Hello, beauty!

I’ve been carrying so many stories in my heart, so I decided to start sharing my work.

This is Part 1 of my new fictional series: Clocking 30.

Part 1: Now You Know How I Feel

For the first time in a long time, I felt hot.

It was date night. After what felt like an endless stream of indistinguishable days filled with work and my one-bedroom apartment, I was finally breaking the cycle.

I had on a slinky black dress from Zara with my YSL heels that somehow didn’t hurt after hours of wearing them. A lush cloud of vanilla, caramel, and musk followed me as a cute blonde hostess with a high ponytail and a practiced smile led me to a table reserved for two at the hottest new Mediterranean restaurant in the West Loop. I couldn’t wait to try the world-famous flatbread, which an Eater magazine review described as “a buttery pillow of blistered dough drifting in carb heaven.” Still, I was more excited about where the night would take me.

It was my first official date with Robert, my former colleague. Calling Robert my “work crush” would be trite because he was everyone’s work crush. Robert was tall and muscular with curly black hair and skin the color of toffee. He had the nicest teeth I had ever seen, the kind that made you smile back without meaning to. His dimpled smile was gentle and reassuring, warm enough to make you feel safe and just magnetic enough to make you blush.

We worked in different departments, him in accounting on the eighth floor and me in research and development on the twelfth, but I would see him most mornings in the ninth-floor kitchen during my first cup of coffee. I needed four cups of coffee to carry me through my days as a research associate, running stability tests and documenting results for experiments that had a tendency to blur into one another. My Nigerian parents, who called at least once a week to ask when I was finally taking the MCAT, would have preferred I was powering through medical school instead. I consistently delayed the process with a rotating set of excuses, each one more creative than the last.

Robert always looked pensive in the morning, as though he were quietly solving an equation that no one else could see. He seemed completely oblivious to the lingering glances and shy smiles that followed him around the office, and honestly that obliviousness made him even more attractive. There is something deeply appealing about a man who has no idea how he captivates a room.

In the beginning we mostly exchanged pleasantries.

“Good morning.”

“Cold out today, isn’t it?”

The safe, cordial language of two people who share a common space but not yet a real conversation.

Of course I thought he was fine. Like, fine-fine. Anyone with eyes could see that. Beyond that, though, I thought nothing else of Robert because I assumed he thought nothing of me.

Until one fateful evening.

It had been a long day at work, the kind that made me question the entire architecture of my life. I was overworked, underpaid, and standing at the intersection of “almost there” and “not even close, bitch.”

The elevator doors opened and Robert walked in.

We smiled and greeted each other cordially, as usual.

“Long day?” he said. His voice was low and unhurried, the kind of voice that made even small talk feel intentional, like he had considered the question before asking it.

“Yeah, well… I’m usually here this late,” I said, smiling a little too hard. I had to remind myself to calm down.

“I know,” he said, and something about the way he said it, quietly, without elaboration, made my stomach do something embarrassing. He had noticed. He had been noticing.

He leaned against the elevator wall, loosening slightly, like a man who had decided to stop pretending he was in a hurry.

“I’ve been staying late myself, trying to wrap things up before I leave. I accepted a new role somewhere else, with an accounting team at an architecture firm. I start in a few weeks.”

I felt a small, stupid wave of disappointment move through me.

“Well… congratulations,” I said. “They’re getting a really good one.”

A really good one? As if he were a prime cut behind the glass at a butcher shop. I didn’t even know this man.

A slow smile moved across his face, the kind that suggested he found my awkwardness charming rather than corny, or maybe both. A few seconds of comfortable silence passed between us before he spoke again.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I said.

“You always smell incredible. Every single morning in that kitchen. What is that?”

I tried to keep it cool, but I blushed faster than I could catch myself.

I took pride in my extensive fragrance collection. I layered scents the way some women layered jewelry, depending on my mood, the weather, and the version of myself I wanted to be that day. My scent was one of the few things I felt I could fully control, a small and private power I carried with me everywhere.

That evening I was wearing one of my everyday combinations: Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Crush Cheirosa 71, Yves Saint Laurent Black Opium, and Prada Candy. The warm vanilla and caramel melted into something deeper against my skin, indulgent and almost edible.

Usually when someone at work asked what perfume I was wearing, I would name one perfume or pretend I couldn’t remember. Not because I actually forgot, but because explaining my combination felt like inviting my coworkers into something personal, and I sure as hell did not want to do that.

But with Robert?

Honey.

I gave him the entire fragrance map.

Some would say that’s thirsty. And it was. I was parched. You would be too. The dating pool was truly infested with a flesh-eating disease.

My most recent date had been six months earlier with Abraham, a man who called himself a “businessman” and who I later learned was reportedly connected to a Nigerian fraud case. I found out through an article that my best friend Moji sent me after Abraham and I had already stopped talking. She had gone through all twenty-seven pages of Google search results that brought up his name, because that is the kind of best friend Moji is. I did a search too, but I stopped after seeing his professional, smiling face on LinkedIn. Maybe I was scared of what I might find.

The real crime, however, was the fake Chanel bag Abraham bought me for Valentine’s Day.

I didn’t even find out it was fake until I tried to resell it and a woman with a chic, voluminous gray bob told me it couldn’t be authenticated. After that I was completely done with dating and seriously questioning whether I would ever find someone who wasn’t damaged goods, especially at twenty-nine.

Anyway. After my entire fragrance monologue to Robert, I decided to test my luck.

“They’re the perfect fragrances to buy for a girlfriend… or a fiancé.”

I couldn’t believe I said it. But hey, shooters shoot.

He smiled, slow and deliberate, like he had all the time in the world.

“Well, I don’t have a girlfriend or a fiancé,” he said, his voice dropping just slightly, “but I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”

The way my heart, and other body parts, fluttered.

“I’m Robert, by the way,” he said. “I see you every morning but I don’t think I ever got your name.” He held out his hand and I took it. His handshake was firm and gentle at the same time, which I would later decide was a very accurate summary of Robert overall.

“I’m Glory,” I said.

My full name, Glory Temilola Adefolarin, took many years for me to love. When I was younger, I hated that I was Nigerian and was given the ever-so-creative schoolyard nickname “African Booty Scratcher.”

My parents insisted that my first, middle, and last name appear on everything, every attendance sheet, every graduation program, every yearbook photo. I also hated that they named me Glory instead of something more normal like Gloria. Being othered was exhausting when all I wanted was to blend in and survive.

Even so, I knew it could have been worse, like Moji, whose full name is Mojisola Aramide Ogunshola.

Eventually, I fell in love with my name in all of its glory, and yes, I am aware of what I just did there. It wasn’t until I learned the meaning behind it that it began to feel fully like mine. My mother had spent years being told that she could never carry a child, that her body would not cooperate with her prayers of conceiving. Then, at thirty-seven, against all medical reasoning, she had me. “Only by God’s glory,” she always said, and those four words carried the full weight of everything she had survived to get there.

“Glory. That’s a beautiful name,” Robert said, echoing what I already knew. But still, I blushed.

I subconsciously tucked imaginary hair behind my ear before remembering that I was bald-headed. My hair was in a short pixie cut and there was absolutely nothing to tuck. The only older woman who had ever approved of my hair was my Aunty Temi, the youngest and undeniably coolest of the aunties. My mother, grandmother, and the rest of them were a very different story.

They often said things like, “Ah Ah! You had such long thick hair, why did you cut it?” Or “Why do you like to use your hands to interfere with the beauty that God has created?”

But when Robert complimented it, something indescribable stirred in me. Such a small thing, but it made me glow in a way I couldn’t quite articulate. I felt seen, and I almost resented how much that mattered. He had noticed my scent, my name, my hair. I had spent months assuming I was invisible to him, and it turned out he had simply been paying quiet attention all along.

That was the beginning of our work-flirt story.

Maybe Robert loosened up because he was leaving and had nothing left to lose. Our morning coffee chats slowly evolved from polite workplace pleasantries into conversations that lingered longer than they had any professional reason to. We started finding excuses to run into each other multiple times a day. He sent Teams messages that made me smile at my screen like an absolute idiot, but it always ended there, just close enough to keep the tension alive.

Three weeks and five days of tension finally snapped on his last day at Pearex. We had both stayed late, which had stopped being a coincidence some time ago. He mentioned needing to wrap a few things up after loading the last of his belongings into his car, but it was obvious he had made an excuse to come up to my floor. The office was dark and quiet around us. He placed his hand on the small of my back and held the elevator door open. It then closed behind him with a soft click, like a secret gently sealing itself shut.

He pulled me in by the waist and kissed me like he had been thinking about it for just as long as I had.

The elevator doors opened to the lobby seconds later and we stepped out like nothing had happened.

After he left Pearex, Robert still texted from time to time, warm and unhurried the way he always was, but he didn’t ask me out until he had fully settled into his new role. I respected that about him.

We were actually supposed to go out a week prior, but I had to work late at the last minute. I was in the middle of a stability test on a new topical ointment we had been developing for months and the samples couldn’t be left unattended at a critical point in the process. My colleague, Jen, had completed her portion hours earlier and had gone home. By the time my monitoring window was finally done, it was almost midnight.

The tantalizing smell of garlic, warm olive oil, and fresh herbs drifted toward me when a server set the bread on my table, golden and still steaming.

I thought, for sure, Robert would be here by now.

I ordered a dry martini with an extra olive.

Maybe I would have a boyfriend by my thirtieth birthday in two months. I had already delayed medical school, to my parents’ very vocal dismay, and on top of that I was still single at almost thirty. The least I could do was show up to my parents’ home with a handsome, sensible, successful man on my arm. Someone to distract everyone, including myself.

As I sipped my drink, I contemplated how to text Robert without sounding too eager, even though I absolutely was.

I’m here, I finally typed.

Five minutes away, he replied almost immediately.

He was late, but I decided to let it slide tonight. I even smiled to myself at the thought.

My smile slowly faded as fifteen minutes passed, then twenty-five, then thirty.

By my third martini, I had been waiting forty-seven minutes. Still no sign of Robert.

I called him. A frantic mix of rage and worry had started to creep in as I scrolled to the R section and dialed. No answer.

“Hello, you’ve reached Robert Dulaney…”

The rest of his voicemail might as well have been in gibberish.

Where could he be? What if he got hurt? What if—

Buzz.

My thoughts were interrupted by the vibration of the phone in my lap. My heart sank before I even finished reading the text.

Now you know how I feel.

I stared at those six words for a solid thirty seconds as the confusion slowly dissolved into a devastating realization.

I had been stood up. Robert was paying me back for canceling our date.

What a fucking bitch.

It always amazed me how seemingly sensible, upstanding men behave in private. There is something deeply jarring about watching a man’s façade crumble and finally seeing who he actually is underneath it. I never would have thought that Robert, calm, deliberate, and quietly attentive Robert, could be so petty. I realized then that he had always been aware of the attention he got around the office. He wasn’t oblivious the way I had assumed. He just never had to acknowledge the attention because it was always within easy access. He was so used to being wanted that the one time I made him wait, something in him couldn’t let it go.

So naturally I blocked him everywhere, except Instagram. I looked too good in that dress to deny anyone the experience, including Robert. Especially Robert. The usual suspects liked the story that I posted: the married acquaintance with the couple photo as his profile picture, the emotionally unavailable guy who sent the generic heart-eyes emoji, and the “hey stranger” fuckboy who sends benign flirty messages and ghosts you the moment you reply.

I refreshed my views until I saw that Robert had seen my story. Of course he didn’t react. The ones you intend the story for seldom do.

Then I blocked Robert Dulaney on Instagram.

Another one bites the dust.

And then I left. But first I finished the entire basket of warm, pillowy flatbread. I wasn’t about to waste a perfectly good carb. I wasn’t raised by wolves.