Free The Graphic Details by Evelin Smiles Page B

reputation it
had to uphold as a swanky fashion magazine. I did good work for
them. What did it matter if I resembled a bag lady? Just as long as
I didn’t smell like one, too. Truthfully, I wasn’t that bad. But I
was the furthest thing from “put together.” I looked stressed and
my coworkers noticed.
    “Kathy, are you ok? You look a little… worn
out,” said Christy. Christy was the closest thing I had to a best
friend in this city. She was my best female friend anyway, that’s
for sure, and she had been my friend since the first day I started
with this company. She had been here a couple of years before me
and showed me the ropes.
    “What? Oh, yeah. I’m good. It’s just this
damn ad. Let me get your opinion on it. Check it out,” I said, as I
turned my computer screen toward her. I took a sip of coffee. I
needed it badly that morning.
    “Now what font would you use for this?”
    “Hmm, Zapfino,” she said. I looked at her
with eyes that could murder. Zapfino in an atrocious and
very sappy font used only for titling the worst and trashiest
romance novels and corny wedding invitations.
    “I’m serious. Zapfino.”
    “If you’re serious, I will throw this
scalding hot coffee in your face. Now, come on. Please. What
font?”
    “Ariel. Ariel would be perfect for that,” she
said as she started to laugh. Ariel was the polar opposite
of Zapfino: the simplest and most boring font of them all. In the
world of fonts, it was the graphic design equivalent of a
McDonald’s hamburger: bland and lacking any visual flair. I mock
throwing the coffee in her face, when our supervisor, Sarah, walks
in followed by a man, a very good looking man. So good looking in
fact, that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, not even for a
second, and believe you me, I was trying to. I was ashamed at
myself for the thoughts that were flooding my mind at that moment.
I was able to break my stare for a second and take a look around
me, and I noticed that most of the female staff, which made up half
of the office, was probably thinking the exact same thoughts I was:
if their eyes had been daggers, the office would have been a bloody
murder scene by now.
    “Everyone, I’d like to welcome a new addition
to our office,” said Sarah. She spoke about him as if he were a new
student to our kindergarten class. She was nervous, I could tell.
And it took a lot to make Sarah nervous. She’s one of the strongest
women I know and a brilliant graphic designer. I knew a lot of
nervous people in my lifetime, but she is not one of them: always
cool, always calm and always collected, no matter what. Never
faltering. But today, she was a shy little schoolgirl with a face
full of red. The new guy stepped from behind Sarah and presented
himself to us like an award statue. He stood straight (good posture
is always appreciated) and his hair, which was a walnut brown sort
of shade, was nice and shiny and cut short. His face looked smooth,
no stubble anywhere to be found. Normally I don’t like my men
clean-shaven, but this guy, yeah, he was the exception. He looked
like what I imagine Ryan Gosling would look like in the role of
Superboy, you know, if Mr. Gosling were a brunette. He wore a form
fitting blue V-neck t-shirt, which showed off his near-perfect
figure. I only say near-perfect because I don’t think anyone is the
perfect specimen of anything, but if there were a competition for
the perfect man, this guy was certainly in the running, right near
the fucking top in fact. He had a faint amount of chest hair: not
so much as to remind me of a bear, and not so little as to remind
me of a junior high school student––just the perfect amount.
    Sarah continued her introduction.
    “This is Charles Montague, and as of today he
will be a member of our design team. Be sure to treat him like one
of our family.”
    “Oh, I don’t think I can do that. It’s
disgusting to think of fucking my brother,” whispered Christy, as
she poked her elbow into my