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"Okay, don't be weird, Aggie," she opens, which is how she opens when she's about to be weird, "but I figured it out."

“What, Bird? Figured what out?"

"The money." A dramatic pause she's clearly been saving. "Ag. You've got a man."

My reaction hits fast, it almost sounds like a laugh, which I do my best to swallow. Because Birdie’s not wrong. She's just not right either.

"You've met somebody rich," she barrels on, delighted with herself, "and he's, like, taking care of you, and you're too proud and weird to say so, which, honestly, is so on brand for you. Tell me, is he hot? I really hope he is. And is this a sugar situation? I fully support a sugar situation, I want that noted, Aggie."

Lies are interesting. Sometimes the best one is the one somebody hands you. I could correct her. I could say, No, Birdie, there's no man, there's three, and they're my bosses, and I take my clothes off for them on the internet for a living now, please pass the abundance meditation.

Or I could let my sister believe I've landed a rich boyfriend and call it a day.

"He's private," I say, which is kind of true. "Let me have this, okay? Don't make it a thing."

"Oh my God, there IS a guy." She's thrilled. She's off. She's naming our future children. And I sit at the front desk and let her, because a fake rich boyfriend is the single safest thing anyone has believed about me in a month, and I'll take it, and I'll feed it, and I will never, ever let her meet him.

Them.

I hang up feeling like I got away with something, which should have been my first warning.

Because that's when Theo comes by with the coffee.

He does it most afternoons, the oat milk and one sugar. In fourteen—or is it fifteen?—months now, this has been the nicest, most weightless thirty seconds of my day.

It is not weightless today.

Today, I know the voice that goes with the hand setting the cup down. Today, I know it says dick and pussy and I want this to last as long as you do and God, look at you. And when Theo sets the coffee on my desk and says, "Careful, it's hot," his voice changes on the word hot. It’s nothing big; in fact it’s barely anything, but for a moment, his voice is a half-degree warmer than usual. I look up, and he's looking at me.

Not past me. At me. The way KindRegards looks at Diablo.

Neither of us moves. His hand is still on the cup. Mine is coming up to take it, and our fingers are an inch apart. The whole lobby floats away, and for one second, the two worlds I have kept separate are standing on the exact same square foot of carpeting, crashing into each other over a paper cup.

Holyfuckingshit, he knows. The thought bangs me upside the head, painful and terrifying. He knows, he's going to say it, right here, he's going to⁠—

"You doing good?" he asks.

I grip the edge of my desk to stay upright.

It's the most ordinary question in the world. It is also, almost word for word, what KindRegards typed to me at midnight three nights running. We both hear it, I watch us both hear it, and the air between us goes so tight, I could pop it.

"Perfect," I manage with a forced smile. "Couldn’t be better."

"Good," he says. And he doesn't move for one more second, one second too long, and I swear to God he's about to⁠—

The phone rings. Loud, shrill, merciful, the front desk phones lighting up like slot machines.

Theo steps back like a man waking up. The professional warmth slides back over his face, the FedEx-guy warmth, the mailbox warmth. "Have a good one, Agnes," he says, and he's gone toward his office. I answer the phone with the voice of a woman who has her shit together.

I don't hear a word the caller says after my greeting, and I have to ask him to repeat himself twice.

That was close. Fucking close. I don't have another word for it. I don't know which scares me more, that it almost happened, or that I wanted it to happen.

I'm still shaking it off, still not hearing my caller, when I glance up and catch Beck.

He's across the lobby by the elevators, phone to his ear, mid-deal, being the taking-on-the-world Beck. Except he isn't looking at his phone. He's looking at me, and then at Theo's back disappearing, and then at me again.

And the grin is gone.