Page 5 of The Girl with No Name

While I ride up the elevator, I type a text to my girlfriend.

Reed: Good morning, sweetheart! Have an incredible day :)

Samantha is in grad school for business at Berkeley, and it’s a little early for a good-morning text since she’s still sleeping on the west coast. But I want my words to be the first thing she sees when she wakes up.

I’m a dedicated boyfriend. Fuck off with that red-pill, don’t-show-interest shit. We’re in love. I send her a good-morning text. She sends me one back.

Usually.

I press send on the message as I exit the elevator at my floor, heading to my cubicle.

I walk through rows and rows of cubicles until I finally arrive at mine, a partitioned-off area I share when I’m in the office with a tenured sales guy named Jay, who is thirty-nine. At twenty-seven, I appreciate that he can share his fifteen-plus years of corporate experience with me, as my mentor.

As I settle in, I pick up the picture of Samantha and me on my desk. It’s from a barn dance in college. We were a couple of kids without a care in the world back then—twenty-one year old seniors, loving life.

Since then, we’ve had our ups and downs, like any couple, I suppose. Among the hardest of them was when I left about three and a half years ago to do the Peace Corps in Bolivia and she went west to do her MBA. We split up momentarily.

But ultimately, in the long term, we’re a good match.

I smile as I log on to my laptop.

In September, she’ll be completely finished with her MBA from Berkeley, and she’ll move back to Chicago. I’msolooking forward to finally being together in person again. And this time? Conceivably forever.

I stare at my login screen, which features my tech company’s logo: ChiConCyber. Known in the biz as Triple C.

You need your business protected from ransomware? You come to us, baby. Everyone needs protection online these days.

It’s been a long and winding road, but I have the big three figured out, finally.

Stable, well-paying job? Check.

Long-term partner? Check.

Awesome city? Fucking check again.

I’m not rich—as I noted, making $400 per month in the Peace Corps and deferring my student loans certainly didn’t help—but it will come. In twenty-eight years, according to my numbers.

Life is about discipline.

I pull the little box I got this week out of my pocket and put it on the desk, next to the photo of Samantha and me.

Then I head down to grab my coffee from Reed’s Coffee Shop—same name, so you know it’s good. When I get back, Jay is there in our cubicle, with a wry grin on his face.

“Morning,” he booms.

“Morning.”

“Thinking of proposing?” He nods toward my desk, his eyes landing on the ring box. “I’m sorry to say, I’m married. And though I’m flattered, I’ve always been a tits man. You’re a little on the skinny side for me. Como se dice en Colombia? Flaca?”

“I was in Bolivia. And flac-oh,” I emphasize. “O is masculine, and I’m a man. And I’m proposing to Samantha when she moves back to Chicago in September, yeah. I’ve been carrying it around with me this week. I don’t know why, exactly.”

“Oh?” he says.

“Yeah, so I’m really proposing.”

“And when do I get to meet this allegedgirlfriend Samantha?” He makes air quotes around both words.

“Jay, she’s real.” I grin as I open my Outlook.