I had known Anne for as long as I could remember. A few years before I was even born, my mother opened a florist in our hometown and, over the years to come, built a profitable little business. Anne was one of eight full-time employees, all of which I came to know during the course of my childhood and adolescence. The women employed at the flower shop were all endearingly nice to me any and every time I was around. It helped that they had tremendous respect for my mother, their boss.
Anne was the youngest of the women who worked for my mother, though she was still 22 years my elder. Married, with two kids, she was also –by far– the most attractive physically. Anne was modest, most likely due to the fact that she married young. Despite possessing an incredibly toned body, she never flaunted it. She was petite, maybe 5-foot-4, with a blonde pixie cut, stunningly bright blue eyes, and a bubbly, friendly, personality. Her face was that of a classic girl-next-door beauty, cute as a button, naively unaware of her true beauty. She was the type of girl whose smile made you completely unaware of your other surroundings. Her professional, conservative-ish, work clothing went to great lengths (disappointingly for me) to obscure her assets, but it didn’t take much imagination to picture what she had covered up. As I progressed into my teenage years, I put my imagination (and a photograph of Anne I had slyly “borrowed” from a drawer at the office when no one was watching) to work several times in the privacy of my childhood bedroom.