[ WP ] Your almost 30 years old but look no older than 17 . You seem to have have stopped aging but no one else has seemed to notice or seems to be surprised by this .

Jake rolled over and hit snooze on his phone's alarm for the second time. He only allowed himself three snoozes on any given morning, but had already decided that he was getting up when it went off again. 
 
 He knew that for most people their birthdays were exciting, but he had been dreading his for the past month. Like it or not, today was the day. 
 
 The alarm went off again and Jake dragged himself from his warm, soft bed. He stared briefly into the mirror on his closet door and sighed. His features had n't changed. He still did n't need to shave more than once a week. His body was toned and athletic, but in a high school athlete way. Not a wisp of chest hair, much less back hair. He was thankful for the armpit hair he had. That in and of it self was a pretty odd thought. 
 
 As he shuffled to the shower his mind took the familiar frustrating trip. How was it that he looked like he was still waiting to graduate high school when all of his peers looked their age? More than looking young, the most frustrating thing was that nobody else seemed to notice until they looked at a photo. 
 
 Two years ago he had been engaged to a woman two years younger than himself. That ended abruptly when she saw their engagement photos. She had n't told him, but the grapevine had reported that she felt like a child molester when she saw the pictures of them together. 
 
 Since then he had n't really dated. Because his youthful appearance was so prominently on display in photographs, online dating was out. He tried Tinder using `` always swipe right'' method, but all of his matches were 18 to 20 year olds. Sure he could have just had some fun, but that is n't where his mind was at. 
 
 As he showered he went ahead and ran a a razor over his upper lip. Being almost completely unable to grow facial hair was bad, growing a dirtstache would have been worse. 
 
 Jake quickly toweled off and dressed. He did n't feel the need to do anything to his hair, more over he did n't feel like spending time looking in the mirror. Then he took the thirty second commute to his home office. 
 
 As annoying as it might be to be young looking, at least he did n't work in an office any longer. Getting mistaken for an intern got old really quickly. For the past four years he'd worked from home and had noticed a remarkable change in the way he was treated by his co-workers. While they knew what he looked like, without that reminder on a day to day basis they treated him more like the subject matter expert he was. Hopefully this would work in his favor when the time came for a promotion too. 
 
 His emails were the same boring things. Questions he could answer in his sleep, though most often he just copied and pasted the answers from a knowledge base document he'd created just for this purpose. The only out of place email was a meeting request for 8am. 
 
 `` Who the hell schedules a meeting for 8am?'' Jake said to the empty room. 
 
 Fifteen minute. Damnit. Jake started to finding the powerpoint slides that he thought would answer the questions this `` Director of Compliance'' was going to ask. When he was done with that he logged into the Skype call and continued to work while he waited. 
 
 Soon he heard the telltale tone that announced the other party had joined the call. Out of the corner of his eye he caught movement on the screen. 
 
 `` Shit, a video call. Figures.'' Jake thought as he turned a little wearily towards that screen. A girl who appeared to be in her late teens maybe early twenties was on the screen. 
 
 They looked at each other quizzically until Jake asked, `` Are you the Director of Compliance?'' 
 
 She nodded slowly and asked, `` Are you the Senior Security Architect?'' 
 
 Jake mumbled a `` Yep'' as he stared blankly at the monitor. 
 
 After a moment the woman on the other end of the camera said, `` I think we need to have this meeting in person''. 
 
 Just like that the call was disconnected and Jake sat staring at his monitor where the Skype call had been a moment before. He swiveled in his chair and opened a tab in his browser. Once on the company's intranet he looked up the Director of Compliance. 
 
 She had started at the company six months before he had and had been with the company for seven years. She was a graduate of Yale with an MBA in Regulatory Compliance from Harvard. Jake was still thrashing through the information trying to justify what he'd seen from what he was reading, when his new email notification chimed. It was a new meeting request from Nancy Wright Director of Compliance for 6pm that night. 
 
 `` What the hell?'' Jake said aloud. 
 
 He clicked on the `` Propose New Time'' icon and wrote a brief note that it was his birthday and he was planning to go out with some friends. Then he suggested the next day. Less than thirty seconds later his Instant Messenger popped up with `` Cancel it and pick me up at the airport at 5:30''. 
 
 Now Jake was starting to get pissed. This woman was ordering him around like he was an intern. The last thing he was willing to do was let someone not even a full rung above him on an org chart boss him around on his birthday. He started to furiously type out a reply on to her IM when it chimed again. 
 
 `` I'm sorry for that last message, please do this for me. I'll explain tonight.'' 
 
 Jake's hands hovered over his keyboard for a minute before he held down the backspace key to wipeout everything he'd typed, then responded with a simple `` OK''. 
 
 He pulled up his email and set an out of office status for the rest of the day, then sent an email to his team assigning some tasks and informing them of his status. 
 
 This was n't even remotely how he had planned to spend his birthday, but he figured if he was going to lose his evening then he should go have some fun during the day. 
 
 Jake changed into shorts and a jersey, put on his well worn pair of 5-10 shoes and went to the garage. He went through the ritual of pulling out his mountain bike checking the tire pressure, shock pressure, chain tension and axles. Then headed out for a ride. 
 
 Jake had never found a better way to clear his head than to ride up into the mountains. The climbs had his lungs and legs burning until he was almost ready to give up, then he got the payoff of the decent. 
 
 He pedaled towards Corner Canyon, pushing himself harder than usual. Using the time to think through what had happened and wondering about the meeting to come. By the time he found himself at the top of Peak View, he had come to a few conclusions. 
 
 First and foremost, Nancy was like him. In as much as she was well older than she looked. He did n't know how much of that was due to the miracle of photography/videography or if she always looked young. 
 
 The second thing he was sure of was that she had recognized that about him as well. He thought that she had recognized it much more directly astutely about him than he had with her. 
 
 Lastly and by far the most interesting, was that her recognition of his being similar in affliction to her had shocked her into some sort of resolve. How else could he explain her suddenly ending the call and getting a flight from New York to Utah? There was no way she was going to expense a last minute flight to the company. If you did n't schedule your flights three days in advance you had to have VP approval and Jake did n't see how she could have gotten that. 
 
 As Jake started down Rush he wondered, `` Why? What's her motivation?'' There were no easy answers here and Jake let his mind go from morbid to erotic as he glided down the trail. By the time he reached the bottom he had come to the conclusion that if she wanted to chop his head off a la Highlander, then she would n't have telegraphed her move. On the other hand, if she wanted to screw his brains out she probably would have acted with more tact and been less demanding. So the two ends of the spectrum were out of bounds and the truth was somewhere in the vast gray in between. 
 
 Jake rode home at a leisurely pace. He had plenty of time before he needed to leave for the airport and was enjoying the perfect weather. He told himself that even if her coming into tow turned out to be a bust, at least it had taken his mind off his own issues for a day. 
 
 By the time 5 o'clock rolled around Jake was showered and dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. Nancy had sent him an email with her flight information on it while he was out riding, so he used the Flight Tracker app on his phone to confirm it was on time before he climbed in his car and headed to the airport. Since he had only seen her once, and very briefly then, he decided to park his car and head into the terminal where he could watch the arriving passengers stream into the baggage claim area. 
 
 The questions returned to his mind making him second guess the whole situation. The one question that kept coming to the front was, would he even recognize her? 
 
 The board now showed that her plane had landed and he stared down each person coming through security trying to determine which one was Nancy. It was pretty easy to rule out the men, but he took enough time with each woman that he was sure he'd creeped out a couple of them. If she had the same condition as him, then she might appear years older when not on camera. He could n't even remember what color her hair was. 
 
 As the crowd coming through security started to slow and then trickle he became convinced that he had missed her. He started to widen his search, looking around the baggage terminal. 
 
 As he scanned back to the security exit a petite woman who looked like she was in her early 20s was walking directly towards him with purpose. She was maybe 5'4'' with strawberry blonde hair and an athletic build, but her eyes, her piercing grey eyes, were fixed on James like hunter approaching its prey. 
 
 As she reached him she put her hands on his shoulders, then moved them to his cheeks and stared deep into his eyes. 
 
 Suddenly she said, `` We need to talk.'' 
 
 If you'd like more I'll continue, but I'm almost at max letters for this post.
