Page 70 of Brooklynaire

“Well…” I let out a nervous laugh. “Not purple. Red, maybe.” The bathroom attendant hands me a soft linen towel as I shut off thewater.

“Oh. My. God. You didn’t!” Her eyes are bright and shiny. “Wow. It was Bal Harbour, right? You canceled breakfast for sexwith…”

I reach up and put a palm over her mouth. “Please. A little discretion regarding my poor lifechoices.”

The bathroom attendant has been hanging on every word, and now she looksdisappointed.

Georgia blinks. I remove my hand. “Oh myGod,” she says again, her voice full of awe. “Wow. Florida has some powerful mojo. Whoknew?”

Not me, that’s forsure.

“Okay.” She takes a deep breath and blows it out. “I just have one question. Was itgood?”

Ugh. Why does everyone keep asking me that? “Does it even matter? It doesn’t make my life less complicated, so it’s really beside thepoint.”

“It isnot at allbeside the point!” Georgia says, wringing her hands. “Either you’re into him or you’re not. So which way isit?”

“It’s not that simple. We can’t just have an office fling, Georgia. There would be consequences—more for me than forhim.”

“Well…” She leans a hip against the marble countertop and frowns. “That’s the whole problem, right? There’s an imbalance of power betweenyou.”

“Yes! Thankyou!”

“N—” She catches herself. “Your guy has more power than anyone else I know. But it’s also his prison. I’ll bet he can’t trust that anyone he meets will ever love him for his own sake. And since his company is his life, anyone he meets there is already in debt tohim.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way. Then again, everything else in his life goes pretty much as he pleases. “Let’s not get out the violins just yet. Nobody can have everything come easily. What would be the fun of that,anyway?”

Georgia shrugs. “I know. Did he, uh, say he’d like to see you again sometime. Out of the office, Imean?”

“Or bent over his desk,” I whisper. That’s another one of my fantasies. Not that I’m ever tellinghim.

The bathroom attendant’s eyes gethuge.

“Oh, wow.” My best friend fans herself with the linen towel. “Remind me to always knock on doors at work.” She smileswidely.

I mentally slap myself. “Actually, you don’t have to bother. Because I told him we need to just forget the wholething.”

“Oh.” Georgia looks crestfallen. “But why? Because my mind just went straight to candlelit dinners and weekends in Bermuda. Picture the dinner parties you could throw in thatmansion!”

Ican’tpicture it, though. “That is a fairy tale. Reality is far more awkward. What if we dated and it didn’t work out? I don’t want to live with the fallout. And besides, I wouldn’t even know how to behis…”

“Girlfriend,” Georgia putsin.

Even that word sounds impossible. “My psyche might not be able to wrap itself around the concept. I used to get his coffee, Georgia. I stilldo.”

“Girl!” The bathroom attendant yelps. “I’ll get his coffee till the day I die if it means I get banged by a hot, rich guy in Bermuda. Whoever he is, you gotta give it a whirl. If you don’t, I’ll do it foryou.”

“She makes a really good point,” Georgiainsists.

They high-five each other and I kind of want to punch themboth.

16

Nate

May 15, Brooklyn

When I was eight,I learned my first lines of computer code. One of the first lessons was how to avoid an infinite loop, where the program gets stuck, and the computer just hangs there, frozen, while you try to decide if it’s time to pull the plug andreboot.