Surrender

Vivian Harper scanned her computer monitor, searching for a good image.

When she found a cute photo of a pair of stylish heels in an unusual shade of orange-rose, one sitting upright and the other fallen over on an aged, oak-planked floor, she pulled it up, wrote out two quick sentences, and pinned the picture onto one of her boards.

She was scanning for another good image when a voice came from the doorway of her office. “It’s time to go home.”

She didn’t need to look over to know the slightly dry voice belonged to her business partner, Jeff. “It’s not even eight yet.”

“It’s eight forty-two.”

Surprised, she peered down at the time in the corner of her monitor and discovered Jeff was right. She hadn’t realized it was so late. “I’m almost done here.”

Little red notification alerts at the top of the screen showed that more than a hundred people had already saved her last pin to their boards.

Jeff walked in, looking tired and slightly rumpled with his messy, light brown hair and five-o’clock shadow. He’d taken off his suit jacket early that morning, but he still wore the red-and-gold-striped tie.

He always wore a tie even though she’d told him a million times he could wear anything he wanted. The rest of the staff—including her—wore less formal attire to the office, usually unique and stylish. Today she was wearing red capris, a boatneck top with horizontal black-and-white stripes, with designer heels and a vintage scarf. But Jeff never wore anything but suits and ties—bought, Vivian suspected, at discount outlet stores.

Not that it mattered. He was still adorable with his loosened tie and his sleeves rolled up haphazardly.

“What are you working on?” he asked, moving around her desk so he could see her screen.

“I’m pinning.”

“You’re on Pinterest! For Pete’s sake, Viv, why are you wasting your time?”

“You know that a presence on social media is imp—”

“I know that, but your time is way too valuable for you to be doing it. Grace can be doing that. Hell, one of the interns could do all that messing around with pins.” He spoke the last words like they were describing a strange and mysterious disease. Then he muttered under his breath, “For Pete’s sake.”

Vivian tried to keep her expression composed as she kept scanning for images, but her lips wobbled slightly.

“What’s so funny?” Jeff demanded, slouching down into the chair next to her desk with a resigned sigh.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

She darted a quick look over to him. “You do know that you’re the only real live person I’ve ever met who uses the expression ‘For Pete’s sake,’ don’t you?”

Jeff frowned at her.

She snickered. “Mel and I were talking about it this afternoon.”

“It’s a normal expression, isn’t it?”

“If you’re a friend of Beaver Cleaver maybe.”

Jeff maintained his frown, although his brown eyes were glinting with a matching amusement. “My mom used to say it.”

“I’m sure she did. It’s just one more irresistible feature of the Jeff Owen package.”

Jeff rolled his eyes at her. “But seriously, you can’t be wasting your time on social media. You’re already in the office fourteen hours a day. You need to delegate.”

Vivian quickly wrote out a couple of sentences and pinned one more image to a board before she lowered her hands and leaned back in her chair, turning more fully toward Jeff. “I know. I’d like to. But Grace doesn’t do the pins right.”

“I’ve seen what she does. They look fine.”

“Most of the images she picks are okay, but what she writes about them is not. Faith and Fabulousness is supposed to be about a Christian approach to culture. I don’t want our Pinterest boards to turn into covet factories.”

Jeff’s lips parted as he thought that through.

“It’s a fine line, but we have to hold it,” Vivian continued, “or we might as well close down the whole enterprise.”

“Okay. Okay. I get that. But the answer isn’t for you to do everything. The answer is for you to train Grace so she can do it better.”

“I know. As soon as I get some time, I plan on doing that.”

“Then it will never get done. You’ll never have extra time. You need to make time for it now so you don’t have to do everything forever.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes were serious now as they held hers. “Don’t tell me yeah like that. Tell me you’ll do it.”