Without Hesitation

Chapter 1

Elle would have given anything not to go back to that meeting. She liked her coworkers well enough, but God it should not take two hours to discuss the need for more efficient meetings. And no one seemed to grasp the irony of it all. She was able to make her escape under the guise of using the restroom a little too long ago, so she knew that she had to make her way back. Nevertheless, staring at her blank reflection in the awful purple bathroom on her office floor was a much-needed reprieve.

She washed her hands a second time for good measure, grabbed her notebook and made her way back to the conference room, silently praying that the meeting had ended already. Elle pulled out her phone and opened her messages, only to find an unanswered text from Laura asking if she could come over that night to grab some of her things. Elle thought about it for a second, then put her phone away before responding. She figured it was okay to delay the inevitable for just a couple more hours.

"Someone was gone a while," Morgan said while rounding the corner, effectively proving Elle's efforts to miss the end of the meeting as successful.

"Yep, and I have no shame," Elle said proudly. "The number of redundancies in that meeting was too much for me to deal with, so I left."

Morgan rolled her eyes but chuckled. "Wow, someone is being a bit much. It wasn't that bad, and I think that we came up with a much better resourcing system by the end!"

Elle found herself smiling at her best friend. Morgan was an eternal optimist - she could find the bright spot in anything. Even in their jobs at Jolt. Elle tended to get very competitive, frustrated, and downtrodden. Being best friends with Morgan kept her from staying that way for too long. But her attitude didn't make the work any less stressful, no matter how much she wished it could.

"Well, it shouldn't have been a problem in the first place. Then that meeting wouldn't have been necessary," Elle rolled her eyes as they sat down at their desks.

Morgan looked her up and down for a second. "Has she texted you yet?"

Elle waved at her dismissively. "Yes, but I don't want to deal with it, I just want to get my work done for today."

"Okay look, I know you don't want to say your last goodbyes, but it's not fair just to leave her hanging," Morgan replied.

Elle's head fell into her hands, and she groaned with as much angst as she could muster. "Please let's not talk about this right now. Tell me what's next in wedding planning."

Morgan's face brightened and she immediately jumped into talking about coordinating travel to Oregon. Mentioning her upcoming wedding was the easiest way to get her off Elle's back. Morgan was just three weeks out from marrying the love of her life, Adrian, and it was essentially taking over her life. Despite Elle's love life being in shambles, she couldn't help but enjoy the excitement radiating off her best friend. Adrian and Morgan were perfect for each other, and she was incredibly excited to leave for Oregon in a week to celebrate their love with them.

Morgan and Adrian both grew up in Portland, Oregon, and moved to Chicago after they both graduated from college. Morgan worked on the brand team at Jolt with Elle, which is where they met four years ago. They had been each other's rock throughout the early days of the startup. Elle was honored that after just four years of working in Chicago with Morgan, she had asked Elle to be her maid of honor. Plus, she wasn't mad about a free trip to Portland, courtesy of Morgan's parents.

After they went over some details for the trip back to Oregon, they both turned to focusing on their work for the rest of the day. Elle was working on updating brand communication guidelines for Jolt's new money newsletter. Jolt was a relatively new news corporation, focused on summarizing the day's biggest stories, and sending them out to their subscribers in newsletter form for them to read over their morning coffee. The CEO and founder of the company, Will Lawson, had brought Morgan and Elle on in the early days when trying to differentiate from the New York Times and Business Insiders of the world. Elle had a degree in marketing and public relations, and she was brought in to create the brand voice and help with the copywriting, but it has evolved into being the company's brand manager and lead fire-putter-outer.