“What a prick,” says Hailey, shoving her phone in my face. “Look at this.”

We’re squished together on the little couch that we somehow stuffed into her tiny room after finding it at a garage sale for twenty dollars—a real steal in San Francisco, the city where people rent dumpsters for hundreds of dollars a night.

It’s morning, and Hailey’s just gotten home from some late night hook up. Me, I’ve been showered for an hour, but I haven’t yet changed into my work clothes.

I take the phone from her. On the screen, a picture of a man in his early thirties greets me. There’s a headline, but I’m not reading that now. Somehow, I’m mesmerized by him, his piercing blue eyes, the perfect amount of stubble, the chin so chiseled he’s probably a famous actor.

“Falling in love?” teases Hailey. “Found who you’re going to lose your v-card to?”

“No,” I sputter. “I’m just…”

“Just read it,” says Hailey. “You aren’t going to want to fantasize about him after you read the article.”

I force my eyes away from his face and killer body and scroll down, so that just the headline and the article are on my screen.

“Douchebag Billionaire at it Again,” reads the headline.

“Journalism at its finest,” I say, scoffing.

“It gets worse,” says Hailey. “I know it’s just a tabloid site, but keep reading.”

“Ryan Hudson seriously earns his title of Douchebag Billionaire of the year,” continues the article. “He was spotted last night driving over a pensioner’s wheelchair. Fortunately, she wasn’t in it, but it’s the thought that counts, right? The wheelchair, owned by Mrs. Sally Davison, a widower, is estimated to cost over $10,000. Damages to Hudson’s Maserati are currently unknown, and he was not available to make comments.”

“Wow,” I say, taking a sip of my coffee. “What a prick. Drives over an old lady’s wheelchair? What’s a pensioner, anyway?”

I feel Hailey shrugging against me. Yeah, we’re that squished on this couch, but we’ve gotten used to it. “I think it’s a British term for a retiree… But that’s not the first thing I’ve read about this guy. Supposedly he wants to use his company to run the world or something. And he’s…”

I should keep listening. Hailey’s my best friend, after all. But my fingers glide up, moving his image back into view.

My eyes gaze into his, and, yeah, it’s just a publicity photo on my friend’s phone, but…

“You even listening to me?” says Hailey.

“Yeah,” I say, scrolling down and then handing the phone back to her. “That’s really messed up.”

“Well,” says Hailey. “I’ve got to get to work.”

“Good luck.”

“It’s been a year,” says Hailey. “Good luck doesn’t happen at the Bigfoot Diner.”

I laugh.

“You’re the one who really needs it,” says Hailey. “Second day on the new job. An intimidating office environment. Professional dress.” She’s teasing me lightly, since she knows I hate all those things about my new job.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

I watch as Hailey throws on her work shirt and heads out the door.

“Pizza and wine after work?” I call out after her.

“Depends on what I make in tips,” she calls back.

Slowly, I unravel myself from the plush if somewhat dirty couch (mostly wine stains, since it was in perfect shape when Hailey and I carried it home, cursing all the way), and head back into my own room, which isn’t nearly as exciting as Hailey’s.

Her room is full of interesting knick knacks, weird things people have left her as tips (it still is San Francisco, after all, despite all the techies), and what must be a hundred posters of her favorite bands—a lot of ‘80s punk bands, but generally she’s a fan of everything under the sun.

My own room is boring in comparison, fairly neat and tidy, without any decoration at all. A couple of assembly language computer textbooks are on my makeshift desk. (My room, too, is cramped and tiny, but I make it work).

I’ve just moved in here a week ago, but Hailey’s been living here for an entire year. We’ve been best friends since high school, but we’ve never lived together before. She hooked me up with this room, and without it, I wouldn’t have any place to live in San Francisco. Instead, I’d be back home in Boston, working at the family furniture business, something I desperately want to avoid. Although, at times, it seems like a more secure, safe option… maybe I should just retreat to what’s comfortable.

But my dream, strange as it sounds, is to be a top notch coder, one who can compete with the techie boys of Silicon Valley, one who can out code them all with one hand tied behind my back. I want to really change things, and I want to help people, and coding seems like a viable way to do that.

Even though I was an academic, yet popular girl in high school, a cheerleader and all that, I taught myself everything I know about coding.

I pull off my t-shirt with holes in it, and grab my professional blouse, which is drab and boring by my tastes, but tight fitting and not terribly unflattering.

I stand before the mirror on the back of my door and suck in my stomach a little, looking at my breasts in my bra. Somehow, upon my turning 21, my breasts started to grow, and for a little while it seemed like I was going to need a new bra every few months. They’ve settled into a large B cup, but they might burst out of that any time now.

Checking the clock, I realize I don’t have much time left.

I take my skirt from the hanger and try to pull it up over my legs, but my ass and thighs have gotten bigger recently, too, and even though the skirt is almost brand new, I have to scrunch it and really tug it to get it on. Checking myself out in the mirror, turning sideways, the skirt looks almost too form fitting, too tight, my ass too big. I hope this isn’t too sensual for the somewhat stodgy office I work in.

After an hour on public transportation, I arrive at work, out of breath, but at least looking as professional as I ever have.

“Hi Ms. Wright,” I say to the secretary.

“Call me Sheila,” she says. “Second day, huh?”

“Yup. And I think I’ve got that employee manual memorized at this point. I read it all day yesterday.”

“Good,” says Sheila, nodding.

“And I think I’m ready to start coding,” I say. After all, coding is my dream. Coding is why I took this job, even though I imagined myself working in a t-shirt in some funky startup, rather than this stodgy super establishment office… at least I have a chance to code, right?

Sheila gives a little laugh that doesn’t make it sound like I’m going to be doing much coding.

She reaches down and pulls a binder as thick as a telephone book out and hands it to me. The weight of the binder makes my arms feel weak right away, dragging them down.

“That’s the extension of the employee manual,” she says. “It’s important to read that and understand it thoroughly.”

“Great,” I say, putting on a fake smile.

I walk down the hallway with the plush carpet to my cubicle. This office isn’t at all what I would consider the Silicon Valley norm. There aren’t any nap stations or crazy gadgets lying around. There isn’t a corporate culture of sharing. There’s nothing hipster or flashy or trendy about this place at all. Instead, it’s downright traditional. Very nice, sure, everything very tastefully done, but…

Looks like it’s going to be another day in my cubicle reading a boring book instead of coding. Why won’t they let me actually do any work? They’re paying me pretty good money. Most people would consider me lucky, landing this job at 21, right after graduating college. But I just want to code. I want to use what I’ve taught myself, and I need experience working with a group of other coders.

I sigh as I sit down in my swivel chair and open the massive binder.

The first page is something horrendously boring that I skip over. It’s a company mission for a company so boring and stodgy that it couldn’t actually have a mission. This isn’t anything like the mega hip companies with killer benefits, nor the hacker-style startups… nothing like what I was expecting. I know I said that before but it just keeps running through my head, making it hard to concentrate.

What I find on the next page makes me stop, though. Something so unexpected I can’t believe it.

It’s a picture of Ophelia Tech’s founder.

And it’s none other than the famous douchebag billionaire Ryan Hudson that Hailey showed me earlier this morning.

It’s exactly the same photograph. It must be his press photograph.

His eyes seem to pierce mine again. It’s almost as if he’s a real person gazing at me from the picture. It sends a warm shiver through me and creates a warm feeling between my legs.

My eyes move down past his perfectly chiseled jaw to his broad, muscular shoulders, which are visible even through his business suit.

I suddenly realize I’m holding my breath, and I let it out, and now I’m breathing faster than normal.

“You OK over there, new girl?” calls my cubicle neighbor, a man in his late fifties who I think is named Jim, or maybe Jerry. He’s got the typical old school programmer body. He’s balding on top, and somehow makes his unusually nice clothes (I think his wife dresses him, and shops for him) look slovenly and incredibly sloppy.

“Oh,” I say, trying to hold my breath again, which doesn’t work when talking, obviously. But I just can’t tear my eyes off this picture of Ryan Hudson. “Yeah,” I say. “I was just reading the extension of the company manual.”

My neighbor chuckles. “Hell of a document,” he says. “They make me reread it every quarter.”

“I just want to get on to programming,” I say.

“Well,” he says, sighing. “We don’t do a lot of that here.”

“You don’t do a lot of programming? Aren’t you a coder?”

“Going on twenty years now,” he says. “But Ryan came up with the algorithm, and there’s not a whole lot to do to it. It’s pretty much perfect, which never happens in programming. Then again, Ryan’s an unusual case like that…”

Ryan… he’s talking about Ryan Hudson like he knows him. He knows this gorgeous douchebag billionaire? Personally?

I have so many questions about what Jim/Jerry is saying, especially since all I want to do is program, and he’s telling me I’m not going to be doing much of that. But somehow, all I can think about is Ryan Hudson, with his gorgeous face that makes my virgin body quiver.

“So… where’s Ryan’s office?” I say, trying to sound casual, but I probably sound more like I’m just ridiculously awkward.

It’s just occurred to me that Ryan Hudson might actually be only a few hundred feet from me—here, in person, in his hot muscled flesh.

Jim/Jerry starts scooting his chair behind the cubicle wall, and I see him in the flesh today for the first time. He’s already got a coffee stain on his shirt.

He’s chuckling. “Ryan Hudson, here?” he says, a smile lighting up his face. “He hasn’t shown up here in years. Too busy being a billionaire playboy. I’m sure you’ve seen the news.”

I nod shyly, not knowing what to say.

This certainly isn’t the type of office for a billionaire playboy to hang out in, that’s for sure. So he doesn’t even work? He just designed some genius algorithm years ago, and now he never comes to work, just spends his time running over old ladies’ wheelchairs with his Maserati?

He sure doesn’t look like a coder…

I suddenly notice that my skirt is bunched up strangely around my thighs, exposing a lot of my leg.

I catch Jim/Jerry glancing down at me. Gross.

“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” I say.

I get up, leaving my chair spinning, and rush down the carpeted hallway in the ultra-quiet office building. It’s small, too small for a functioning company. So this explains it all: no real work goes on here.

I’m strangely turned on by the idea of the asshole billionaire Ryan Hudson, but at the same time I feel like I’m about to have an anxiety attack. This job isn’t what I thought it was. Will I even get to program at all, or will I just sit at my desk until I’m just like my cubicle neighbor?

I stare at myself in the mirror, breathing hard. The door is locked behind me.

“You’re just a stupid inexperienced little girl,” I tell myself, self-doubt rearing its head. “You’re still a virgin, and you just think you’re a coder. But what have you done?”

“Shut up,” I tell myself, sitting down on the tile. It’s a very nice bathroom, after all.