“It’s got to be tonight,” Gabi mumbled. She stood on the outer edge of her feet as the lift climbed towards the upper floor of the rooftop bar. Rose, her housemate and only friend, promised to meet her there once her fiancé’s suit fitting was over.

Gabi licked her dry lips as she reread the email update from her consultant.

She scrolled past the date of last week’s appointment and the generic details about her syndrome that were at the top of every letter from the hospital.

The man beside her cleared his throat, and she tucked her phone closer and stepped away so she was pressed against the corner of the metal box.

Shame about her secret condition fit her better than the floaty summer dress she’d stolen from her sister’s wardrobe.

She fiddled with the vodka miniature in her pocket. She should drink it before she reached the bar to gain confidence, but what would the man with the sea air fragrance standing in the lift with her think?

Gabi stared at him beneath the edge of her dark fringe. With his back to her, she let her gaze linger on his broad shoulders. His bulk and dark blond hair reminded her of the bad angel with the dirty mouth from the romantasy book she’d finished reading in the middle of the night. She stifled a yawn. One more chapter wasn’t a great idea when, several hours later, you were teaching screaming seven-year-olds.

As his muscles rippled beneath his checked shirt, she pegged him as more of a stacked superhero than an angel.

Still bad, though. She smiled.

He gawked at his phone.

With a lifetime of anxiety, she recognised it in others. He tapped his mobile and stared at the screen while hunching his shoulders. She resisted the urge to tell him it would be okay. If the last years taught her anything, life was shit, and you couldn’t do anything about it.

The stranger pushed up his sleeves, revealing tanned forearms covered in fine blond hair.

The veins on the sexiest forearms she’d seen in her adult life pulsated as he fisted his hands.

He muttered something Gabi couldn’t hear and returned to staring at his phone.

Gabi’s gaze travelled to his butt. It clenched under her stare, and her eyes nearly popped.

The man looked over his shoulder as if he knew she was staring, and Gabi quickly returned

to her consultant’s email on her phone.

Gabriella has shown through her diligent dilation exercises over the last year that penetrative sex is possible without an operation…

Diligent dilation exercises was a weird way of describing nightly pressing increasingly larger little plastic tubes resembling dicks inside herself to stretch her vagina, but that was their wording. At least now, she used vibrators, as advised by the hospital nurse, instead of the clinical plastic things, all to have penetrative sex—except that was just conquering the physical aspect. The other barriers were impassable. Her sad sigh drew the attention of her lift buddy, and she dropped her head quickly. She couldn’t talk to guys, let alone fuck them.

… The hospital psychiatrist, Dr. Adams, has worked through the emotional impact of her

syndrome and of having penetrative intercourse.

Only doctors and psychiatrists could describe something that filled the books she read, featured in her favourite videos, and fed her nighttime fantasies in such a clinical way.

Dr. Adams will discuss the other emotional impacts of the syndrome with Gabriella at their next online session.

She bristled. The other emotional impacts were for future Gabi to worry about. She stared at the jittery stranger’s forearms again. She licked her lips as she watched his massive hands tap his phone. One could easily pin her wrists above her head while the other slid between her thighs. She lifted her hair off her neck to cool herself.

He resembled one of her favourite superheroes, Thor. She’d read too much spicy fan fiction about him. Getting fucked was feasible in the books she read, but it was impossible in her life. She couldn’t go up to a random guy in a lift and explain sex would hurt, and she might not be able to do it, anyway.

Tim, aka Price Face, was the last guy to touch her intimately. That was four years ago, just after her eighteenth birthday. She gritted her teeth. He’d told everyone she was a freak the day after she tearily made him stop because it wouldn’t work.

Which is why you’re here. The psychiatrist, nurse, and consultant all said you’re ready.

The only people who touched her now were employed by the hospital and used a gloved finger to test how deep she was. Her stomach turned. She wanted to go home and hide under her blanket, but if she did that, she’d never have sex and get over this condition. She was a freak. Prick Face would be right.

Time for liquid courage.

With her fumbling hands, she yanked the vodka miniature from her pocket. It slipped from between her sweaty fingers. It hit the lift floor with a clink but didn’t smash.

She dropped to her knees as it rolled across the floor.

The force of her drop sent her phone and a card with her challenge for the evening written on it tumbling from her hands. She hated carrying bags, but this was so much worse.

Her lift companion dived to his knees.

She kept her head down as he handed her the miniature.

“One of those days, eh?” His deep voice warmed her skin. “You know, you’re seconds away from a bar. You don’t have to drink in the lift.” There was a tease in his voice.

“Um,” Gabi replied. The vodka was meant to give her the courage to speak to men. If she was going to be having sex with one tonight, as per her challenge now the hospital said her body was ready for it, she needed to speak to them. Well, needed to speak to just one.

Her cheeks heated as she met his beautiful blue eyes. She unscrewed the vodka miniature and downed it. His eyes tracked her throat as she swallowed the burning liquid.

With her empty, rumbling stomach and low alcohol tolerance, the vodka should kick in rapidly.

She grabbed her phone from the floor and spied the challenge card. She’d created it last weekend when the email first came through from the hospital, and proceeded to decorate it with hearts and dicks while Rose drank wine.

As she threw herself across the small metal box to reach for the challenge card, the stranger grabbed it. Her body sprawled out. Her hand was on the cusp of the credit card–sized note as he turned it over in his hand.

Her stomach clenched with anxiety as he mumbled the challenge. “‘Gabi, you need to get fucked.’” He spluttered and dropped the card before seizing it again. He stared at her as he sucked in deep breaths. “Are you Gabi?” His voice was hoarse and his eyes wide.

The lift dinged, and the door opened onto a busy bar.

She snatched the card and jumped up, pulling down her dress, which had caught on her Wonder Woman knickers.

She ran into the crowd, letting it hide her as she searched for Rose, and escaped from the fixed stare of the stranger with the beautiful eyes.

Ten minutes later, with another drink in her hand, Gabi swept her long black fringe from her eyes and stared at the exit. The blond guy stood near it with his friends, a bunch of men with similar bulk. He was blocking her escape.

Gabi fiddled with the hem of the cotton summer dress.

The blond guy searched for something as the guy next to him chatted animatedly with his hands in the air. His lips tilted, and Gabi pressed her fingers to her mouth. He had a beautiful smile. She shook her head. He was too hot for her.

Her head dropped as all the crumbs of confidence she’d gained since moving to town a year ago threatened to disappear.

I’m fading into the background.

The place was buzzing with the Friday night after-work crowd, and there were so many confident women there. They laughed, their hands lingering on their arms of the men they chatted to. I can’t do that. She’d rather talk to them about their workout routines or how she intended to decorate her classroom for Easter.

With her head down, she spied her cleavage, which she always kept hidden. She was torn between trying to be proud of her body and not wanting to give anyone the wrong idea. She lifted her shoulders to emulate the confidence of the women around her, remembering she’d shown her knickers to the guy in the lift when she dived for her challenge card.

She glanced again at him. What was on his phone that had made him so anxious in the lift?

He glanced in her direction, and she hid behind a tall man who reeked of cigarettes. The tall man turned and winked at her. She pegged him as twenty years older, the same age as Rose. A man with experience could help with her challenge, but with his full beard and beast-like body, he reminded her of her sister’s fiancé, a local premiership rugby player.

Gabi opened her phone to her notes app and found the list she made the same night she’d decorated the card that had made her lift companion choke.

Mr. Cherry Popper Challenge.

It was a list of the things she was and was not looking for in the man she would lose her virginity to. It included no beards and no smokers. The older guy was off the list already. She didn’t want to associate the smell of her first time with yellow-stained fingers.

She squeezed past the older guy and eased away from the window, where the city’s bright lights shone through the floor-to-ceiling glass. She neared the bar as she tapped out a message on her phone.

Predictive text thwarted her efforts, or maybe the alcohol had kicked in. Rose was late, as Charlie, her fiancé, had a suit fitting that had gotten out of hand, whatever that meant. But she needed a wing woman so she could find someone to lose her virginity to.

“I’ve not seen you here before,” the older guy said, following her.

Gabi: Please hurry. This guy, who isn’t ticking anything on the list, is chatting to me, and I’ve already shown another my knickers.

Rose: I’m on my way. Don’t talk to anyone until I arrive, and stop showing your knickers.

“Are you waiting for someone?” he asked.

Gabi’s awkward laugh came out as a hiccup, drawing a raised eyebrow from the barman.

“No—yes, kind of,” she mumbled.

At six foot, he towered over her. The way he ogled her breasts confused her. She wanted to feel womanly, something that had escaped her when she’d become an adult, but she was tempted to bolt when this guy stared at her with intent.

She looked to the exit again and caught the eye of her blond superhero.

He said something to the guy next to him and pointed at her.

She needed to escape. She wasn’t going to have sex tonight. At this rate, she’d remain a virgin for the rest of her life.