Grace Holloway had exactly four minutes to make it back to Sterling Tower, and she was eleven blocks away.
She clutched the pale pink shopping bag against her chest and ran. Her sensible flats slapped the pavement in a rhythm that matched the panic hammering in her ribs. The lunch crowd on Broadway parted around her -- a short, round bowling ball in a shapeless gray suit with a shopping bag full of lace underwear she absolutely did not need.
Three hundred and twelve dollars. She'd spent three hundred and twelve dollars on lingerie she would never wear for anyone, because there was no one to wear it for, and because she was an idiot who couldn't walk past a sale sign without losing her mind and her debit card.
She dodged a food cart, nearly clipped a woman pushing a stroller, and mumbled apologies over her shoulder without slowing down. The glasses on her face bounced with every step. Her hair, yanked into its usual severe bun that morning, was coming loose in sweaty strands around her temples.
Two blocks. She could see Sterling Tower now, that obscene needle of black glass and steel rising forty-two stories above the SoHo streetscape. The autumn sun hit its surface and threw light back at the city in sharp blades.
One block. Her lungs burned. Her thighs burned more. She hadn't run this hard since the Brooklyn Half Marathon three years ago, and she hadn't finished that either.
She hit the plaza at a dead sprint, weaving between the smokers loitering near the entrance, and threw herself at the revolving door.
The door was already moving. Someone was coming out from the other side.
Grace slammed into the glass partition at full speed. The impact knocked the shopping bag from her arms. The bag hit the chrome divider, tipped, and spilled its contents into the narrow wedge of the revolving door compartment -- directly onto the man who was trying to exit from the other side.
Time did not slow down. That was a lie people told about embarrassing moments. Time kept moving at exactly its normal speed, which meant Grace had to experience every second of what happened next in full, agonizing real-time.
An emerald green lace bralette -- the one with the scalloped edges she'd held up to the light in the fitting room and thought, yes, this is the one, this is the bralette of a woman who has her life together -- landed on the man's left shoulder. It draped there like an epaulette, one strap dangling down the lapel of what was clearly a very expensive suit.
A pair of burgundy silk underwear hit his chest and slid down to catch on his vest button.
A sheer teddy -- the splurge, the ridiculous, impractical, backless teddy she'd grabbed at the last second because it was seventy percent off and she was already in too deep to stop -- landed directly on his right shoe.