Chapter 2
GUNTHER
The spreadsheet refuses to cooperate.
I push my glasses up and rub the bridge of my nose where they've left a red mark.
Focus.
The quarterly projections are due tomorrow. Colum needs these numbers for the investor meeting, and I can't show up with a half-finished mess just because I'm distracted by—
Her.
The woman from the party. Sis.
I close my eyes and she's there again. Bright lipstick, freckles across her nose, that laugh that sounded like she was surprised to be having fun. The way she looked at Ridge like he was interesting instead of dangerous.
The way she looked at me, even though she had no idea it was me.
My phone rings. Colum, naturally.
Status update? Investors want sexy graphs.
I type back: Graphs aren't sexy. They're informative.
YOU'RE NO FUN
That's why you pay me.
Three dots. Then: Lunch in 10. Don't argue.
The clock shows 11:47. Close enough.
Colum's idea of lunch involves the sandwich shop two blocks over and an interrogation disguised as friendly conversation.
"You look terrible," he says, sliding into the booth across from me with a turkey club and enough enthusiasm for both of us.
"Thank you."
"I mean it as a compliment. You're usually so..." He waves his hand vaguely. "Pressed. But today you've got this rumpled thing happening. Very human."
I take a bite of my roast beef to avoid responding. Colum interprets silence as encouragement.
"So." He leans forward, grinning. "How was Saturday?"
Saturday.
The party. The plaza celebration. The moment I decided to stop being Gunther for one night and become someone else entirely.
"Fine."
"Fine? Gunther. My guy. I heard you left with a gorgeous brunette? They said she was dolled up, all glittery with her outfit and makeup."
I remember now. She'd mentioned it, laughing about how glitter gets everywhere, how she finds it in the strangest places weeks later.
I'd kissed her and tasted cherry lip gloss.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Colum's grin widens. "You're blushing. Orcs don't blush well but you're giving it your best shot."
"I'm not—"
"You are. And I'm proud of you." He points his sandwich at me like a weapon. "You needed that. The whole Ridge thing? The rented motorcycle. Brilliant. I didn't think you'd actually go through with it. "
Neither did I.
It had been Colum's idea, of course. Two weeks before the party, sitting in his office after a particularly brutal day of investor calls and damage control.
"You need to loosen up," he'd said, pouring whiskey into coffee mugs because he couldn't find the proper glasses. "When's the last time you did something spontaneous?"
"I bought a new calculator without researching reviews first."
"That's depressing."
"It was very liberating."
He'd laughed, shaking his head. "I'm serious. You're thirty-three, you're brilliant, and you spend every weekend color-coding spreadsheets. Live a little."
"I live plenty."
"Name one wild thing you've done this year."
I couldn't.
So he'd proposed the idea. One night. No glasses, no pocket protector, no reputation to maintain. Henna tattoos from that artist in the plaza, leather jacket borrowed from his oversized brother, a fake name and a motorcycle I didn't actually know how to ride parked strategically in the lot.
"Be someone else," he'd said. "Just to see what it feels like."
It felt like flying.
I don't tell Colum that part.
"It was fine," I repeat, focusing on my sandwich. "We talked. I left."
"Talked." He draws out the word, skeptical. "For six hours?"
Six hours.
Had it really been that long?
We'd left the party around nine. I'd walked her to my motorcycle, helped her with the helmet I'd bought specifically as a prop, then admitted I'd had too much to drink to ride safely.
We'd talked in the room first. About the plaza, about her business, about Colum's terrible habit of throwing parties that were half celebration and half networking ambush. She was funny. Quick. Every time I thought I had her figured out, she'd say something that surprised me.
Then she'd kissed me, and talking became optional.
I'd woken up at dawn with her curled against my chest, her hair tickling my nose, and felt something I hadn't felt in years.
Content.
When I reached for my glasses out of habit, remembered I'd left them at home, the panic had set in. What if she woke up? What if she recognized me without the persona? Saw boring, anxious Gunther instead of confident, mysterious Ridge?
I'd pretended to stay asleep, hoping she'd wake first. Hoping we could talk, maybe exchange numbers.
Instead, I'd heard her moving. The rustle of fabric, the soft click of her shoes. The door opening and closing with careful precision.
By the time I got up, she was gone.
No note. No number. Just the faint scent of her perfume on the pillow and a single hair tie on the nightstand.
I'd kept the hair tie and the coaster where she’d scrawled her nickname in that confident, looping hand..
It's in my desk drawer now, tucked next to Clarence and my backup pocket protector.
"Gunther."
I blink. Colum's watching me with an expression that's uncomfortably close to pity.
"You caught feelings."
"I did not."
"You absolutely did." He sits back, shaking his head. "This is why I told you to get her number."
"I was in character. Ridge doesn't ask for numbers."
"Ridge is an idiot."
"Ridge is a persona you invented."
"And you perfected." He points at me again. "So what now? You just pine? Make sad spreadsheets about the one who got away?"
"I don't make sad spreadsheets."
"All your spreadsheets are sad. They have graphs."
I don't dignify that with a response.
Colum leans forward again, his voice dropping to something almost serious. "Look. I know you. You're going to overthink this until you've convinced yourself it was all a mistake. That she wouldn't have liked the real you, that Ridge was better, that it's safer to just move on."
He's not wrong.
"But here's the thing." He steals a chip from my plate. "She's still in the plaza. Sparkle Beauty, right there next to that weird candle shop. You see her every day on your way to work."
I do. I've been taking the long route around the building to avoid it.
"So either you find her and tell her the truth, or you spend the next six months ducking into doorways like a Victorian ghost whenever she walks by."
"Those aren't the only options."
"Name a third."
I can't.
Back at my desk, the spreadsheet is exactly as broken as I left it.
I fix Column G. Trace the error in J-14 to a misplaced parenthesis. Update the formulas and watch the numbers cascade into place with the satisfying logic of a solved puzzle.
This, I understand. Columns and rows and formulas that behave predictably. Variables I can control.
Not women who taste like cherries and slip away before sunrise.
My phone goes off again.
Stop sulking. Ask her to coffee.
I type back: I'm working.
You're spiraling. I can feel it from here.
That's not how feelings work.
Ask. Her. To. Coffee.
I set the phone face-down and stare at my monitor.
Here's what I know: she called herself Sis. She owns some sort of cosmetic glitter shop. She's funny and warm and terrible at sneaking out quietly. She has freckles I wanted to count.
Here's what I don't know: if she'd have looked at Gunther the same way she looked at Ridge.
The henna tattoos washed off Sunday morning. The leather jacket went back to Colum's brother. My glasses are perched on my nose where they belong, and my pocket protector has three pens, one mechanical pencil, and a tiny notebook for sudden calculations.
I am not Ridge. Ridge was a fantasy. A single night of pretending I could be someone confident and spontaneous and worth sneaking away with.
Gunther schedules things. Gunther plans. Gunther doesn't do one-night stands with beautiful strangers and certainly doesn't moon over them afterward like some protagonist in a romance novel.
Except apparently, Gunther does.
My email pings. Investor meeting moved to Thursday. Colum needs the projections by end of day tomorrow instead of this afternoon.
The projections take four hours instead of two because I keep getting distracted by the memory of her laugh.
Pathetic.
I finish at six, send the file to Colum with a subject line that says "Done" because anything more feels like too much effort, and lean back in my chair until it creaks.
The office is empty. Everyone else left an hour ago, off to lives that probably don't involve obsessing over women whose names they don't actually know.
Sis. She'd said it so casually when I asked. "Just call me Sis." And I'd been too busy trying to be Ridge, confident, mysterious Ridge who didn't need last names or phone numbers, to ask for clarification.
Brilliant, Gunther. Really top-tier decision-making.
I should go home. Order something bland and predictable for dinner, reorganize my bookshelves, maybe clean Clarence's screen with that special cloth I bought specifically for vintage calculator maintenance.
Instead, I pull open my desk drawer.
The hair tie sits exactly where I left it, coiled like a question mark next to my backup pocket protector. Navy blue with a small metal charm—a star, I think, though it could be a flower. Hard to tell.
I pick it up. Turn it over in my fingers.
What are you doing?
Colum's voice echoes in my head. Ask her to coffee.
Except I don't know where to find her. She could be anywhere in the plaza or in the city. Could be a pop-up that's already moved on. Could be—
My jacket.
The leather one I wore Saturday night is still draped over the back of my chair where I'd tossed it Monday morning, too tired to hang it properly. I'd been planning to return it to Colum's brother all week but kept forgetting.
I search the pockets.