Chapter 191

191 Learning Journey

“Ace...” I called his name softly as I stood at his side.

“What is it?” he asked but without much interest.

“Thank you for working so hard for us...” I said softly but clearly.

Ace turned to stare directly into my face before he smiled a little at me. Slowly his hand reached out and soon I felt its warmth against my cheek. He softly stroked my cheek with the pad of his thumb, and I smiled back in response.

“Umm...I’ll head back to bed now...” I mumbled softly as I felt heat rise to my cheek.

His loving caress made so much warmth flood my face and my chest.

...

Despite my wish to spend an entire day or more submerging myself in Ace’s past works in the company’s archive, I never got around to it. Work was crazy and Jeremy was ruthless in his revision of the storyboard. The fact that we were running out of time didn’t help relieve my stress at all either. Every day that I spent at the office ended past midnight and I was beginning to lose track of the number of cups of coffee that I had.

“Should I schedule a meeting with Ace to go through this?” I asked.

.....

“Do you think we’ll be ready soon?” Jeremy asked without turning away from his screen to look at me.

In my opinion, we’ve done all that we could and if this didn’t pass by Ace then he needs to tell us specifically what he wants. This grind was killing both Jeremy and me.

“What about we do one last push tonight and I’ll try to get us a meeting with Ace tomorrow end of the day?” I suggested.

“That should work. Thank you, Karina,” Jeremy said with his eyes still glued to the screen.

After getting some inspiration from taking a look at some of Ace’s past works, we split to come up with some ideas, and then we discussed our thoughts endlessly before settling on quite a few changes to the details of the storyboard.

“We should run the changes through with the head of the production team as well,” I murmured.

“Can you do that? I’m still stuck with drawing this part up...” Jeremy said with a frown.

“Of course. I’ll get a meeting with him within today. Leave it to me,” I said confidently.

Everything seemed to be progressing as planned when the end of the day arrived. We made a lot of progress in one day and I was able to schedule a meeting with Ace early in the evening tomorrow. I glanced over Jeremy’s shoulder at what he was working on, and it seemed to follow what we had in mind perfectly. Jeremy was really detailed oriented; he was much better than me in that respect. It seemed like there were many things that I could learn from Jeremy too.

“Some coffee?” I offered as I stood to the side of his desk.

It was already late in the night by that time, and I was already feeling sleepy. My eyes hurt and it took a lot of effort to keep them open. Jeremy had a lot more grit than I did and a lot more stamina as well. He had been staring at his screen since morning and he was still doing the same thing. His focus was also very admirable.

“Yeah...thanks...” he murmured.

I wondered if he even heard me with his eyes still staring at his screen like that. It was clear that he was very focused on what he was doing. I decided to leave him and get to the pantry to make us some coffee. We were in the final stage of wrapping up and Jeremy didn’t need my help anymore. He was just checking everything through one last time and then we should be done. I truly trusted Jeremy’s attention to detail to catch any last-minute mistakes that we may have missed out on in the previous rounds of reviews.

When I returned with our mugs of coffee, Jeremy had gotten up from his seat and was leaning against his worktable instead. The fact that he was no longer staring at his screen told me that we were done for the day.

“Coffee for you. How is it?” I asked while offering him his mug of coffee.

“Thanks. I think we’re done unless there’s something else that you want to fix,” Jeremy said as he took the mug from me.

“Let me see one last time, is that ok?” I asked.

“Sure,” Jeremy replied before backing away to give me some space.

This was probably going to be the last time that I’ll get to review this storyboard before we need to get back to Ace in tomorrow’s meeting. Regardless, we planned to send this updated version to Ace tonight so that he can hopefully review it before our meeting tomorrow. Ace had been so busy lately with his plans to expand the company and I wasn’t sure if he would have time to review this. Of course, I couldn’t tell Jeremy that. I still had trust in Ace that he could somehow juggle all his responsibilities.

“This should do. Can you email it to Ace?” I asked.

“I’ll do that,” Jeremy said with a smile.

...

Although we only had to wait for a day for our meeting with Ace, the wail felt like forever. I’ve had countless meetings with Ace before and I was dating him as well; however, that didn’t ease the tension that I felt inside of me before meeting him at all. Having a business meeting with Ace wasn’t something that I could get used to. Just when I thought I could meet his expectations, it always seemed like he expected more of me, and I had to step up and challenge myself to meet his new set of expectations.

The good thing was that it always kept me on my feet and always up and running. Without realizing it at first, I have grown exponentially in my skills and my career compared to the time before I moved to join the CEO’s office. Ace was already waiting for us in the meeting room when we arrived although we were not late.

–To be continued...