First up on her list: user retention. She’d spent countless hours studying the market, and one of the biggest downfalls Samiah had noticed with most developers was that they’d designed something that users would use only sparingly.

Incorporating some type of social network was key. Engagement drew people in and made them want to press the in-app purchases button once they’d downloaded the free app. But it had to be different than what was currently out there. She wanted to design something where once people matched, they could set up their own cozy chat rooms that would allow them to communicate outside of the public spectacle of the larger social networks, but those rooms needed to be more versatile than the typical private message.

Common areas.

She sat up straight. “Wait. I like that.”

Samiah jotted the words down and circled them. The moment she put pen to paper, the ideas started popping in her head at lightning speed. She hadn’t felt like this in way too long, but the tingling of remembrance vibrated along her skin.

She jumped up from the couch and ran to the junk drawer in her kitchen. She knew she had some of those wall-friendly adhesive strips in there somewhere.

She found the strips and raced back to the living room. Using a Sharpie marker, she wrote Common Areas in big, bold print and tacked the sheet of paper to the wall, then she picked up a block of Post-it Notes and went to work.

After an hour her wall was covered with bright blue sticky notes, each containing ideas on how to tackle user retention. Samiah grinned despite her mental exhaustion. Wasn’t it just an hour ago that she’d stood here contemplating whether she could do this?

“Girl, you got this.”

But not before a brain break. She swore there was smoke coming out of her ears.

She raised her arms over her head and leaned back into a long stretch, working out kinks she didn’t even know she had. She grabbed her right wrist and wriggled it back and forth, loosening the joint. As her fingers moved down to her palm, it summoned the memory of strong, lean fingers massaging her flesh with firm, yet gentle, strokes.

A low groan unfurled from deep in her throat as images that had no basis in reality impinged upon her fatigued brain. She’d never seen Daniel Collins naked. Had no plans to see Daniel Collins naked. But, holy shit, could she imagine Daniel Collins naked.

And she had. She’d done so way too often over these past couple of weeks.