Deja had been on pins and needles all day. She’d spent the faculty meeting that had actually pulled her onto campus on her day off, pretending as if she was paying attention to her colleagues fighting about next semester’s enrollments, but really poring over Alejandro’s brief email telling her that he’d pick her up at seven. She’d carefully sent him her address, looking seriously at her laptop screen so her colleagues might think she was taking notes on the meeting. And then she’d spent a solid twenty minutes trying to remember if her favorite little black dress was still at the back of her closet and if she could still fit into it.

When the meeting was over, instead of hanging around and listening to her colleagues’ continued complaints or heading back to her office to grade, she practically ran home to her small apartment. And then, instead of spending a few hours walking in small circles around her home office, talking to herself — but not typing — she pulled every hanger out of her closet so she could try on every dress she owned. By the time she was done, she’d discovered that she could just fit into her favorite little black dress and had a trash bag full of clothes she couldn’t or no longer wanted to wear. She took the rare opportunity to rearrange her entire wardrobe and stepped back with a brief satisfied smile. It wasn’t a finished and submitted article, but a clean closet soothed Deja’s jumping nerves.

She wasted an inordinate amount of time shaving and moisturizing herself from head to toe. How long it had been since she’d been on a date? Too long, was the closest she got to an answer.

How long since a man had taken her out for dinner and a movie? How long since someone she was attracted to told her she was beautiful while running his fingers along the circumference of her wrists with the lightest touch? Opened doors for her? Put his hand heavily at the small of her back after a glass of wine? Leaned in close so his cologne enveloped her? Looked at her with soft, enamored eyes like he couldn’t think about anything else but kissing her?

Too. Damn. Long.

She mentally replayed an expedited version of her love life in the past few years alone and was bored. Her mood sagged as she shimmied into her dress and resisted the urge to change into something that covered her cleavage or didn’t hug it so...tight. She did her makeup and refreshed her curls. When she stood back to look at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of her bedroom door, she thought she looked like a version of herself she hadn’t seen in Too Damn Long.