Page 121 of September

“You’re not–” Molly stopped herself from talking and walked around Juliet toward her own desk.

“Yeah, it didn’t work out.” Finley shrugged a shoulder.

“I feel like I’ve heard this before, Finley,” Juliet noted, watching Molly closely as she sat down and pretended not to care that her longtime crush was now single.

“It’s over for good this time. We’re not meant to be,” Finley said. “So, Molls? Interested?”

“In the game?” Molly asked, turning back to them.

“Yes, Molly, in thegame,” Juliet said, trying to help her focus.

“Uh… Yeah. If I’m free that day. Sure.”

“Great,” Finley said with a smile. “Do you need another ticket for anyone? I’ll have two left, with Juliet and Gwen and me and you.”

“No, I don’t have a plus-one for a football game,” Molly replied, smiling at Finley.

“Okay. Good. I mean, cool.”

Juliet watched curiously as Finley’s cheeks turned just a little pink. She was blushing. Juliet glanced over at Molly and then back at Finley, who still had that blush on her cheeks, and she thought about suggesting that Molly and Finley grab lunch together again today to give Molly some encouragement, but she knew her shy friend. Molly was probably doing advanced relationship calculus in her head to consider how long she’d have to wait before telling Finley how she felt this time.

“Shit! Jules, your meeting,” Molly said, pointing to her computer screen.

“Oh, crap.” Juliet checked the time on her own screen and stood quickly. “I’ve got to run. Message me the details, Fin? Where to meet, how much for the tickets, and whatever.”

“Yeah, sure,” Finley replied.

Juliet pulled down on her shirt in an attempt to make herself look more professional by eliminating the wrinkles in a single pull and then walked to her boss’s office and knocked on the doorframe.

“Juliet, come on in,” he said.

“Thanks,” she replied and closed the door behind her, wanting privacy for this conversation. “I was hoping to talk to you about the doc I attached to the meeting invite.”

“I saw that, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet,” he said. “Need me to do that now before we talk?”

“No, it’s okay. I can talk you through it.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

Juliet sat down and said, “Well, I’ve only been doing this job for a few weeks, but I’ve had my old job for years now, and I’ve been at Southern for a while. I feel like I have a good grasp on how we’ve done things and how we might be able to do things in the future.”

“In the future?”

“Near future, I hope,” she added with a nervous laugh.

“Go on.”

“We currently have all of our participants travel for any out-of-store training. That means we’re paying for them to drive or fly sometimes, for their food and other expenses, and their hotels.”

“Yes.”

“On top of that, the trainer travels to the hotel, too, and we have to rent out the conference room. I saw the bill for that. Just to use it for a day and a half and have them provide bad coffee and some water… It was pretty expensive.”

“It adds up, yes.”

“What if we held the classes here instead?” Juliet suggested. “I know we’ve donesomeclasses here in the past, but we have the fake café that we don’t use that often anymore, and Jordana loved traveling so much, she never used it forherclasses. This company isn’t exactly the most progressive when it comes to making changes, but I ran some numbers. They’re really basic, to start, but if we were to hold the manager, leadership, and some sales classes here, in the big conference room, we’d save over a hundred thousand dollars a year just on hotel rooms alone. It’s even more when you add up the conference room rental and the trainer’s travel on top of gas or mileage, food, and everything else. All in, it’s probably close to three to fourhundred thousand dollars, depending on how many classes we teach and how many participants there are.”

Her boss nodded but didn’t say anything.