The Problem

Monday mornings were usually Agnes' favourite part of the workweek.

The law office was quiet before everyone arrived. No ringing phones, no lawyers calling out questions from their offices, no assistants hurrying past the reception desk with files tucked beneath their arms. Just the soft hum of the building's ventilation system, the muted sound of traffic several floors below and the occasional ding of the elevator doors opening somewhere down the hall.

Agnes liked having that time to herself.

Arriving early gave her the chance to prepare the reception area properly. Magazines were straightened. Pens were aligned in their holder. The waiting-room chairs were checked for anything that might have been left behind by a client the previous afternoon. The day's appointments were reviewed twice, because trusting memory when a schedule was sitting right there in front of her seemed unnecessarily risky.

Everything had a place.

Everything looked better when it was taken care of.

Agnes took pride in that.

She took pride in herself, too.

Her hair was already perfect. Blonde, carefully styled, not a strand left to chance. Her makeup was subtle enough to look effortless while requiring considerably more effort than anyone else needed to know about. The clothes had been chosen the night before, fitted in all the right places without looking as though she had tried too hard.

And underneath it all was the body she'd worked so hard to maintain. Gym four times a week. Sometimes five. Careful meals. Plenty of protein. Very little junk. Enough cardio to keep herself lean and enough strength training to give her the shape she wanted.

Agnes understood beauty. At least, she thought she had. That was the problem.

Her eyes drifted towards the hallway leading to the lawyers' offices. More specifically, towards Jessica's office. Agnes was hoping Jessica would arrive early. She needed to talk to her. The thought had been circling Agnes' mind since yesterday, growing more uncomfortable every time she tried to push it away.

Jessica was one of her bosses. Agnes had always respected her professionally. Jessica was successful, intelligent, attractive and confident, the sort of woman who seemed to know exactly where she was going in life. Now Agnes knew something else about her. Jessica was dating Roy.

Roy.

Agnes stared down at the neatly arranged pens on her desk. Just a few days ago, the name would have produced nothing but irritation. Roy was the fat old guy down the hall. The neighbour she'd rolled her eyes at more than once. The man who had somehow managed to bring an assortment of people into her building, people Agnes had privately decided didn't belong there. She had judged his appearance, his age, his clothes and his life without ever knowing anything about him.

Then she'd met Jessica in the hallway. Then she'd seen Roy with two of his other girlfriends. And something inside Agnes had gone horribly, wonderfully wrong. Because now she couldn't stop thinking about him.

Roy was shorter than she was. Overweight. Older. His clothes weren't stylish. There was nothing about his appearance that should have fit the picture Agnes had spent years constructing in her head when she imagined the kind of man she wanted. Yet every time she pictured him now, the same thought surfaced.

Hot.

The word still seemed ridiculous. Agnes pressed her lips together and looked away from the hallway. How could he possibly be hot?

And yet he was.

Not conventionally, at least not according to the standards she'd always followed. But there was something about him now that she couldn't ignore. The way he carried himself. The calmness in his expression. The fact that he seemed completely comfortable with himself. Even the softness she'd once found unattractive had somehow become part of what made him appealing. It was as though someone had reached into Agnes' brain, taken every definition she'd ever had for attraction, dumped the contents onto the floor and rearranged them while she wasn't looking.

A few days ago, she'd wanted Roy out of her building.

Now she just wanted him.

Badly.

She'd spent years assuming that men who looked a certain way were desirable. The men at her gym were practically walking advertisements for that belief. Broad shoulders. Defined muscles. Perfect hair. Expensive clothes. The kind of men who knew they looked good and made sure everyone else knew it, too. Agnes had never questioned wanting someone like that.

Roy had changed the whole equation. Not because he had tried to. He barely seemed to notice her. When they'd spoken the previous evening, he'd been distant. Cold, even. There had been no trace of the easy warmth he seemed to show the women he cared about.

Of course there hadn't. Agnes knew exactly why. She'd treated him poorly. She'd looked down on him. She'd dismissed him. She'd decided he was beneath her without ever giving him a reason to prove otherwise. If anyone had earned the right to keep her at a distance, it was Roy.

It was a problem of her own making. She didn't want distance. She wanted him. She wanted Roy.

Agnes reached for the coffee maker and switched it on. The machine gave a low mechanical hum as it began heating. Her fingers lingered on the button.

There was still the problem of the other women. Jessica was one of them, obviously. Agnes had seen her herself. Then there was the young Black woman she'd seen in the building. Michelle, if Agnes remembered correctly. And the curvy Middle Eastern woman she'd met in the hallway, Zara. Roy had at least three girlfriends. Maybe more.

Not that it was strange for Roy to have more than one girlfriend. Far from it. To Agnes, and she supposed to the rest of the world, it seemed like the most natural thing for him. No, for Roy to have found love so many times, to have committed himself to loving so many women at once, was not anything out of the ordinary. It was commendable, in fact, to see him be as generous with his affection.

Agnes frowned.

Still, she didn't like thinking about sharing him with those women. The jealousy came easily enough. The thought of Roy touching someone else, laughing with someone else, looking at someone else the way she desperately wanted him to look at her made something unpleasant twist inside her.

But the deeper discomfort, the one that she had a greater time reconciling, wasn't jealousy.

It was the fact that Roy had chosen them.

Jessica made sense. She was strong, smart, successful, and sexy. Jessica was the kind of woman that Agnes looked up to, could aspire to be once day. Not the divorced, single mother part, but the fact that she was a woman who knew what type of world she wanted to live in and made that world come to be.

But the others...

The thought of them being with Roy made her uncomfortable.

Very uncomfortable.

A black woman? A middle-eastern woman? What was Roy thinking? Didn't he have standards? Didn't he know better?

And that wasn't the worst of it.

What if he was right about them, and what if she was wrong?

Agnes leaned against the counter while the coffee brewed.

For years, she'd heard people talk about groups she didn't like. Commentators, websites, social media personalities, people on television who seemed to have an explanation for everything wrong with society. They'd talked about culture and crime and the economy. They'd talked about new arrivals, immigrants, changing the country, changing communities, taking things away from people who had always belonged here.

Agnes had listened. She'd agreed. Sometimes she'd repeated those ideas herself.

Now she couldn't stop wondering whether she'd simply accepted everything she'd been told because it had made the world easy to understand.

Then Roy had walked into that world and ruined it. Not by choice, but by example.

Roy hadn't given her a lecture. He hadn't tried to convince her of anything. He hadn't even seemed particularly interested in what she thought. He had simply lived his life. He loved Jessica. He loved Michelle. He loved Zara. And somehow, impossibly, Agnes wanted to be loved by him, too.

The coffee maker clicked. Agnes poured herself a cup and stared into it. Maybe the problem wasn't those women. Maybe the problem had been her.

She hated that possibility.

She also couldn't dismiss it anymore.

A small part of her wanted to go back to Friday, before any of this had happened. Back when Roy was just the unpleasant man down the hall. Back when she could walk past him in the building without feeling confused. Back when she could look at the muscular men at the gym and know exactly why she wanted them. Life had been simpler then. But simpler didn't necessarily mean better.

Agnes returned to reception with her coffee and sat down. The office remained quiet. She checked the appointment schedule again without actually reading it.

What would it take for Roy to want her? She'd worked hard on her appearance. Harder than most women she knew. She knew how to dress. She knew how to present herself. She knew how to take care of her body.

But Roy barely looked at her. Maybe none of that mattered to him. Maybe she'd spent years perfecting herself according to standards that meant nothing to the man she actually wanted. The realization was almost frightening.

Agnes looked towards Jessica's office again. Jessica was her way in. If she could talk to Jessica, explain what had happened, maybe Jessica could help. Maybe she could tell Roy that Agnes wasn't the woman he'd thought she was.

Except Agnes wasn't entirely sure who she was anymore. That was the real problem. She had treated Roy like he was less than her because she'd believed certain people were supposed to be beneath her. Now she looked at him and saw the man she wanted more than any of the men she'd previously considered perfect. What did that say about everything else she believed?

The elevator dinged. Agnes immediately looked up. For one hopeful second, she expected to see Jessica walk through the doors.

The doors opened.

Two junior lawyers stepped into the reception area, talking quietly about an upcoming case.

Agnes lowered her eyes to her desk. Soon, she told herself. Jessica would arrive soon. And when she did, Agnes was going to find a way to talk to her. She needed to know what she was supposed to do. What she needed to change. How she could make Roy see her differently.

Because beneath all the confusion, beneath the jealousy and the embarrassment and the uncomfortable questions she'd been asking herself since meeting him, one thing had become painfully clear.

Agnes wanted Roy.

She wanted him badly.

And for the first time in her life, getting what she wanted might require her to become someone she had never imagined being.