Everyone has a defining characteristic. That one thing that makes them who they are. For example, perhaps you're a particularly upbeat person who always finds fullness in the glass. Or maybe you only ever see a small dribble of droplets at the very bottom, not nearly enough to quench your thirst. Or perhaps you don't give a crap about the glass! Perhaps you push it off the edge of the table like an obstinate cat might do, watch it shatter on the floor, liquid gushing out in all directions; you're a rebel like that.

Me? If I look at the glass, I will take out a ruler and measure the liquid before I pass any judgment on where it may or may not be. I'll double-check the glass too, make sure it's not one that's wider on the top and narrower on the bottom. Is the glass even on a flat surface?

I like details. I'm a perfectionist, nothing wrong with that! And as far as I can see, it's stood me in good stead through the decades, especially in my work as a journalist. I think it gives me a certain edge, an ability to hone in on all the details, bringing them into crisp, microscopic focus, to ask every conceivable question in the quest for a well-balanced article. But lately I've discovered I have a new defining characteristic . . .

"What's this?" I pointed at the suspicious mauve smudge on my side of the desk. Under normal circumstances, I might not have noticed the smudge so quickly if it hadn't been for all the other irregularities in the office.

The first irregularity was the loose partition in the middle of the desk, dividing his side from my side, so I didn't have to stare directly at him all day. There was a definite slope to it this morning, which had not been there yesterday when I'd left work. The other irregularity was that my pink highlighter was lying on the carpet and my trash can was also in the wrong place.

My office nemesis didn't look up. Had he even heard me?

"JAGGER!" I shouted, and his head snapped up.

"What?" He rubbed his temples with his fingers, a sign that he was, as I like to politely call it—although I have no idea why the hell I even bother with politeness when it comes to him—"under the weather."

"This!" I pointed and clicked my fingers. He visibly winced at the sound. Clearly he was a lot more under the weather than I'd initially thought.

"Whaaat?" Jagger groaned and finally released his temples.

I sighed. Well, it was more of a very pointed and purposeful loud inhalation, followed by an equally purposeful loud exhalation of breath. I followed it up with a tap of my foot, which was not nearly as effective as I'd hoped, given that the floor was carpeted.

"This! The mauve smudge on my side of the desk. And don't think I haven't noticed that the middle partition has also been moved and my pink highlighter is on the floor. And as for my trash can," I bent down and picked it up. "It belongs on the right side of my desk."

Jagger raised his red-rimmed eyes to meet mine. "Nothing escapes you, Detective Maggie May."

"Margaret! Stop calling me that. How many times do we have to . . ." I stopped talking and inhaled slowly, drawing an imaginary infinity symbol in my mind with my breath—something my therapist had taught me. Jagger was riling me up, again. As if that was his sole purpose for existence. And he'd been doing it from day one, from the second we'd been made to share this way-too-small cubicle.

I'd been forced to hand construct—with very little experience in such things, I might add—a middle partition to divide our desk in half. Did you know that using a nail gun is not as easy as they make it look in those DIY YouTube tutorials? That had been precisely six months, three weeks and two days ago, yes, I was counting. Because that was the day when my entire work life changed. When it went from normal and pleasant to downright hell on earth, all thanks to him—Jagger Villain! I'm also not entirely sure that's his real surname, by the way. Although there is definite poetic sense to it!

"So," I said, "what is it, and why did you move the partition?"

Jagger gave me one of his signature shrugs, a move that totally ticked me off. Everything about him did, but it was these shrugs that really grated on me. They were always accompanied with this casual, bordering on utterly-uninterested-in-everything-around-him attitude that he seemed to ooze around the office. I say ooze, because Jagger Villain never walks—Oh no—he slips and slides through the office like shiny, liquid mercury. Glinting and gliding under desks and doors, flowing through small spaces and somehow always managing to being everywhere at once. And we all know how poisonous mercury is!

"God, it's waaaay too early in the morning for this interrogation." He gave me that stupid lopsided smile of his, which I've noticed seems to have quite an effect on all the females in the office. It seems to make them positively lopsided themselves. In fact, some seem so lopsided that they look as if they might fall over onto their backs. Not me, though. I remain upright.

"It is after nine, Jagger. I'm supposed to be working but, thanks to you, I'm officially—" I glanced down at my watch "—two minutes late!"

He chuckled. God, I hated that chuckle of his.

"Has anyone told you how funny you are, Maggie May?"

"Stop calling me that!"

"But it's such a classic song . . . Doo, do doo, du, waaah!"

"Uh, what are you doing?" I watched in horror as he made some strange noises and did something with his fingers in the air that I couldn't interpret.

"Catchiest guitar riff ever."

"Stop!" I held my hand up.

He smiled, leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and put his hands behind his head, another one of his signature moves. I glared right into those silver-gray eyes of his, which only seemed to make his smile grow.

"The mark!" I pointed back down at the desk. "What. Is. It?"

Jagger rose out of his seat with a dramatic swoosh. He was tall. Taller than most men. This was the other thing I'd noticed women got lopsided about. They always seemed to gaze up at him with a ridiculous look in their eyes, as if they'd been living in a nunnery for years and were encountering the last male on earth.

Jagger straightened his T-shirt, although I have no idea why. His T-shirts were always old and crumpled and looked as if they'd been lying around on some floor in a twisted pile all night. Whose floor they'd been lying on, though, was anyone's guess.

"Heeey, Jag." I heard a voice and turned. It was Denise from Accounts. "Hey," she said again, her voice sounding like the slow, high-pitched drag of a bow across a violin. The sound made my skin crawl, and I wasn't sure how to interpret her tone, but it did give me pause. It seemed to imply something. Something. And then her lips twitched into the slightest smile and . . .

"Oh. My. God!" I turned back to Jagger and scowled at him. Surely, he wouldn't.

I reached down and wiped the stain with a piece of paper and then raised it to my eyes; my suspicions about its origins were instantly confirmed. I glared at Denise's mauve lips and then turned my attention back to Jagger.

"You did not! On my side of the desk? My side! I can't believe you—well, I can—but I can't and . . . Oh my God, it was Mark's birthday last night, everyone stayed late for drinks, so of course you did!" Denise was looking decidedly sheepish now, and that pink flush in her cheeks really did not complement her lip color. Not that the brown melamine surface of my desk did either. She lowered her head and dashed off.

I analyzed the situation. Lipstick smudge, partition that had clearly been taken down, on floor, moved trash can. It all pointed to one undeniable thing.

"You had S.E.X. on my desk!" I whisper-screamed at Jagger. "We have rules about being on my side of the partition and this is a clear violation of those rules. Not to mention that having S.E.X. at work, with a coworker, has to be a clear violation of about a million other HR rules!"

"Maggie May, please—"

"Stop calling me that!"

"Fine, Maggie, then—"

"My name is Margaret, which you know but choose to ignore!"

"It's not what you think, Margaret."

"Not what I . . . HA!" I threw my hands in the air. "How can it be, 'not what I think—'" I wiggled my fingers around dramatically "—when someone else's cosmetics are smudged on my desk. I mean, how did she even get her lipstick there?" I looked back down at the smudge and tilted my head from side to side, trying to imagine what position a person needed to be in to produce this kind of . . .

My hands flew over my mouth when I figured it out. She would have had to have been on all fours—NO! I couldn't think about it. It was terrible enough imagining it happening in the first place, but like that! Doggy style! On my side of the desk.

But what did I expect from a man like Jagger Villain? A man whose entire job revolved around dating and hooking up with women, and then writing a weekly column about his single-man sexcapades. A man whose job it was to go to concerts and parties, get drunk with celebrities and pen trashy, scandalous gossipy articles about who screwed who, or who came back from the bathroom with a white-tipped nose, for what was once a very respected newspaper. Whose job it was to consume strange foods—like the time he'd eaten that one-hundred-year-old egg—and film himself doing it.

But now due to—what had my boss called it? "The need for clickbaity content," whatever the hell that meant, he'd been hired and placed next to me. And now he was having coworker coitus in my once-calm cubicle. No, this time Jagger had crossed a line, and I wasn't just referring to that line that clearly divided our cubicle in half.

"Margaret, it's not what you think. I know you think you hate me—"

"I do hate you," I snapped.

"Well, thanks," he said sarcastically, "but I'm not so bad that I would have sex on our desk!"

"Stop talking," I managed to say, even though my throat felt tight. "In fact, please don't say another word to me for the rest of the day. The rest of the year, if possible." I looked down at the stain again. "I'm going to get some coffee, and when I come back, I expect you to have disinfected the desk!"

"Don't leave like this," he called out as I started walking away. "I swear, it's not what you think."

I brushed him off with a flick of my wrist and didn't look back.

"'Maggie May' is one of my all-time favorite songs by the way."

I swung around. "Well, I think it's time you got a new one!" I said, and then stormed out.

Yes, my new defining characteristic was that I definitely hated Jagger Villain.