Page 11 of Guy's Girl
Even warm and still on his mattress, Ginny feels as if she’s falling.
It might have been Adrian’s beauty that caught her eye. But what hooks her—what makes her heart beat way down in her stomach—is that he never touches her below the waist. That he refuses to acknowledge she has a body below the torso he holds so gently. That he refuses to acknowledge she has a body at all.
And that—that, more than anything—is all Ginny has everwanted.
Part II
Six MonthsLater
Spring awakens in New York with a fervor Adrian has never seen before. In Boston, winter dragged her feet as long as she could, leaving grey-brown piles of slush dripping on the sides of the road well into May. Not in New York. In New York, the seasons work as efficiently as the city itself. They have distinct beginnings and ends, and no one is allowed to overstay its welcome.
April. A year out of college, and he still has another to go before he’s fulfilled the standard two needed to prove to other companies that you’re dedicated to your job. But Adrian isn’t dedicated to his job. His job makes him want to pour lighter fluid all over 200 West Street and burn the building to the ground.
Is this adulthood? Is that why people tell you not to grow up?
In moments like these, Adrian thinks of Budapest. He thinks of biking along the Danube, legs flying as he tries to break his record for getting from his mom’s apartment to his grandparents’ house. He thinks of the crumbling bars, the castle on the hill.
An emaildingsinto his inbox, the third in five minutes. The higher-ups are chattering about their newest deal: a bid to buy a craft beer company. Every email they send means more work for Adrian. More juggling numbers in Excel. More edits to the deck. More mind-numbing clicks ofF2, F2, F2.
All for a stupid beer company they probably won’t even buy.
Beer. Beer makes him think of Ginny. Clay said she’s moving to New York this week. When Adrian first heard she was movinghere, his heart sank. He likes her, but... doubtless, she’s going to expect that they start dating, and Adrian simply doesn’t have the time.
He sighs, opening Outlook to see exactly how fucked the rest of his week will be.
The door to Sofra-Moreno Companies, LLC, is made of all glass, half of which is plastered with hundreds of beer brand labels. Ginny recognizes them all—some from her year with the company, some from drinking warm cans in sweaty fraternity basements.
It took six months. Six months of gently nudging her manager, then not so gently nudging her manager, then emailing HR, then interviewing on Zoom for a dozen different roles. But her hard work paid off. Today, Ginny begins her life as the youngest member of the global communications team.
She lives in Manhattan.
She lives in Manhattan.
Ginny grew up far from New York City on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in a thimble-size town called Sault Ste. Marie. Locals just call it “the Soo,” an Americanized version of its French name. Every house has a stack of firewood out back. The airport has one gate. The outskirts are nothing but chipped red barns and bales of hay. The biggest attraction is the bridge that carries tourists out of the city and into Canada.
Before she could even spell her own name, Ginny knew she was going to leave.
Ginny’s best friends were her brothers. Two above, one below: Tom, Willie, and Crash. One serious, one funny, one who likes to blow things up. They spent nearly all their free time playing video games, driving to Wendy’s, organizing the neighborhood into giant games of ghost in the graveyard, and finding things for Crash to light on fire.
And, of course, there was Heather.
As kids, Ginny and her older sister didn’t get along. Not even close. It’s kind of sad when she thinks about it. After six years as the only female in the family, Heather was probably excited when she found out her mom was pregnant with a girl. Probably she wanted a doll, a two-foot-tall, porcelain-necked American Girl with plaid skirts and a symmetrical face. Whose hair she could cut however she wanted. Who she could cover in lipstick, make pretty.
Instead, she got Ginny.
From the start, Ginny wasn’t what her sister wanted. She didn’t like dolls. She liked dinosaurs and digging holes. She played dress-up, but only to turn herself into a Viking, vampire, or backwoods explorer—never a princess.
Heather, on the other hand, isn’t just feminine; she’saggressivelyfeminine. She wields womanhood as a weapon against all who would harm her. Handbags heavier than rifles, heels sharp enough to draw blood. She’s unreasonably beautiful, like staring straight into the sun.
As a kid, when Ginny watched her sister move through a crowd—purse swinging, miniskirt stretched tight, giant sunglasses balanced on the bridge of her nose—she felt that she knew a secret no one else did:this tiny blonde could fucking kill you.
***
Inside, a security guard sits behind a sleek black desk. To the left, turnstiles flash from red to green as employees trickle inside.
“Hi,” says the guard, a bald man whose name tag saysgary. “Visiting?”
“No.” Ginny smiles. “It’s my first day.”
