Turned Up to Eleven

It was late afternoon when Roy pulled his car into the parking lot of the building that held Zara. The sun slanted low across the parking lot, turning windshields into sheets of gold and throwing long shadows beneath the rows of cars. Roy sat and waited, engine off, windows down. Warm air drifted through the cabin, carrying with it the faint scent of asphalt and summer.

Time stretched.

Friday. End of the workweek. The kind of moment that usually came with a sense of release, a quiet exhale after five days of routine. Today, though, the feeling was sharper. Anticipation threaded through it. Something new. Something uncertain.

Across the lot, people filtered out of the building in loose clusters. Conversations overlapped. Laughter drifted. He watched them without really seeing them at first, thoughts looping back over the same strange knot that had been tightening all afternoon.

Zara.

Girlfriend.

From his perspective, tonight was a first date. For Roy, at least. It wouldn't feel that way for Zara, nor had it for any of the other women. Each of them had arrived already carrying the weight of a pre-packaged relationship, knowledge about him, about his life, about his love.

But somehow Zara felt different from the other women. It was like she was earned, somehow. Not by anything Roy had done to woo her, to get to know her, but by what he'd had to do to free himself from the previous girlfriend.

That kind of thinking, though, was dangerous for Roy, and he knew it. Starting to think that he deserved these women, that somehow he had a right to them, would lead him down a moral path that he wasn't comfortable with. Men like Tom thought like that. Zara wasn't his. She, just like all the others, had been pulled into the same impossible orbit that rewrote her reality as his girlfriend. Michelle and Elaine hadn't even blinked when he'd mentioned spending the evening with her. Maybe the night.

It was now normal for Zara.

No matter what she would have wanted.

His fingers tapped idly against the steering wheel thinking, about the night ahead. A drink, she'd said in her texted response. Then dinner. Then her place. Clear. Direct. No ambiguity.

Still, the plan had its advantages. The bar he had in mind wasn't far. The very bar he'd visited the night he'd made his fateful wish. But the reasons he'd chosen it that night would serve him this night as well. It was quiet. Familiar. Most importantly, removed from the office. No coworkers. No awkward encounters. No risk of... complications.

The last thing he needed was to have Zara find a way to activate the wish while they were out, and have the relationship transfer to someone he knew. Someone he'd have to look in the eye again after he'd moved on from them. It wasn't beyond reason to consider it a possibility. Tabitha had gotten him off in the washroom of a gas station, after all. If she could do that while he was stone-cold sober, he knew a few drinks would make the possibility even more real.

Roy wasn't sure whether to avoid that particular scenario or to lean into it. His goal, after all, was to let Zara go on with her life as quickly as he could. Maybe a tryst in the restroom wasn't a bad idea.

Movement at the edge of his vision pulled his attention back to the present. People were leaving the building.

A tall man in a suit crossed in front of the car, scrolling through his phone. Three older women followed, laughing loudly, one of them gesturing with a set of keys. More people trickled out behind them.

And then...

A figure.

Not just another office worker.

A woman.

Confidence in every step, heels striking the pavement in a precise, rhythmic cadence. A short skirt traced the line of her thighs. A red blouse caught the light, fitted and deliberate, revealing so much cleavage Roy had to double-take to make sure he wasn't imagining it. The sway of her hips wasn't exaggerated. It didn't need to be. It was simply there, effortless, drawing the eye.

Roy straightened slightly without meaning to.

She looked like she belonged somewhere else. Not in a parking lot at the end of a workday, but under spotlights. On a screen. The kind of presence that pulled focus without trying.

She was walking toward him.

Toward his car.

A flicker of confusion.

That couldn't be...

Her hand reached for the passenger door.

The handle clicked.

The door opened.

And she slipped inside, bringing with her a faint trace of perfume and the lingering warmth of the outside air.

Oh my god.

Zara.

For a moment, recognition lagged behind reality. The glasses were the same. The shape of her face. The eyes. But everything else...

Refined.

Amplified.

Transformed.

Cute and nerdy had been replaced with something sharp and striking. Intentional. The difference wasn't just clothes or makeup. It was posture. Presence. The way she held herself like she knew exactly what she was doing.

Heat surged through him, sudden and undeniable. His mouth went slightly dry. Zara turned toward him slowly, one hand resting lightly on his arm as she leaned in just enough to close the distance.

"Miss me?" she murmured, her voice low, almost purring.

For a second, Roy just stared.

Then she broke.

A bright, irrepressible grin spread across her face, the composed façade cracking in an instant.

"Oh my god, okay, hi. Hi!" The words tumbled out in a rush, her hands fluttering briefly as if she had too much energy for her body to contain. "I practiced that in the mirror for like twenty minutes and I was worried it was going to come out weird but I think it landed? Did it land? You look a little stunned, which I'm choosing to interpret as a success metric."

Roy let out a short, disbelieving laugh, still trying to catch up.

"It... definitely landed."

"Yes!" She pumped a small, triumphant fist. "Okay, good. That was phase one of the evening. Phase two is, well, honestly, I didn't fully script phase two because I got distracted watching eyeliner tutorials and then I fell down a rabbit hole about contouring techniques, which, by the way, are wild. Like, people are just casually reshaping their entire bone structure with powder..."

She stopped abruptly, eyes widening slightly.

"Oh! Right. Focus. Important things."

Her expression softened, just a fraction. The energy didn't disappear, but it shifted. Warmer. More directed.

"I missed you," she said, quieter now, though the enthusiasm still glowed beneath the surface. "Like, statistically more than I expected to. Which is interesting, because I don't usually..." She cut herself off again, smiling, a little breathless. "Anyway. I'm very happy to see you. And I have... plans."

There was a spark in her eyes when she said it. Playful. Excited. Roy felt it land somewhere deep in his chest. Before he could respond, she leaned in.

The kiss was quick, but not tentative. Soft at first, then a little more certain, like she was testing something she'd decided she already liked. It carried that same strange duality: Zara's bright, open warmth layered with something new. Something deliberate.

Something she'd built. For him. It was impossible not to notice it. Impossible not to feel it. And yet, beneath it all, she was still her. Still the same woman who got excited about mechanics and tutorials and data points. Still the same spark. Only now, instead of her attention being drawn to her hobbies, or her collections, she had a new focus.

Him.

They pulled apart. Zara was grinning again, wide and unfiltered, eyes bright behind her glasses. Then, just as quickly, she caught herself.

"Oh wait, hold on."

She flipped down the visor, angling the mirror toward herself, already reaching into her purse. A lipstick appeared in her hand with surprising efficiency.

"Maintenance," she explained, twisting the tube and carefully touching up the colour with practiced precision. "There's a whole upkeep component to this that I hadn't fully appreciated before. It's like cosplay, but higher stakes and less margin for error."

The word lingered in Roy's mind.

Cosplay.

He watched her for a moment, something like amusement flickering through the lingering haze of attraction. That actually made a strange kind of sense.

She finished, pressed her lips together once, then turned back to him. A sideways glance. A small, knowing grin.

"Well?" she said, voice dipping again, that practiced edge returning. "Are you going to just sit there, or are you planning to do something about having a very attractive woman in your passenger seat?"

Roy blinked.

Right. Breathing. Thinking. Functioning. All good goals. He **** himself to sit back slightly, hands finding the steering wheel again, grounding himself.

"So," he said, clearing his throat lightly, aiming for casual and landing somewhere in the vicinity. "About that drink."

Zara's grin widened. She leaned back into her seat, one leg crossing over the other, posture shifting into something almost theatrical.

"Take me away, lover," she said, voice dropping into a husky imitation that lasted exactly half a second before it cracked under the weight of her own amusement.

A giggle slipped out.

And just like that, she was Zara again.

Just Zara, turned up to eleven.