1. Clarissa

1

CLARISSA

" Y ou aren't wearing that, are you?" my roommate asked.

I looked down at my outfit. I thought I looked good. Presentable, as my mother would say.

"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" I fingered the side of my skirt. It was vintage, A-line, light purple, mini-wale corduroy, very office friendly, or at least I thought it was.

"Nothing if you're a fifty-year-old librarian. I thought you said you got an internship at an architectural firm," Marci continued.

"I did." I pressed my hands down the front of the vest I wore. It was also vintage, really old, from some big guy's tux. It fit really well over my chest, but even I had to take a few stitches to nip in the sides. I was curvy, but not as curvy as whoever this had been made for.

"So why are you dressed like your mother? More realistically, like how your mother probably dressed for her first job in the last century!"

I let out a heavy sigh. Marci was so dramatic. The last century wasn't all that long ago. So what if I had never lived in it? I was wearing vintage, so thirty-plus years was to be expected.

"You were in the same seminar as I was," I started.

"The one where they told us how to dress for work? Yeah, but she didn't say you had to dress hyper-conservative, just not to wear your slutty clubbing clothes. You look…" Marci shook her head as she pushed off the junky couch we had rescued off the side of the road and walked around me, plucking at my clothes.

"Sweater or vest, not both. The skirt could be cute, but it really doesn't do much for your figure."

"It covers my hips."

"Yeah, like a tarp. It's just there. If it says anything, it's saying, ‘look, big hips here.'"

"It's not meant to be a statement piece. That's the vest," I pointed out.

"Then let the vest be a statement piece and don't hide it under the sweater."

She reached up and pulled my sweater off. "Really, Clarissa? That shirt?"

With a grunt of exasperation, Marci stomped off to the bedroom we shared. It was a small room with our perspective beds lining opposite walls and a single closet we had crammed with all of our clothes. But we had an off-campus apartment. I know I thought we had achieved optimal city living.

Marci was already pulling a few items out of the closet by the time I dragged myself in behind her.

"Tell me everything you know about this architecture firm," she said as she dumped clothing on my bed, and then, with her hands on her hips, she looked back at me.

"It's the Love Agency," I said. I emphasized the name. Kyle Love was a big deal. And the fact that I had been selected as one of the summer interns was going to set me up for a great job after I graduated.

"Okay, so what's love architecture? Is that a style, or something dirty?"

"Kyle Love," I said.

"That means nothing to me. I don't take architecture classes."

"Kyle Love is one of the hottest architects in the world. He has buildings all over the place—Dubai, Hong Kong, London."

Marci nodded. "Okay, how old is he?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think he's what I would call old-old."

Marci rolled her eyes. "Forty and over, or under forty?"

"Probably under. Why?"

Marci shook her hands at me. "Why? Because you are wearing old people's clothes, Clarissa."

"Vintage," I corrected.

"Vintage doesn't automatically make it cool. You look like you expect to go to work for a bunch of old grandpas. If this Kyle Love guy is a big deal, he's not going to trust some middle-aged librarian looking chick to be able to design anything other than kitchen cabinets."

I bit my top lip. Marci knew my reluctance to embrace body positivity and show off my figure. Every time I tried, it had a bad habit of smacking me in the face. I knew I tended to hide behind my clothes. "I don't want to have too much attention on my clothes."

"I understand. But you're going into an industry where people will look at you and judge. If you can't put effort into how you look, how can they trust you will put effort into your designs?"

"That's what my portfolio is for," I said.

"Yeah, but they have to get past you to be interested in seeing your portfolio. You don't have to be all ‘look at me', but you can't hide behind frumpy old clothes, either." She turned and picked up a plain shirt and held it up in front of me. "Pick one, the skirt or the vest."

This was one battle I wasn't going to win. In the end, I showed up to my first day interning at the Love Agency in the purple skirt and the sweater I'd originally planned on wearing, only this time, it was as my blouse. A wide belt gave me the appearance of having an hourglass shape. Marci insisted I wear my Doc Martin boots, not dress shoes.

I had to admit, after seeing how the rest of my intern cohort showed up on our first day, I was very glad Marci had helped. I wasn't in anything that called attention to my body, and I looked relatively stylish. On a scale of fashion to frumpy, I was closer to the frumpy end. I never was going to be like the two women in the group who were built and dressed like models, but at least I wasn't like the guy who looked like he had slept in his clothes last night.

There were six of us crammed into a conference room with boxes of catered coffee. Steve, the guy who looked like he had rolled out of bed and straight here, sat hunched over a cup of coffee. The models, Bella and Kendall, hovered in a corner with their phones out, talking quietly to each other. Occasionally, they would glance out at the rest of us. The other two guys, Conner and a second guy named Steve, discussed some sporting event that happened over the weekend.

I sat across from the tired looking Steve and examined my cuticles. I didn't want to play with my phone, thinking that might make a bad impression. And I didn't drink coffee. Without anything to do, the wait seemed infinite.

Alayna Hunt, the woman I had interviewed for the internship with, stepped into the office with the most gorgeous man I had ever seen right behind her.

"Good morning, everyone," Alayna announced. "Welcome. We're so glad you're here with us. This is the Love Agency's inaugural year of having a summer internship program. We hope this experience proves to be as valuable to your future as we believe your fresh perspectives will bring to us."

Steve made a half-awake noise. I glanced over at him and saw him blink and try to focus. He lurched, and I was afraid he was going to be sick.

"Are you okay?" I whispered, but I don't think Steve noticed.

The handsome man with Alayna crossed the conference room and stood behind Steve, clasping his hands onto Steve's shoulders. "Time to wake up and join us here, okay, bud?" The man put the back of his hand against Steve's neck. "Dude, you are burning up. You should have called in sick. Alayna, take this guy to see if you can get him someplace to rest, or see if he needs to go to a doctor."

He hooked his arm under Steve's armpit and hauled him to his feet. "Alayna is going to get you taken care of."

"Of course." Alayna took Steve, and they left.

The models in the corner twittered, and Conner and the other Steve made some cough-insult about blowing his chance on the first day.

The handsome man turned to me and asked, "Do you happen to have any hand sanitizer?"

I nodded, my tongue unable to work in this man's presence, and grabbed my purse. I squirted hand sanitizer into his waiting palm.

"Thank you." He turned to everyone else. "I had a whole speech prepared for you this morning, but I guess that got usurped. Hi, welcome. I'm Kyle Love. I guess this brings up some expectations the agency is going to have of you. You can't do good work if you are not healthy. Someone, probably the internship coordinator at that young man's school, convinced him to show up no matter what. If you're sick, please call in. If you do not have Alayna's number in your phone by now, make sure you do before the end of the day."

He kept rubbing his hands together. "I touched him. I'll be right back, I've got to wash my hands."

Kyle Love strode from the conference room.

Suddenly, the conversations in the room grew in volume. The models—I really was going to have to think of them by their names—exclaimed at how attractive Kyle was while the guys joked about poor Steve blowing his chance here.

I sat there and kept reliving the moment Kyle looked into my eyes and asked for hand sanitizer. His eyes were the most amazing pool blue. I could have drowned in them. I could have stared into his face for hours and not gotten bored or distracted.

He had the kind of cheek bones that sculptors graced their depictions of the gods with to convey their higher earthly origins and ethereal beauty. He had a jawline that wouldn't stop. And he had asked me for hand sanitizer.

I bit my upper lip and closed my eyes. I really hoped I hadn't done anything so embarrassing as blushing. I let out a long breath and hoped that I wouldn't flare up in a blush when and if Kyle Love returned.