It was one thing to be an excruciatingly shy newbie working as a graphics designer under various badass-looking colleagues.

It was entirely another thing when one of said colleagues were your crush for more than ten years.

Either way, Romy Sanchez was regretting her decision to come to work at Golden Retriever Publisher.

It had all gone smoothly at first. She graduated college, looked for work, passed an interview and a quick test (designing a book cover with the material provided, as well as resizing several pictures to make a visually appealing banner), and somehow landed the job.

What she didn't bargain for was that the first person she saw on her first day of work was Bert Calloway, the guy she had had a crush on since sixth grade, when she still had braces and wore trainer bras and shrank away whenever someone tried to talk to her.

Romy was pretty now, with legs that went on forever and lovely willowy hair (thank god for puberty), but she still shrank away whenever someone tried to talk to her.

"Hey! Are you new?" Bert had asked, a wide and friendly grin on his face. Bert had very pale skin and very pale blonde hair and a smile with so much warmth and genuinity that it could melt butter.

It also melted Romy's heart. It had been years since she last saw Bert (being a recluse, she never went to reunions, and even though she caught glimpses of him on the streets sometimes because they were neighbors, she never dared to talk to him), but his smile was just as bright.

"Oh wait, I know you! Hey Romy, haven't seen you in ages. We gotta catch up. Later at lunch?" Bert had said. Romy had looked down at her shiny new heels and nodded, cheeks on fire.

They got along just fine. Bert was like he had always been—friendly, inviting, always making sure that Romy was included and didn't feel left out. He had been that kind of person all the way from day care to high school. It was probably one of the reasons why Romy's high school didn't have much bullying going on—students followed popular people's example, and Bert happened to be very popular and also very nice.

It made Romy detest herself even more and feel like she should be more outgoing and less awkward, because it would save Bert the trouble from going out of his way to make her feel like she belonged. But she had been awkward and shy for her whole life—it wasn't like she could change it now. It wasn't like she could change it in a decade. In fact, Romy was positive that she would stay like this for the rest of her existence.

Through the years, Romy had taught herself that being shy was perfectly fine; there was nothing wrong with keeping to herself. But seeing Bert somehow made her forget all of that.

Like this very moment. The graphics designers of the company were having an emergency meeting on how to figure out more about Grimm Website Designing, one of the companies that would be aboard the cruise ship with them this weekend. Suggestions were flying, and everyone was getting quite creative—everyone except Romy. She just smiled and nodded and hated herself for being tongue-tied whenever others were having brainstorming sessions.

They wouldn't mind her not contributing because she was still considered new in this company. But very soon her newbie status would wear out, and then—she didn't even know and then what.

"We should ambush some of their employees in an alley and punch them until they tell us things," Pia, the head graphics designer, declared. Pia was intimidating in every way and looked like she could beat up several cops at once without breaking a sweat. Romy counted ten tattoos on her right arm. They were very good tattoos; she wondered if Pia had worked on the patterns herself.

"Wouldn't that be a little too drastic?" Leonie pointed out. Leonie was a tough blonde who had lean muscles on her legs from taking the stairs to work every day.

The office was on the twenty-fifth floor.

"Well, if that's too drastic, do you have any other ideas?" Pia countered, downing a can of beer as she spoke. Pia really liked beer. Sometimes she came to work drunk, but no one commented on it because Pia's best designs were done when intoxicated.

"Hmm, how about we bribe them with Doug's virginity?" Leonie suggested.

Pia furrowed her brow. "And that is not drastic?"

Mr. Farris, a plump and slightly greasy fifty-year-old who had been in the industry for more than thirty years and worked so fast it was like he had thirteen hands, decided that it was time he chimed in. "Ladies, ladies, let's not go down the crazy route. We don't want the new girl to think that we graphics designers are all psychos, do we?" He winked at Romy, who gulped visibly.

Pia turned to Romy. "Hmm, new girl, do you have any ideas?"

Romy gulped again. She knew she shouldn't blame Mr. Farris, but at the moment she hated his guts for bringing her into the conversation. And she had been doing so well blending into the background too!

"Um, uh, I, um..." she murmured, her voice barely audible.

"Speak up, I can't hear you," Pia said, arms crossed.

Of course Bert stepped in at the right moment. "Hey, I was thinking—they design websites, right? We could probably get them to design a website for one of our new books. I was thinking maybe that one about skateboarding, the one with the blue cover. We can provide them some Adobe Indesign files and information about sponsors and such and see what they make out of it. And in the process, boom! We get to know a bit more about what they're like."

Everyone liked the idea, and immediately got to work. They didn't exactly have the budget for website commissions, but they figured that they could always just tell Grimm, the website company, that they ended up having second thoughts.

As their CEO said, after all, business was all about fucking others.

Teak, one of the graphics designing guys, managed to gather a lot of information in a short period of time, by asking Grimm's contact person whether the website could be finished and demonstrated for them on Saturday.

"I'm afraid that's not possible," the e-mail he got in return had said, "because our whole company will be on a cruise Saturday."

Teak wrote back to say in an exaggerated tone that he was so jealous and wished them a good vacation. The email he got in return explained that it wasn't a vacation, but a company outing thing that involved some training seminars and meetings with an important perfume company called Formella.

Teak then wrote back to say that oh, yes, he had heard of Formella, and thought it was cool that the Grimm employees would be meeting them. The email he got back said that it was indeed a great opportunity, and that the "people up there" made it very clear that they needed to have a contract signed by the end of the three-day cruise, no matter what. The contact person himself, though, was looking forward much more to lounging around in the cruise luxury swimming pool—his whole project team had already bought swimming suits for it!

Teak wrote back to say that he was most envious, and quickly signed out.

"Well, we now know that they're on the ship for a meeting and they like to swim, basically," he told everyone. "Sounds innocent enough, actually. Unlike the dirt the marketing people dug up on Formella. Blackmail—that's juicy."

"If there's anything I hate, it's being beaten by the marketing people. We have to dig deeper, find juicier stuff," Pia declared and slammed a wireless mouse on the desk. It was clear by this point that she was drunk.

"Did it ever occur to you that this is very likely just a normal little website designing company with no juicy secrets to speak of?" Leonie interjected, but Pia didn't reply because somehow she had dropped off to sleep on her lion plushie. Pia had a soft spot for lions.

Leonie shrugged. "Guess that's it for this afternoon. Let's go back to work—still need to finish twenty banners for ten bookstores! Ugh!"

She went back to work.

Romy sat quietly at her seat. On her screen was Bert's instant messaging window—all employees had exchanged instant messaging addresses, so as to make communicating as well as sending files much faster.

Romy typed "thank you" into the window, but as her mouse hovered over the "send" button, she hesitated.

And then she deleted the words and went back to photoshopping out a model's armpit hair.

She was still too shy to speak to him, even on instant messaging.