“Shit! Here comes the boss!” Rosalie said quietly, quickly rushing to her cubicle and pretended she was working. Rosalie Earnshaw was a gorgeous woman in her late twenties who however had a certain disposition towards men. She had chosen to remain single for years because she was very picky and much to the surprise of her best friend, Marcy, Rosalie had also kept her virginity, even till age twenty-six.

Her three friends, Marcy, a thirty-year-old widow with two kids; Trish, a Twenty-nine-year-old single woman and Clenora, a thirty-seven-year-old black American woman have tried their best to hook up Rosalie with several men whom they considered good, but Rosalie had adamantly even refused to go on any date and her friends had almost given up on all hopes that she would ever fall in love or get laid.

Fortunately, for these four friends, they all worked in the same company and hung out during lunch, after work or on weekends. Despite their differences, they were rather inseparable. Trish lived a wild life and shied away from commitments, which made her prefer having flings or one-night-stands with total strangers. She loved to club, party and meet new men and she reveled in such lifestyle.

Marcy was having an affair with a co-worker, Finn, who was also having troubles in his marriage and they would often sneak off to have quickies in the Janitor’s closet, while Clenora, who was on the big side, had a seventeen-year-old daughter whom she was bitter against after her husband eloped with her cousin and she never saw them again.

Clenora who was still struggling to heal from the betrayal, kept jumping into relationships and ended up breaking up later. Most of her relationships never lasted six months but she never stopped trying to find love again while she poured out her frustrations on her helpless teenage daughter.

Among these friends, only Rosalie stayed away from relationships and even stated that she wasn’t interested in getting married nor in having kids in the future. Judging from how miserable her friends could be most times from having certain affairs, she didn’t envy them one bit and would rather remain single than having to go through one heartbreak or the other.

Just then, the boss, Mr. Barrett walked out of his office and walked down the aisle between the cubicles. He was not really a tall man in his early fifties and had a paunch which was always straining the front of his buttoned suit. He finally stopped in the middle of the aisle between her cubicle and Trish's. He cleared his throat loudly and Trish knew that anytime he did such, he was about to announce something very important to the staff. "Announcement everyone, so, listen up!" He said aloud, attracting the attention of almost all the staff who turned their heads towards his direction while Rosalie silently hoped that he wouldn't notice Marcy's and Finn's empty cubicles.

"The CEO will be visiting on Monday and I'll advise you all to be in your very best behavior. Diligence and punctuality are expected of you all, and-" Mr. Barrett paused and pointed to a fat Black-American woman with slick black hair. "Clenora, could you just quit the call for now? I'm trying to make an announcement here!"

Clenora's toothy smile wavered then she pulled the receiver away from her ear a bit and gestured at it with a finger. "But boss, this is my fiancé on the line." She replied. “We are tying the knot soon.”

"And that’s what? The fifth boyfriend this year, yeah?" Mr. Barrett said wryly and everybody burst into laughter while Clenora glared at them in embarrassment and stuck up her middle finger at Trish whose laughter was especially the loudest. She put the receiver to her ear again and said quietly. "Um...baby? Duty calls, gotta run...missing you too, Bae..." Then she puckered her lips and made a kissing sound at the receiver while the others watched her with amused interest. Reluctantly placing the receiver down in its cradle, Clenora glanced around her at the several pairs of eyes still watching her and she frowned. "What y'all looking at, uh?!" She queried her colleagues in her usual high pitch voice. "Kill joys! You all watch, this man is intentional about me! He is not like the others! Let’s see who will be laughing at last!" She bragged but they all burst into laughter again.

"What is he this time, a baseball player? Some unknown bloke you met on Tinder?" Trish flinched her brows at her, teasing her.

"None of your business, Trish!" Clenora craned her neck to look over at Trish over several cubicle walls then she pointed at Trish and Rosalie. "You skinny bitches just stay the fuck away from my man! I know y’all think we big women don’t have them coming for us! But they do!" she laughed smugly. “Men like extra pounds of flesh too!”

Trish beamed and raised her hands in friendly surrender. “Fine, you win, Clen, you win!”

Although, there were a lot of things they were not supposed to do at work but because of the boss' friendly attitude towards his staff, they had the liberty to do some things whenever possible even though he mostly pretended not to notice. He was a boss who was loved by everyone. He was very lenient and understanding, unlike his predecessors.

He cleared his throat again and continued, "If you all love your jobs and need it as much as I believe that you do, it will be in your own interest to keep your desks tidy on Monday and also look your very best!... Abigail!" He pointed at a blonde. "No more spilling of coffee on your desk and making a mess of your papers! George!" He pointed to a lanky man in big eyeglasses and a big shirt. "Learn to use the appropriate tie that suits your shirt and please, get your shirt-size this time, not those crap you always wear!" The others laughed again. "From my experience, the CEO is a very strict man with little tolerance for bullshit even though most of you have only heard of him but have never seen him. He is a hard man to please, so I'd buckle down if I were you. Now, get your ass back to work!"

The staff began to discuss among one another and Clenora laughed from whatever her coworker had said to her, her ample bosom bouncing as she laughed deeply. Trish nervously scratched the back of her ear and pretended to get back to work. "And you!" Mr. Barrett said quietly to her. "You don't have to pretend; I saw you two chatting while you should be working!" He pointed each index fingers of both hands at Trish and Rosalie.

Rosalie sheepishly looked up at him, biting back a smile. "We urm..." She stuttered and nervously began to tap her pen against her desk as she tried to avoid his gaze. "We were just...urm…" she scratched the back of her head, unable to come up with a reasonable excuse.

Mr. Barrett shook his head. "Don't make such a mistake on Monday. The CEO is very keen on negligence of duty and there is no telling what punishment he might met out." He simply said and began to walk back down the aisle towards his office.

***

At the end of work that day, Bruce Walsh, a colleague who had his cubicle several cubicles away from Rosalie's but always had a good view of her head and upper body whenever she was seated, took off his rimless eyeglasses and tiredly rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger as he leaned forward on his elbow on his desk.

The handles of his glasses had left behind lines at the sides of his face connecting to his ears which meant that they were pretty tight. Blinking a severally to adjust his vision after focusing on his screen for hours, he dragged both palms down his face, sighing deeply. He had decided to pause work and take a brief break even though it was already time to close from work.

Letting his gaze move around him, he could see his colleagues moving here and there, chatting with other coworkers while the others who were eager to call it a day at work were already packed up their stuffs and hurried off after bidding their close colleagues or friends goodbye but no one acknowledged him. He was almost invisible in the office.

Bruce was quite a good-looking man in his early thirties. He was almost 5.9 in height, had broad shoulders and short brown hair. He had brown eyes and a quite handsome face with a stubble of beard that made him look rugged and would have passed for a Hollywood almost major star in the cast if not for the ugly long scar that ran from the side of his neck down to the front of his chest and disappeared into his shirt. He was very reserved, unsocial and hardly ever left his cubicle to go chit-chatting like most of the others do and this left him with no friends.

He was the punctual sort and was always properly and smartly dressed. He had a preference for long-sleeved shirts which he never rolled up his arms like the other male colleagues did whenever they were having a hard or tired time at work. He only ever left his seat when going to the restroom or going out for lunch.

He leaned back into his seat and adjusted his tie so that the noose was a bit loose then he diverted his attention and attentively observed Rosalie. He regarded her to be the most beautiful woman on the floor if not even the entire building but all attempts to get her to go on a date with him had never prevailed.

As he watched her keenly, he realized that she had her head down, obviously arranging her desk and putting the contents in order and throwing into the waste basket what she didn’t need like she always did before she left the office unlike most of the others who left their mess for the janitor to clean up. When she finally looked up, her usual charming smile broke on her face but it was not meant for him but for Clenora who was now approaching her cubicle. He watched as her other friend, Trish got up and crossed over to Rosalie’s cubicle, while Marcy whose cubicle was directly in front of Rosalie’s simply swiveled around in her chair to join the conversation.

As the ladies started to chat and laugh about how they’d all spend the weekend, Rosalie’s smile waned when she saw Clenora turn her head to look over her shoulder at someone approaching them.

"Hello ladies!" Their humble intruder, Bruce, beamed at them, his hands in his pockets, and the women immediately knew what he had come to do and whom he had come for, so they each gave one flimsy excuse or the other so as to give them some privacy even though they could see the displeasure on Rosalie’s face at the intrusion of her unwanted admirer. Soon, the other ladies packed up their stuffs in their purses and prepared to leave the office.

"Hey, Roxie!" Clenora called, holding the strap of her peach handbag over her arm. "We'll be down in the parking lot when you are done."

"Yeah." Marcy added, slipping into her overcoat. “Don’t stay too long.” She gave Rosalie a wink, glanced at Bruce and walked out of the office, leaving Rosalie all by herself. Rosalie wanted to curse them all. They knew just how nervous she was around Bruce and yet they had abandoned her to her fate.

She quickly glanced around and was just a bit relieved when she realized that two or three colleagues still lingered around in their own cubicles, perhaps, finishing up some work. There was a brunette was busy redoing her makeup before a hand-mirror, a man who was busy on the telephone with his lifted feet crossed at the ankles on his desk and a woman in her late thirties who was still busy on her computer. She let her eyes wander back to Bruce and watched him move to stand where Clenora had just vacated but he still had his hands in his pants-pockets.

"Hi." He said with a rather boyish smile that would get several women who were susceptible to his charms, swooning.

"Hi." Rosalie replied, forcing a smile and managing to get her voice past the knot that was already forming in her throat the moment he had approached her cubicle. There was just something so unsettling about Bruce that made her so uncomfortable around hum and she wondered why she was the only one who felt this way around him. Because if her friends also did, they wouldn't be desperately trying to persuade her into dating him. According to them, Bruce looked perniciously breathtaking! And since Rosalie was the only one he ever really spoke to, they felt she was lucky.

"Are you free this weekend?" he asked. "Was thinking we could hang out."

Here we go again. Rosalie groaned wearily within her but plastered a smile on her face that didn't reach her eyes. Even if she was even to consider dating, Bruce wouldn't even be on her list. She just didn't feel any attraction towards him. She began to dump her things into her purse, eager to get away and join her friends even though she knew that they wouldn't mind the wait. They would obviously love to be given the details of how her conversation had gone with Bruce Walsh and she still couldn’t phantom why they were all so thrilled about him.

"I'd love to but I’m hanging out with the girls tomorrow." Rosalie finally replied him as politely as she could, hoping that her implied message stuck this time. He just never quit and it was really starting to irk her. Couldn’t he just read the signs that she didn’t want to go on a date with him? She had come up with several lame excuses all the times he had asked her out but he just never stopped trying.

"What about on Sunday? You ought to be free on Sunday." He asked immediately as if he had actually been planning all along to come up with an alternative if she gave him a negative answer at first.

"Sorry, but I don't go out on Sundays, Bruce. That day is for binge-watching movies and cuddling my cat." She answered. Of course, she was not sorry. She pushed her chair back and stood up and he took a step back to give her some room.

"Okay…” He said in a disappointed tone. “I could walk you to the lot if you don't mi-" He started to say but she quickly cut him off. Either he couldn't read her body language which screamed fuck off or he was a just pretending not to notice. Whatever the case might be, he was beginning to rankle her real fast.