Levi’s lips against my shoulder, where my bra strap was, where the strap of my bathing suit sits. Levi’s lips tracing that pale line down to my collarbone. Levi reaching for me, both of us shirtless, both of us skin on skin, grabbing at his shoulders, clawing at him, ready to explode...

“Ruby?”

I jump a foot in the air at the sound of my boss’s voice. Shit. I don’t know what I was working on before she came over here.

I was lost in the memory of him.

I should be thankful for the interruption, because at the ends of these fantasies is nothing but a deep, red-faced shame.

I couldn’t go through with it.

“Helen! Yes.” I clear my throat. What the hell was I working on? Nothing on my computer, because the screen is asleep, and I haven’t been taking any notes, so it must be...

“Are you all right?” Helen is in her sixties, with green eyes that sparkle in the afternoon sunlight coming through the single window in my office. “I seem to have startled you.”

“Oh, I was just—I was just a little absorbed, that’s all.” I laugh, but it sounds awkward, nervous. I haven’t done anything wrong, and still. 

Well, I haven’t done anything wrong here. And maybe it wasn’t wrong to stop what was happening between Levi and me. Maybe it wasn’t wrong then, but it sure as hell feels wrong now. This minute, at least. I have no idea how I’ll feel in five minutes, or ten. The world has been knocked off its orbit and I can’t keep up with the shifts in gravity.

I want him. I need him. I hate him. I should never have done anything with Levi in my parents’ house. I was always going to let the heat overwhelm me. This isn’t what I wanted, and it’s everything I wanted.

Shit. How long have I been sitting here, thinking about this…again? Helen is looking at me from the threshold of my office with narrowed eyes. She looks like she’s searching my face for clues.

I clear my throat. “What can I do for you, Helen?”

She pats a hand against her curly silver hair. “I wanted to check in with you on the last batch of submissions. I know there were a lot.” Helen purses her lips. We just ran a contest that ended in May, and more manuscripts than we were expecting entered, the manila envelopes filling bin after heavy plastic bin. I have a team of six interns doing an initial once-over and sorting out the ones who didn’t follow requirements. Then they read the remaining ones and bring me anything that looks promising. I’m working my way through all of those, plus any agented submissions. The manuscripts that come over the transom—not that Drawstring has an actual transom—will have to wait.

“We’ve still got at least four hundred to process.” I swing back to my computer and pull up last night’s email update from the lead intern. Sophie is from the Creative Writing program at NYU and a thousand times more brilliant than some of the bankers and CEOs I’ve met in my life. “The team is handling it well.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Helen has her arms wrapped around her own batch of manuscripts. She handles her own submissions as well. One day, if I’m at this long enough, I’ll have industry contacts like hers—agents that send me the best. If I can stay in this field that long, that is. If things keep going the way they’re going, I won’t have a choice. Even with the recent…family mishaps, I should be able to leverage some of our name recognition into a higher-paying job.

That will only happen if Levi’s auction idea goes down in flames.

For all I know, it might already be a smoldering pile of rubble. I haven’t heard from him since yesterday, when my own choking anxiety about all of this, my own feelings battling it out in my chest, made me dump a pitcher of ice water on the proceedings in my dad’s den.

“Are you—” I look back at Helen, whose face says she doesn’t quite believe me. “I can try to speed things up, if you’d like. I’m sure some of the interns have a few more hours in their schedules they’d be happy to give up.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary—not yet, at least. Just keep me updated. If things get overwhelming, we can bring on more interns. Or Kristin can shift some of her workload around until we announce the contest winners.”

I give her a big smile. “Sounds like a plan.”

Helen winks at me, then turns to go. She’s almost out of sight when she stops and pokes her head back in the doorway. “Oh, and Ruby? There’s—” She laughs a little, as if the situation is almost too strange to put into words. “There’s something for you at the front desk.”

I raise my eyebrows. “I’ll go check it out.”

“Do that.” She laughs again, then moves on down the hallway.

I click out of my email program and stand up from my seat. What the hell could possibly be at the front desk, other than another set of late manuscripts? We already passed the threshold for late arrivals, and if that was what got delivered, why didn’t Helen just bring them to me?

Very strange.

I head out of my office and down the hall. The reception area is on the other side of Drawstring’s floor, so I soak in the sunlight beaming in from outside. I’ve been so lost in thought today, trying to bury myself in work and failing, that it’s three in the afternoon and I’m just now noticing the beautiful day.

The moment I step into the reception area, I see it.

The bouquet is not from the flower cart on the corner. Oh, no. One look, and I’m blushing furiously.

It’s not enormous, but the crystal vase and the white blooms remind me of something I saw in a magazine recently—an arrangement in a Baccarat Harcourt vase. Two steps closer, and I’m certain. That’s exactly what it is. My face burns, and the heat gets stronger when the receptionist, Melanie, sees me standing there with my mouth open.

“It’s not your birthday,” she says with a sly smile. “Ruby, who are these from?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.” I approach on legs that are on the verge of trembling and stare down at the arrangement. But I do know. There’s only one person even tangentially related to my life who could afford—at this moment in time—a bouquet that costs over a thousand dollars. “Is there a card?”

Melanie reaches forward and plucks a white envelope from between the blooms. She hands it over, then steps to my side, looking over my shoulder.

It’s hard to resist the urge to turn away, but I do, opening the envelope like I get this kind of delivery every day.

On the card are a few words in handwriting somewhere between elegance and a scrawl:

No hard feelings.

-L