Now it was time for the pitch. She took one look around the cool, silent hotel room, bathed in blue morning light, made sure she had everything she needed—laptop, briefcase, check—and let the door lock behind her as she strode down the hallway to the elevators, her pumps whispering along the carpet. Her mind kept returning to thoughts she didn’t want: her father, Hudson. Hudson, her father. Her father, her father. She kept redirecting herself to the pitch. Everything else out. Pitch in. That was all she could handle right now.

Annika stepped into the elevator and checked herself in the mirror. The blood vessels in her eyes were a bright crimson, standing out in stark relief against the whites. In spite of her heavy hand with concealer, there were purple shadows under her eyes, but that couldn’t be helped. She took a breath and faced forward, checking her phone for a message from June or the hospital. Or Hudson. Nothing.

Since it was such a small pool of contestants, they’d all been given an individual time slot and strict instructions not to arrive early. This was apparently to keep them from seeing or intimidating each other. It had seemed a silly rule when Annika had first learned of it, but she was immensely thankful for it now. She couldn’t handle seeing Hudson again, not so soon after they’d broken up, not when her father lay in a hospital bed, not before the pitch.

Annika emerged from the elevators and walked across the hotel foyer down a carpeted hallway to wait in a small room that was outfitted with frond-y potted palms and small leather armchairs just outside of conference room A. She wondered whether Hudson was in there right now, just a few dozen yards away from her, and pushed the thought out of her mind again. She couldn’t think of him, not while her heart felt so pulverized and raw. But sitting here, in the quiet, wasn’t good for her, either. Her mind kept turning to things she wanted to keep locked away.

Luckily, she only waited two more minutes until a diminutive man in a mint-green suit and purple glasses stepped out of the conference room and called her name.

She entered through the open conference room door, her head held high and her shoulders back, looking—she hoped—more energetic and confident than she felt. There was a small headache starting behind her eyes, but there was nothing to be done about that now.

This was it. This was her chance to save Make Up. She couldn’t afford to fuck it up.