When I was in college, if a professor scolded me or even gave me a disapproving look for something I’d done, or even something I hadn’t done, I would feel sick for weeks. A former boss telling me that she wanted to see me in her office would sometimes drive me to tears. My life was falling apart, someone wanted to steal my dream store from me, but the thing that really made me feel like throwing up was that idea of calling the man I’d just turned down and asking him to reconsider. The man that I’d said no to. The man that I still wasn’t entirely sure I hadn’t just watched cut the buttons off a woman and bring her – and, if I was going to be honest about it, myself – to orgasm. The man I couldn’t stop thinking, or even dreaming, about. His card was still on my desk. I picked it up and ran my thumb over it. Letterpress from the looks of it, and expensive. It had his name and a phone number, and beneath that, right in the centre, the shape of a keyhole pressed into the paper with black ink.
