It was a ground-floor, one-bedroom apartment. No frills, no luxuries. There was a small stove that she used for cooking and a fridge that had some age on it but still functioned. Her twin bed had a bedspread that her mother had painstakingly crocheted, and of which Sunny was very fond. It was multicolored, beautiful. It brightened the dull room.

The back window bothered her because it had a loose screen and she couldn’t lock it. She’d asked the maintenance man to fix it times without number, and he always promised. But somehow, he never seemed to get around to it. So far, nobody had tried to break in. Probably they knew she had nothing worth stealing.

She had a very small television that had been given to her, secondhand, by one of the other nurses. The apartment’s rent covered cable, so she had access to the local news and weather and a few programs that were free. She could never have afforded a package that offered prime movies and things. Not that she missed them. Her shift left her drained and ready for bed. She slept, if fitfully. She did have Wi-Fi, courtesy of the landlord, as well as all utilities. The apartments were occupied mostly by people in the services industry, predominantly medical personnel. Marcus Carrera might have been a mobster at one time, but he was a man with a huge heart. Sunny never failed to send him birthday cards and Christmas cards, always with thanks. He’d done a lot for her in the past. He was married to a very nice Jacobsville woman and they had a little son.

Lying in bed, in her soft white cotton gown, she thought about the gorgeous man who’d tugged her onto the dance floor at work. What had they called him—Ruiz? Was that his first name or last name, she wondered. Surely a man that handsome was married. He looked to be in his early thirties, another reason he was probably spoken for.

She wished she could have explained why she was nervous about dancing with him. She was sorry she’d given him the idea she didn’t like him because his skin was just a little darker than hers. She loved Latin men. Her favorite music was Latin, and she loved the dances her dad had taught her.