Page 2 of Boardroom Mask

The mystery isn’t the appeal for me. After what I went through five years ago—what my best friend Rae calls “The Year That Jillian Went Missing and Refuses to Explain”—neither is the fear factor.

The reveal—that’sthe magic. Shine a torch on the creeps and perverts of the world and watch them squirm.

I wish I’d had that power five years ago. It might have changed the course of my life.

I let two more stops pass before I give myself permission to look up again. This time, the corner by the far doors is empty. He’s gone. There’s a little old lady with a rolling grocery cart standing where he’d been.

Thank God.I exhale in relief.

I get off at Times Square, walk the six blocks to the office, and try to forget about the Man on the Train. But, weirdly, I can’t. At my desk, I keep pulling up the security camera feed from the lobby on my second monitor, scanning faces. I don’t even know what I’m looking for, but whatever it is, I don’t find it.

Maybe that’s for the best.

Lunch comes around. Things have not improved. The feeling of being observed has settled into my bones. I eat a sad, limp, lukewarm desk salad and squint at the street below throughthe break room window. The problem is that everyone looks suspicious when you’re already suspicious.

A guy on a bench reading a newspaper… he’s the right height. A woman standing too long at the crosswalk… could she be his accomplice?

I’m losing it.

I stab a wilted piece of romaine and chew without tasting. The thing is, I used to be braver than this. Or maybe not braver, but at least more reckless, more willing to barrel forward without checking the shadows first.

That wasbefore,though. Before the thing I don’t talk about. Before the year I disappeared from my own life and came back lighter in some ways and heavier in others, and told everyone I’d taken a gap year for “personal reasons,” which is the polite way of sayingplease stop asking me, I’m begging you.

My best friend Rae, bless her, never pushed. She just held the door open and waited for me to walk back through it. That’s what I love about her: She lets me keep the locked rooms in my heart chained up tight.

But locked rooms have a cost. I know that. The fear that consumes me day and night—that’s the tax I pay. I don’t sleep well. I check locks twice. I sit with my back to the wall in restaurants.

Most of all, I notice men who watch me and don’t look away.

A husky male voice nearly scares me out of my skin. “Easy there, Jill. You look like you’re plotting a murder.”

I look up from my salad in alarm, but when I see who it is, I breathe a little easier. My work husband, Weston Porter, dropsinto the chair across from me, chomping on a protein bar and slurping coffee. He’s got his reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and his sleeves rolled to the elbows, which means he’s been deep in edits all morning. It’s late November, so local elections just wrapped up. As one of our NYC politics writers, he’s busy as hell explaining to our readership what it all means.

I give him a false, cheery smile and throw my long red hair over my shoulder. “Me? Plotting? Ladies do notplot,Mr. Porter. We simplyponder.”

“Dangerous hobby for you,” he replies with a snort. “I’ve seen where it leads.”

Weston’s one of those annoyingly put-together people. Six-one, dark skin, razor-sharp jawline, and biceps that strain against his shirt sleeves because he does CrossFit five days a week. Hence the protein bar. But he’s got kind eyes behind those chic, black-frame glasses and a brain that works fast enough to keep up with mine. He’s also funny, driven, and all-around decent, which in a New York newsroom makes him practically an endangered species.

If I were in any kind of dating chapter of my life—which I’m emphatically not—he’d be exactly the type I’d go for.

Unfortunately, Weston’s husband Jeremiah would slaughter me if I tried to make a move. Jer is a cardiac surgeon at Mount Sinai who meal-preps Weston’s lunches in color-coded containers and sends him off every morning with a kiss and a thermos of cold brew. I bawled my eyes out at their wedding.

So, because of all that, Weston remains firmly in the work-husband category, which is probably better. All the banter and warm hugs, none of the psychosexual wreckage.

“How was your weekend?” he asks as he puts his feet up on my desk. “Wait. On second thought, don’t tell me. Last time you told me about a date of yours, I had to go to confession and I’m not even Catholic.”

I pretend to roll my eyes. “It wasn’tthatgraphic.”

“Jillian, sweetheart, I’m a gay man in Manhattan; I’m no blushing virgin. And yet I had to Google half the things you described in your exhaustively detailed report of what you did to that poor man.”

“You’re welcome for expanding your horizons.” I flash him a cheeky grin.

“My horizons were fine. Jer and I are very, very happy with our horizons.” He swallows his last bite of protein bar, licks his thumb, and drops the wrapper in my waste bin. “But, okay, fine, I’m a sucker for gory details. Fill me in on the latest. Any new conquests I should emotionally prepare for?”

“Quiet weekend, actually,” I say with a straight face.

“I don’t believe that for a second.”