The fortieth floor reeks of stale coffee and is congested with half-walled cubicles, but none of that matters during Calvin’s daily visits. I work hard. I run every morning and attend Mass most Sundays. I’ve never smoked pot, despite the fact that Frida offers it weekly. I only allow myself one vice, and it’s Calvin Parish. Thick, wavy brown hair that falls over his forehead, even though he constantly brushes it back. His expression is perpetually grim, and his eyes permanently hooded, like there’s an entire universe behind them. Even shielded by bulky, black-rimmed glasses, his olive green eyes smolder. I’ve imagined that looking directly into them is such an experience, I’d come out a different person. I’d do it anyway, even knowing it could be my undoing. Just to see what would happen.

“I’m sorry about Lyla,” Frida says. I wonder how long she’s been watching me with her inquisitive look.

“It’s okay. I should concentrate on other things right now anyway. No time for boys.”

“Boys? Isn’t Calvin in his thirties?”

“Okay, no time for men,” I say. “For now, I’ll have to settle for appreciating his beauty from afar.”

At some point she’d stopped switching channels and unmuted the TV. Bugs Bunny is on the screen, sleeping and snoring though his rabbit hole floods. Even focused on the cartoon, I sense the disapproval in Frida’s glare, as though it’s a thing that might reach out and knock me over the head. Finally she says what I already know she’s been thinking: “I’m going to get you laid.”

“Nope.”

There’s frustration in her sigh. “You need this. You know I think it’s sweet that you’re holding out for the right guy, but that’s fairytale stuff, Cat. This is real life, not one of your books. I promise, your first time is not as big a deal as you’ve made it out to be. It’s just messy fumbling in the dark.”

I look at my fingers, picking at the chipped, midnight blue polish. “Waiting until I’m in love is not making a big deal out of it.” I drop my hands back on the couch and look at her. “You act like I’m some kind of freak for wanting that.”

Her feet wiggle in my lap. “You’re a twenty-two-year-old virgin. Nowadays, that makes you a freak.”

I laugh and roll my eyes. “I admit, it’s a little old-fashioned, but when I meet ‘the one,’ he’ll appreciate it.”

“Screw ‘the one.’ Here’s what you do: bang a lot of guys before you find the love of your life. That way when you finally meet him, he won’t be able to resist your sexpertise.”

I giggle. “That’s messed up, and you know it.”

She giggles too, and her head falls back toward the TV. A green-skinned evil scientist with an oversized head enters the frame. “Oh, dear, delays,” he says, “delays, nothing but delays.” The scene cuts to a steel, blue dungeon door with “MONSTER” stamped across it. It rattles with beastly growls, but the scientist unlocks the door calmly. “Come, Rudolph,” he instructs as the looming, heart-shaped monster is revealed. His pulsing, vermillion fur is marked only by large, scowling eyes. “There is a rabbit loose in the castle, Rudolph. Return him to me, and I shall reward you with a spider goulash.”

Frida bursts into a seemingly endless fit of laughter. She points at the screen as Rudolph grins and disappears on his rabbit hunt. “Cataline,” she sings madly at the screen. “My virginal Cat-uh-leen, who walked into my life at eighteen, with just a single bag, what a terrible drag.”

As I watch her laugh so hard that she almost falls off the couch, I’m only thankful. Four years earlier I boarded a bus alone from my high school graduation ceremony to this doorstep knowing only the grand things I’d heard about the big city. I dragged a bag in one hand and in the other, clutched New Rhone’s “Classified” section with this address scribbled across it in red pen. Frida opened the door, all jet-black hair, piercings, and bossy attitude. But it was only minutes before my shoulders relaxed, and she was gossiping about Russ across the hall’s affair.

Tonight as I fall asleep, thoughts of Lyla from accounting plague me. She has fine blonde hair and yellowish skin that stretches over high cheekbones. Her eyelids sag under periwinkle eye shadow that gathers in the creases around her eyes. She is things I'm not: brazen, pushy, confident. She finds cheap thrills in alcohol and late nights. She doesn't seem to have trouble finding men, only keeping them.

Men like Calvin, who would take her home and bestow her with a smile I’ve never seen, something sweet and personal. A smile just for her. He’d trail his fingers through her hair and down her naked back. I shiver wondering how his touch would feel against my skin, and suddenly I’m Lyla. It’s my spine his fingertips drag down and then back up until reaching the ends of my long, murky mane. He’d remove his glasses to look into my blue eyes and take my jaw in both palms. I can almost feel his lips on mine now, opening me up as his fingers slide into my hair to play in the tangles. His kiss would mean something. Behind his glasses, as I stripped away the brusqueness of him, the curtness of his every move, I’d find tenderness. People like him are hard because they have something to protect. Even from a distance, I know that something is worth protecting. Goodness that’s buried like treasure.

2

There are two things that get me through my workday—meeting Frida for lunch and staring at Calvin Parish. Currently, I’m doing the latter. The office is my dreamland and Calvin, my star. At the moment, he’s sexy-prowling toward my desk, irradiated by ribbons of sunshine as he passes by each window.

“Cataline,” Mr. Hale hisses.

I jump, and my chair groans as I whip around to the cracked door. “Yes?”

“I’m not here,” he says before disappearing back into his office, locking the door after him.

My fantasy disintegrates. Calvin is striding in my direction, and since the sky is currently overcast, any sparkling sunshine was merely a figment of my imagination.

“Mr. Hale isn’t in right now,” I say barely in time.

Calvin grunts, sparing me no glance as he continues forward.

Fear propels me out of my seat to block the door. I splay my arms across it just as he reaches for the handle.

“I need to leave this for him,” he says to a spot above my head. He slices a Manila envelope in front of my face. His body heat practically fuses my back with the door. I’m spellbound by him, his scent, the proximity of him, all the while seeking out his eyes. Just as I open my mouth, his gaze drops. His glasses slide a millimeter as his head tilts, and for one vibration of a second, our eyes connect. Even behind the glass shield, I see the worldliness in him—a soul that seems equal parts calm and stormy. I have no breath, though my lungs burn for it. His glance is so quick that it ricochets off me, but it leaves me heady nonetheless. “Do you mind?” he asks, anger edging his voice.

“I’ll see that he gets it, Mr. Parish.”

“He’s not in?” Calvin asks. “You’re sure?”

His hand dashes by me, brushing my waist to turn the handle. The lock breaks with a loud snap, and the door swings open.

Mr. Hale’s voice comes from behind me. “Mr. Parish. Can I help you?”

I shrink down as Calvin glares over my shoulder and then at me, this time holding my gaze. “No. I’ll just leave this with your secretary.”

“Executive assistant,” I correct automatically.

“Mouthy for someone who just lied to the man who holds her fate in his hands.”

“Fate?” I repeat.

“Your job.” He says job as though I’m the most incompetent person he’s ever encountered. He pivots away, tossing the envelope on my desk without a backward glance.

My muscles liquefy, a belated reaction to being within inches of the subject of my frequent daydreams. His scent lingers in my nostrils, intoxicating my already whirring mind. Or perhaps it’s just the memory of him? My urges morph between laughing and crying with each rapid heartbeat.