CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Bea was admiring her latest sketch for Greet Cute around lunchtime the next day when her phone rang. The sketch featured Cranky Bea and Princess looking their most bedraggled—Princess’s overbite was more pronounced, and Bea’s boobs had hit new lows—but they were both sporting globs of glittery blue eye makeup and big rouged cheeks. The caption was going to read: Too glam to give a damn.

Just looking at it gave her a little ache in the center of her chest. Of happiness and joy and…accomplishment. Was this how her mom had felt about her creations? Would she—a bona fide artist with regular shows in prestigious LA art galleries—have approved of her daughter’s Cranky Bea and Princess cards?

Bea wished she knew. She wished her mom was still around to ask her.

Searching for her phone in the debris of stuff on her cat-hair-strewn duvet—an open, empty pizza box; multiple scrunched-up sheets of paper towel she hadn’t yet gotten around to tossing in the wastebasket in the middle of the floor; art supplies she’d acquired online; her yellow dress—she found it under a sleeping Princess. Hardly surprising given the cat was stretched out across half the bed like some kind of furry Slinky.

Princess opened her good eye and let out an irritated meow. The phone stopped ringing just as she hit the Answer button, but, glancing at the screen, Bea noted it was from Kim and hit Redial.

“Hey, you,” Kim said as she answered.

“Sorry,” Bea apologized. “I couldn’t find the phone.”

“It’s fine, thanks for getting back to me so quickly.”

They discussed the dossier of ideas for the next month’s designs that Bea had been working on and had sent off last night just prior to leaving for Jack’s. Bea’s heart fluttered for a moment, thinking about Jack’s, about how she’d felt Austin’s eyes on her body the entire time she’d danced and how damn wonderful it had made her feel.

“I’ve got another proposal for you.”

Kim’s words were like a machete severing Bea’s wandering thoughts. “Oh?”

“We want to get national exposure across all media for Cranky Bea. We think it’s smart to capitalize on the free viral media we’ve got into something more long-term and sustainable. We want to run an ad campaign, and with your advertising background, we want to put you in charge of it; we want you to run the show.”

Bea blinked. Now that she hadn’t been expecting. It was a smart move—viral sensations had a pretty short shelf life—but…Bea had cut that string a few months ago. “When you say all, you mean traditional media?”

“Yep. TV. Radio. Newspapers. Billboards. Obviously, our budget is modest, but I think if we’re smart and strategic and keep using social media impressions to drive response to the traditional stuff, we can do it. And there’s nobody in the business better than you for flair, creativity, and cross-media strategy.”

Bea tried not to let Kim’s flattery go to her head, but it was true. She had several awards to her name for just those things. Which was why missing out on that much-coveted promotion this year had been particularly cutting. “Look, Kim…I’m flattered. Truly. But I’m not in the business anymore.”

Even as she said it, though, Bea felt that old buzz in her blood, the tingle in her fingertips, the flash of images on her inward eye. The beautiful potential of a new campaign that she got to craft and manage from the ground up. She’d worked collaboratively on many projects over the years, creating advertisements to very specific briefs from clients, working within those parameters and with multiple people in multiple departments, and she’d always delivered.

But the thrill of running the show herself was tempting. The awards and accolades she’d earned over the years had always come from campaigns where the client had given her free rein. Which was exactly what Kim was doing.

“It’s not about getting back into the business,” Kim dismissed. “It’s just a one-off campaign that you can do from Credence and fit in around your Cranky Bea designs. We’ll support you with everything you’ll need on this end, including a team to work with, but it’ll be your baby. You’ll be in charge. Everything from the copy through to the hiring of the actors for the TV ads—it’ll be all yours.”

Bea couldn’t believe how tempted she was—she’d loved doing TV ads the most. Prior to her career coming to a rather ignoble end, she would have said that advertising had given her the best years of her life. But it had also dealt her the biggest blow, and living here, becoming part of Credence—the polar opposite of LA—had made her realize that best was subjective.

That there were multiple versions of best.

Thoughts churned and clashed inside her head, about a zillion questions swirling in with the mix. Could she do this? Did she want to? A national campaign under her control, introducing and selling Cranky Bea—essentially her product—to the market. It was an advertising wet dream and would get her back into doing what she was good at—selling product.

Not creating it.

Because selling was what she knew. Selling was what she’d lived and breathed. It was what she excelled at. These doodlings had given her something to do and had opened up this opportunity, but they weren’t who she was. She was an ad woman. Not a…creative. And this was a massive chance to prove to the LA advertising scene, to her father, to herself, that she was still the same person. She was just doing it in her own way this time. On her own terms.

“What time frame are you thinking?” Bea asked.

“We’d like to have a plan mapped out in, say, about a month?”

A month…that wasn’t much time to come up with a national strategy, but Greet Cute was hardly Coca-Cola, and Bea had always done her best work under pressure.

“The aim is to have the campaign up and running by the end of the summer,” Kim added.

The end of the summer. Even as part of Bea rejected the idea, the other part of her was already becoming invested. Cranky Bea was her. And if anyone could sell the crap out it, she could.

“Look,” Kim said, “don’t give me your answer now. Let me email you a bunch of information and you can have a think and get back to me in the next couple of days.”

Bea shook her head. “I don’t need a couple of days. I’ll do it.”

There was a slight pause on the other end, like Kim had been expecting a no and was trying to regroup. “Really?”

“Really.” Bea laughed. “Send me what you’ve got and let’s talk some more.”

Suddenly Bea had never been more sure of anything. She hadn’t known what she wanted and she’d never pictured this—going back to the industry that had used and discarded her. But it was a one-off campaign. Which she could orchestrate from her little apartment here in Credence.

Sure, it might take up a bit of her time for a few months, but then it’d be over and things would get back to normal and everything would be rosy.

So, as Austin was fond of saying, why not?