Page 86 of True Colors

Keeping Anouk from presenting isn’t taking anything away from her, is it? It’s just protecting her from what could happen in the meeting with two juggernauts of the industry, two tough CEOs who are known to rip you a new one if you screw up.

And I’m protecting the project, which is my job. Right?

But even as I rationalize the decision I know I’m going to make, I know the truth. I’m afraid of my father finding out that I’m not as good as he wants me to be, as good as I want to be, and that’s why I can’t take the risk of putting Anouk out front, no matter what and how she feels about it.

My fear of looking like a failure in front of my father is much bigger than my love and affection for Anouk.

That’s the truth, and it doesn’t sit well with me.

CHAPTER 19

Anouk

“Ineed to nail this,” I tell Dot after I unceremoniously barge into her office.

She looks up from her screen, eyebrows lifting. “Nail what?”

“The presentation.” I sit across from her. “I want to do this.”

For the longest time, Dot has been nagging me to present more, not worry about the stutter, and just own my data. But I was always reticent. But now I want to make Luther proud.

Dot studies me for a long moment, then smiles slowly. “Good.”

She doesn’t warn me about board meetings or the challenges; she simply gets to work with me.

Dot pulls in Pallavi, Mila, and Ian—no managers, no politics, just people who care about the work and about me.

We book Conference Room 4B every afternoon for an hour, sometimes two. Sometimes we practice with the lights on full blast and people walking in and out, sometimes with the lights dimmed and a timer ticking loudly in the corner. Everything they do is designed to make me comfortable with chaos, to get me used to it.

Pallavi drills me on structure. “If they interrupt you about the data logic for the inventory management, you pivot to slide twelve.”

Mila works with me on pacing. “Take a power pause. If you need a moment because you’re stumbling over your words, make it a pause.”

Ian sits in the back and plays devil’s advocate. “What if Jacob Grant challenges your assumptions on supplier elasticity?”

I answer the question.

I record myself on my phone and listen back—wincing, adjusting, repeating.

I practice transitions in the shower.

I whisper numbers while brushing my teeth.

I recite assumptions while biking to work, timing my breaths to traffic lights.

I don’t try to eliminate the stutter. I just work around it.

I build pauses into the slides. I swap out words that trip me up without dumbing anything down.

I anchor myself to the data, where I never feel lost.

By the end of the week, my throat is sore, and my brain feels wrung out—but I am ready.

“You know,” Dot tells me a couple of days before the presentation, “most people think confidence is about not hesitating. It’s not. It’s about knowing where you’re going even when you slow down.”

I haven’t told Luther about any of this. I want to surprise him. I want him to see how well I present. I can’t wait to see the look on his face. The pride, the awe…no one has looked at me like he does, with such love and affection.

But I’m dying to tell him.