Everybody always says that Monday is the worst day of the week. For me, it’s Friday. I just can’t seem to maintain any kind of structure for five straight days, so by the end of the week, my life has essentially fallen apart.

This Friday was no different. I peeled up the ramp of the parking garage, anxiously glancing from the clock to the angle of the sunlight and back, sparing a glance in between for the rows of expensive cars resting on either side of me. I skidded into my parking space with twenty seconds to spare, gathered my things, and raced for the elevator.

My phone chimed, and I had to juggle my purse, my giant thermos of coffee, and the loose file I had, for some reason, neglected to put in my briefcase. I eventually managed to pull my phone out, but not until it had chimed twice more.

Meeting starts in fifteen. You coming??

911! Mr. Dane is on the floor!! Get here!!

Ten minutes, Kaley!!!

“Oh, no,” I muttered to myself as I stepped into the lobby.

I had never seen Mr. Dane in person, and I wasn't looking forward to it; he always seemed so cold and severe, glaring out from framed photos scattered around the towering building. I passed one just then as I hit the button for the elevator with my elbow, and shuddered slightly under the flat stare of his gray eyes.

I struggled with my burdens, arranging and rearranging them in my arms as the elevator slid smoothly up the twelve floors to the marketing level. I’d barely managed to center my thumbs over the keys when the doors flew open, and I hurried out of the elevator.

On my way!

I typed it out just fine, but the send button was hidden under a corner of the manila folder, and I craned my head awkwardly to push it away with my nose. I barely managed this when my frantic momentum was interrupted by a broad chest wrapped in an expensive suit.

“Ah!” I cried, as the coffee spattered up out of my thermos to cover my white blouse. Of course I wore white today, I thought in a panic.

Clumsily, I tried to recover, only to drop everything with a clatter.

“Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry,” I said, sinking to my heels to scoop things up.

My blouse dripped all over stray papers, staining them even as I flicked the coffee off. I was embarrassed to glimpse his expensive watch out of the corner of my eye as he kneeled to help me, and I'm sure it made me flush as red as a fire engine.

“I'm a klutz,” I explained awkwardly, feeling like a schoolgirl. “Are you all right?”

“Quite all right,” he said softly.

His voice seemed familiar, but somehow strange; glancing up at his face, I immediately figured out why. I froze in shock, hands quaking in terror as I looked up at the strikingly handsome face of the man himself: Jonathan Dane, CEO.

“Oh my… I am so very, very…”

“Sorry? I believe you mentioned that,” he interrupted, his lips quirking in a smile…or perhaps a sneer. In my panic, I couldn't tell.

I looked away quickly, my things bundled haphazardly in my arms, and fled down the hall.

“Wait!” His voice stopped me in my tracks, as powerful and terrifying as it sounded during his weekly PA message.

Heart pounding, I turned to him. He waved my folder in the air.

“You might need this,” he called.

“Yes, sir,” I squeaked through my tightened throat. I shuffled back to him, and he carefully set my folder in the crack between my purse and briefcase.

“Careful,” he said, his grey eyes turning almost silver in the fluorescent lights. “Wouldn't want to lose something.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled as I turned away once more. At least, I think I said it. I might have simply thought it and ran away.

It wasn't only his position or the mortifying situation; in person, he was the single most handsome man I had ever laid eyes on. Not to mention his scent—musky and exotic and pure deliciousness. A shiver ran through my body at the memory, which didn't help in my quest to get down the hall without dropping anything.

“There you are!” Imogen materialized at my elbow from a small alcove and quickly relieved me of half my burdens. “I thought you would never get…what happened to your blouse?! Oh, never mind. Here, take my cardigan. It'll cover most of it.”

“It won't cover any of it,” I pointed out. “Anything that fits you that well will be bursting buttons just trying to get over these.” I shrugged my shoulders, the gesture lifting my cumbersome breasts.

Imogen glanced down at her own compact, boyish figure doubtfully.

“Well, you can't meet the study group looking like that,” she insisted, tossing her straw-like blond hair over her shoulder. “I'll keep them occupied for five minutes. Find a solution.”

I squeezed her arm gratefully and hurried to the elevator. My locker was one floor up, just beside the product development stations, and I was sure that I had left a shirt in there at some point. I pushed through the elevator doors before they opened fully, hugging my purse to my chest to hide the stain.

Once upstairs, as I was flinging my locker open, I froze again. That voice! It drifted toward me from the play table which ran the length of the development room. Cold sweat trickled down my spine as I rifled frantically through the locker, pulling out every scrap of cloth, paper, and trash which had accumulated over the last several months.

“There you are,” I said triumphantly, pulling a deep magenta sweater out of the back of my locker. Cotton and ribbed, it hadn't suffered a wrinkle in all the time it had lived there. I pulled it out, straightened it with a snap, and shoved the remaining detritus back in my locker. 

“I don't know, Chase. The glitter alone seems like a health hazard.” Mr. Dane's voice came closer, and I ducked around the corner in a panic.

Throwing caution to the wind, I ripped my blouse off and shoved my head into the sweater. My curly hair snagged on the back clasp, causing the fabric to bunch up around my neck and forcing a small yelp out of my throat.

“You keeping dogs up here, Chase?”

Oh, no. Don't come in here. Please don't come in here, I silently pleaded.

“Oh!” His voice was right behind me, in full view of my naked back. I forced the sweater down, ripping a few hairs out by the root from the feel of it, and retrieved my blouse from the floor.

Please go, I begged internally. Please, please…

“Everything okay?” Chase asked.

“Squeaky pipe. I'll have maintenance get up here to look at it. So, you were explaining the pink sand?” He walked away, leading Chase back to the play table, and earning my eternal gratitude in the process.

Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, I tossed my blouse into my locker. I’ll grab it on my way home, I thought, knowing that I would forget. Then, I hurried back downstairs.

Just as I reached the focus room, Imogen appeared, leading a group of mothers and their young daughters.

“Good morning, everyone!” I said brightly. This was the best part of my job. “Now who’s ready to play with some brand new toys?”

The girls cheered, and it warmed my heart. I wished for the hundredth time that I would have a focus group every day. I led the girls and their mothers into the glass-walled room, where three camera men were waiting with their equipment pointed at the long table.

“Please, have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the twelve seats lined up along one side of the table. “We have two different toys for you to play with today. First, a question. Who here likes dinosaurs?”

All six of the girls raised their little hands. At five years old, they hadn’t yet learned that dinosaurs were for boys. If I had my way, that was one lesson they would never learn.

“Awesome! Now, who here likes to play in the dirt?”

They all raised their hands again, giggling this time. I chuckled as well, delighted at their candor.

“That’s perfect! Today, you’re going to be digging in sandboxes with special tools to find dinosaur bones! They aren’t real bones, but they are nearly-perfect models of the real-life fossils they represent. Take the lids off your boxes, girls!”

They did so excitedly. On top of the plastic which covered the synthetic dirt in the box lay a pack of cards, a miniature scraper, shovel, and rake, three different kinds of brushes, and a small book of facts about dinosaurs.

“Please take the things out of the box, then remove the plastic cover. Do you see the cards? Great! Each card shows you how to put together one set of fossils to make a dinosaur. Those tools will help you scrape away the dirt to find your fossils…but do you want to know the best part?”

They nodded, wriggling excitedly in their seats.

“These fossils won’t just go with their own set. You can take any fossil you find and put it together with any other fossil, and make a brand new kind of dinosaur!”

A couple of girls clapped, and I grinned. One girl with a shiny black bob and huge green eyes raised her hand.

“Yes, what’s your name?” I asked her.

“Eerie,” she said. “Like the lake. I have a question.”

“I have an answer,” I replied with a wide smile.

“Why is the dirt pink and purple? And why is there glitter?”

Because I lost the fight with the design department, I thought dully.

“Sand comes in all kinds of colors,” I said instead. “And a lot of sand does look glittery in the sunlight.”

Eerie wrinkled her little nose at it. “I don’t like it,” she said. “I want to find real fossils, not fairy princess unicorn fossils.”

“And real fossils you shall find,” I told her happily. “Well, models of real fossils, anyway. But I will be sure to pass your comments on to the design team. Tell me, girls, mothers, how many of you agree with Eerie?”

“What does agree mean?” A brown-eyed little girl asked.

“It means…um…how many of you would like the kits better if the sand was tan rather than pink and purple?”

Four girls, Eerie included, raised their hands. A majority. My arguments were vindicated, but I kept the victorious gleam in my eye to a minimum. It wasn’t really professional to gloat on camera.

“Hm, noted,” I told them. “Now, let’s see how you like playing with the rest of it!”

Five girls dug in, and one raised her hand.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Lisa,” she chirped.

“What is your question, Lisa?”

“What’s the second toy we get to play with?” she asked.

“That’s a surprise,” I told her with a wink. “But I think you’re going to have fun with it.”

“Oh. Okay,” Lisa said with a little wiggling shrug. She returned to her paleontology kit, and I stepped back. Sometimes the best feedback happened when the kids and parents were left to their own devices. They began discussing the toy as they played with it, as these groups usually did, without my interference.

“You called that one,” Imogen said quietly as we watched the kids play. “How did you know?”

“I remember being that age,” I answered. “Toy aisles always felt so patronizing. As if I couldn’t be interested in building blocks or doctor’s kits or cash registers unless they were ‘girly’ colors. I went through a phase where I’d throw a massive fit any time someone would buy me anything that was pink. Not my proudest moments, but, you know…being a kid and all, I think I can be forgiven.”

Imogen chuckled softly and bumped my shoulder in a friendly gesture. “You’re really good with the kids,” she whispered, her voice tinted with envy. “You should be a mom. You’d be great at it.”

“You think so?” I asked wistfully.

“Oh, yeah. You’re still young; there’s no rush or anything…but I think, from a global perspective, that humanity would benefit from you raising kids.”

“Whoa,” I breathed with a laugh. “Too much pressure. I can’t even get a decent date. At this point, I think saving the world through the power of my ovaries is a bit much to ask.”

“Maybe.” Imogen shrugged. “Don’t you want kids?”

“Of course I do,” I said, watching the little ones play. “A whole houseful of them. When I was a kid, I wanted to have my first kid when I was twenty-one, only when I reached that age, I figured out that I was really still a kid myself. Now, with life and everything…” I shrugged, trying to figure out how to end that sentence. “I don’t know. It’s still the goal. My lifelong dream is to be a mom.”

“You make a terrible feminist,” Imogen teased affectionately.

“I know,” I chuckled. “That’s why I have to balance my baby craving with dinosaur toys.”

We laughed together, then returned to the table to check on the kids. Imogen took the three nearest the back of the room, and I took the three nearest the front—Eerie, Lisa, and a little girl named Rose. They were enthralled with the texture of the synthetic dirt, which mimicked real layers as closely as possible; loose sand on top, sticky sand beneath, a layer of super-compact chalky dirt, a thick layer of clay-like dirt, and the rock bottom.

It wasn’t very messy, as the kit itself had been designed to catch displaced dirt and feed it back into the bottom of the reservoir, and the dirt had been designed so that it wouldn’t stick to skin or stain it, but it was still a lot of fun to play with the various textures. Each kit came with six complete dinosaur skeletons, and the three girls I was working with uncovered two each before it was time to move on to the next activity.

“Don’t worry about cleaning up your stations,” I told them. “Let’s wash our hands at the sink; then, you can play with the next toy!”

“Ooh, what is it, what is it?” they asked, jumping out of their seats.

I merely grinned at them, and moved to the center of the room, where a pile of toys was covered by a white sheet.

“If I may have your attention, ladies and smaller ladies,” I said in my best circus announcer voice. “It is my honor and privilege to present to you…the dinosaurs!” I flicked the sheet away, revealing a dozen remote-controlled mechanical dinosaurs.

Six of the toys adhered to the most recent theories about colors and skin textures. Red feathers and grey, leathery skin sat beside six other fantasy dinosaurs. The shapes were the same, but the colors and textures had been altered to suit the ‘girl-toy’ narrative. Rainbows shimmered across pearly skin, fluffy fur replaced the slick feathers, and each dinosaur had long eyelashes and studded collars.

The girls squealed in delight, running over to choose their dinosaurs, grasping for the controllers. Unlike the dinosaurs, each one of the dozen controllers was pink. Eerie glared at hers, then at the sturdy, realistic triceratops she had chosen, then at me.

“Why is everything pink?!” she shouted.

“Eerie, behave yourself,” her mother said sternly.

“No, no, it’s a valid question,” I said quickly. “This particular study is to determine which set of dinosaurs you girls prefer. Could you tell me what sort of color or pattern you would prefer for that controller?”

Eerie thought for a long moment, tapping her tiny chin. “Wood,” she said. “Because they didn’t have plastic in dinosaur days, did they? So the controller needs to be wooden.”

“That’s a very good idea,” I told her sincerely, “and I will definitely pass that on to the design team. Thank you, Eerie.”

Eerie grinned happily, thrilled at being taken seriously. Kids are really just like adults, in many ways. They want to be heard and understood and validated. I found those parts of my job to be the most rewarding, when I could make a child feel like a key contributor in the world. Because, the truth was, they were.

Each girl had now chosen her dinosaur, and the results were split evenly. Three girls chosen the realistic dinosaurs, while three chose the fantasy dinosaurs. I couldn’t blame them. The rainbow-shimmer plesiosaur would have been my choice. I laughed as four of the girls immediately shattered stereotypes, choosing to make their dinosaurs battle. Another vindication for me, as I had gone head-to-head with the design team regarding the sturdiness of these particular toys and won.

“Don’t look now, but we’re being observed,” Imogen told me out of the side of her mouth.

I casually turned around, and my heart skipped a beat. Mr. Dane was watching us through the window, an incomprehensible smile growing beneath his hooded eyes. I grabbed Imogen’s hand instinctively, and she gave me a curious look.

“You look terrified,” she said. “He’s not that bad. I mean, he can be, but not if you’re doing your job right. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I said shakily. “I…um…oh, God, I’m going to get fired. I knew I was going to get fired.”

“Calm down,” Imogen hissed, nodding at the focus group. My whimpering had caught the attention of at least two of the mothers, and I swallowed hard. “Why do you think you’re getting fired?”

“I’ll tell you later,” I said, trembling. “He’s coming in.”