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up something nice. A matching set, a nightie, whatever you want. Don’t worry, I won’t ask to see.”
    I picked up the card, still waiting for him to burst out laughing, tell me he was joking, and send me back downstairs. Instead, he handed me an office key on a black leather fob and put on his overcoat. “Retrieve the documents before you leave tonight,” he said. “Come on, I’ll walk you back downstairs.”
    He escorted me back to the temp lounge, where my latte and Danish were waiting. I was alone and someone had left the TV tuned to The Big Bang Theory . I watched him leave out the front door and clicked off the TV. There wasn’t any work to do, so I stretched out on the couch with my headphones on, pondering the strangeness of what had just happened. The first lesson we got at MetroReaders was to never seek out the higher-ups at any agency we worked at. I wondered what Susan would say if she knew I was not only interacting with Philip but picking out his lingerie.
    It was too much to comprehend at midnight. Between this and KitKat’s murder, my life was quickly turning surreal, and I turned instead to something that made sense: music. I dug out my headphones and hit shuffle.
    I played a little game with myself whenever I put my songs on random, trusting the chance and math of the shuffle feature to dictate the mood of the room. I would follow the path as if it were a tarot deck, predicting my future and peering deep into my soul. It wasn’t always accurate, but it was always kind of fun.
    But tonight, perhaps inspired by KitKat’s box of tapes, every song reminded me of some great lost love—driving with William under the endless autumn sky to the mournful wail of October Project’s “Bury My Lovely”; New Year’s Eve hanging around Mikey’s Pizza in Loring with Jay as he filled a hundred drunken orders and gave me a quick, shy midnight kiss to the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight,” like we were ringing in 1996 instead of 2006. It had been a long time since I’d let a new songremind me of anyone, but like KitKat, I still had an archive of every tape and CD all my boyfriends had made me.
    But the aching nostalgia really kicked in with July for Kings’ “Champagne” and all of a sudden I was back in college, sprawled out on the floor with my vintage red cocktail dress pushed up around my waist and Catch’s arms around me, tie abandoned, jacket thrown over my chair, shirt unbuttoned. It was so real I could almost taste the stolen champagne on his lips as he leaned in close, half-proposing marriage in between breathy kisses. We’d swiped the bottle from the department reception for our senior recital. We’d been performing together for about a year by then, and we had arranged a jazz version of Warren Zevon’s “Searching for a Heart,” his trumpet muted and mournful, my vocals smoky and deliberate. It was the hit of the show, and when we’d reached the peak of giddy adulation at the after-party we’d grabbed the champagne and retreated to his dorm room. It was not the first time we’d made out on his floor, but whether it was the champagne or the high of performance, kisses had quickly turned to eager hands, and soon we couldn’t get each other’s clothes off fast enough.
    My phone buzzed, jolting me out of my daydream. Have I got a story to tell you, Sid wrote. I loved that he typed out his text messages in full, no stray 2 or u like Prince. Brunch tomorrow?
    Can’t wait to hear it, I wrote back. 11?
    See you then . Good night, darlin’.
    I played the song again, trying to will myself back into the beautiful memory, but nothing came except for the reminder that Catch, like his own apparition, was long gone.

Chapter 8
THE BOYFRIEND BOX
    B aldrick was asleep on my bed when I got home just after three A.M. For the first time since I’d gone off to college, I felt