shock. “What?”

“We’ve run it by Ed and mum and they agree, too. You’re our best bet.”

You look between everyone in the room, bewildered. “Why?”

“Because you know more about dealing with the investors and shareholders than any of us,” Alex says. “You saw first-hand how Finn did his business with them, something me and Sean rarely did. And they not only know you personally but they trust you, too.”

“Y/n,” Ed pipes up. “Whether he did it deliberately or not, Finn taught you everything he knew about the most important part of running this corporation. Alex knows finance and sales, Sean knows property and asset management but you? He specifically taught you how to bargain. And bargaining and making deals is part of what keeps the Wallace Corporation on top.”

“All our shareholders, the investors, they’ll be okay with this?” You ask.

Ed gives you a look, “You tell us.”

The weight of the responsibility hits you in full force but you’re surprised when you don’t feel scared. You feel sure. They were all right, you’d been doing this already.

You nod. “They will be.”

And it’s not a threat so much as it’s just pure confidence on your part. You knew their strengths, their weaknesses, you knew you would be able to keep them in line with your words, either finding mutual ground or using certain things as leverage to get what the company needed. You could bargain with them the same way you’d bargained for Sean’s life. You could do this.

You meet Sean’s eyes across the boardroom table and he smiles at you, pride blooming in his chest at the thought of his girl, the one he had fallen head-over-heels for at sixteen, being the CEO of his dad’s company. You smile in return. God, you loved him. Your entire world, your whole heart, belonged to him. And his to you. It always had been, and it always would be.

_________________________________________________

End notes: The first kiss setting in one. I took straight from Volume, lol, and then two. is set after that meeting scene at the end of Episode 7 of Gangs but I’ve taken some liberties with that meeting and diverged from canon right before Ed tells them Finn never wanted Sean near the business because Sean’s reaction to that hurts my heart. So that’s not a thing in my fic world. Anyway! Too many thoughts about this show. Let me know if you enjoyed this fic!

[pigtownchronicles]

Chapter 2.4 - The Broker

The phone call on Monday had been cryptic:

“Brokerage,” a rather deep voice had said on the other end of the line, after Barry dialed the number he’d been given.

“Yes, hello. My name is Barry Gersholm. I was given a card with this number to contact a Mr. Ian Miller.”

There was a bit of silence. “Who gave you the number?”

“A fellow named Hugh.”

“Are you buying or selling?”

“Excuse me?”

“Buying or selling?”

“I guess...I’m not sure? I was told that I...uh...had some assets that might be valuable. Selling, I guess?”

A little more silence than before. The man asked him for his name again, gave Barry an address to write down, didn’t repeat it, and then hung up.

It was not the sort of business contact Barry was used to dealing with, but then, nothing about Hugh, or Depot, had been anything like he’d expected. The more he thought about it, though, the less likely it seemed like something he ought to do. He had no idea who this person was. If he told Dennis where he was going, he would have a conniption--taking a drug dealer up on a possible job offer with a third party, without knowing anything about what they did? Was he an idiot? Maybe he was, he thought, but at the same time, it was exciting. He couldn’t really remember the last time he’d taken a risk--an actual risk, barebacking while on PrEP didn’t really count, not that Dennis could know about that either. That evening, he thought about telling him, but didn’t. Tuesday morning, at the office, he spent all day trying to figure out how to get out early. He had never been good at believable excuses. Richard checked in with him again, and his smarmy fucking demeanor made him want to be there even less.

“Hey Richard, I’m gonna take off early, get a little work down at home this evening,” he said, “I got a doctor’s appointment, hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, any meetings you might miss?”

“Nothing on the schedule.”

“Then no problem. Oh, but in exchange, you have to promise to come out with the rest of the team on Friday. I want us to have a little party, you know, to celebrate our near completion of the project.”

More likely, it was to celebrate his own promotion, but Barry agreed to go. If nothing else, it would be beer he didn’t have to buy on a Friday night. Around three-thirty, he packed up his stuff and left the building, and about ten to four, he arrived at the address that had been given to him. It was a rather dilapidated house, looking like it had survived a few rezonings in its time--on one side was a liquor store, and on the other, a little string of businesses being run out of repurposed buildings like this one, until they ran up against a sizable apartment building that took up the rest of the block. Unlike those other little shops, this one didn’t seem to have a sign anywhere around it, but the address was right. He walked up the steps, gave a knock on the door, and after a moment, it opened up, revealing a rather tall fellow in business casual, maybe a bit younger than Barry was. “Barry, right?” he asked. It was the same voice from over the phone, but in person, he was putting off a little more charm.

“Yeah, you must be Ian,” Barry said, and the man nodded as they shook hands. 

“Come on in, let’s have a chat.”

Barry followed him into the living room, which still felt more like a living room than the meeting room it might be used as. There, sitting in a sagging armchair, was Hugh. Ian sat in a second armchair, leaving Barry the couch in front of them both. He gave a little nod to Hugh, but he wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. If he’d been suspicious that they were selling drugs before, he was almost certain of it now, and he wasn’t sure this was the sort of move he wanted to make. Best to go through the motions, though. He pulled his resume out and handed it to Ian, who set it aside without looking at it. “Hugh and I have been talking about his impression of you on Friday, and I asked him to join me for our chat today, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t,” Barry said, “I suppose I just feel a bit in the dark about all of this. What exactly is it you do here?”

“The growth in this part of the city over the last year has opened up a number of possibilities that would have been unimaginable before,” Ian said, putting on a tone not unlike half the tech startup gurus who were rotated through his office for various seminars each year, “I have found myself in a rather fortuitous position, to be able to offer folks the ability to take part in a commodities trade unlike anything that has been in existence before this.”

Barry nodded along, and then decided he didn’t quite feel like nodding. He was being sold a line of bullshit already. “That all sounds very fascinating, but it doesn’t tell me anything--I’ve been in sales long enough to know a pitch when I hear one. Just be straight with me.”

Ian looked over at Hugh, and gave him a look that could have meant a number of things, part shrug, part curiosity, perhaps.

“I’m a broker, as it says on my card. But what I buy and sell isn’t anything...physical, exactly. I’m in the business of buying and selling emotions, experiences, pasts and futures. Livelihoods.”

“Sounds like drugs.”

Ian gave another one of his little shrugs. “You sound like that’s what you were expecting, but no. I know Hugh has many hustles, but this isn’t drugs, not exactly. Like I said, I’m merely a broker, trying to help men find their way to happiness. Everyone has things they don’t like about their life, of course. But to someone walking down the street, perhaps that life you have is exactly what might make them happy. You in turn, might desire aspects of another. My services and skills help men like this connect, and make one another happy. To give each other the assets that they no longer appreciate.”

“That...what does that even mean?”

“Here, let me show you something,” Ian said, picked up a remote control, and turned on the TV hanging on the wall.

Barry recognized the location--it was the couch where he was currently sitting, but instead, a rather slender, twinky fellow was sitting there. “I’ve tried to gain weight all my life, I guess. I’ve always just had this strange desire to be...fatter. I can’t really explain it. I know I should be happy with how I look, but I’m not,” the young man said, “Can...you really help me?”

The video cut to the young man lying on a table in a sterile looking room. It looked like hyperlapse, what came next, but it was too smooth. The man’s body began to swell, packing on weight while he laid there, seemingly in a matter of moments. He went from a lean 170 to well over 300 pounds, and after the strange transformation, the video cut back to the couch, where the...new man was sitting, grinning with delight.

“How are you feeling? Adjusting well?” Ian’s voice said from off screen.

“Fuck, I’ve never felt better man, I finally...feel like I have the body I was supposed to have. I know that sounds a bit sick, but I can’t thank you enough.”

Ian paused the video, and waited a moment while Barry digested what he’d just witnessed. “That’s just one of many, many testimonials I could show you. Some changes are physical, like this young man. Others want a different persona. Others want a different line of work, a different past, a different family. Anything that you want to sell, I can try and find a buyer to connect you with, or if not, I’m also happy to take unwanted aspects in exchange for payment.”

“I...that’s unbelievable.”

They watched a few more videos, and either Ian should have been in Hollywood doing special effects, or he was telling the truth. Hugh slipped in then, and made a pitch. “I could see that you wanted another chance there at the club. A younger body, carefree, able to dance the night away, resilience and vigor and all of those wonderful things. You, in turn, have a respectable career, a husband who you seem at odds with. But those things could be an asset to someone else, and you, in turn, could have what you wanted on Friday night.”

Ian had gotten up for a moment, went to a glass display case on the wall, pulled a little jar from it, and returned to where they were sitting. He tapped a small bit of the powder out from inside the jar, and made a small line on the coffee table. “Here, this isn’t the real thing, but I’ve managed to...synthesize, some of what I do downstairs for folks. If you want a little taste of what I can offer you, try this.”

“So it is drugs.”

“It’s an emerging product line, still in development. I merely want to help you fully understand what I can offer you. I assure you they’re completely safe. The effect only will last a few minutes.”

A bit suspicious, and thinking it would probably be just a little bit of coke, since all of this had to be a very complex ruse, or scam, or...something. He took the hit anyway, because he felt like he deserved a little coke for listening to this bullshit, but what happened when it hit him was unlike any drug he’d experienced before.

He wasn’t...in the house anymore. He was in a club. What club didn’t matter, what did matter was the pounding of the music, the throbbing energy in his body, and when Barry looked down at himself, it wasn’t...his body he was looking at. He was slender, and young, and vibrant, with a...sizable bulge in the front of the skimpy underwear he was wearing with nothing else. But he wasn’t there to look at himself, he was there to dance, and vibe, and it felt like he could do this forever. The euphoria that washed over him wasn’t from a drug, it was the sheer thrill of that moment, and just as he grasped it and held it, believed it, it was gone--and he was sitting on the couch again, eyes tearing up slightly, while Hugh and Ian watched.

“Now do you understand? That could be you. For real.”

“I think...I think I need to go,” Barry said, wiping his eyes. That had been....too exquisite. Too tempting. He needed some distance to think about this.

“No worries, my offers are always open ended. You take the time you need to come to the decision that would make you happy. You wouldn’t be the first to walk away from it--sometimes, knowing what you could have is enough to make you appreciate what you already possess. I’m merely offering you the possibility of something else, alright?”

Barry retreated back to his car, and just sat in the silence for a while. He could feel it, the pulse of the music in his bones again...but was that really what he wanted? It would be pleasurable, sure. Fleeting, maybe. But what was really missing from his life didn’t seem like something that could be bought and sold. But then, what if it could be?

***

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[ktheist]

interlude: sit still, look pretty. [1]

a spin off from nice guys finish last fic.

synopsis. yoongi is like the embodiment of the dark side of the moon while jungkook is the luminous, shining side that showers you with his light. one grounds you down to earth and the other makes you want to reach your hand up and touch the cosmos.

but you can’t be making decisions on your own now. everything you do and all you will do, is subject to the happiness of the little bundle of joy you had along the way of your fallen marriage.

and it’s obvious as day, your daughter won’t accept anyone else as her father other than min yoongi and nobody else as her mother other than you.

muses. ex-husband!dad!yoongi x ceo!mom!reader x co ceo!jungkook

genre. slice of life

chapters. previous | next

words. 1.2k

note. i’ve been pretty busy with classes and assignments so i decided to do this. i’m more of a ‘let the story flow’ kind of person so i can’t say for sure how many chapters it’ll be lmaooo 

x

you like yoongi - you were married and you loved him then but you still like him now. maybe it’s the way he keeps it real with you. tells things straight to your face. 

you like it. keeps you grounded.

but that’s also why you divorced him. sometimes his words are a little too blunt. a bit too imposing even. felt like he was holding you back from what you wanted to do most which was running your own startup with your rival-turned-co ceo.

“you’re gonna let our three year old hang out at the office on the day you’re supposed to pick her up from kindergarten but failed to do so, so i had to drop her off here because you said by the time i got here, you’d be done with the meeting,” like right now when he uses that judging tone of his and that stone face without any trace of empathy whatsoever, “which you clearly aren’t?”

you don’t hold back from crunching your nose with displeasure. a hard frown settling on your features. you can feel hwayoung physically shifting in your arm. her giggles have died down and you know for sure, if you glance down, you’ll see her smile taking a turn downwards. she may be young but she’s not blind to the tension that lapses between her mother and father.

so for your daughter’s sake, you press a kiss on her forehead and drop on your knees to set her down on her little feet. 

“baby, why don’t you play with auntie joy while i talk to your dad?” she’s still giving you those puppy eyes - the same ones you used to give to yoongi throughout the three years you spent raising her together - when you signaled for joy to come and take her.

she doesn’t protest, letting joy hold her hand and guide her out of your office, the squeak of her shoes cutting through the silence until it’s out of shot.

“seriously, what’s your problem?” you run a hand through your hair, pushing the strands you had initially styled to frame your face back, “i told you it was a really important meeting. i stepped out to say thanks for doing me a favor even though it’s rude to walk out of a meeting with the directors. hwayoung doesn’t care - i brought all her toys here so she could play with them while waiting.”

his eyes widens in mockery, voice raising into a pitch “oh wow. you went out of your way to make sure your daughter isn’t bored. con-fucking-grats. do you want a pat on the back for a job well done?”

then his voice drops, eyes boring into yours like he’s the least bit impressed, “she wouldn’t even have to be here if you did your part as her parent and picked her up after school like you’re supposed to.”

“not everyone has the luxury to laze around at home and go ‘oh! look at the time. time to pick up my daughter because i’m fucking min-no work-yoongi’.” you retort, heart pounding rapidly in your chest, face hot from pure unadulterated anger that begins to make its course the way only min yoongi can.

it’s only until a moment and yoongi’s crestfallen face later, do you realize the weight of your words. 

“wow.” the man nods, tongue prodding from inside his cheek. he walks backwards slowly, palms held midair as though in surrender.

but you don’t feel like a winner as you watch the man you used to share your fears and aspirations with, twirl around and walk straight out of the door like he’s walking out of your life. again.

“fuck.” you hiss under your breath, hand swiping the mug of pens closest to you off the desk. a shattering clamor cuts through the leftover tension.

it’s a whole solid minute later that jungkook pops his head into your office, the rest of his body outside still visible from the see through wall. a whistle escapes his mouth at the sight of pens and glass pieces strewn across the floor, a shard glinting dully next to your own heel.

“trouble in paradise?”

he strides in, hands buried in the pockets of his cobalt blue trousers.

“piss off.” you grunt, shooting him a probably uncalled for glare.

jungkook doesn’t seem offended, eyebrows knitting together in a rather concerned frown, “hey, we’re a team now. i hate to see you like this as much as i hate to see you regret it when you step out of that door still mad over what your ex-husband said.”

“or did.” he adds as an afterthought.

“he didn’t do jack shit.” you confess, shoulders slouching, “i called him an unemployed loser even though i know he quit his job so he could pay more attention to hwayoung - fuck, i’m an asshole.”

you pinch the bridge of your nose just between your eyes, willing the memories of yoongi’s crestfallen face away even though you know it’ll haunt your dreams for at least a week. 

“that, you are.” jungkook nods from the corner of your eye.

“but you’re not a bad mother, ____. i saw how much you wanted to be the one to pick hwayoung up from school but also didn’t want to miss the meeting. in the end you chose to stay and lead the meeting. thanks to you, it looks like we’ll be coming to an agreement faster than we thought we would.” he adds, and that’s the thing about jungkook, he doesn’t sugarcoat it but he doesn’t necessarily throw a brick in your face and tell you to take it for what it is.

and all of a sudden, you feel like a dead weight have been lifted off your shoulders. your spine feels a little straighter and your chest more puffed than a minute ago.

“meeting starts back in five. let’s wrap it up so you can go back to being a badass mom.” the corners of his lips tilt higher just in the briefest second before he twirls on his feet and walk out of your office.

you tuck the hem of your skirt down, smoothing out the creases and retying the ribbon around the neckline of your peach colored blouse before strutting out of your own office, head held high, heels clicking against the floor, announcing your return to the meeting room.

[sooghostwriter]

Chef Soo. Three meals a day

Pairings: Do Kyung Soo x OC (Nameless, but I refuse to use Y/N)

Genre: Romance, AU (?), fluff, slow burn (?), crazy story, a tiny tiny bit of angst.

Dinner: Chicken Stew

The sample and the buyer

She was one of those young millionaires. She had just won her first million after opening her startup with her business partner. She always dressed well, not in high heels or two-piece suits, but she owned a Gucci backpack, and his friend Jongin said it was very expensive. She also had a very expensive smartwatch and phone. But those were the only rich person thing she had. She was sweet, down to earth, funny, and very polite. She visited his small restaurant when she got her first big deal and haven't stopped coming there since then. Almost every day of the week. By herself or with her coworkers. She never ordered anything, she only told him "Give me whatever you want, I trust you" The first time she did that, he almost had a breakdown. That was way too much responsibility. It amused him that she kept doing it after becoming a regular client. Kyung Soo never asked her why she did that, he didn't have the guts. After a couple of months of serving her whatever she wanted he began cooking especially for her. He knew she liked spicy food, so he prepared a special batch from that day’s menu and added wasabi to it. He realized he liked her when he began cooking just for her. A single portion, a dish that didn't figure on that day’s menu. Maybe a dish that he wanted to try out, or maybe that day there was an especially big abalone at the market so he would buy it and cook it especially for her. One day he almost got caught. She and another two coworkers came for dinner. They asked for that day’s vegetarian menu, and she only smiled at him. She didn't have to voice her wish anymore. That day he cooked her a portion of homemade ravioli. Then another coworker arrived and asked for her dish. He panicked for a while until he found the perfect excuse "That was the last portion, sorry" That was the only close call. In general, their relationship was very business-like. They spoke on first-name basis though, but nothing more.

---

She was walking down the street with Junmyeon, looking for the best place to celebrate their first big deal with the biggest app developer of the country. They passed by several bars, but they needed more than a beer. She stopped in front of a small entry with a small but elegant sign that said, Chicken Stew. There was a nice sent coming from inside the place and it looked cozy. The thermometer outside was marking some good 2 degrees, so they got inside without thinking too much about it. Inside there was an open kitchen and some tables scattered around the place. The place was really warm, decorated with simple pieces but very assertively. There were some tables free, one of them just in front of the kitchen. She dragged Junmyeon to that table and sat down feeling excited. She wanted to celebrate with her friend and colleague but also enjoy some good food. That night they settled for a bottle of good wine and two portions of Chicken Stew. They had a small but delicious menu available at night but they settled for the Chicken Stew because it was the recommendation of the Chef, Kyung Soo. 

--- Chicken Stew was Kyung Soo’s baby. At a young age, he had decided to become a chef. Not only because he wanted to cook, or because he enjoyed following recipes or coming up with his owns. He wanted to be a chef because he liked giving people food. Not only for their compliments. Watching a person sigh in happiness with the first spoon full of food, bringing spoon after spoon to their mouths too quick for their well-being was what filled him with pride. He saw his job as an art, although it could sound a little bit too full of himself it felt like art. But opening his own restaurant was an odyssey. No bank trusted a young chef. Rent was expensive and the price of kitchen supplies was only reasonable if that industrial kitchen was made of gold. It was impossible for him to open his restaurant with his savings and the money his dad could borrow him. He was about to take a job on a cruise, just so he could save money, when a friend gave him an idea. It was a new thing that had arrived in Korea, but it was already well known and popular around the world. Sperm banks. “My sister and her husband bought a sample from them, since they were having issues conceiving” His friend told him “Of course it is super secretive and all, the pay is super good, you should try it” And he did. Taking advantage of his privilege as a man. Because getting a sample wasn’t that hard, he had been getting samples since he was fourteen. The nice nurse gave him paperwork to sign, his check and a number and also made a very nice comment about his appearance and how healthy he was and how popular those kinds of samples were “Your sperm could be useful for you someday, so save this number, is the number of your sample” 1313. What a coincidence, it was the number of the place he wanted to rent, and it was perfect for his restaurant. So that morning after leaving the clinic, he went straight to the real state agency and put the deposit for his soon to be restaurant and then called his friend Jongin offering him a job.

--- Since she was a teenager, she had two dreams. Being her own boss and become a young mom. She always hated having someone telling her what to do, like everybody. And growing up with parents like hers, specifically a mother like hers, she always believed that becoming a mom before turning 30, a young mom, was the way to go. But to do that she had to become the boss first. It happened before she had planned it. She was 27 when she and Junmyeon got their first check for more money she could have ever imagine. As she put her signature on the contract she kept repeating to herself that today was day one of the quests of becoming a mom. When they entered Chicken Stew and she saw the cute chef behind the counter she thought to herself: I bet he could make some cute babies. 

--- It was very amusing to her how she never considered a man on this plan of becoming a mother. In a beginning she did. But every boyfriend was a disappointment. A one-night stand could do the job, and yes she could get pregnant, but also she could get a nasty STD. She considered inviting Junmyeon into the project. And she was sure he would help her. But she felt kind of shitty offering him to be a silent partner when she knew how much he craved to have a family in the future. But he gave her an idea that she could only expect from a businessman like him “In-vitro” He said as he was munching his dessert. It was lunchtime and they were seated at the back of 'Chicken Stew'. She had already finished her fettuccini Alfredo that Kyung Soo served her and skipped dessert because she was already full “I don’t know why you haven’t thought about it already, it’s way more expensive than meeting a guy in a bar but safer” “I never planned any of this with a partner actually, if there was one, good, but if there isn’t, good too” “You don’t want to wait a little bit though? Maybe Kyung Soo grows a pair and invites you dinner one of these days” She chuckled bitterly “Bold of you to assume that I don’t see this as a dinner invitation” She gestured to the empty plate “It’s not” “It is! He cooked for me!” Her friend rolled his eyes and patted her hand condescending “Don’t do that, he is going to think we are together!” “No he won’t, I came here with a date the other day” He distracted her for a couple of minutes so he could tell her about this date, but once Jongin came to ask them if they needed something else, Junmyeon came back to the previous discussion  “Look, I know that this relationship thing is not your thing, I’ve known you for years, when we were in high school I thought you were a lesbian, then I thought you were asexual until the first year of uni when you got your first boyfriend, that didn’t end up well…my point is that is not often that I see you showing interest in another human being…but also, you can’t stop your life from moving forward just to wait for a significant other” “This is all very cute, but where are you going with this” He cleaned his mouth, organizing his ideas because he was also a bit lost “My point is…I take back what I said before, get pregnant and pursue Kyung Soo, or don’t, just live your life, and if you want to become a mom right now, do it, I will support you” “I really want to be a mom” He saw her sparkling eyes “I know, you have been saying that since we were kids, so go ahead and do it, also, I know I’m your only friend so yes, I will go with you to the doctor if you need me” She thanked him, although she already knew that. When her friend left the restaurant, she stayed there looking on her computer for fertility clinics. There weren’t that many, but they all had a very good reputation. She was about to call one of the clinics when Kyung Soo interrupted her “Your friend already paid, I don’t want to bother you, but I’m about to close to prepare for dinner, but you can stay If you want” She looked around the place and noticed that she was the only one left “I’m so sorry I was so focused looking at…at something here I didn’t notice, I will be going” Kyung Soo put one hand on her shoulder stopping her from standing up, cleaning his other hand  in his apron nervously “Don’t worry, you are free to stay, really is nothing, I’m going to be back there working, you can stay” “I don’t need to go to the office and I really enjoy being here, so If I’m not bothering you…I think I will stay” He didn’t answer, only smiled at her and walked back to the kitchen. She kept looking at him from her table. She always did that when she went there for lunch, especially when she was there with a big group, in that way no one would notice it. She liked how focused he was. How organized he was. During these months of eating regularly at the 'Chicken Stew' she was able to visit the kitchen twice, and she was always taken away by how clean it was, even after lunchtime. Kyung Soo was a clean man. She liked that. Also, the food was unparallel. All the flavors merged perfectly. She was sure she had tried every single dish it was there to offer and they were all amazing. Several times she went to fancy restaurants with potential business partners and the food was never as good as Kyung Soo’s food. Kyung Soo was an amazing chef. She liked that. But going to the 'Chicken Stew' was also a great experience in terms of social interaction. One time when the place was packed with people she shared a table with a man who looked a bit under the weather to say the least. His appearance wasn’t the best. One of her co-workers asked him what was going on and he opened to these three strangers “I’m pretty much homeless now, I have been leaving in a net café for two weeks now, and the little money I have I use it to pay for that place, Kyung Soo met me in a very bad situation and brought me here for food, I have been eating here for three days, I have tried to pay and he stopped me from doing so, he gave me this look…you better follow what he says” He finished with a merry laugh. Then she heard several stories like that. A high schooler who went there to eat three days a week ended up being a hard-working kid with really crappy parents. An old couple that went there every Friday were two retired who sometimes had to choose between food or medicine. All of them eating for free thanks to Kyung Soo. He was a remarkable man. She loved that. She kept looking at him as he was chopping tomatoes. There was a peace around him. She barely knew him, but she was sure Kyung Soo was an easy-going guy, trustful, competent and caring. She wanted to know him and see if she was right. She wanted to talk to him. Hear his voice. Ask what his favorite food was. Why did he become a chef? Why Chicken Stew? She had so many questions. And Kyung Soo was right there, probably feeling observed by her. She stood up and walked to the kitchen counter, knocking at the steal surface as if it was a door. He looked up fighting a smile and asked if she needed something. She asked him if they could talk. Kyung Soo felt a rush of something taking over.  He knew she was coming, he hoped so after feeling observed by her for so long. He thought she wanted something else to eat, maybe the portion of Crème Brule she didn’t eat at lunch. He wasn’t expecting her to ask him to talk. He wasn’t expecting the questions. The need to know about him. He wasn’t expecting her laughs and interest. He wasn’t expecting how relaxed he felt answering her questions. He wasn’t expecting how easily he asked back. He wasn’t expecting to realize that she was maybe interested in him.

After that Kyung Soo was a little bit more open about his feelings. One time he cooked a chicken and tomatoes stew just for her and when her coworkers asked if they could have the same, he answered with the truth. He cooked that just for her, it was a personal portion. Everybody went silent and when he met her eyes, she was smiling fondly at him. He noticed once that her hair was getting on her way and she complained to her lunch mates about forgetting to bring something to hold it. And it happened often. She always found a way to fix it, a headkerchief or pencil. One day as he went with Jongin to buy something for his niece he found a cute hair tie with a cute chick on it. He bought it, ignoring Jongin when he asked him for who it was. The next day, when he brought her plate, he left the hair tie next to it. Thank god that day she came to eat by herself. He didn’t have the guts to do that with an audience. He walked away quickly and didn’t come back to her table. But a couple of minutes later Jongin came to him with a silly smile, raising a cheeky eyebrow “So the cute chick was for her?...You are so romantic…just so you know, she is wearing it” He lifted his head quickly,  and saw her slurping her ramen noodles, with her hair high in a ponytail with the yellow hair tie bright on her head. 

--- One Monday she didn’t come for lunch. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday passed and she didn’t come. When Friday came she asked her coworkers what happened to her. They said she was abroad because of work. Two weeks passed. He was missing her. Sighing around the restaurant, feeling weird without cooking that extra dish just for her. Jongin began to worry, bringing him his favorite coffee or taking him out during the weekends. But he was still feeling down. He missed hearing her laugh and the way she would mess with her co-workers. It was way too soon to feel lovesick. But that was exactly how he was feeling. The chick hair tie was next to the cash register waiting for its owner. Then one Friday night she arrived with Junmyeon. He had one arm around her shoulders and she looked like she had just cried. They sat at a table in front of the kitchen counter and in between sobbing she laughed happily to something he said. Kyung Soo felt a whirlpool of emotions. He was so happy to finally see her after so long. But he imagined a friendly comeback. An exchange of polite words and then he would bring her some food. But now he didn’t know what was going on. She was crying but she didn’t look sad. Her friend was beyond happy and laughed at her when she broke into tears again. And when he made eye contact with Kyung Soo, he waved at him, asking him to come closer. He felt insanely awkward standing in front of them, it was impossible to read the atmosphere there “Is everything ok?” He asked unable to hid how worried he was “Kyung Soo, everything is ok, more than ok, we came to celebrate, my friend here” His voice broke with a bit of emotion “My friend here just had a  pregnancy test at the bathroom of our office and she is pregnant” She heard her squeal, hiding her face on her hands and then looked up at him. She looked so beautiful. Her face was covered in tears, yes. But she was happy. So happy he could almost see a bright shine surrounding her “You are pregnant?” He asked, not sure why. He was happy to see her so happy, but a dark sadness settled on his stomach. You need two to be pregnant. He didn’t know she had a boyfriend. Or maybe it was Junmyeon’s. “Could you bring us a bottle of champagne to celebrate? Oh, you can’t drink…well, Kyung Soo and I can drink you drink some water” Kyung Soo moved in autopilot to the kitchen and brought a bottle and champagne and one of water and three glasses to their table. Junmyeon opened said bottle and served the drinks. He was as happy as his friend, which made the theory of him being the father even more plausible. He felt like biting his head off. She grabbed her glass, took a deep breath and made a toast “This is for me, my child and his or her father…sample 1313” Kyung Soo dropped his glass to the floor. He felt their stares on him and despite knowing that he had to move he just couldn’t. 1313 was a number he was very conscious about. How much coincidence could be involved in this entire situation? Did she purchase his sample? He was brought back to life by Junmyeon patting his shoulder nervously “I guess our friend is as surprised as us…Kyung Soo are you ok?” “Yeah, yes, yes, I’m ok, Congratulations” His hand was numb, still in the air and his glass in the floor spilling wine on his black shoes. Jongin came quickly to help him clean and thanks to that he came out of his stupor. He was hating himself violently now. He made a fool of himself. There was no way he could explain this behavior. A reaction like out of a soap opera. She said she was pregnant, and he dropped his glass of wine. This was ridiculous “Sis, you said sample? What do you mean?” His beloved Jongin came to the rescue and their focus changed from him to Jongin “Oh, well you see, I really wanted to be a mom, since I’m a little girl, and I want to be a mom now that I have money and a good job and I’m young, but I lost hope in men, no offense,  and I don’t have the energy to try right now, so I went to a fertility clinic and I got inseminated” Kyung Soo felt like fading. Cold sweat ran down his neck and back, there was no way this world was so small that the woman he liked got inseminated with his sample. No way. There was absolutely no way. Life couldn’t be this…bizzare. “Sis, and your sample is number 1313? As the number of our restaurant?” She looked at Junmyeon nervously looking for help “That is a huge coincidence right?” He tried to help with something that was believable “It was a good sample” She commented with almost a whisper. This sample talking was making her very uncomfortable, especially with these friends by proxy. Jongin smiled at her and took a long step, reaching for her with his arms, hugging her “I’m very happy for you sis, I hope you have a beautiful and healthy child” She hugged him back because his bear hug was too good not to answer it. Kyung Soo was outraged. Not because his best friend was hugging the woman he liked. He was shocked because now he had to hug her too. It would be awful if he just stood there. And there is no such thing as a congratulatory handshake to someone who announced her pregnancy, which will also disarm him. Jongin let go of her, holding to her hand patting it caringly and turned around sending him a wink. He was going to chop him to pieces later. Kyung Soo dried his hands on his apron and went to hug her. He didn’t know how it looked for the rest, but for him, it was an amazing hug. There were approximately two steps separating them. She took one and he followed. She raised her arms to his shoulders and he went for her waist, circling his arms around her pulling her softly against him. She rested her chin on his shoulder and sighed contently. Her hair tickled his nose, making him smile. He took a deep breath and said what he really wanted to say “I’m very happy for you, you should do want you want, and I’m glad one of your dreams is coming true” He rubbed her back and his head was shouting at him that the hug was long enough, but she wasn’t letting him go. So he didn’t either “Thank you Kyung Soo” She said, patting his back and cuddling deeper in his arms. She opened her eyes and saw Jongin exchanging stares with Junmyeon. They were both holding their laughs and being all giddy, Jongin clapping his hands silently and Junmyeon covering his mouth with both hands. Just then she realized what was she doing. She really didn’t want to let him go. He felt so warm and solid between her arms. He smelled amazing, a mixture of his perfume and the smells of his kitchen. His arms were strong but held her tenderly. His chest vibrated against hers when he spoke, and his words resonated on her ears. His voice sounded different, and the tone of his words was new to her. He sounded happy, yes, but there was a melancholy behind them. She didn’t want to let him go. And when she felt him move she could only tight her embrace. Could she start blaming the pregnancy for this? Pregnant women were…emotional, right? Her friend and Jongin kept sharing silly smiles and her long-time friend began making signals to cut it, mouthing “enough, enough” She jerked, waking up from her dreamy moment and let go of him, sliding her hands down her shoulders and arms. He held to her hands like Jongin did and sputtered “I hope you have a peaceful and healthy pregnancy too” “We can help you with that, right chef? Bring us what the nutritionist recommends and he will cook it for you” Jongin assured sweetly. She thanked him but made sure to take pressure away from him. Kyung Soo didn’t let her finish “I would be glad to help you with that” She smiled delighted, feeling a bit guilty, but not surprised by his words. That was the kind of man he was “Ok, can we eat now? I’m very hungry and we have to celebrate” “Jongin and I were about to close the kitchen, but we have some food left, we will prepare something fast and bring it to you” “Thank you, you two should join us” Jongin was about to answer, thrilled with the idea, but he stopped him by pinching his waist “We need to clean and prepare some things for tomorrow, but thank you for the invitation” He grabbed Jongin’s upper arm and pulled him to the kitchen “Hyung, hyung! What are you doing?” He complained on their way to the kitchen. He pulled him to the cleaning station that was away from the eating area and stood in front of him with his hands on his hips  “Do you hate me? Do you want me dead?” “No, no, why are you asking me that?” “Why did you do that?!” Jongin was frowning in confusion, and he knew that he didn’t do anything wrong, he was just a warm person, but he needed to blame someone now and vent a little bit “Why did you hug her?” Jongin’s face changed from confusion to understanding and a mocking grin took over his face “No, is not what you are thinking” Kyung Soo predicted “Since you hugged her I had to hug her too!” “So?” “So?! You know how I feel about her, that was the hardest thing I had to do, hug her and let…and let her go, and then you offered myself to cook for her” “Hyung, I was doing you a favor there, you were considering doing that anyway weren’t you?” Kyung Soo snarled and walked past him into the kitchen. He couldn’t stand another word from Jongin. He was too right. And it annoyed him. The night was cold and he was especially tired that day. Jongin’s steps were longer than his in their way to the flat they shared. He liked it like that, it gave him a bit of privacy. He was feeling like crap. On one side he was thrilled for her pregnancy. Because if she was happy he was too. He was sad she didn’t wait for him. But what saddened and terrified him the most was the possibility that sample 1313 was his sample. He felt guilty for not telling her, but also selfish because why did she need to know, the whole thing of going for the insemination was keeping this between her and her child. No man in between. He was terrified of the future, what if she began bringing her child to the restaurant, what was he going to do? And he couldn’t avoid feeling happy, he wasn't bothered by the idea of having a kid with her. There were way too many emotions swimming around his head and chest, he felt like crying “Kyung Soo, Do you care if she is pregnant?” Jongin asked stopping on his steps, but not turning around “Jongin” He called his friend, almost in tears. Jongin turned around alarmed “What? what is it? Don’t be sad hyung” His friend was pouting, rubbing Kyung Soo’s shoulders. Kyung Soo felt great relief when he could finally share what was hunting him “Jongin, I think that baby is mine” Jongin’s eyes went as big and round as the moon that night. After talking with his friend Kyung Soo went to his bed not bothering with taking a shower. The energy to be a functional human just wasn’t there. He lied in bed for hours thinking about her. About her happy tears and her warm hug. How he didn’t know too much about her but his feelings were still strong. He hadn’t exchanged a lot of words with her, but he has seen her through the eyes of the people around her. Her co-workers would talk about her a lot during lunch when she wasn’t there. Only words of care and admiration. About her tolerance, how open she was to share her time and knowledge, how good she was putting down small fires, but they never saw her raise her voice or being disrespectful. He also knew about her strength. How brave she was. How formidable she was. A woman who is successful before her thirties and just goes for what she wants, like becoming a single mother, for example, is a woman who behaves like no one. She doesn’t care what others can think. He always liked women like that. He never wanted to be a prince. He wanted to be a comrade in arms.

---

With all the commotion from last night, with her telling Kyung Soo and Jongin about her pregnancy, then hugging Kyung Soo for what felt like an hour and still, it wasn’t enough and then celebrating with her friend, she forgot a very important thing. She was only one month pregnant, and she wished to keep this as a secret until the three-month barrier. She went for lunch with almost all her workers and she was afraid that Jongin or Kyung Soo could make a comment, so she dashed to the front of the kitchen and found them mumbling in a corner, Jongin appeared to be comforting Kyung Soo. She called them so she could talk to them. They both looked at her with wide eyes and Jongin was the only one who could compose himself and come to her “Good afternoon! What is it sis?” She bowed at them and spoke in a hurry “You guys are the only ones who know about my pregnancy, could you keep it a secret from everyone please”

“Yes, of course, don’t worry, are you ok?” “Never been better, thank you” Jongin smiled at her warmly “Is he ok?” She whispered as she saw Kyung Soo walk out of the kitchen “Yes, I mean, he is very tired, but just that, you know business owner and suppliers, paying bills…is very hard, but he will manage, thank you for worrying” She was very worried indeed. She didn’t know Kyung Soo was having a hard time. It was stupid of her not to think that it was hard. He just never showed it. He always looked so stoic that someone could easily forget what he was going through. During lunch she tried to talk to him, but he was busy serving. He didn’t meet her eyes either.

She convinced Junmyeon to go to Chicken Stew for dinner “I was planning on going to the gym” “Why? What could you do at the gym? You are already in shape” He rolled his eyes at her and decided to come with her, he never once said no to her. Neither she “You wanna go see Kyung Soo?” “He was so weird today, he looked distressed and didn’t talk to me once, he was avoiding me” “You think you freaked him out with that hug you gave him” No. No, she didn’t. But know that her friend said it, she felt panic crippling up her back “Oh god, I fucked it up, didn’t I?” His friend was quick to calm her down “No, I was just kidding, he was super into the hug, ask Jongin, you both disconnected from this world, come on, you must have felt it” Her nose crinkled, smiling coyly “I did, you think he likes me” “Ok, let’s stop there, what if it is true, he likes you…so, what are you going to do?” “What should I do?” He looked at her frowning “Friking confess you idiot, or better, wait until you are 8 months pregnant and you can go rolling to his restaurant and ask him for a date” She kicked his shin and when he crunched down to rub the place where she hit him, she slapped his head “I’m being serious! Don’t mess with me!” “I’m not! Confess, what’s the worst thing that could happen uh?” “I feel like the stats are not on my side right now, I could wait a bit more” Junmyeon was going to answer back when his phone buzzed. His cheeks went rose with a smile as he picked up. She knew that face. She was about to go for dinner by herself “Is the girl from the other day?” She inquired with her hands on her hips, he nodded his cheeks still glowing “Ok, go, but if this is serious you better introduce her to me quickly, I don’t want jealous girlfriends” He hugged her quickly and walked away telling her to text him when she gets home. She kept walking, with the intention of still going to Chicken Stew, but her plans changed when she arrived at the restaurant. Through the big window, she could see that the place was full. There was a seat available in the counter in front of the kitchen, but something else stopped her from going inside. Kyung Soo. He was very busy attending tables and serving the dishes. She didn’t want to bother him with conversation. And if he was still tired or in a bad mood, she didn’t want to annoy him. But in reality, it wasn’t just about him. She didn’t want to see him ignoring her and being so weirdly cold towards her like that afternoon. It affected her more than she dared to recognize.

She made sure to go with company every time she went for lunch. In that way, she was busy with work talk rather than looking at Kyung Soo. Winding her head with ways to talk to him about more than what was she going to eat or if she wanted coffee or tea. She wanted to ask him how he was doing. She could ask Jongin, they were close enough to do that. But he was busy all the time. It was Friday, and at lunchtime, she asked Jongin what was the menu for dinner “We are not opening at night today, hyung as something to do at the kitchen” It was clear that Jongin didn’t know how to lie. He was too pure for that. But she acted as she believed him. Curiosity was killing her. She wanted to know why he was lying. That day she left work late. She had a ton of codding to do and she hated doing that at home. Especially now that pregnancy was begging to affect her energy. The office was for working and her house was for sleeping. If she was lucky she was going to be able to catch the last bus. She still had an hour left so she walked to the stop slowly, enjoying the autumn wind. When she passed by 'Chicken Stew' she noticed that the lights of the kitchen were on. She looked inside but couldn’t see anyone and the front door was closed. She walked around the building and found the back door slightly ajar. There was a murmur like music coming from the inside and a low voice singing along. The words sounded a bit slurred but the voice was beautiful. It was clear that no one had broke in to steal anything. She opened the door slowly and let herself in. This was her first time in his kitchen and it was incredibly intimidating. She walked slowly, deeper into the kitchen, looking around, her eyes and ears very aware of her surroundings. She called his name once but no one answered. The voice was still singing. She tried again and this time the music went off and so did the beautiful voice. Someone called her name. It was Kyung Soo. She walked around one of the kitchen counters and found him seating in the floor with an empty bottle of wine next to him and a couple of beer cans. His eyes told her something for sure. He was drunk. He called her name again and followed with a smile “You are here” He said entertained “How are you?” “Better than you I think, Kyung Soo…are you ok?” He shook his head and released a long breath “I’m not ok, I’m not ok at all” She kneeled down next to him, not sure of what to do or say, but at least she could give him some company in his drunkness “Are you having problmes?” “Yes, a huge one” “Can I help you with it?” He shook his head again, looking at his hands  “Is there anything I can do to help you? She insisted and waited a bit for his answer. He went silent, but his breathing and the way his shoulders moved told her that he was crying. She didn’t want to intrude so she just waited for him “There is something you can do…please don’t hate me” “Why would I hate you?” Her hand reached for his shoulder rubbing it “Because I’m…I just…I feel horrible, I shouldn’t tell you but at the same time, I can’t keep quiet, no when I imagine a future with you every night before I go to sleep, no when I can only imagine all the things that I want to cook for you and only for you” He was whimpering, cleaning his tears with clumsy hands. She didn’t know what to say, she was frozen in the spot. She couldn’t believe her ears. He was confesing. Drunk and between tears “Kyung Soo, why are you like this? What is this thing you want to tell me?” “You are pregnant, and you decided to get inseminated for a reason…and I understand, I really do, we are useless, women don’t need us to raise their kids, and if you were another woman I would just keep quite, but I like you and I want to be with you but…I can’t be with you with this secret, this lie hunting me” There was no logical answer in her head to what was going on right now. Her brain was split between trying to understand what had him so sad, process the fact that he said he liked her and what was this secret “Before you say anything let’s sober up a little bit ok? I don’t care what you have to say to me, if you say it drunk you are going to regret it and it could be harder for me to understand, stand up and let me give you some water and a cup of coffee” She tried to lift him holding his arm but he pulled away from her “I’m so sorry, forgive me please”   “Kyung Soo, please come with me and sober up so we can talk ok?” “Your baby” He began and a part of her reacted like a lion feeling attacked. Why was he talking about her baby? “Your child, you wanted to do this by yourself, you went to a clinic and you bought a sample, but this damn fucking world is so small…you had to go and buy from the bank where I sold my sperm right? 1313…why did you have to choose that sample? Tell me, why did you?” “I just liked the description of the donor and…it’s the number of your restaurant” He cursed under his breath, chuckling humorlessly “Yes, it is, the sample 1313 was mine” “Kyung Soo…” “I checked, I thought it could be a huge coincidence, but is not, I’m sample 1313, I’m so sorry” She stood up. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. This was too messed up. Kyung Soo hid his face on his hands, still sobbing. She didn’t have anything to do there. There was nothing they could do or say now. He was too drunk, and she was too shocked. She walked away, feeling horribly bad to leave him there like that, but she was incapable of doing anything, for him or for her. On her way out she ran into Jongin. They didn’t exchange a word, it wasn’t necessary. He got it immediately. She was thankful that Kyung Soo wasn’t going to be alone.

---

Only a few times before  Kyung Soo felt so helpless. This was probably the third time he got this drunk. First time when he broke up with his first girlfriend, the second time when his restaurant almost goes bankrupt and now this. The worst thing was that drunkenness never took his memories away. So he remembered everything that happened that night at his kitchen. Her worry, his bitter tears, every word he said, her face of horror and the sound of her heels walking away. He felt his chest torn apart when she left. Jongin came to his rescue, but what else could he do. There weren’t enough words of support, who could know how to act in this situation when it was such a bizarre one?

As he suspected, the next week she didn’t come to the restaurant. He waited for her at lunch and dinner but she didn’t appear. He wasn’t planning on going out of the kitchen if she actually went there, but just knowing that she was eating was enough. Only her coworkers came. Junmyeon didn’t appear either. Jongin asked what happened to their coworkers and they told him he was very busy and their other boss was sick. That was the worst answer they could give him. Was she really sick? If so, how sick? Was the pregnancy? Or what he told her stressed her and was now affecting her pregnancy? The worry kept getting into his nerves to the point that he had to throw away a whole pot of pure because he used sugar instead of salt.

After a week of anguish, Junmyeon appeared at lunchtime. He was about to close and there was only one portion left, hers. He greeted him warmly and sat at the kitchen counter “Sorry for coming too late” He told him, but he wasn’t only talking about the closing time “Don’t worry, I have a portion of Chicken Stew for you” “Perfect” Junmyeon waited for his plate and noticed Kyung Soo moving around nervously. He knew what happened that night in the kitchen. She called him first thing in the morning to tell him. It was a situation he couldn’t quite understand. But he did understand how weird and complicated it was. He wasn’t a cruel man. He wasn’t going to wait for his question, he knew how hard could be for him to ask “She has a lot of morning sickness everything she eats gives her nausea so I told her to stay at home” Kyung Soo left his plate on front of him and rested his hands on the counter, letting his head fall. He looked tired, but his shoulders looked relaxed, just a tiny bit. He turned around without saying a word and began washing rice and asked Jongin to peel some veggies. He was cooking for her. Junmyeon felt relieved all of a sudden. He wasn’t sure why he just thought about what a great man he was. Before he was done with his lunch, Kyung Soo had already packed a big portion of rice porridge and steamed vegetables “Could you send her this?” “Sure, I’m going to visit her today, but can we talk?” Kyung Soo sat in front of him, he already knew what he wanted to talk about. He knew Junmyeon was to her what Jongin was for him. He probably knew everything “She told me about the sample thing” “It’s that why she isn't coming?” “Part of it” He decided to be honest with him. He knew his friend and he needed some help “I can’t believe I told her that during those circumstances” “There are things you can’t say sober” He smiled, trying to make him feel better, and Kyung Soo smiled back, but it was clear he was just being polite “How is she?” “Very confused as you must be” “Is she coming back? Is she going to come here again to have lunch?” If his friend didn’t marry Kyung Soo someday, he was willing to do so. He deserved everything anyone could give him “Of course, yes, just give her some time, you use this time too so you can both decide what to do” “Yes, ok…just, could you tell her…I don’t know what I want to tell her” “Don’t say anything, I will give her the food and then when you are both ready you can talk” He didn’t know where all this maturity came from, but he could see Kyung Soo was feeling better, and maybe latter his friend would feel better too “Yes, that’s the best thing to do, thank you” “Don’t worry, and Kyung Soo, this doesn’t have to be too complicated ok? It wasn’t even an accident, it was just destiny” He felt unbelievable thankful for Junmyeon’s words. The least he could do was giving him that meal for free.

---

The next week she didn’t appear either. But this time Junmyeon made sure to tell him that she was better, but the doctor recommended full rest for some signs of miscarriage. Kyung Soo panicked. Jongin held his arm just in case “She is fine, don’t worry, the doctor said it was common, she would be able to come to work next week, please don’t worry, are you ok?” Kyung Soo sat down next to him rubbing his legs and fumbling with his fingers “That caught me unprepared” “I’m being honest Kyung Soo, she is fine now and the baby too, she is just being extra careful” “It’s just…I realized something just now” “Great, that’s good, what did you realize?” He looked at him and Junmyeon knew that this was the line he couldn’t cross. This wasn’t his business anymore. He took back is question. Kyung Soo wasn’t able to sleep well that Sunday. He knew on Monday she will be back at work and back at his restaurant. This was one of those situations where he really wanted to see her but was terrified to do it. He informed Jongin that he wasn’t going to open the restaurant for dinner time. He gave him his silent support and went back to work. The rush hour at lunchtime passed and she didn’t appear. Neither her coworkers so maybe there was something going on at the office. 30 minutes before closing time, they appeared. Junmyeon, the other coworkers and at the tail of the group, her. Jongin helped them put together two tables so they could all sit together and as he did so she walked to the kitchen counter rubbing her hands together and bowing at him. He looked over her shoulder and saw Junmyeon and Jongin standing together looking at them as if they were watching a suspense movie “How are you feeling?” He asked “I’m better now, Junmyeon told me you are aware of what was happening to me, were you worried?” Her voice was soft, filled with uncertainty as if she didn’t know how to talk to him “I was so worried…could we…could we met today so we can talk?” “Yes, sure, of course, I…when? Where?” “Come here when you are done with your work…could you?” “Yes, of course, I will be here around seven” Kyung Soo felt happy for the first time in weeks. Of course, he was still terrified but he could tell she wasn’t mad at him or distant. Her coworkers called her, so she bowed at him and went to heir table. They didn’t talk again after that.

She was punctual, she counted the seconds until it was time to meet him. She didn’t know what would come out from this. She was sure of what she wanted though. A solution for all this. Kyung Soo was waiting for her in front of the restaurant. This was the first time she saw him wearing street clothes. As expected, it was very simple. Dark jeans and a sweater. Stylish sneakers and his signature glasses. He looked very handsome. They greeted politely and Kyung Soo invited her to a coffee a couple of blocks down the streets. He made sure she was comfortable with walking “Is not as terrible as Junmyeon told you” She tried to give him some peace “I had some pain and a bit of bleeding, I went to the doctor immediately and they gave me medicine and whatnots, I spend two days in the hospital just so the baby could be safe and then at was back at home, is very common” “You must have been very scared” How could he know? She made sure to speak nonchalantly, trying to hide how badly that memory made her feel. She was very scared indeed, she was terrified of losing her child “Yes, I was, but I’m ok now, don’t worry” They walked in silence to the coffee shop and Kyung Soo guided her to a private booth. He thought the couch was better to seat down that a wood chair and it was way warmer there. They asked for two cups of tea nothing to eat, she was afraid food could give her nausea and ruin this moment. The cups arrived and the silence was about to swallow them both. Kyung Soo decided to act like an adult, speak with the truth and be honest, especially to himself “I’m so sorry for what happened” “For what are you apologizing? the sample mishap or the drunkenness” She ended with a smile, an honest smile from ear to ear. He giggled and rubbed his neck still embarrassed but not scared anymore “Because let me tell you, you shouldn’t apologize for neither of them” “I shouldn’t have said that drunk, it was so disrespectful” “Thanks to that bottle of wine you opened up to me sooner” She wasn’t wrong “And I prefer it like that…about the sample, it was a coincidence” “Would you have preferred for me to shut up about it” “No, no, I would have hated that, you were right, if we think about a future together, there can’t be a secret like that between us…I don’t think you would have been able to live peacefully holding that to yourself” Kyung Soo felt something like a wrecking ball hitting his stomach “You think about that future too?” She didn’t notice she was recognizing her feelings, she should have prepared for this talk in advance “I do…I like you too, I like you a lot…but the future that worries me right now is the one I’m going to live in 7 months” “I understand that” “Is not that you are not a priority or less important, but…our circumstances right now are complicated” Kyung Soo lowered his stare, looking at his hands organizing what he wanted to say. He wanted to be very clear “I like you too, you already know that, but there are two things between us, the love we feel for each other, and your child and I don’t want to say our child because that would be incredibly rude, I was never part of this equation, as you said, it was a mishap, but that doesn’t take the fact that…I can’t even say it because is not my place, but I want you to know that I would follow whatever decision you make because I’m ready for all the possibilities” “If I tell you that I want you to be the father and take your place in this equation, would you do it?” “Yes” They weight of his answer felt heavy on her chest “I had my doubts before, but when Junmyeon told me about the miscarriage symptoms…I feared for your child” He was still refusing to use the word our. She took her time before saying something. She believed him, but it felt rushed. She wasn’t yet clear with her desition and she was the mother. Kyung Soo couldn't be clearer either. It was so unfair for him. Of course, he would take his place of a father because he was the best human out there, but she always felt like motherhood was natural and fatherhood was a bit of an imposition. It sounded messed up, but that’s how she felt growing up “I don’t want you to make that decision just yet…this is not the optimal circumstance, you just needed the money, I wanted a child, we are in extreme opposites, so I don’t want you to feel forced to do this just because is what your values dictate to you” He made the intent to interrupted her but she stopped him “And I know that you could be driven by your feelings, but is still too soon, we are not even dating” He swallowed thickly. Deep down he felt like this wasn’t going the way he hoped for “As for us…I don’t think is fair for you to date me now” “why would you say that?” She chuckled bitterly “Because I’m pregnant Kyung Soo, the me you will encounter now is different, my mood is going to be weird as hell, my body will change, and I’m not going to be able to give you all my attention” He called her name sweetly “I’m not a child that wants your constant attention” “We don't know that” She joked and they finally laughed together, after a long time of tension “But I understand you…I said this before, it’s your decision “ “If we don’t date, would you still be there, I feel selfish asking you to wait for me…but would you wait for me?” “I was going to do it even if you didn’t ask for it” She felt all shy and giddy, he was so sweet and so good with his words. She felt like lying on the floor and rolling around “How much do you want me involved?” He asked with a tiny bit of confidence “As much as you feel comfortable” “That’s a very open answer” “Is the one I can give you now” Kyung Soo reached across the table and held her hand “Let’s not take more decision for now and let’s see with time, maybe you don’t want me at all or maybe you want my constant company” “Kyung Soo, that’s unfair” She felt like she was using him “It’s not, I’m comfortable like that too, I don’t want to force myself into you…but I have confidence that we will make it through” He squeezed her hand and she put her other hand on top of his “I hope you don’t think I’m not sure about my feeling for you, because I am, especially now, I just think…” “You are being careful, I can understand that…I’m just glad you are not pushing me away” “I’m glad too” The tea went cold as they kept holding hands, talking and trying to reassure each other feelings. She wanted to stay there longer, but he insisted that it was too late, and she needed to go home and rest. She didn’t resist, she liked how he cared for her. The third month passed by and her doctor told her that she was risk-free now. The symptoms weren’t as terrible as before. The nausea went away. But her digestive system was a mess. She never commented this to Kyung Soo, but it was clear that he had made some research because now he was cooking exclusively for her and the menu was fourth month of pregnancy friendly. Her constipation was almost under control and heartburn was a story from the past. One day she thanked him for it and his only answer was “I know how to take care of you” She played his words over her head for the rest of the week. It wasn’t as horrible as she thought it would be. Junmyeon’s new girlfriend was a gift from heaven. She took her out to buy new underwear since her boobs refused to settle in her old bras and would call her asking if she needed girl help wish was code for, help with anything that could make Junmyeon uncomfortable. She thanked every day for the teacher that sat them together in middle school which was the spark that developed their friendship. He was the brother she never had and the support she needed these days. She was so glad that his girlfriend understood their dynamics. Kyung Soo had nothing to envy from her childhood friend. They met during lunch and dinner, and he always took the time to talk to her and he never treated her like a sick person. Not like some of her coworkers. He just wanted to know if she needed something, what the doctor said and how she was feeling. She felt very tired all the time, and there were mornings that she just couldn’t get up. The changes in her blood flow made her feel dizzy most mornings. During those days she would work from home and every time at lunchtime a deliver guy will bring her food. A taste of the food told her that it was Kyung Soo’s. It began with him sending him lunch to her house whenever she didn’t go to work. But then, lunch began arriving at her office. She let it happen twice until she had a talk with him “Why did you do that?” He was chopping carrots as they were talking at the kitchen “Doctor said you shouldn't walk too much” “That's true, but is like a five-minute walk from my office to here and I use the elevator,  I think stairs are my real enemies” “There are stairs over there” he pointed at the street were in fact she had to walk down three steps. She rolled her eyes following him around the kitchen “If I can make your life easier…” “And I'm thankful, but maybe... I want to come here to see you” He came to a sudden halt and she collided with him. He grabbed her by her arms just in case “Oh... You do?” “Yeah” He looked down at his hands holding her and let her go. She liked how he touched her and helped her out of reflex “Ok,  sorry” “Don't apologize, I really really appreciate it, but for now is not really necessary, maybe when I go with maternity leave” He held his hand up, waiting for a handshake “Deal, but at least can I invite you lunch?” “No way Kyung Soo” “Come on!” She rested her hands on her hips and Kyung Soo could already recognize that as a sign that there was no place for debate “I can pay for my food, I would rather you invite that plate of food to someone who really needs it, like you have been doing so far” His eyebrows showed his surprise “How do you know about that?” “It was a secret?” “No, but it isn’t common knowledge either” “I spoke with several people who have been eating here for free, is one of the reasons I like you” Since that serious talk at the coffee shop, they never addressed their feeling again. It was both embarrassing and a bit unnecessary for now. Her confession there was a slip of the tongue. She didn’t regret it though. She knew her confession could make him happy. His bright smile told her so “I wanted to own my business so I could do that” He confessed, walking away from her, a bit shy. She followed him again, eager to know more about it. That afternoon she stayed with him as he prepared something for tomorrow's lunch. That afternoon he confessed that he has been cooking especially for her since they met. She wanted to stand up and kiss him, but she got dizzy again.

---

It was killing her not knowing if she was having a boy or a girl. It didn’t dictate what things she bought in terms of clothing or toys, but she wanted to imagine her child. Start dreaming about the exciting future with her or him. Her next visit to the doctor would be the one that would tell her. She was finally in her 5th month. Her tummy was bigger now, her pants were already a bit uncomfortable so she began using dresses and skirts. She began feeling little butterflies in her stomach, in a beginning she thought it was because of Kyung Soo, but she read somewhere that it was the baby moving. The symptoms weren’t too terrible, the dizziness was the only thing left. And she finally had big girl boobs. Her new bras were no good anymore. Yes, they hurt a bit, but she had a cleavage now. She took the day off that day. More like Junmyeon forbid her from going to work so she could have a calm day and then they could celebrate if he was going to have a niece or nephew. 

--- Kyung Soo woke up from a horrible nightmare with his heart in his throat. In the dream, he saw her and her child inside a glass case. He could see them but they didn’t see him. She was holding her child, but she didn’t look happy. She looked distressed and tired. The baby was sleeping but suddenly jolted in her arms and began crying. She did her best to stop her child from crying, but nothing happened. The baby was turning red and the sound was louder and louder. He wanted to help them. He felt that he could calm the baby. He wanted to take her child in his arms just so she could rest for a little bit, but he couldn’t touch them. He began banging the glass, looking for an opening but the more he hit, the thicker became the glass. He woke up with the sound of his alarm. He couldn’t stop thinking about the dream for the rest of the morning. He was outside his restaurant talking with the guys who brought him the vegetables for the week when Junmyeon walked to him, just to say hi, he was on his way to their office. He immediately asked for her, no shame “I told her not to come to work today, she as a doctor appointment at 10:00” That was in two hours “Ok, then I should send it to her house” “Don’t worry, she normally eats out when she has a checkup…oh! She is very excited because today she will know if it is a girl or a boy” He told him as he walked away in a hurry. Kyung Soo felt for the first time like he needed to be there. He wanted to be there. Of course, it had to do with the nightmare he had that night, but if the dream was a premonitory one, it was clear the glass walls represented himself. He was the one building them and staying away when in reality he wanted to be there. He wanted to know if they were having a girl or a boy. That was the first time he allowed himself to think about an us. He kept repeating to himself that If she needed him, he would go to her. He didn’t even have her personal number, just her secretary’s. Jongin hated that “Hyung, that’s so stupid, I have your number and we are not in love nor I’m expecting your baby, but we are friends, that’s why I have your number saved” He knew his friend was right, but the more he controlled himself, the more comfortable he felt. So he didn’t ask for her number. And she didn’t give it to him. In fact, he got the number of her office from a business card she gave him when she went to Chicken Stew for the first time. But now he wanted to talk to her, he wanted to go to her. He needed to do so. But his stupid self-control was too strong, so he went inside the kitchen ready to start cooking for that day's lunch. Jongin arrived a couple of minutes later merry as always “I met with sis at the subway, she was on her way to the doctor, hyung! Did you know? Today they are going to tell her the sex of the baby, she looked so happy! Although I was wondering, is it safe for her to use the subway?” He was too focused on Jongin’s words to notice that his hand was too close to the skillet, the burn in the palm of his hand woke him up from his long-time delusion that he didn’t need to be there. Instead of applying cold to his hand he took off his apron and began giving instructions to a very confused Jongin “Put everything in the freezer, make sure everything is off and close the restaurant for the day” “Where are you going?” “To see her” he shouted over his shoulder as he walked out the back door. He reached the main street and panicked for a second. What to do now? He had no idea where her doctor was, what her number was. He knew where she lived but it was too late. Her office. Junmyeon could help him. This wasn’t his first time there, so he walked inside Junmyeon’s office quickly, not caring about manners. He didn’t even greet him “I need her number?” “Fucking finally” Junmyeon chuckled a bit exasperated, scribbling the 9 numbers he knew by memory. He gave him the piece of paper and said nothing else, only wished him good luck. On his way out he called her, feeling his heartbeat on his throat. She picked up, her voice doubtful and when he identified himself, she went silent. So he didn’t lose more time. He asked her where she was, she said she was at the bank. She also told him what he already knew. She didn’t comment about what was going to happen in that appointment, but he could hear the excitement in her voice “Can I go with you?” He asked, making sure his voice sounded sure and decided. She didn’t answer immediately which took away some of the confidence he was trying to develop “Are you sure?  You don't need to do this”   “I do, I need to, May I go?” She chuckled in disbelief “I will love it” Kyung Soo released the breath he was holding, and almost felt like his knees would give up. She wanted him there “I will meet you at the hospital ok?” He stopped a taxi and told the driver the address she had just gave him over the phone.  

She sat at the waiting room close to the entrance so Kyung Soo could spot her easily. It wasn’t too crowded, but it helped her with her anxiety. Ten minutes after she arrived, Kyung Soo appeared at the entrance, looking at his phone. He was probably going to call her so she called him instead. He lifted his head confused and when he saw her his smile gave her so much happiness and made her felt so relieved that she had to stand up and met him halfway “Why did you get up? Come here” He locked arms with her and walked her to a line of seats that was empty. She was terrified of uncomfortable silence so she made sure to act normal, as normal as this whole situation can be “How did you get my number?” “I went to your office, and your friend gave it to me” He answered avoiding her eyes looking around with curiosity. She had so many questions. Why the sudden change? Why that day and not yesterday or tomorrow? She was afraid of asking and when she did, her voice was low and shaky “Why are you here Kyung Soo?” He finally looked at her, he was as nervous as she was, but in his eyes, she could see determination “I came because I want to tell you that I want to be here” He grabbed her hand softly, something he hadn’t done since that day they confessed, and they both craved madly “I need to be here, May I accompany you from now on, I know you can and will do all this by yourself, but I can’t” His voice loose strength by the end of the sentence, she didn’t want him to lose confidence or braveness regarding them, so she lain closer to him and kiss him on his cheek, and held there for a while giving him some warmth, clasping his hand harder. She heard him hold his breath for a second and then relax into her. She moved apart a couple of centimeters and whispered a thank you. She had a lot more to say, but this wasn’t the moment. The waiting room of a hospital wasn’t the place either. He looked bemused, but a smile was pulling the corner of his lips “That means I can stay right?” “I really want you to stay” “Great…um…when is your appointment” She looked at her watch, not letting go of his hand “In 30 minutes” “We arrived quite early…are you nervous?” She only nodded, her stare lost ahead. This was something she couldn’t get use to. The fear before every doctor's appointment. She always feared that her doctor would tell her something terrible about her baby. But in the past, her fear showed through locking herself in the bathroom with nausea or dizziness, breathing in and out just to try to calm herself down. She always went by herself. She began this by herself and was planning on finishing it like that. She never complained about the tiny panic attack she got before every appointment. And obviously she didn’t even dare to imagine Kyung Soo giving her company during those times. She should have suspected that his presence would bring some peace. She was still scared, but not terrified. His hand holding hers was warm, soft and it kept her distracted from whatever fear was dancing around her head. Maybe if she was closer he could take away all of the fears. So she moved closer to him resting her head on his shoulder. She thought it could catch him by surprise but on the contrary, he arranged his body so she could rest her head comfortably “Kyung Soo, Why did you call it Chicken Stew?” She needed a distraction for the next thirty minutes, and Kyung Soo was always a great one “Several reasons, it was the first dish I learned how to cook, it’s also my brother’s favorite, all my friends say it’s my best dish and is a dish that is always delicious” “Like your restaurant” “I hope that's the case” She lifted her head, resting her chin on his shoulder “It is, your food is amazing” He thanked her, scratching the back of his ear nervously “You think the baby will be a chef?” Since he was here, wishing to be part of this, they could start thinking about their kid “I doubt it,  I don't think babies can cook, but in the future, who knows” That was what she needed, an explosive laugh, an almost howl that made breathing hard for her, harder than normally “You liked that one?” He asked giggling through his nose “That was so funny, I imagined a baby with your cool apron and a knife” She had to cover her mouth not to bother the other people in the waiting room “My apron is cool?” Not cool, sexy, she thought but kept it to herself.

Her doctor congratulated her on her healthy gain weight and for the good numbers on her exams. She asked all the questions related to her symptoms and then invited her to lay in the bed so they could use the ultrasound “Doctor, before we start, can I go and call my…friend that’s waiting outside” She gave her a signal to go ahead and she opened the door nervously. She asked Kyung Soo to wait for her until she would call him. The conversations between her and her doctor were always way too graphic and she didn’t want Kyung Soo to hear them. But the ultrasound part was different. She wanted him there. He was standing with his hands on his pockets, some tension in his shoulders that could easily translate as nervousness. She called his name softly and he turned around, and with quick steps got inside the doctor's office. He greeted the doctor extremely politely and she invited him to sit next to her. As the doctor prepared her things, she reached for Kyung Soo wrist but he held her hand instead “Are you nervous?” He asked her again, but she was sure he was the only one nervous here. And with good reason, this was going to be the first time seeing their child. She said she was nervous, and asked him back “I think I’m going to fade, I’m so nervous” They laughed together and for the first time she felt completely relaxed at the doctor’s office. “Is he your partner?” The doctor asked as she poured the cold gel in her tummy “No,  but he is the father of the baby” The doctor turned to Kyung Soo with a bright smile “Oh, then congratulations father of the baby... Although I thought this was an insemination... “ She stopped her so she wouldn’t ruin the moment “It's a long story” From now on that was the sentence he would use whenever someone asked what was her relationship with Kyung Soo  “And we don't have a lot of time, I’m glad he is here, let's get to business” The doctor commented and held the probe against her skin. They both held their breaths until the doctor could get a clear image of the baby “So, we always say, it’s a boy if we see turtle and a girl if we see three lines, and in this case” She elongated the last sound as the image of their baby became clearer “We got three lines, you are having a girl” She began pressing buttons on the machine. And gave them some time to take it in. She looked at Kyung Soo but he didn’t meet her eyes. His eyes were stuck on the screen in front of him as the image of their baby kept moving on the screen. Now the image was clearer, head, hands, legs and arms, you could almost see her profile. She saw herself on him, in awe with what was happening. She was sure that for him now everything was clearer. It was like that for her. The moment she saw her baby for the first time was the moment she realized that she had made the right choice. He was probably feeling the same “Her size is right, organs on point, amniotic fluid and placenta are great, that’s all we have for now, a very healthy girl, is that what you were hoping for?” She always said that she would be happy with either, but deep down, or maybe not that deep, she hoped for a girl “Yes, actually, I wanted a girl” “Great! then what about the father, are you happy?” Kyung Soo had his eyes still stuck on the screen and when he spoke, his voice was soft and a bit shaky “She is perfect, our…our daughter is perfect” The doctor chuckled and looked at both of them with care “They all say that, and guess what? They are right” Eventually the doctor had to turn off the ultrasound, not without showing Kyung Soo what they were seeing, what was every shade and shape. When they were back to her desk, he was in a state of elation, to say the least “So, everything is great,  let's keep some precautions,  no stairs or excessive exercise, the baby is great, but this is the first one and inseminations require extra care, keep having your calcium supplements and no sex for at least one more month Ok?” She gasped and looked around awkwardly, Kyung Soo reacted very similarly. She could imagine how funny was for the doctor to watch this insufferable awkward couple “Oh,  so is not that kind of friendship, Ok, let's all move along, any questions?” They were both questionless, so they left the room quickly to avoid any more awkwardness. They were on the second floor, just one set of stairs. She was walking towards them, but Kyung Soo stopped her holding her waist, or what was left of it and turned around to the elevator. She was going to complain, it was only one set of stairs, but she preferred to enjoy being taking care of. In fact, the day was going great, having him there was amazing, better than she could have ever imagined, and going out of the hospital to part ways brought her down quite a bit “You need to go back to the restaurant?” She was determination itself, she was going to keep enjoying the rest of the day with him. She was sure the feeling in her tummy wasn’t her baby moving around her womb “No, I'm not opening today” “You wanna go for a walk?” Asking him didn’t feel as hard as she would imagine “I have a better idea, let's go on a date” Kyung Soo was trying to act cool, but she could see a slight twitch on his lips. He could be nervous or embarrassed. And she felt exactly the same. A hot rush went up her neck and settled in her cheeks. As before, she was sure it wasn’t the pregnancy. She tried to cover her cheeks with her hands, just adding more to the situation “How cute” He commented, imitating the gesture of her hands “Is my blood pressure, the pregnancy makes it weird, I'm not like this because the guy I like asked me out” “How cute!” He commented again between goofy laughs. He took one of her hands, uncovering her face and pulled her with him. He invited her for lunch to a restaurant that he really liked. She was famished and she felt like she could eat at least two dishes. When she told him that, he told her to go ahead. She really liked that. She didn’t do it, but she appreciated the support “I didn’t ask you, I’m still a bit in shock…we are having a girl, you wanted a girl?” There was some awkwardness in his question and it was understandable. She felt the same. Everything was very new and sudden, but she knew he was confident about it. He had show it “Yes, I hate to admit it, but I always imagine myself with a girl, you?” She regretted asking that, of course, Kyung Soo didn’t imagine anything, this wasn’t his plan, men don’t imagine those things. It was one of those women things “Of course the priority is health, boy or girl, if they are healthy is all that matters, but I was so, so happy when the doctor said it was a girl, the possibilities are so many with a girl” Any doubt about Kyung Soo’s intentions coming to the hospital that day was over. She didn’t know if he was there out of guilt, or just trying to do the right thing, but looking at him there in front of her, drinking his coffee with a soft smile on his lips, she knew he was doing this genuinely. She didn’t eat two plates, but she did eat a slice of cake and a chocolate chip cookie. During her pregnancy, she didn’t have a lot of cravings, but her baby really liked sugar “So she is going to be an active girl” Kyung Soo told her when she shared her food preferences with him “Oh no, I was hoping she could be like me, still as a picture, what about you? You ere a good kid right?” “My mom says I was until I went to school, but I was a good kid overall, I never got in trouble” She didn’t think otherwise “Were you a good student?” “No, I hated going to school, you?” “Same, I only liked math class, if it weren’t for Junmyeon who did all my homework and borrowed me his notes I wouldn't have made it…I was smart, but not the kind of smart schools needs” Kyung Soo tapped the table and pointed at her “That’s it! That’s it! We are all smart, but school only cares about one kind of smart, I’m glad you did well though” “We did” Kyung Soo riced his glass of wine and clinked her lemonade. She wished it was a glass of wine too. She sighed heavily drinking her last bit of juice. Kyung Soo asked her what was wrong “Remember when I told you that dating me wouldn’t be fair because the me you will encounter now is different, my mood is going to be weird as hell and all that? Well, that applies to this kind of things too, I can’t go for drinks with you and get drunk, we can’t go for walks because my feet are not dealing well with this pregnancy, we can’t go for long drives because my bladder shrunk, we can’t even kiss because I look huge!” And of course, she followed that statement by shoving the last bit of cookie in her mouth. She was half-joking, half being honest but Kyung Soo just took it seriously. Not completely though,  he wasn't laughing,  but an involuntary smile, maybe a shy smile, kept pulling the corner of his lips as he spoke "When I met you, you weren't pregnant and I liked you, now you are, and I still like you, with all the changes" She knew this time it wasn't the baby moving because she felt the tickles not only in her stomach, also in her chest, back and legs "It would have been perfect if you said that you liked me more now" "I like you more now " She laughed, but he didn't. She didn’t care if he was lying or if it was the truth, it felt amazing to hear that from him and that was all that mattered. Kyung Soo accepted when she offered to pay for the food but made her promise that next time he was paying. She agreed as long as there was a next one. He asked her what she wanted to do now as he held her hand, his body language always clear, the date wasn’t over yet "Since now I know we are having a girl, I feel like buying her a gender-specific something, wanna come with me? " "Really? Can I buy her something too? " "As long as you don't buy her a knife" He took a step closer to her, laughing merrily but stopped rather suddenly as if colliding with something. He stopped laughing and turned his head away. He went shy and uncomfortable all of a sudden. He didn’t let go of her hand but separated from her a little bit, not meeting her eyes until she called his name and pulled him with her to the sidewalk so they could go shopping. She didn’t understand why he acted like that. His change was sudden and caught her off guard. But it didn’t matter now. She was planning on thinking about it obsessively at night, but now she had better things to do, like keep enjoying her date. They walked a couple of street until they reached a strip mall with a baby clothing store. They got in, she was already used to go inside a baby store and buy whatever she needed. The amount of cuteness and little things didn’t shock her anymore. But for Kyung Soo, it was all new. He went straight to the girl section and his eyes moved from one side to the other, his smile a mixture between wonder and happiness. He grabbed a set of baby shoes, each shoe not bigger than a peach. He turned around and showed them to her “She is going to be this tiny?” “Hopefully not tinier than that, you like those?” He nodded looking at them in awe “I’m going to buy them for her” He pulled them closer to his chest and kept looking around the store, constantly commenting on how cute and tiny they were. She let him wander around as she picked a light pink onesie with delicate embroidered around the chest and the hospital bag to put all the things she would need for the day of the delivery. He asked why she needed such a big bag. The bag brought another issue.   Now that he expressed his need to be involved, he naturally had a lot of questions regarding the birth and the previous process. Was she living by herself? By the 8th or 9th month who was going to take care of her? Who was going to take her to the hospital? Was she having a c-section or natural birth? And after that, who was going to help her? The answer to most of those questions was Junmyeon. “He and his girlfriend are planning on taking care of me, the plan is that I will move to his apartment but since he has to work, his girlfriend offered to stay with me. We have the same job, so she is planning on working from home, I think I’m going to move there in a couple of months? I don’t want to invade their space” “I wish I could offer you my place, but I live with Jongin and I work 20 hours a day” She let him know that again, she wasn’t expecting anything from him “But I have enough time now to find someone who can replace me at the restaurant after you give birth, I think I can be more useful there” That sounded so nice. So very nice. Having him there to bring her calm and help when she was going to need it the most. Because now the harder thing to do was tying her shoes and maybe find the right position to sleep. But after their child was born…that was going to be hard with capital h. But still, the idea sounded too unfair for him, before she could refuse, Kyung Soo made her stand in front of her holding to her arms “It’s not unfair for me…I want to be there, please let me be there with you” Did he just read her head? It didn’t matter how bad she could feel for him and his current accidental situation, but if he honestly wanted to be there, she couldn’t deny him that experience. And she didn’t want to say no either. She wanted to be with him. She encircled his waist and brought her cheek closer to his chest. She thanked him. Her voice low as a whisper, her happiness clogging her throat, but she knew he had heard her. He hugged her tight and she felt his lips on her head. He wasn’t kissing her, but it was still warm and scarring in the sweetest way.  There was nothing else to say. He was planning to accompany her. The details could be arranged later, now they could only feel calm and confident that they were there for each other “What else do you want to do in our improvised first date? We already ate and then bought things for our daughter, What other things people do in their first dates?” Has Kyung Soo always being this funny. This was the second time that day that he made her laugh hard enough to make her tear up a little bit “I would love to do more things with you, but I’m so tired, I already walked enough, my feet are a bit swollen” He pulled away from her startled, examining her “Are you tired? Your feet hurt? Are you ok?” His wide eyes looked at her in concern but lost a bit of it when she smiled at him “I’m ok, just tired” “Then I should take you home” Her hands flew to his cheeks, caressing him “How can you always say what I need to hear?” He shrugged, looking down flustered. He was so cute. So incredibly cute. And she loved that of him. But he was also loyal, funny, smart, respectful, mature, the most selfless person she had ever met. Commit to this with her was the biggest proof of it. He stopped a taxi and helped her get inside. He gave the driver her address, and she kind of liked how he knew it by memory after sending her all those meals. The streets were already packed, red lights seamed longer. She took a deep breath preparing for the extra 30 minutes it will take them to go home. The inside of the taxi was warm, the driver was playing some nice jazz and the seats were soft, it was perfect for her tired body. She scooched to Kyung Soo's side and rested her head on his shoulder "Too tired?" He asked with a smile on his mouth "Yes, it was a very exciting day" "We have a long way to your place, rest" He arranged his body so she could rest more comfortably and grabbed her right hand, resting them on his thigh. His warmth sept into her being and comforted her "Kyung Soo keep talking, your voice relaxes me" She knew this could put him in the spot, and she also knew he wasn’t very talkative. But she didn’t need a Ted Talk. A simple description of his last visit to her parent's house, or what he saw on TV would do it. But he gave her more than she expected. He called her by her name all the time. Each question escorted by his voice muttering her name in a unique way. Sweet and familiar. As if he had christened you with it so he knew how to use it. She didn't fall asleep, to interested in Kyung Soo's stories, but her entire body felt energized by his presence and peace. He called her name again and vacillated for a moment before asking her “You think it’s gonna work out between you and me?” “I think it will, what we have is rather young, but I have trust in me and especially in you, why you ask?” He twisted his body to her side so he could cuddle her closer “It’s just…you are ones and zeros and I am fat and salt” “You mean we are different” He nodded “I’m ok with that, but what is really worrying you” She tried to move to look at him, but he stopped her, maybe he wanted a bit of privacy to express his worries “As you said, what we have is young, but there is a lot in the middle, not only our daughter but also how we reach this point, I feel like if this didn’t work it would hurt me so badly…so I wanted some reassurance from you, some extra hope” She wanted to turn around and kiss him, hug him, kiss his face and hug him again, he wanted to give him that hope. But he wasn’t done yet, his grip kept enabling her from moving “My feelings for you came so suddenly and with so much force, I pinned for you for so long, and maybe the way our relationship developed was not normal, but that doesn’t change anything about how I feel for you…I’m so sorry that I’m saying this here, but I guess the closeness gave me some braveness” “Don’t worry…Kyung Soo, If you are determinate to do this with me and at the same time love me and take me as your partner I’m into this too, for what I heard, we have walked the same path, at the same time…I also fell for you hard, and pinned for a while too…my only sin was to rush into doing this, if I have waited a little bit things could have developed normally” He chuckled next to her, agreeing with her, but not shaming her “I wonder…what if the sample I purchased had belonged to another man?...” He was quick to answer “Nothing would have changed, we would be here, In the same place, coming back home after finding out we were having a girl” It felt like a miracle. That moment felt like a miracle. Finding him wasn’t something that could happen as an accident. Someone or something for some reason considered that she was worthy of someone like Kyung Soo and put his restaurant on her path, and made her set her eyes on his folder at the fertility clinic. Nothing could be a coincidence. It was a miracle. She released his hand and passed her arms around his waist hugging him tightly. She was afraid of speaking, she might cry and turn this into a very cheesy movie. So, she only hugged him, she knew it was enough. As she predicted, it took them almost an hour to arrive home. She wasn’t tired any more thanks to the very fulfilling trip. The driver wished them a good night and good luck with the birth of her baby. It was very nice how everybody was somehow nicer with you when you were pregnant. They got inside the building holding hands, she was a bit cold so he made sure to bring her inside quickly. They kept chatting on the elevator, a part of her head a bit nervous about having Kyung Soo in her house, but calm. Kyung Soo looked relaxed, so that spread to her. She opened the door and Kyung Soo held it open so they could go inside. She tried to kick her shoes off but her laces were a bit too tight and crunching down to untie them was a bit of a shore “I will help you” He got down in one knee and undid the double knots of her shoes. He did it quickly and she stood in the step of the entrance waiting for him to get rid of his own shoes. She stared at the top of his head and her chest felt this yearning that was hard to understand or control. It was suffocating  “Kyung Soo?” He hummed his response, leaving his shoes next to hers, feeling at home “Before, when we were outside the restaurant, were you going to kiss me?” She felt a bit guilty for attacking like that, but his face was kind of priceless. Like a kid who was caught stealing candy. She waited for him until he could look at her “I wanted to,  but I thought it wasn't the right time” She imagined that much, the way he stopped himself was very clear “What about now? Is the right time?” She did her best to sound flirty, playful so he could relax, so he could see that these kinds of things don’t need that much thinking. And it worked because he laughed and looked up at her “It... I think... It is” Perfectly synchronized, as she moved her arms to his shoulders, he passed his around her waist. She liked the position, she was a bit taller since she was standing on the doorstep so he could look at his face perfectly, the right angle. His adoring gaze and an amused grin. There was a bit of nervousness, but how not to. She was sure she was looking at him with the exact same eyes. She tangled her fingers in her short hair, pulling him closer as she leaned down. She felt goosebumps over her skin when his breath fanned her lips. Her heavy eyelids closed when she finally felt his soft lips against hers. She lost the ability to breathe for a moment, not only for the shock but also because she focused on his kiss. She engrossed herself on his kiss so she could enjoy it and remember it for the years to come. If he could describe the kiss, she would describe it as Kyung Soo. It was just the kind of kiss she would expect from a man like him. It was paced, but deep. His lips warm, soft and enchanting. He was also playful, nibbling her lower lip and tugging it sensuously, as his hands slid up her back pulling her as closely as he could. It was new, but it felt safe. It was just like him. He kissed her slowly, making it last. The kiss was short but it felt longer. His eyes opened up slowly, looking up at her. They shined like she had never seen before and pulled her in. She followed them and kissed him again, just pecking them a couple of times. It made him smile and that was all she wanted. He was so close to her. Her hands moved to his nape caressing him, making him sight in contempt and then she framed his face, caressing his cheeks that felt warmer all of the sudden, maybe for feeling observed so closely by her “I was waiting for that” She whispered, caressing the corner of his lips “But I’m glad we waited for it” “We do everything backward uh? First I got you pregnant, then I kissed you” She snorted embarrassingly, making him laugh too “Should we get married tomorrow and then date?” He asked, and she only laughed. He tucked himself tighter, resting his head on her chest and she cradled him naturally between her arms, caressing his head “How can I get so lucky? although you might not feel the same, this was never your plan” She commented, although it was more like thinking out loud. She wasn’t expecting an answer “It wasn't, but I feel lucky too, I feel very lucky” She took a deep breath, the emotion clinging to her throat. She thanked him with a string of voice and he looked up at her, thanking her too. About 15 minutes had passed and they were still at the threshold, so she invited him in, holding his hands and pulling him in. She showed him around her flat, especially the room of their daughter. He was very interested in watching her tiny toys and tiny clothes. They shared a cup of tea in the living room as the night came. It was almost dinner time. She was hungry already. Double hungry “Should I prepared us something? Should we order?” She offered, just trying to be a good hostess. He looked a bit displeased, not to say offended “I can cook you something” He was already walking inside the kitchen “Really?” “Yeah, really, what do you want?” She didn’t need to think too much about it “Chicken stew, I love your chicken stew” He turned around grabbing her apron and tightening around his waist “Chicken stew it is” He grabbed her by the waist and kissed her on the cheek and then for the first time rested his hands on her belly. She had felt her baby move around the entire afternoon, the normal fluttering feeling, but for the first time, she felt a kick. A deaf thud, not a jab, but close. She jumped in surprise. They both looked at her belly and then up. They didn’t say a thing, it was clear what just had happened, and she was so glad he felt it too. He moved his hands over her stomach, slowly and with much care. And it happened again. She yelped in surprise. And he laughed merrily, that cute goofy laugh she loved so much. They stayed like that, looking at her tummy for a long time. Kyung Soo was silent, but he didn’t need to say anything to show how happy and dumbfounded he was. She wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what to say. She brought his head up, holding his face with care. Between all the emotions they felt at that moment, there was one that she felt a long time ago but it was new for him, for sure. That tiny movement that felt like an explosion for her was that last proof that all this was real. And that day Kyung Soo not only had felt the baby move but also saw her daughter for the first time. He must have felt like a soup of feelings, from happiness to fear. She knew that feeling well “We can order something to eat” She offered again, thinking he could have a hard time focusing, but he shook his head with decision “No, no way, now I have to cook for the three of us” He caressed her tummy for the last time, and the baby only moved around, she could feel it but was sure that he couldn’t. He kissed her on the lips, a soft peck that could still make her blush and then turned around, opening her well-stocked fridge. He told her to go to the living room and seat on her sofa. She was sure that for at least thirty minutes Kyung Soo would be completely focused on his cooking. On making his warm, healing and delicious Chicken Stew.

-END-

Notes: Last story from the trilogy. It took me a while, you know why, so thank you for the constant support. 

I saw this story somewhere before. A single mom that got inseminated meets a guy and they get married. Then her child needs a transplant or something, they make blood tests and stuff and bang! He was the real dad all along!!! That inspired this story. 

Because of my career, I know a lot about the development of the fetus in the womb, but little about how the moms feel, so thank you to planned parenthood.org for all the answers. 

Also, I don’t want kids.

[chloemokthequeen]

I am a Freelance Marketer.

Too many people ask what I do and I usually give a very simple answer. Many of them who are skeptical might think that I have an easy job, or that I'm just another housewife making ends meet. Well, they are not exactly wrong. I've decided to write about my career choice and a description of this choice in detail because there is so much in this choice that I cannot finish explaining all in a hangout session. Many mothers have asked me how do I do this, and wish they have the same thing going on for them. I suppose, after two years of freelancing, I owe it to many mother-friends and ex-colleagues to tell you what I now do.

In a Nutshell

In a nutshell, I'm a marketing consultant who helps businesses who need my help in any marketing activation. My clients, who are mostly Startups & SMEs, need a jack-of-all-trades expertise who can contribute in many areas within the marketing department.

A lot of people ask why would people hire me instead of hiring a full timer. The answer is simple: I'm cheaper, better and clients don't need to contribute to my EPF (retirement fund) and employment benefits. Cheaper, because I charge based on my invested hours, instead of the potentially hefty cost of keeping me onboard on a full-time basis. Better, simply because at my rates, you won't find a full-timer as experienced, nor will you find another freelancer with my set of skills.

The Work

I wish I am Liam Neeson and tell you I have a unique set of skills, but Neeson I am not. But I do have a set of skills that is rare when all of them combined. I can plan and execute both online & offline marketing activations, from organizing press conferences, running & optimizing Adwords campaigns, designing ecommerce websites, to data crunching. Some simpler yet time consuming tasks include social media management, graphic design, CRM and copywriting.

In other words, I'm a Jack-of-all-trades.

Each of my client has a set of projects, and each project is of a different nature and/or industry. In two years, I have worked on property development, education, F&B, football club, tourism, fashion, job portals and so many I have lost track.

The Structure

Unlike what most people imagine freelancers to be, I maintain the same work hours, sometimes more. Weekdays, 9am to 6pm, I am dedicated to my work the same you would do in an office. Instead of being accountable and responsible to only one immediate superior, I report to multiple clients and manage them to the best of my abilities. I don't have time to take a breather because every minute I'm thinking of a marketing strategy on a macro level, I can be doing something on a micro-level that does not need as much brain power.

I keep myself very productive and every minute is accounted for, with the help of Toggl, a time management app. Of course, being at home with a baby/toddler means that I'll step away from my computer once in a while but that does not take me away from my work. I use every mobile app available to get work done and have long mastered feeding and/or putting my child to sleep while working. (Still an exclusive direct-latch breastfeeding mom! #win)

There is still work stress, just as you would in any type of work. There are still heavy attachments to projects I run, and every mistake on my judgement can have upsetting repercussions, reflected on numbers, be it engagement or pure sales.

The Life

Instead of spending time on the road, waking up early to get preparations done, I wake up a little later, most times just in time to make breakfast and work. While that sounds nice enough, imagine juggling work and a toddler all day. I no longer go to the washroom alone and I'm always explaining myself to someone who may not understand me.

So, while I save time in the road, I'm more tired at the end of the day. I'd imagine that if you've spent a full day at work, you'll feel energised once again to see your child after work, and would like to spend some quality time with him/her. Me? I'm spent at the end of the day, craving for quality bathroom time. Unfortunately, there is really no break until my daughter decides to sleep. If I'm lucky, that's 10pm.

Juggling, takes on a whole new meaning when my body discovers new muscles it never knew it had. I was ambidextrous as a kid, and I've come to pick it up again when managing more than three tasks at once. Breastfeeding, typing out an email and blasting out a post from my phone all at once.

Unlike most home-based employees who never step out, I have regular meetings with clients, both teleconferences and face-to-face meetings. There are deadlines and targets to achieve, and I play a good amount of significant roles in a number of businesses. I cannot be a bottleneck and cannot allow myself to be one even if I have good reasons to, for example my daughter is sick and I haven't slept in two days.

I am also thankful for help from my husband who also works from home (not a freelancer), my mother who sometimes stays with us, and my mother-in-law who is always ready to help. While I am the primary care giver of my child, they have been there to relief me, and they are the very reason of how I've survived this far.

Pros & Cons

The Pros are many, here are the top 3 for me:

- In a short two years, I've come to know more than ever. I am most likely the first to sense a new marketing trend, from better landing page features, colour with the most engagement, to new Google upgrades. I have also accummulated a pretty impressive portfolio (I think!) in just two years based in industry, scope and performance.

- I've never missed a milestone with my child, ie. First words, first step, first dance, etc. I can always choose to drop everything and egg her on!

- I've learned so much in these two years that I've rolled out many of these learnings into different industries and cities - at the same time witnessing how different the outcomes due to language, culture, audience expectations and local competition.

Cons are plenty too! But here are my top 3:

- As a freelancer, I don't usually get to run strategic-level projects or lead the company on a specific direction. I might not see the whole picture the way full timers do, or that I refrain from doing so for a number of office politics reasons.

- Most freelancers like me, are hired to tackle the most difficult and tedious marketing tasks. Unlike when employed as a full-timer in a managerial role, you will have assistants or help to complete the minute items, I am there to do both planning and execution, independently and without help.

- No maternity leave. This is probably what bothers me the most. The loss of income aside while dealing with incoming post-natal depression, I might need to source for new clients if my "original" clients replace me with another during my downtime.

Conclusion

There are still more pros and cons; but I know that I'm in a uniquely blessed position. I am grateful for clients who have decided to stick with me, given that I have a set of rules myself, and grateful that I'm enjoying my daughter's new quirks almost everyday.

I won't say it's easy, heck I'd say it's the hardest thing I have to do so far. But it is so rewarding, in so many ways.

Many ask if I'll ever go back to a full-time role. My answer is 95% No. 5% if Godfather makes me an offer I can't refuse. Lol.

So that's it! That's pretty much all I have to tell. If you want to start some freelancing work, do try out Workana.com, who is also one of my favourite clients who truly appreciate the value of freelancers.

Hope this answers some of your questions (if not, all!). Got a question? Just shoot, and I'll try my best to answer!

[ragarza]

The Myth of Startup Investing

Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) in Alice in Wonderland

The first question I would ask myself if I see a dude who’s 27 years old and not a self made billionaire writing this would be: why in heaven is he talking about startup investing?

But the truth is that the lie they’ve told us is that nobody has a criterion, that only the self made billionaires or “angel investors” know what they’re talking about.

That’s the biggest lie we’ve heard.

At a time when apps and social media take up most of our attention span, and therefore our energy, we fall into the culture of burnout for doing absolutely nothing. Its as if only by virtue of belonging to this generation we are automatically conditioned to become numb and permissive.

How do people get away with madness nowadays? How do people and leadership get away with insults, single-handed authoritarian actions?

Because we don’t care.

Gone are the days when “going with the flow” or “Gone with the Wind” take us to some acceptable and comfortable haven. Going with the flow nowadays is akin to what before would be called the “Wikipedia black hole” that is, the days when we would go through article after article catalyzed by our own thirst for knowledge.

Nowadays, it seems like, we give in to this cascade of pseudo news on Facebook. Nowadays, we don’t have the attention span to read a full article not to mention the energy!

Burnout by Getty Images

Remember those days when people used to read books? I’m already seeing some eye rolling here as the guy writing this article pretends to be an intellectual or “well-read” person but the author, let me tell you, as any other millennial, knows he falls into this rabbit hole too, quite often mind you.

The resistance to technology has always been the same. What will it do to us? Why meet it with fear as opposed to excitement? And the answer to these questions inevitably borders with ambiguity. To what extent should we embrace technology? - Is met by, what technology is beneficial for what and when?

What I’m advocating for here is not for the return to those days when we would play with rocks and kindle fire on a cave to eat some raw meat, YUMMY 😋! No, what I’m advocating for here is awareness.

Yuck, comes that psychological and boring term, that term these “enlightened” scientists and researchers use in their esoteric papers and articles, which we don’t read anymore! Why? Because we don’t respect studied people anymore. Gone are the days when we respect the intellectual authority as knowledge becomes presumably democratized (thanks Google). Nowadays, nobody knows more than the other because knowledge is no longer proprietary or hardly acquired (see Tesla’s patent giveaway).

Bare with me, it seems like I’m trying to get “somewhere”, to a “conclusion” or to some “value judgment of the human condition”.

But that’s not fun, so don’t hold your breath.

The question we face now is, how are humans adapting to these technologies and how are we deciding to evolve with them?

That brings me to the subject matter.

A few years ago, I predicted a bust. A moment when the world realized the ginormous Ponzi Scheme-like Silicon Valley model. Some people call it the “Pump and Dump” model. That is, you start a company, you make it sexy or popular, then you “raise” (ask for) money at a bigger valuation (overpriced estimation of how much your company is worth) and then you sell it to the highest bidder (the dumbest bidder).

Today, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that Soft Bank’s Vision Fund, the visionary (mind the pun) Masayoshi Son’s venture capital fund, is running out of cash. Meaning, this fund, which asks investors for their money to allegedly invest it into the “next big thing” is almost done spreading the money (or the powder as those private equity guys like to call it). The model works only if there’s a higher bidder when they sell their stake (or equity) in these companies. Because let’s be real, these companies (like Uber) don’t plan to make any money any time soon, insofar they continue to raise money from “investors” (I put it in quotations as almost anybody hearing the word investor presumes they are smart. I’ve got news for you, you’ve got $5 dollars in your bank? You can be an investor! See Stash).

“Wall Street Executive Accused of Scheming to Defraud Investors of $95M” (from ABCNews)

But what happens “after the music stops”? As Alan Blinder titles his book on the 2008 crisis. Well, investors will want their money back! But these funds would have to sell their stakes. If there’s a flash sale (end of season sale), suddenly there will be a lot of merchandise out there! Prices fall. What then, what then will these little investors do?

Panic.

And we go on and on and on about these assumptions about the future as if I am some sort of visionary (like Masayoshi 🤣) and knew what the hell I’m talking about.

No, what’s actually happening, in my opinion, is that with the advent of digital globalization, we all know more, we all have access to more, we can all invest in more (see crowdfunding) and therefore we are all the same! But there’s another kick to it: barriers to entry fall (like those Harvard Business School people like to talk 🤓, I went to the University of Illinois in Urbana, I couldn’t tell between a kernel of corn and a book).

Therefore, the biggest myth they told us about startup investing, is that we’ll find the next monopoly (like Facebook, Google, Tinder 😏), myth because, without anymore barriers to entry, there cannot by any more Googles!!

In light of wanting to please and end this article with some sort of conciliatory, heartwarming and cohesive conclusion I will say what follows:

We cannot judge the future by the past because that only makes sense when things don’t change. The truth is that the future will and continue to look much different than the past at a much faster pace. See Andrew McAfee’s Second Machine Age as a framework of how the economy as we know it is inevitably changing, also see Aeon Flux, if anything you’ll get to see Charlize Theron at her best 😍. Gone will be the times when we go to our 9-5pm job, mow our lawn and kiss our wives (or husbands) goodbye. In comes the time when our own sense of validity in the economy will be put into the question as working, in many ways, becomes irrelevant.

Barney’s Beach Party from Barney Wiki

So what do I advocate for? I advocate for people traveling, having fun, meeting other people and drinking coffee by the sea. I advocate for people to embrace the waves of the second machine age, to advance their inner most desires to the benefit of humankind. I advocate for awareness in what we do and why we do it. Because frankly speaking, falling on the victim mentality because we can’t stay away from our phones is just our excuse to shy away from this Brave New World (see Aldous Huxley).

Let’s stop idolizing these investors, billionaires, technologists and instead, start utilizing what they have created to expand our minds in ways previously unimaginable 😲...

[ohthismustbetheplace]

“Why Don’t I Want to Marry My Perfect Boyfriend?”

“One thing I’ve always been certain of is that I want to have a family. When I was younger, this meant a husband and biological kids. My definition has since expanded, but the concept remains the same: children to raise and a partner to love who will raise them with me.

Imagining what this will look like is a cherished pastime of mine. Sometimes we’re building a homestead with our bare hands by a lake in New Zealand; sometimes we’re living in a multimillion dollar apartment in Manhattan and I’m the editor-in-chief at the New Yorker; sometimes we run a bakery in a sleepy California beach town; sometimes my husband is French and we raise our kids in the 6th arrondissement…the possibilities seem endless.

That is, until I actually have to pick one. I met my boyfriend a little over a year ago. He’s wonderful, perfect, perhaps not everything I’ve ever imagined (he’s American, doesn’t have any Oscars, has never taken me to a yacht party, etc), but he’s one of the everythings I imagined. It’s easy to see that we love each other, and I’m constantly being asked “is he The One?”

The question forces me to confront the reality that now, at 28 years old (around the age I always imagined myself to be in the aforementioned fantasies), with all the pieces in place to make my dream a reality, I’m hesitant.

People are always shocked when I answer honestly: I don’t really know if he’s the one. I love him and I’m happy, but it’s hard to imagine myself giving up the possibility of something else. To them, that means it’s not true love; if he were The One, I’d be sure. But I don’t know if that’s true. Many of the high points in my life have been born of my never being 100% sure about anything.

In 2013, I moved to San Francisco on a whim. I’d never been. I fell in love with a long-haired programmer, cooked huge meals for my friends in tiny kitchens, worked in a startup incubator and went skiing and hiking on the weekends.

I loved living in SF, but when my boyfriend wanted to move to New York City, I was up for an adventure and I followed him. We broke up before I found a job or an apartment, which left me with the blankest slate I’d had since graduating college. Thanks to the money I’d saved in anticipation of the cost of NYC living, I seized the opportunity and traveled for a couple months, then decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, 2,650 miles from Mexico to Canada.

On the PCT, I was “Wonder Woman” (my trail name). I hiked by the light of the moon and slept on dramatic ridgelines. I did it all by myself. I was hardcore.

When I finished, I moved to New York to see what all the fuss was about, and that’s where I live now. I work in fashion. I drink urbane cocktails in crowded bars and buy frivolous pairs of shoes. I love it. In none of these situations have I ever felt like I’m pretending or playing a part, but rather, each time feels like I’ve unlocked a secret door inside me.

All this is to say, I am acutely aware of the many lives I could love to lead, which makes it hard to feel sure that my present situation is IT — it-enough, at least, to think about getting married, buying property, settling down.

I crave newness, challenge and freedom more than I crave stability, and this is what makes me hesitant to call my boyfriend “The One.” He is A One, that’s for sure, but I know now that falling in love — with a person, a place, a time — can happen more than once, and each time it does, it’s electrifying. Each time it makes me fall more in love with myself.

So I’m wondering: Can you legitimately be in love with a present context, even if you know it may not be what you want forever? I talk about this with my boyfriend often, that we might want some time for personal growth, for new experiences, for change. That doesn’t mean we won’t end up together, but we don’t have to be certain that we will.

Now that I’m in my late twenties, people are blown away by this. They see it as wasted time. I used to see it that way too, but I’m starting to come around. At this point, I’d rather revel in the multitude of possibilities than sign off on just one of them. In fact, I don’t know if that kind of certainty will ever exist for me, despite those in my life who’ve showed me it’s possible to pick a dream, a love, a life, and stick with it.

New passions have a tendency of sneaking up on me like a wave at my back, overwhelming me with gentle force and sweeping me off my feet — to San Francisco, to Pacific Crest trails, to New York City, to places I’ve yet to imagine. And I live for that feeling. But it gets harder and harder to justify to myself as the years go by. I do want to get married, I do want kids, and even though these things still exist in that mysterious “future” place (and even though I’m “only” 28), I sometimes worry about what will happen when the future becomes my present. What if I lose my someone — who could have been the one — because I’m so resistant to the idea of forever?

Perhaps what I’m most unsure of is whether I’m truly living life to the fullest and basking in my freedom, as is my intention, or if I’m running from commitment and hiding behind fear. For now, I like being with A One. I like having someone to talk about my dreams with, however far away or unrealistic they are. I like waking up next to him in the morning, listening to music and fighting over the air conditioning.

I also like waking up by myself, puttering around my apartment, imagining the dress I’d wear to The Oscars as Leo’s date. I like luxuriating in the infinite possibilities. For now, I’m riding the wave.”

By Nina Wheeler on Man Repeller

[sidneycrosbyisawitch]

The first time Jamie and yoga Tyler have sex Jamie goes to push Tyler's legs towards his chest and they just go so easily and and Jamie realises how flexible Tyler is and has to take a minute

okay now i’ve started thinking about backstory for this and it will put me in the grave.

tyler moves to vancouver after he graduates from university of toronto. he’s interning at a sports marketing firm, and just. fucking hates it. he tries to keep his chin up, gives his mom happy updates when she calls every week. but the truth is he feels like he’s slowly unraveling in this new city, and his hips hurt all the time from old hockey injuries. everything’s new, and he works such long hours and making friends isn’t as easy as it was in school. 

he adopts a dog and that makes things a little better. marshall likes to cuddle a lot, and tyler doesn’t know how he survived without him. 

he’s at an after work party, and it’s fine, it’s fun, the drinks are free, and he likes his co-workers just fine. but there’s definitely a part of him that wants to be back in his apartment with marshall instead.his hip twinges and he rubs at it absently.

his team leader’s wife notices and asks him about it. tyler tells her all about the hockey injuries, and she nods, tells him about rehabbing from playing college soccer. 

“you should try yoga,” she suggests, and gives him the name of the yoga studio she goes to. 

tyler thanks her and forgets about it for awhile. 

until one weekend when he feels like he’s aged 75 years overnight and sits on the couch with marshall all day, heating pad across his lap.at that point he’s willing to try anything. he orders a yoga mat off prime and looks up their class hours.

and then, he falls in love with it. 

first of all, his hips start to feel miraculously better. that enough sells him on it.

but it’s been so long since he’s used his body. with hockey, he used to be able to push himself to his limits and then keep going. with yoga, he learns, he can do the same thing. his body is still his, still has that same strength, and maybe he felt a little lost in a world where he couldn’t *use* it. 

he starts going to two classes a day. he works on his handstands at home while marshall yips and paws at him. it’s actually a great way to practice balance, with marshall pushing him off center and making him giggle.it’s not a lie anymore when he tells his mom that’s he’s doing good. work’s still boring, but at least tyler has something outside of it now.

so tyler’s getting really good at this yoga thing. enter jamie.

who goes running on the same route tyler uses to walk marshall. he’s getting up a lot earlier now to practice his flow, and maybe that’s why he’s never noticed the guy. but he’s really broad in the chest and always stops to pet marshall. “okay, marsh, let him get back to his run,” tyler says, pulling gently at marshall’s leash. “no, it’s okay!” the guy protests quickly, running his big hands all over marshall’s wiggly, happy body. “i love dogs, it’s not a problem.”he has these big kind eyes and his hair is kind of sweaty and flopping onto his forehead.“he’s going to follow you home if you keep doing that,” tyler jokes.the guy shrugs, smiling gently. “i’d be okay with that.”tyler feels out of breath the whole walk home

it keeps going like this for *weeks*. tyler doesn’t even know the guys name, but he’s soft spoken and makes stupid jokes and marshall actively looks for him when they’re on their walks now.and then the guy shows up at tyler’s evening yoga class.

“hey,” tyler says, surprised, when he notices the guy unrolling his mat in front of him. the guy lights up with a smile. “hey!” he says with genuine excitement. “sorry, i don’t know your name! marshall’s dad, right?”tyler laughs and holds out his hand. “yeah, tyler’s my actual name.”“jamie,” the guy, jamie, says, and then grimaces. “please don’t judge me. my sister got me a class here for christmas because she thinks i work too much. i’ve never done yoga before.”tyler giggles, and promises. but.fuck, jamie is bad at yoga.

when they’re rolling up their mats, jamie is drenched in sweat and tyler is full on laughing at him now. he managed to hold it together during class okay, watching jamie fall out of his lunges and curse quietly under his breath trying and failing to hold tree pose.but now that class is over, tyler lets it all out.

“i asked you not to judge me,” jamie says, sheepish and still redfaced from exertion.“i’m sorry, dude. i didn’t expect it to be *that* bad.”“yeah, well.” jamie wipes his face. “you’re incredible, so i guess you’re allowed to judge.”tyler heart flips a little at the praise. like it always did when one of his teammates slammed into him to celebrate a good goal. “i’m alright,” he shrugs, and crosses his arms because it makes his biceps look really good. and, okay, he knows he’s better than alright. but there’s always room for improvement. “i haven’t been doing it very long.”jamie looks surprised. “really? fuck, now i’m really embarrassed. you’re amazing, seriously.”tyler shrugs again, blush spreading over his cheekbones. “thanks. that’s cool to hear, man.”

so jamie asks for tyler’s number and asks him out to dinner and they fall really hard, really fast.

jamie works at a startup he helped get off the ground after he graduated from school. jamie and tyler are dating and it hasn’t even been a year, but they’re in deep.and then jamie’s startup gets bought out. and they’re promoting him to CTO. and they need him to relocate to dallas.so jamie makes tyler dinner and drops all this information on him and tyler’s kind of in shock and kind of steeling himself to get dumped. 

then jamie gets down one one knee and proposes.

“will you marry me? i can’t imagine making this new life without you.”

tyler cries a little, and punches jamie in the shoulder. “you fuck, i thought you were about to dump me.”jamie’s crying a little bit now, too, laughing wetly. “so is that a yes?”“yes,” tyler says. “that’s a big fucking yes.”

and jamie slides the ring on tyler’s finger, kisses his forehead. his eyelids. the end of his nose. and tyler just clings to his arms.he gets to have all this. all of jamie, for the rest of his life.

so tyler quits his job, which is great because tyler hated it anyways, and they pack up and move to dallas.jamie buys a huge fucking house with big windows that let in the early morning texas sun. tyler starts looking for a job, but he’s not really feeling… anything.

jamie tells him to take his time, no rush.tyler adopts another dog. he finds a yoga studio he likes but it’s not great. but that’s okay, he’s getting more into his home practice anyways.

starting the instagram is mostly out of boredom. jamie works a lot, and tyler wants a way to track his progress. when he starts getting followers and views, it’s a bit of a surprise.but tyler loves a challenge. on weekends, jamie acts as cameraman so tyler can take pics in cool backgrounds and nature. tyler jokes that jamie’s his instagram husband.

and it’s jamie who says, “i think you should stop looking for a job. you’re really good at this. i think you should make a go of it.”because tyler always hated working in that corporate atmosphere. he honestly can’t think of a job he’d be as happy with as he is coming up with new insta content. and he gets to hang out with marshall and cash all day. and his practice is growing in leaps and bounds.so tyler adopts another dog, and commits to it, 100%.

AND THEN TYLER LIVES THE DREAM LIFE AND GETS ENDORSED BY ADIDAS AND THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER IN TEXAS, THE END

[margiehasson]

In the Time of Coronavirus, How to Effectively Work From Home

Salaam and hello everyone! I’m Lindsay, the Customer Relationship Manager here at Haute Hijab. I’m in charge of creating all those emails you get every week with new product drops, style tips and more. Like many of you, we here HH are worried and watching closely as the coronavirus pandemic plays out. Many of us are switching to working from home, limiting our social engagements and much more. This is an area where I have a lot of expertise thanks to my prior role as Director of Audience at a startup called Werk.

At Werk, I helped create the first and only people analytics platform dedicated to helping companies become more flexible. I spent nearly three years consuming every single piece of available data on workplace flexibility, and used that data to craft a narrative about the importance of workplace flexibility in the future of work.

Well, turns out that future is now.

Haute Hijab's CRM Manager Lindsey Dreyer grabbing a photo from her computer as she worked from home.

I know you're probably feeling overly stressed out and anxious thanks to the endless stream of news articles and op-eds about this pandemic, but I'm not here to give you medical advice or make fun of you for buying toilet paper in bulk (seriously though, what's up with that?). But with social distancing mandates already happening and more on the horizon, I want to share my expertise to help you stay connected to your job and co-workers as more of us move to a work-from-home situation while we ride this thing out together.

Making Work From Home a Success

The most important thing you can do is not let physical distance create psychological distance. What do I mean by this? Think about your best friend who lives across the country. Think about the last time your husband left for a business trip. Think about your parents or grandparents who might live miles away from you. Even though it's not always easy, these relationships are able to withstand the difficulties of physical distance because of the care and effort we put into them. We must apply the same level of care and effort to our relationships with our co-workers while working remotely.

But how? Don't worry — it's easier than it sounds. Here are some ways to overcome physical distance and feel more connected to your team while miles apart.

1. Create a virtual water cooler. If you use a messaging platform like Slack (that's what we use here at HH), take the initiative to create a "virtual water cooler" channel where you and your co-workers can discuss topics unrelated to work the same way you would in person. Or just share cute cat pictures and GIFs! You know your work culture best — whatever you would (appropriately) chat about IRL, you can (and should!) chat about online.

2. Check in often. When you're working remotely, it's not just important to be overly communicative with your direct reports — you must also manage up. This means that you should make sure to check in often with your boss or manager to let them know what you will be working on that day, what you have already achieved, and what you still need to complete. Even if it feels totally random and out of context, drop them a line a few times per day to say hello or relay a new discovery, thought, or idea. It will help reassure them you're still there, you're still just engaged, and you're still ready and eager to brainstorm. That said, it's probably a good idea to check in with your manager first to see if they'd like to receive these updates, or would rather have them bundled into a weekly update.

3. Celebrate success. One of the hardest things about working remotely is loneliness. Say you close a new deal or have some kind of technological breakthrough. You can't just turn to the person next to you and tell them about it (though you can always try talking to your cat or dog — hey, no judgment!). That's why it's super important to blast out your success to your co-workers using Slack (or whatever messaging tool your office uses), so they can throw a few celebratory emojis your way. And if you're not the one sharing, be sure to congratulate your colleagues when credit is due. Shout out your co-workers who have hit major milestones like work anniversaries or sales goals. If your company mood is a more serious one, maybe skip the emojis and respectfully acknowledge/congratulate yours and your co-worker’s accomplishments.

4. Be overly communicative about your plans. Need to take the dog for a walk? Have to get the kids from school? Have a doctor's appointment? Share your plans on every tool or platform you have — your Google or Outlook calendar, Slack, etc. When your co-workers can't see you physically entering or leaving the building, it's hard for them to know if and when you're available to chat. If you're stepping away from your computer, alert your team and give them a preferred way to reach you in case of emergency while you're away. Here at HH, we have a Slack channel dedicated to our availability where we can see everyone's whereabouts and plans for the day so there's no confusion.

Now, this all comes with the caveat that you and your manager (or your employees) trust each other enough to get the work done and are being courteous in letting each other know when you may need to step away. Especially now, if you’re switching to WFH during this particular coronavirus pandemic and perhaps your kids’ schools are closed as well, we all need to acknowledge and inform each other of our work-day schedules and breaks we may need to take to attend to something else.

5. Don't keep things to yourself. Have something to say? Don't keep it to yourself and assume you can just tell your co-workers later. At this point, it's unclear how long we'll need to work remotely. You also want to make sure you're sharing that information with ALL relevant parties. DMs are great because they prevent distractions for employees who don't need to be included, but they can also create silos. If you're unsure, err on the side of oversharing.

6. Utilize collaboration tools and video conferencing. One of the hardest things about working on a distributed team is not having access to a whiteboard. To keep track of your team's goals and progress, you'll definitely want to utilize a collaboration or project management tool such as Asana, Trello or Basecamp. These tools are lifesavers for remote teams and the key to keeping projects on track. For meetings, instead of old fashioned conference calls try using a video conferencing tool Zoom, BlueJeans, or Google Hangouts. (Just be sure to have a hijab nearby in case you need to get ready in a pinch!) Always include a link to the video chat in every meeting invite so you don't have people trickling in 10 minutes late. And, be on time to these meetings!

What if Your Boss is Not into Remote Work?

That all sounds easy enough, right? But what should you do if your boss is opposed to remote working and you don't feel comfortable taking the packed train to your office in the middle of a pandemic (I DON'T BLAME YOU!)? Here are some ways you can more effectively negotiate a temporary remote arrangement:

1. Always start with data. The reality is that remote workers are far more productive than their in-office peers. This can be substantiated in study after study after study. According to one recent study by ADP Research Institute reported in Harvard Business Review, employees who work away from the office four or five days of the workweek are nearly twice(!) as engaged as those who work solely from their company office. Not commuting every day also helps employees start working earlier in the day, which can also be a great selling point.

2. Use this as an opportunity to educate. "Social distancing" is a term used to describe the public action taken to stop or slow the spread of infectious disease. In the 1918 flu pandemic, New York City enacted social distancing measures quickly and lost the least number of residents out of any East Coast city.

According to David Gray, a former acting assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor, social distancing is especially effective today because most people will still be able and willing to work during outbreaks. "It is likely that many workers will be sick enough that they will need to stay away from work, if only to keep their coworkers from being impacted, but they will be well enough to complete substantive work," he wrote for HuffPo in 2010. "Or many will be healthy themselves, but they will be needed at home to help care for a family member or a child. Schools across the nation will identify potentially sick children and many will have to stay at home for a week or more, so their working parents will be stuck at home.”

3. Have a plan. When requesting any type of flexible work arrangement, it's important to come prepared with a plan. Show your boss exactly how you plan to meet your daily objectives and goals while working away from the office. This may include asking for access to new tools or platforms, proposing more frequent check-ins or virtual meetings, etc.

4. Suggest a trial period and let your results do the talking. Propose your new temporary arrangement as a test run. Perhaps you can get your boss to agree to one or two weeks of remote work. During that time, you must maintain the same level of output and productivity (though truth be told, you'll probably surpass it). It's critical that you show your manager that remote work works so that others who are at risk of this virus can also be afforded the ability to work from home.

We know this is a time of fear and uncertainty, and we are right there with you. Many of us in our New York office commute on the subway or trains to get here, and some of us already work remote in different states. We’re also moving to a more work-from-home environment here as we try and figure out the best way to be safe during this coronavirus time.

We try to be accommodating, gracious and flexible with each other, knowing that we are all working hard and are responsible team members. And, we are blessed that this trust in us comes from Melanie and Ahmed — from the top down. Our prayers are with you all for your health, protection and safety.

In the Time of Coronavirus, How to Effectively Work From Home published first on https://lenacharms.tumblr.com/

[michaelwma-blog]

An End To My Independent Life & Why I Now Work at RateGravity

Legit photo credit: Ally Schmalling. Deliberately hacky photoshopping: Yours truly.

For the last year and a half, I have accidentally stumbled into being an independent contractor.  After leaving my last startup in a bit tumult, I was not actually looking for work. In fact, I was determined to not work at all. However, I now am starting another chapter as Chief Marketing Officer of RateGravity, a seed-stage startup that is out to revolutionize the mortgage industry.

I am thinking to myself, "How the hell did I get here? Another seed-stage startup? Are you really doing this again? What are you, nuts?" The announcement goes public today  in a few hours, so I thought I'd try to take some time to reflect on the journey that got me here.

I: What Did You Learn, [Loser]? The month after I left my startup, my father-in-law and I went out to dinner. As the former Amtrak Chief of Police, he has a gift for cutting all the crap and getting to the heart of the matter. He asked, "In life, you either win or you learn. So, what did you learn?"

Ouch. OK, I didn't know what I learned. I was burnt out. Cashed. In fact, I was looking forward to my time "on the beach." More gooey blender drinks.  Less thinking.

Ironically, I never afforded myself that luxury.  I think I was just too scared to answer the questions directly. A former investor quickly brought a due diligence project. Another friend asked for another project help. Snowvation needed sales, marketing, and temporary executive leadership, and I was determined to ensure that ShredBetter would not have been sold in vain (BTW, Snowvation is kicking ass).

Looking back, I think I used work to defer having to answer the hard questions. This cycle repeated itself in random ways about 6 times in the last 18 months. I consider myself very lucky and thankful to my friends for being so gracious and open to letting me into their enterprises. What's more, that luck bought me enough time to assuage my own fears, I think.

II: For Hire: CXO With Commitment Issues So I worked, and through work often comes great therapy. As the great activist once Grace Lee Boggs said, "You make your path by walking."  And in that walking, I think I have figured some things out and have a clearer answer to my father-in-law's question. 

By seeing lots of growth and turnaround companies, I have gained newfound perspective about what I learned from my last startup: I honestly failed to continually evaluate my own 3 Questions This Over-The-Hill Entrepreneur Asks (if you don’t at least scan this link, the rest of this piece may not make sense to you, if at all!).

FFS, I wrote this myself about myself. Idiot. While I wrote this just before my 40th birthday, it has all the awkwardness of a high school prom photo. But you just have to embrace the awkward.

Fail 1. My co-founder and I jumped in too fast, never knew each other as people. It was a startup version of a shotgun marriage. Thus, I failed to answer my own Kidney Test:  Would I give my business partner my kidney? I really never took time to answer that question with an open heart and wide eyes.

Fail 2. I also failed my Uzo Abada Test: Where will my art live? We didn't define roles or what we individually owned. Through poorly constructed founding relationships, there was no place for my art to live. Despite guidance from my lawyer and friends who shared their co-founding disasters, we just forged ahead and said, "No need for explicit roles. We'll just figure it out later."

All bad moves. But I did it anyway. Fail. Fail. Fail. 

So Horsepowered Partners was reborn. Originally only intended to be a shingle for my side project ShredBetter, Horsepowered evolved into a very comfortable consulting model. I was able to de-risk myself personally and professionally.  I figured I sucked at answering those 3 big questions for a founder, so why try? 

Most of my projects were tidy 60-90 day projects.  Everything was by referral. I took a little cash from my clients, usually a little equity, and sometimes hired my long-term successor.  I didn't want to be around forever. See it, fix it, exit. I toyed with renaming Horspowered Partners to Your Rebound CXO. 

Subconsciously, I think I was hoping to just finish that last project for my beach time, which never came. To illustrate, I did a lot of digital marketing, yet have no website myself.  Serious commitment problems, for sure.

III: Gravitational Pull And now, I begin another chapter at RateGravity. It started as another one of my projects, "Hey, the person we were hiring fell through.  Can you hold us over? ... Sure, no problem." 30-day contract. Then another 30.  And now here we are full-time.

So, did I learn anything? I think so. Let's run the 3 Tests again. 

1. Kidney Test: Would I give my partners my kidney? 

You may not believe this but the founder, Patrick Boyaggi grew up in the same freaking Cleveland suburb that I did, Westlake. Unreal. 

In the two months we have worked together, we have also both worked hard to get to know each other as people.  I've stayed in Patrick's house, played with his kids, and gotten to know and adore his wife.  We've tried to connect as men, fathers, husbands and also desperate Cleveland sports fans. Our kids have said hi on Slack calls. Is it kidney-worthy? No, but it's darn good for 60 days.

That has extended to the rest of the executive team, where I spent extensive 1-1 time with each of them. While it's not perfect, it might be the most I know about my co-workers before I started a job except for starting ShredBetter with my lifelong friend Brian Morgan.

So does this pass the Kidney Test explicitly? Probably not.  But that's a really high bar, and probably bears revisiting. The point is, in being wiser this go-around, and spending 60 days working and acting like a member of the team, I know more than I've ever before in approaching a new job.

2. The Kid Test: Can I explain this to a 7-year-old?

Me: You know how we had to borrow money to buy our house?

Jack (now 8): Yeah.

Me: Well, Daddy's new company helps save people lots of money on that loan. We shop all the little banks for them and they can get deals that the big banks won't give them.

Jack: Like when you used to work at Bank of America? And how much money?

Me: Yup. Average? About $29,000. It's like getting our minivan for free.

Jack: Cool. Can I get a computer now?

Check.

The mortgage industry is quite a stacked deck. If you know me, you know I am a sucker for companies that overturn large entrenched business that accumulate wealth on the backs of everyday people.  I've been involved in this idea in many industries from financial services to funerals to fashion. If there is a way to disrupt inequitable structures and give Jane and John Public a fair shake ... well, you have my interest.

That's the core of RateGravity's business model and founding story. Patrick was an exec in a major lending company. But when wanted a loan himself, he hacked the mortgage supply chain. He went direct and got a rate that no one else could get. He thought, "Wait. That's the business. Why should I be the only one to get this? We make money on people not 'seeing our screen."

RateGravity is about flipping the screen, hacking it, and saving people money. I'm in. 

Oh, and by the way, you are overpaying for your mortgage. For now.

3. The Uzo Abada Test: Where will your art live? That's one of the beauties of working together for 60 days vs. interviewing for 3 days. As my good friend Farhan Thawar correctly writes cites, interviewing is garbage. My art is already living. And I think there is more to come.

With RateGravity, we've already had more than a couple of "passionate differences of opinion." What's more, we have worked it out. Even before we agreed to full-time terms, the team allowed me to implement and change several keystone parts of the business such as brand, CRM, analytics, and content.  The impact of these decisions extends far beyond my consulting tenure. There is a mutual respect for each other's roles that has already been tested. I am confident stuff will get out in the world ... and that's all I ever wanted.

***

As I look back among all this, I still at times doubt my own heuristic evaluation.  However, my wife, Katherine, is an amazing partner -- my best friend, and my best advisor.  While in compensation negotiations, always the most fun part of any recruitment, she said to me, "Look, I haven't seen you engaged in your work like this for over 2 years. It's nice to see you like this. If you can get it done, then just do it." 

Well said. And I did.

OK, enough navel-gazing.

Fired up. Ready to go.

[mukoshy]

Startup struggle is real & true.

Today, I sat in front of my computer at work but couldn’t work. I was reviewing how we have been doing as a company, the first quarter of the year is few days to be gone and looking at my self as a person and a team leader.

Things started bothering me, they were all nitty-gritty, from the internet service providers at the office delivering poor service to electricity not stable and our burn rate, the pile of projects and new intake applications on the todo etc.

It got really into me and I felt it is a good thing really to share with the Startup community, especially aspiring founders.

Reality will shock you, the struggle is real and true.

I have a lot of friends on the employee side of life but I’m on the entrepreneur side. They usually tell me things like I wish to be like you, running my own business or company. I’d only laugh and save the argument. But today is not an ordinary day, I’m going to voice that argument at least to vomit the dirty side.

To begin with, I was once an employee my self. In fact, for a number of years, I worked as a regular staff of a company, grew to lead a department for a few years before starting GigaLayer. So, believe me, I know the 9-5.

Now I’m doing even more work hours than when I was employed. In some days I work 13hrs stretch, non-stop. Work hours didn’t get any easier but tougher as time goes by in my quest.

If you are considering being a Startup founder, then read carefully.

There is a shadow, no one is talking about.

I'm not here to make it any rosy for you. You better be ready for sleepless nights. There will be days when you will be confused, afraid and worried. There is no insurance for failure. You have to keep moving to bring food to the table, pay salaries and see the light of the next day at the least. You will watch your passion turn to hard labor. You will be held accountable, what use to be a hubby will become your day job. If you have a team, they will all look up to you for guidance and motivation even on your gloomy days.

Things will break, many plans will not go your way, staff will show up late, work will snail. You can shout or motivate your team, but you cannot give up.

While that is ongoing, you will hear that things are broken. To give you a gist, last week during election weekend, petty thieves came to our office, they couldn’t enter but managed to slip out a laptop through the window, this wasn’t part of anybody’s business plan just so you know how odd things can happen in your startup.

No, you are not alone in the market you are pursuing either. Competitors will come after you. You have to deliver competitive service or get buried under. You have to stay cash positive, profitable or be in deep shit loan called funding (PSS: I’m not a pro-funding, I’m pro bootstrap).

If you are like me, married with a child, you will be dealing with even more challenges. You will be trying so hard to meet up with the basic requirements to be a father or husband. Sometimes, I would love to stay back at work to deliver more work, but my child wants me home to play. That kind of a thing. Keeping a to-do list works, I think they do really. I am beginning to acquaint my self with yet another service to help me get on top of to-dos, it will be like the 8th one I’ve used so far. But they also add to the sorrow when you look at a heap of work every day because you will not only manage your own to-do, you will manage the entire company’s to-do and it will get overwhelming.

So the next time you want to think of having a Startup as an exist to stress or easy route away from a 9-5 job, just know that you will be jumping into yet more stress and more work hours.

I’m not here to discourage anyone, I’m here only to give you brotherly eyebrow of caution. Generally I’m a friendly, welcoming and motivating kind of ;guy, only that today is not that day. Thank you and I hope your blood is wormed up, don't be cold, follow your passion it will guide you!

[themakersmovement]

A look at Birdies, the popular slipper shoe startup that just raised $8 million more from investors Bianca Gates is a first-generation American, her parents having immigrated to the U.S. from Latin America. As such, she says, after waitressing her way through college at UC Irvine, she was expected to get a safe job with a 401(k) plan and to live with her parents until she was married. Things haven’t gone exactly that way, but one can imagine Gates’s parents feeling pretty satisfied with their daughter’s trajectory nevertheless. The reason: Gates, along with cofounder Marisa Sharkey, are the cofounders of Birdies, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based  footwear brand that has made it chic to step out in shoes like look like elegant slippers, and which just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Slow Ventures and earlier investor Forerunner Ventures. Sure, another e-commerce brand, who cares. Actually, if you’re a woman and don’t own a pair yourself yet or know someone who does, there’s a high likelihood that will change soon, including because one of the company’s biggest advocates to date has been none other than Megan Markle, the actress turned Duchess of Sussex, whose fashion choices are copiously detailed by fashion sites around the world, copied by their readers, then picked up by readers’ friends. Interestingly, Markle was never meant to step outside in the slippers. But before we explain, let’s back up a bit first, to Gates’s earlier career, which is a familiar story but also underscores the importance of grit — as well as the importance of making the right connections.  As Gates tells it from Birdie’s offices on Union Street, a kind of yuppie haven in San Francisco, “My family was living in Santa Ana and I was commuting every day to Irvine and I just wanted to spread my wings and move to a big city with a lot of diversity after graduating.” Thanks partly to her fluency in Spanish, she landed a job with the broadcast giant Univision as an account executive. After more than three years, and “realizing I didn’t want to be typecast as an Hispanic person working for Hispanic TV,” she left for Viacom, where Gates fell in love with a colleague. He landed soon after at Stanford Business School, and after plenty of cross-country flights, the two married and moved to San Francisco to start their family, with Gates opening up an office for Viacom’s MTV in the process. But she was soon feeling antsy again. “It was really convenient for me, but I [felt] after having my first chid and working out of a satellite office that I was out of the action. I wanted to be closer to people.” As it happens, she caught a 2011 commencement speech that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered to Barnard College students and decided to apply to Facebook. Six months later, she landed a job leading retail partnerships, where she helped sales organizations understand what was then a new platform to them.  She also made powerful friends, including Priti Youssef Chokski, a Facebook colleague who was striking corporate and business development deals and who Gates befriended over a series of events at the home of Sandberg, who quietly hosted women of Facebook who Sandberg identified as eager to do more with their careers. “You didn’t photograph yourself there or talk about [the dinners], but it helped Priti and I form a deeper friendship,” recalls Gates. The friendship — and Sandberg’s support — would eventually help get Birdies off the ground. So did Gates’s obsession with finding post-work, pre-slipper-type shoes, which she says dates back a decade. “I just found that more and more, I was being asked to take off my shoes in friends’ homes and I was asking people to do the same. I thought that stylish shoes for indoors made a lot of sense, but whenever I tried to find something, the images went from bad to worse. It was either funny animal heads, or shoes you couldn’t really wear to pop outside.” Gates wasn’t sure if there was a void in the market, or if she just imagined one, but either way, her husband, “who was like, ‘I’m sick of hearing about this,'” encouraged her to pursue the idea. She knew she couldn’t do it alone. She still had that big job at Facebook that she loved. She also had two young kids at home at this point. So Gates texted her friend, Marisa Sharkey, a former Ross Stores executive who’d moved from Manhattan to Sacramento with her own family and was feeling restless. “I texted her and said, ‘I have this crazy idea; I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Marisa texted back immediately and said, ‘Tell me what it is.'” Within no time at all, Sharkey was fully committed, putting $50,000 into the venture, alongside Gates, who also put $50,000 into the venture. What they got for their money? Shoes that today give them both “PTSD,” jokes Gates, but that became the starting point of Birdies. It wasn’t so easy, but some key connections made the dif…

A look at Birdies, the popular slipper shoe startup that just raised $8 million more from investors – TechCrunch

[talldrink-o-h2o]

Lifestyle: Buying a New Car

I grew up in Michigan, which you can read about extensively in this post. Everyone in Michigan either was employed by the auto industry (working for the Big 3 – GM, Chrysler, or Ford, as the case was in the ‘90s) or had family who worked in the auto industry. To this day, I know I’m in Michigan because of the lack of foreign cars on the road. I remember people would make racial slurs to my mom for the three years she owned a Toyota Camry, because it was more acceptable to say a racist comment than to drive a foreign car.

As a side note, I went to school in East Lansing from 2004 to 2008. This was when it was becoming mainstream to pay an obscene amount for drip coffee, a trend which continues to this day. East Lansing was home to a startup coffee chain called Beaners. I shit you not. Beaners experienced massive growth in Michigan and started to look to national expansion. They tried to enter into the Texas market. Allegedly the Texas powers-that-be said you can’t have a coffee shop that is named Beaners in Texas. Turns out that this is a racial slur for the migrant workers. Calling a shop this would alienate a good portion of the population. The company has since changed its name to Biggby (pronounced “Big B”) and claim the change had nothing to do with how offensive the name was. Which shows why people in Michigan thought it was okay to tell my mom she drove a rice racer because her car was Japanese.

But I digress. My aunt and grandfather both had worked for GM and my mother’s childhood best friend’s husband was a co-owner of a car dealership (did you follow that?). A person who retires from GM is granted a discount for him/her and their family for life. Because of this, it was insane for our family not to drive GM cars.*

When I turned sixteen, Katrina had conveniently totaled the little Mazda MX3 my dad had bought for her from a woman he worked with. The woman had kept it in mint condition, barely putting miles on it, and my dad got it for a song. One missed stop sign and the car was kaput. Because Katrina was a senior in high school and would be going to Michigan State the next year where she wouldn’t be allowed to have a car, my parents thought it’d be prudent to get us a car we could share for a year and then I could have it to myself my senior year. That’s how we got a year-old silver Pontiac Grand Am. And aside from feigning heartburn at the injustice of it all,** that car would take us all the way through college and follow me to my first year in Minnesota.

The first spring I lived in Minnesota, I had agreed to give my car to my sister, who had finished her MBA and was moving out to Virginia for her first job. This meant I needed a new car. Up until this point, the most I had ever spent on any single purchase was a $200 purse. I came out of undergrad with $20,000 of student loan debt and dumbly chose to live in a brand new apartment in the coolest neighborhood that literally cost more than one of my paychecks. I had no money to put down on a car and the idea of buying anything, let alone taking on yet another loan, made me sick to my stomach. I stayed up many nights talked to Steve about it, whom I had just started dating, and whom has always been much more frugal than me. For instance, he lived with his dad for a few years after undergrad so stockpiled an amount of cash. His favorite activity on the weekend is to determine just how much we’ll be able to save in the coming year and at what age we can retire. He offered to co-sign the loan for me, something I’d obviously need, being “cash poor” as the lady at the bank would later describe me to my dad. On principle, I couldn’t have a man I just started dating as my co-signer (I couldn’t think to the next week, why would I be beholden to this dude for five years?) so I had my dad sign.

The car I chose? A year-old silver Pontiac G6 with 22,000 miles on it. This is the car that replaced the Grand Am, because even though I no longer lived in Michigan, why would I ever buy anything other than American? Also the idea of doing research and going from dealership to dealership seemed daunting and not the same pastime activity in Minnesota as it was in Michigan. Don’t worry, this wasn’t an exact replica of the car I had just driven to my sister. This car was a very practical two-door, my statement to the world that I wasn’t planning to get married or have kids cause they couldn’t fit anyway. I chose it because I thought the trunk was cute. “I like its butt,” I told the salesman.

Fast forward to November 2018. I still have the G6. In the 9.5 years I’ve had the car, I’ve put a whopping 45,000 miles on it, meaning I never drive the thing. The furthest distances she traveled were two trips to Michigan, three trips to Milwaukee, and one time to Chicago. Only recently did I start driving her with any regularity, which is because I finally got access to Target’s restricted parking lot (you can reminisce about my first month parking there here). On an average day, my driving is 3-5 miles round trip. It’s less than two miles total to get to and from work, and if I throw in a class at OrangeTheory, I top out at five miles total.

Do you remember what it’s like to drive around in a 2009 model? There’s no back-up camera. There’s no keyless engine start. There’s no input for a phone to connect and certainly no Bluetooth. The dashboard is digital but not a touchscreen. It’s basically the Stone Age.

But back to money. A lot of people will say that they don’t buy cars because they don’t invest in depreciating assets. Which like, fuck off. If you’re leasing your BMW 5Series every three years that means you’re paying $500+ per month every month with no end. You’re pissing away money that could be used on literally anything else.

I always said I’d keep my car until it was ten years old or hit 100,000 miles, whichever came first, which, based on my habits, is clearly going to be the former versus the latter. Also, though, I really don’t like having a car payment so my intention was to drag this baby out as long as I could and start doing some initial research this spring.

But, like any long-term relationship, my car required some TLC recently. I was driving her when the “Service Tire Monitor” light came on. At the time, it was winter in Minnesota and air pressure in tires is a real thing, so being able monitor the pressure is something, but this seemed more like a nice-to-have, versus a need-to-have. So I put it off. I should also note that the only other time this light came on, I was driving down the road (not the highway, thank God) and the car just completely shut down in the middle of traffic. It was able to turn back on but it did it again a second time. As I learned while running, the symptom is not usually the cause and the car’s computer had to be reset – nothing to do with the tire monitor at all. One might think that story would have led me to quicker action this time around, but it did not.

On a November weekend, I went to a suburb for new running shoes (as discussed here). I was forced to take the scenic route home, because the road to the highway was blocked by some random festival. I had to go through a neighboring suburb where I could catch the highway. As I got close to the highway, literally every light on my dashboard – Check ABS, Check Airbag, Traction Control Off – started flashing.

I was nervous, but not overly concerned, and called Steve, who was watching Purdue football. “All the lights on my dashboard are on and flashing,” I started in.

“Uh huh,” he said, distracted, over the sounds of football in the background.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that if I die, this is why.”

“Okay – I’m going to go back to watching the game,” he hung up, unconcerned.

I figured that since things were going nuts and I clearly needed to reset my car’s computer, I might as well call Firestone. I explained what was going on with my car and asked if they’d have any availability today.

“No. Actually the earliest we can get you in is Monday,” the Firestone man informed me.

“Can I just drop it off today? She’s no good to me – actually,” I cut myself off. “My car is shutting down now. I need to call someone who can help me. Bye.”

My car completely died in a busy intersection. I tried to turn my car to the side street but only managed to be at a sight angle causing a backup in traffic. I tried turning the car on and off many times over, but nothing was happening. Now, I was panicked. I put my hazards on and started sweating. I called Steve, unclear what to do in this situation.

“Now don’t get mad, but, did you try turning it off and on?” Helpful.

“Yes. Duh. Many times. It won’t go back on. I have my hazards on but people keep honking. What do I do?” I was starting to freak, picturing that my death would not be because my car blew up on me, but rather because the cars behind me would not notice and crash into me.

“Uh…well…umm…” I could hear his brain working but also thought that maybe something was happening in the game.

“I’m going to call someone who can help me. Bye,” and I very aggressively hung up the phone on my husband.

I was able to get a tow truck and three really kind men who were walking by pushed my car out of the intersection and into a parking spot. One even started yelling at the people who were honking as he helped. Like the completely sane, rational, strong, independent woman I am, after the men saw I was safe and went back about their day, I started crying.

To move the story along, my tow truck friend Kyle delivered my G6 to the Firestone I had called previously. I called to alert them and miraculously they now had time to fix my car that day. Steve came and got me – I apparently told him the wrong intersection so not only did he have to leave the game, he was sent to the wrong place, so he scolded me for that upon arrival. I apologized but also reminded him that I was a little distracted.

All in, my car needed a new alternator, battery, spark plugs, and fuel flush. It cost me $1000. Everyone told me that was high and Steve had been able to get them to drop off a whopping $50, but as I asked everyone who offered their armchair quarterback advice, what leverage did I have?

The following Tuesday morning, I was driving my car to OrangeTheory when the Service Tire Monitor light came on, again. This time, I was no fool. I called the Firestone guys on my way back home post-class and they told me to bring it in. The man on the phone let me know that checking tire pressure is complimentary.

Great, sir, but when the air pressure needs to be checked, a light comes on that says, “Check Air Pressure,” not “Service Tire Monitor.” I had to explain this twice, but they ignored me and sent me out to the garage to have a mechanic check the air pressure, because what do I know? I’m just the girl who cries when people are kind to strangers and who overpays for auto repair.

Turns out my air pressure was just fine, but, wouldn’t you know it? One of the tire monitors was out. Don’t worry, that was another $250.

All in all, I decided that I at least needed to get my money’s worth and drive my car through the spring, which will be its ten-year anniversary. Then I will begin the hunt for a new car.

On my list? Unfortunately, Pontiac has since been discontinued by General Motors. An Audi Q5, Jaguar E-Pace, and Infiniti QX50. For the first time, I’m going foreign. And I will be looking to lease, not only because that car payment is so much cheaper, but also because, when the Service Tire Monitor light comes on, someone else will pay the $1250.

 *This obviously didn’t stop my mom from not only owning the aforementioned Camry, but also a Ford van (not a mini-van because apparently owning a mini-van is worse than owning one of those huge vans with the sliding doors that pedophiles drive around in).

**Really my brothers should be the ones complaining. Keith, the eldest, had to buy the Beretta he drove with money he collected from the paper route. He would later inherit my mom’s Ford van, which turns out is the exact wrong thing to give a high schooler unless you want to promote kids getting drunk in the spacious back area. My other brother, Kent, drove a Dodge Diplomat which was more or less a land yacht. It had this big, cushy leather seats that could fit two people each and, unfortunately, the heater only worked sporadically – a problem in Michigan winters – and when it did work, it’d make a really loud noise. He’d proceed to hit the dashboard hard with his fist until the sound stopped. I think a barely used Grand Am to share with my sister was luxury.

[toomanysinks]

A look at Birdies, the popular slipper shoe startup that just raised $8 million more from investors

Bianca Gates is a first-generation American, her parents having immigrated to the U.S. from Latin America. As such, she says, after graduating from UC Irvine, she was expected to get a safe job with a 401(k) plan and to live with her parents until she was married.

Things haven’t gone exactly that way, but one can imagine Gates’s parents feeling pretty satisfied with their daughter’s trajectory nevertheless. The reason: Gates, along with cofounder Marisa Sharkey, are the cofounders of Birdies, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based footwear brand that has made it chic to step out in shoes like look like elegant slippers, and which just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Slow Ventures and earlier investor Forerunner Ventures.

Sure, another e-commerce brand, why should you care? Actually, if haven’t seen the shoes out in the wild, there’s a high likelihood that will change soon, including because one of the company’s biggest advocates to date has been none other than Meghan Markle, the actress turned Duchess of Sussex, whose fashion choices are copiously detailed by fashion sites around the world, copied by their readers, then picked up by readers’ friends.

Interestingly, Markle was never meant to step outside in the slippers. But before we explain, let’s back up a bit first, to Gates’s earlier career, which is a familiar story but also underscores the importance of grit — as well as the importance of making the right connections.

As Gates tells it from Birdie’s offices on Union Street, a kind of yuppie haven in San Francisco, “My family was living in Santa Ana and I was commuting every day to Irvine and I just wanted to spread my wings and move to a big city with a lot of diversity after graduating.” Thanks partly to her fluency in Spanish, she landed a job with the broadcast giant Univision as an account executive. After more than three years, and “realizing I didn’t want to be typecast as an Hispanic person working for Hispanic TV,” she left for Viacom, where Gates fell for a colleague.

He landed soon after at Stanford Business School, and after plenty of cross-country flights, the two married and moved to San Francisco to start their family, with Gates opening up an office for Viacom’s MTV in the process. But she was soon feeling antsy again. “It was really convenient for me, but I [felt] after having my first chid and working out of a satellite office that I was out of the action. I wanted to be closer to people.”

As it happens, she caught a 2011 commencement speech that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered to Barnard College students and decided to apply to Facebook. Six months later, she landed a job leading retail partnerships, where she helped sales organizations understand what was then a new platform to them.

She also made powerful friends, including Priti Youssef Choksi, a Facebook colleague who was striking corporate and business development deals and who Gates befriended over a series of events at the home of Sandberg, who quietly hosted employees who Sandberg identified as eager to do more with their careers. “You didn’t photograph yourself there or talk about [the dinners], but it helped Priti and I form a deeper friendship,” recalls Gates.

The friendship — and Sandberg’s support — would eventually help get Birdies off the ground.

So did Gates’s obsession with finding post-work, pre-slipper-type shoes, which she says dates back a decade. “I just found that more and more, I was being asked to take off my shoes in friends’ homes and I was asking people to do the same. I thought that stylish shoes for indoors made a lot of sense,” but she wasn’t sure if there was a void in the market, or if she just imagined one.

She decided to pursue the idea while recognizing that she couldn’t do it alone. She still had that big job at Facebook that she loved. She also had two young kids at home at this point. So Gates texted her friend, Marisa Sharkey, a former Ross Stores executive who’d moved from Manhattan to Sacramento with her own family and was feeling restless. “I texted her and said, ‘I have this crazy idea; I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Marisa texted back immediately and said, ‘Tell me what it is.'” Within no time at all, Sharkey was fully committed, putting $50,000 into the venture, alongside Gates, who also put $50,000 into the venture.

What they got for their money? Shoes that today give them both “PTSD,” jokes Gates, but that became the starting point of Birdies.

It wasn’t so easy, but some key connections made the difference, one of which surfaced through good-old-fashioned outreach.  “We basically became so obsessed with our idea that we asked everyone we talked with whether they could help. Through degrees of separation, we were connected to someone who’d just retired from the footwear business in L.A and knew some factories in China and agreed to help introduce us to them.”

It was a game changer, even if what the factories were left working with wasn’t exactly pretty. Think shoes torn apart, their innards — including their memory foam inserts — reassembled on construction paper. “The shoe industry is very small and it’s really hard to get into a factory unless you know someone,” says Gates. “It isn’t like making apparel, where you can go to a factory in South San Francisco and make 24 dresses and see how it goes. With footwear, you can’t try in small doses.”

Of course, there were still many learnings to come, starting with the realization that they had nowhere to store the 1,800 pairs of shoes they’d had to order — and which arrived sooner than expected outside of Sharkey’s home. (They wound up housed in her garage.)

Gates also began worrying about losing her full-time job, eventually writing Sandberg to explain that she was responsible for a garage piled high with slipper shoes that she hoped to sell — then fretting about what the return email would say. As it happens, Sandberg “could have been more supportive. I even forwarded her note to my manager, saying, look, Sheryl is cool with this,” says Gates, laughing.

Fast forward several years, and Birdies is now a a legitimate, if surprisingly small, operation, one with just six employees but a big and fast-growing base of customers.

Its very first customer, Gate’s Facebook friend, Choksi, wound up being an important champion. Choksi left Facebook last year to become a venture capitalist. And as a partner with Norwest Venture Partners, she just led the firm into Birdie’s competitive Series A round, a development about which she sounds excited. “Even that first pair — they didn’t look like the random shoes i was putting on with what i was wearing at home,” recalls Choksi. “I could also get the mail and do quick errands.” She still has them, she says. “They’re fairly worn out, but I keep them to taunt Bianca.”

Meanwhile, Meghan Markle helped put the company on the map. A short lifestyle piece about Birdies in the SF Chronicle got the ball rolling. “We started to gain traction,” and with that came the nascent attention of fashion editors and celebrity stylists, says Gates. But the company still had very limited resources. It had to choose one celebrity on which to focus and it zeroed in on Markle, then an actor starring in a show called “Suits.”

“We just loved her casual elegance,” says Gates of Markle, whose courtship with with Prince Harry was on no one’s radar at the time. “We loved that she often wore simple button-downs and jeans and casual loafers. We also liked that she was this humanitarian.” Birdies sent Markle a complimentary pair of shoes, and to its great delight, Markle took to them. In fact, she began wearing them all them time and tagging them on Instagram, too.

There was just one problem. Markle was wearing them everywhere other than indoors. “It was this amazing, frustrating moment for the brand, because they were made for entertaining in the home.” They might have stewed longer, but a quick call with Bonobos founder Andy Dunn — who’d attended Stanford with Gates’s husband — soon set Gates and Sharkey straight. “He basically said, ‘You just fell into a much bigger opportunity.'”

A thicker rubber soul followed — along with a $100,000 check from Dunn —  and the rest is history in the making. Not that it’s all a walk in the park, naturally. The company has at times had waitlists of up to 30,000 people — a problem it hopes its new round of funding will help solve.

As happens with many new brands, it’s also wrestling with price points, offering several limited edition shoes in partnership with designer Ken Fulk last fall that “brought in a whole new customer” but were also priced at $165, roughly 30 percent more than most of its slippers, says Gates. (Birdies more recently introduced a “resort” slipper that’s priced at $95, and Gates says the company hopes to introduce other, more affordable designs down the line.)

There’s also the challenge of figuring out which new markets to chase while simultaneously hiring, fast. Choksi and Norwest, which has reach into many consumer brands, is helping on the latter front. Meanwhile, Gates says to expect more in the way of bridesmaids’ slippers, as well as other new designs coming this spring and summer.

Like another e-commerce footwear startup that’s taking off  — Rothy’s — which has filed a patent infringement suit against a rival, Birdies also seems poised to see more copycat designs.

Asked about this, Gates doesn’t seem terribly concerned, not yet. “We’ve had friends tell us that Target is offering a similar slipper at a different price point. Everybody copies everybody,” she says. “It’s our job to create a brand beyond the silhouette of a slipper, because that can be knocked off, it’s not defensible. What is defensible is why [a customer] is buying Birdies, and why she is telling her friends to shop us. It’s our job to give her more than a product, to lift her up.”

Birdies has now raised roughly $10 million altogether, including $2 million in seed funding led by Forerunner in the fall of 2017.

Above, left to right, cofounders Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey. Photo courtesy of Birdies.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/17/a-look-at-birdies-the-popular-slipper-shoe-startup-that-just-raised-8-million-more-from-investors/

[fmservers]

A look at Birdies, the popular slipper shoe startup that just raised $8 million more from investors

Bianca Gates is a first-generation American, her parents having immigrated to the U.S. from Latin America. As such, she says, after waitressing her way through college at UC Irvine, she was expected to get a safe job with a 401(k) plan and to live with her parents until she was married.

Things haven’t gone exactly that way, but one can imagine Gates’s parents feeling pretty satisfied with their daughter’s trajectory nevertheless. The reason: Gates, along with cofounder Marisa Sharkey, are the cofounders of Birdies, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based  footwear brand that has made it chic to step out in shoes like look like elegant slippers, and which just raised $8 million in Series A funding led by Norwest Venture Partners, with participation from Slow Ventures and earlier investor Forerunner Ventures.

Sure, another e-commerce brand, who cares. Actually, if you’re a woman and don’t own a pair yourself yet or know someone who does, there’s a high likelihood that will change soon, including because one of the company’s biggest advocates to date has been none other than Megan Markle, the actress turned Duchess of Sussex, whose fashion choices are copiously detailed by fashion sites around the world, copied by their readers, then picked up by readers’ friends.

Interestingly, Markle was never meant to step outside in the slippers. But before we explain, let’s back up a bit first, to Gates’s earlier career, which is a familiar story but also underscores the importance of grit — as well as the importance of making the right connections. 

As Gates tells it from Birdie’s offices on Union Street, a kind of yuppie haven in San Francisco, “My family was living in Santa Ana and I was commuting every day to Irvine and I just wanted to spread my wings and move to a big city with a lot of diversity after graduating.” Thanks partly to her fluency in Spanish, she landed a job with the broadcast giant Univision as an account executive. After more than three years, and “realizing I didn’t want to be typecast as an Hispanic person working for Hispanic TV,” she left for Viacom, where she fell in love with a colleague.

He landed soon after at Stanford Business School, and after  plenty of cross-country flights, the two married and moved to San Francisco to start their family, with Gates opening up an office for Viacom’s MTV in the process. But Gates was soon feeling antsy again. “It was really convenient for me, but I [felt] after having my first chid and working out of a satellite office that I was out of the action. I wanted to be closer to people.” As it happens, she caught the 2011 commencement speech that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg delivered to Barnard College students and decided to apply to Facebook. Six months later, she landed a job leading retail partnerships, where she helped sales organizations understand what was then a new platform to them, as well as how to connect with customers in a personal way at scale. 

She was also making powerful friends, including Priti Youssef Chokski, a Facebook colleague who was striking corporate and business development deals and who Gates befriended over a series of events at the home of Sandberg, who used to host women of Facebook who Sandberg identified as eager to do more with their careers. “You didn’t photograph yourself there or talk about [the dinners], but it helped Priti and I form a deeper friendship,” recalls Gates.

The friendship — and Sandberg’s support — would eventually help get Birdies off the ground.

It all started with Gates’s obsession with finding post-work, pre-slipper-type shoes, which she says dates back a decade. “I just found that more and more, I was being asked to take off my shoes in friends’ homes and I was asking people to do the same. I thought that stylish shoes for indoors made a lot of sense, but whenever I tried to find something, the images went from bad to worse. It was either funny animal heads, or shoes you couldn’t really wear to pop outside to get the mail.” Gates wasn’t sure if there was a void in the market, or if she was just imagining one, but either way, her husband, “who was like, ‘I’m sick of hearing about this,'” encouraged her to pursue the idea.

She knew she couldn’t do it alone. She still had that big job at Facebook that she loved. She also had two young kids at home at this point. So Gates texted her friend, Marisa Sharkey, a Ross Stores executive who’d moved from Manhattan to Sacramento with her own family and was feeling restless. “I texted her and said, ‘I have this crazy idea; I’ll call you tomorrow.’ Marisa texted back immediately and said, ‘Tell me what it is.'” Within no time at all, Sharkey was fully committed, putting $50,000 into the venture, alongside Gates, who also put $50,000 into the venture.

What they got for their money? Shoes that today give them both “PTSD,” jokes Gates, but that became the starting point of Birdies.

It wasn’t so easy, but some key connections made the difference, one of which surfaced through good-old-fashioned outreach.  “We basically became so obsessed with our idea that we asked everyone we talked with whether they could help. Through degrees of separation, we were connected to someone who’d just retired from the footwear business in L.A and knew some factories in China and agreed to help introduce us to them.”

It was a game changer, even if what the factories were left working with wasn’t exactly pretty. Think a variety shoes torn apart, their innards — including their memory foam inserts — reassembled on construction paper. “The shoe industry is very small and it’s really hard to get into a factory unless you know someone,” says Gates. “It isn’t like making apparel, where you can go to a factory in South San Francisco and make 24 dresses and see how it goes. With footwear, you can’t try in small doses.”

Of course, there were still many learnings to come, starting with the realization that they had no where to store the 1,800 pairs of shoes they’d had to order, and which arrived sooner than expected outside of Sharkey’s home. (They wound up housed in her garage.) Gates also began worrying about losing her full-time job, eventually mustering up the courage to write Sandberg to explain that she was responsible for a garage full of slipper shoes that she hoped to sell — then fretting about what the return email would say. As it happens, Sandberg “could have been more supportive. I even forwarded her note to my manager, saying, look, Sheryl is cool with this,” says Gates, laughing.

Fast forward several years, and Birdies is now a a legitimate, if surprisingly small, operation, one with just six employees but a big and fast-growing base of customers.

Its very first customer, Gate’s Facebook friend, Choksi, wound up being an important advocate. Chokski left Facebook last year to become a venture capitalist. And as a partner with Norwest Venture Partners, she led the firm into Birdie’s competitive Series A round and has joined the board, a development about which she sounds excited. “Even that first pair — they didn’t look like the random shoes i was putting on with what i was wearing at home,” recalls Choksi. “I could also get the mail and do quick errands.” She still has them, in fact. “They’re fairly worn out, but I keep them just to taunt Bianca.”

Unbeknownst to Birdies, it was Megan Markle who would put the company on the map, however. A short lifestyle piece about Birdies in the SF Chronicle after a chance encounter with the story’s author got the ball rolling. “We started to gain traction,” along with that nascent attention of fashion editors and celebrity stylists, says Gates.

But the company still had very limited resources. It had to choose one celebrity on which to focus and it zeroed in on Megan Markle, then an actor starring in a show called “Suits.” Says Gates, “We just loved her casual elegance. We loved that she often wore simple button-downs and jeans and casual loafers. We also liked that she was this wonderful humanitarian.” Birdies sent Markle a complimentary pair of shoes, and to its great delight, Markle took to them. In fact, she began wearing them all them time and tagging them on Instagram, too.

There was just one problem. Markle was wearing them everywhere other than indoors. “It was this amazing, frustrating moment for the brand, because they were made for entertaining in the home.” But a quick call with Bonobos founder Andy Dunn — who’d attended Stanford with Gates’s husband — soon set Gates and Sharkey straight. “He basically said, ‘You just fell into a much bigger opportunity.'”

A thicker rubber soul followed — along with a $100,000 check from Dunn —  and the rest is history in the making.

It’s not all a walk in the park, naturally. The company has at times had waitlists of up to 30,000 people — a problem it hopes its new round of funding will help solve.

Like a lot of e-commerce brands, it’s also wrestling with price points, offering several limited edition shoes in partnership with designer Ken Fulk last fall that “brought in a whole new customer” but were also priced at $165, roughly 30 percent more than most of its slippers, says Gates. (Birdies more recently introduced a “resort” slipper that’s priced at $95 and Gates says the company hopes to introduce other, more affordable designs down the line.)

There’s also the challenge of figuring out which new markets to chase while simultaneously hiring, fast. Choksi and Norwest, which has reach into many consumer brands, is helping on the latter front. Meanwhile, Gates says to expect more in the way of bridesmaids’ slippers, as well as other new designs coming this spring and summer.

Not last, like any successful startup, Birdies seems poised to see more copycat designs, though Gates doesn’t seem terribly concerned, not yet. “We’ve had friends tell us that Target is offering a similar slipper at a different price point. Everybody copies everybody,” she says. “It’s our job to create a brand beyond the silhouette of a slipper, because that can be knocked off, it’s not defensible. What is defensible is why [a customer] is buying Birdies, and why she is telling her friends to shop us. It’s our job to give her more than a product. It’s to lift her up. That’s the mission of the company.”

Above, left to right, cofounders Bianca Gates and Marisa Sharkey. Photo courtesy of Birdies.

Via Connie Loizos https://techcrunch.com