Chapter 1

Ivy

 

Mel: Good luck with registration opening today, Ivy!

Ivy: Thanks! Keeping my fingers crossed that our portal doesn’t crash like last year.

Cameron: I can guarantee that if you promise to let only the best students sign up for my classes.

Ivy: You know I’m an equal opportunist. 

Gray upon gray upon gray. The inside of my head was charcoal, dusky heather, and soot. The monotonous sounds of the registrar’s office, with shuffling papers, clicking mouses, and hushed voices, all amounted to a single, unfulfilling collage of gray. 

 

I faced the printer, discreetly texting my best friends and coworkers, Cameron and Mel, while I waited on copies for the student who’d just registered for classes. If I tilted my head just so, the intricate designs of my silver earrings would chime, and if I listened just so, some of the gray would fade into lilac, and I could clear the monotony out of my head and breathe a little easier. 

 

Ah, the joys of living with synesthesia, where every sound in my ears painted colors in my mind. Some days I handled it better than others. Today was not one of those days. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t had one of those better days in a long time.

 

Before I could enjoy the lilac for long, the printer jammed. 

 

Cursing under my breath, I opened various compartments. Three flimsy plastic doors later, I gripped the twisted page by its edges and managed to coat my fingers in ink. 

 

The door to the registrar’s office opened and closed. 

 

A man spoke. “What a great day to register for classes, right?”

 

The student, who waited for me at the counter, answered, “Especially since I got the last seat in Dr. Whitacre’s class. You?” 

 

The man spoke again. “I’m here for continuing education credits. But I know Dr. Whitacre, and you’re lucky you got in.” 

 

The student replied, but I didn’t care to listen to her.

 

That voice. That sound. 

 

The gray in my head was completely, instantly wiped out with bold shades of paprika, scarlet, cobalt, and emerald. The colors shifted in endless change and movement. 

 

No single sound ever created more than one color for me before. And for the colors to change like this? Impossible.

 

I needed to hear more, needed this voice, needed to know who this was. 

 

No, I didn’t need. I didn’t do desperation. Just because a stranger’s voice had washed away the gray didn’t mean anything. I, Ivy Lunden, was a strong, independent woman with artistic dreams. My mom, a single mother, had taught me to squash spiders by myself and change engine oil without help. She’d raised me on sheer willpower, hard work, and devotion. Mom wasn’t quite the same lately, given she was in her early seventies now and had never taken care of herself. Still, the principles she taught me remained the same. I was capable. Hardy. Tough. 

 

But I was also curious.

 

Carefully, I glanced under the arm that gripped the mangled paper. It wasn’t my most flattering position, and it put the man upside down in my line of sight. But at least I caught a glimpse. And was it ever worth it. Even upside down, he was tall, handsome, big-shouldered, and giving a friendly smile. His words didn’t register in my mind. Just shades and hues—

 

No wonder his voice puts colors in my head.

 

Even strong, independent women could appreciate a gorgeous man.

 

I straightened, wrenched the paper free, and restarted the print job, still listening. With the new copy in hand, I turned to the waiting student. “Here’s your registration paperwork. Your book list and classroom assignments are on the second page.”

 

As the student thanked me and moved away, I gave the man with the voice my best customer service smile. “May I help you?”

 

If his voice hadn’t already made me notice he was different, his smile would have. It stretched in brilliant white across his dark brown face. 

 

He stepped closer to the counter, resting his forearms on the edge. “I should ask if I can help you.” He nodded toward my hands. “Looks like you had a fight with an octopus.”

 

I snatched a tissue from my desk and blotted at my ink-spotted hands. Real smooth, Ivy. “Octopus, evil overlord printer, same thing.” 

 

He laughed, and the colorful image in my mind brightened. “Should I even ask how your day is going?”

 

I forced a breath into my chest. “It’s going fine.” Get yourself together. I tossed the ink-covered tissue into the trash can beside me. “Anyway. May I help you?”

 

“You’re not going to ask how my day is going”—he glanced at the lanyard around my neck—“Ivy?” 

 

If he didn’t have a magical voice, if there had been students waiting in line behind him, if I hadn’t been bored senseless moments ago, I never would’ve played along. But I did. I leaned my own forearms on my side of the countertop. “How’s your day going?”

 

Narrowing his eyes, he considered. “It’s about an eight.” 

 

“A what?”

 

“An eight.”

 

Huh. He may have had a gorgeous face and a fascinating voice, but he was…strange.

 

“On a scale of one to ten, one to one hundred…?”

 

He grinned. “One to ten.”

 

Nodding, I cleared my throat, ready to pass him the student catalog and chalk this up to a bizarre conversation with a good-looking man.

 

“Don’t you want to know why my day is an eight?”

 

There were better things I could be doing instead of playing games with an adult man. But then I remembered all the gray inside my head before he walked through the registrar doors, and I looked at his brilliant smile, and…well.

 

“Why an eight?”

 

“I’m so glad you asked.” He gave me a teasing grin. “My day started off much lower than an eight; it was more like a four, because I knew registering for CEs meant filling out paperwork. I already fill out paperwork all day at work. But then I ran into some students in the parking lot”—he jutted a thumb over his shoulder—“and they let me try out their hoverboard. I’d never tried a hoverboard before.” His dynamism took on a boyish eagerness for a moment.

 

“That bumped up your day to an eight?” 

 

“No, that bumped my day to a six.” He paused, clearly waiting for me to ask where his other two points came from. 

Lucky for him, I felt intrigued enough to play along. “So the other two points came from where, exactly?”

 

“Meeting you, Ivy.”

 

From anyone else, the line would’ve felt rehearsed, forced, fake. But somehow, between his enthusiasm over trying a hoverboard and his teasing me into a more-than-generic conversation, he came across as sincere. His unwavering eye contact certainly helped his cause. He studied me like he thought I was more than just university staff at a dead-end job at the registrar’s office. Like he saw details others missed, like I was interesting, like I was worth noticing.  

 

“How would you rate your day, Ivy?” 

 

He was a relentless optimist; that was obvious. He saw students with a hoverboard and, one way or another, tried the hoverboard. I saw students with a hoverboard and took the long way around them to avoid their noisy laughter filling my head with chartreuse. He met someone new and lured her into a conversation that felt like a game. I met someone new and suspected him of being strange. 

 

We couldn’t be more different, and it wasn’t like I’d ever see him again. Might as well be honest from the start. 

 

“My day is a three.” 

 

“A three?” He leaned a little closer. “Tell me more.”

 

I leaned a little closer too. “It’s a secret.”

 

“I can keep a secret.” 

 

“It’s very important.”

 

“I won’t say a word.”

 

Something in me longed to tell him the whole truth: You see, it’s this job that leaves me feeling empty, discarded, and vaguely depressed at the end of the day. It’s my failed art career that—get this, I chose to fail for reasons I don’t want to go into right now. It’s my love life that I’ve given up on. And it’s my mom, the only family I have, who is now a seventy-three-year-old woman so feeble I barely recognize her. That’s why my day feels like a three. Actually, can I make that a negative three?

 

But I couldn’t say all that to a stranger. 

 

Instead, I whispered, curving my hand around one side of my mouth like we were kids swapping rumors on the playground. I didn’t miss the way his eyes glanced at my lips. “I hate my job.”

 

He tilted his head, frowning a little. “Why?”

 

I’d expected him to laugh, offer some generic sympathy, or shrug with a good-natured “Don’t we all?” That was the typical response people gave when someone complained about work. Face it, work sucks some days even for people who like their jobs. Most reasonably adjusted adults are used to this by a certain age. But genuine interest, free of judgment? I hadn’t expected that. 

 

I shrugged, playing off my surprise at his response. “The drudgery. It’s paperwork and processes and politics, and it drains the color from my life.”

 

He nodded. “What would it take to get your day to a ten?”

 

I place my chin on my hand, tapping my lower lip, pleased to see his eyes flicker there again. “I’m not sure. Maybe a spontaneous half-day? Like take my lunch break and don’t come back for ‘personal’ reasons?”

 

“Then do it.”

 

“Just…take a half-day?” My tone was skeptical, but now that I said it aloud for myself, the idea carried weight, significance, maybe even possibility. 

 

He shrugged. “Why not? Do you have vacation time for it?”

 

“Well, yeah, but—” But I need to save it to go with my mom to her doctor appointments, because I’m all she has, and she’s all I have, and it’s complicated.

 

“Take a day off. Go home. Go on a spontaneous hour-long road trip. Do something fun.” His gaze wandered over my face, studying me with a look of…affection? “What’s stopping you?”

 

I allowed a coy smile to curve my lips. “The day is still young, isn’t it?”

 

This time, his eyes didn’t dip toward my mouth. They stayed fixed on mine, a smile teasing his face. “Yes, it is.”

 

“Tell me,” I whispered, “what it would take to get your day to a ten?”

 

“I’m doing it right now.”

 

I rolled my eyes. “I’m serious.”

 

“So am I.”

 

We locked eyes. Was all that warmth in his face for me? Did a little flirting really mean that much to him? Considering my own improved mood since we met, I was hardly one to judge. 

 

Flirting was fun. I did it all the time. It helped me get along with almost anyone, helped me skip a few places in line at catered meals, and helped turn my day around, like it was doing now. I’d honed my flirting skills for years. If flirting had a pro league, I’d be the team captain. 

 

“I’m flattered,” I teased, “but surely there’s something else.” 

 

This time the coy smile was his, and he lifted a brow suggestively. “Like you said, the day is still young.” 

 

I laughed. It was my real laugh: big, unfeminine, with a faint snort—in that moment, I didn’t have the wherewithal to taper it into something more attractive like I normally did—and his face lit up. 

 

We registered him for CEs next semester. I noted his name, Tobias “Toby” Azumah, and saw his address wasn’t far from here. Maybe he would become a regular at the registrar’s in future semesters. I printed his class schedule and receipt. He accepted both from me, his fingertips lingering at the top of the page, where a line identified me as the registrar staff who had helped him. 

 

When other students began entering the glass double doors behind him, he smiled reluctantly, backing away from my counter with a grin. “My day is a ten because of you, Ivy Lunden.” 

 

I didn’t take that half-day, but later that night, after I called Mom to check in with her, I stood in front of my easel, nestled in the spare bedroom I’d converted into a soundproof studio, and painted something worthwhile for the first time in years. I dared to dream of a future where I had my own art career. I painted the saturated colors his voice had splashed in my mind, adding all the brightness of his last words: My day is a ten because of you, Ivy Lunden.