The Design

  When Darren arrived, he stood at the entrance of the restaurant wearing a Ramone’s t-shirt and a bored expression. He didn’t even bother stepping inside. It wasn’t his style. He waited for me at the door as I hugged Brooklyn goodbye. She begged me to stay and whispered that she was worried about me leaving with Darren. I pulled out of her grasp as a sinking feeling started to take hold inside of my gut. You’re better than this. Stay. Don’t do something reckless. There was no point in doubting my decision; my conscience was fighting a losing battle. At that point in my life, I wasn’t worried about anyone but myself. I didn’t care that it was my sister’s birthday. I needed out.

  I felt Grayson’s gaze on me as I walked away. Just before Darren took my hand and pulled me through the front door, I turned back and locked eyes with him.

  His gaze was cold and hard. There was a darkness in his expression that hadn’t been there before. His jaw was locked tight and his brows were knit together. He shook his head once, and then turned away from me—back to the blonde staring up at him with doe eyes.

  Annoyed, I stormed out of the restaurant’s front doors, ripped off my heels, and sped off with Darren to a college party down in the Valley. I can’t recall if I even slept in my own bed that night.

  After that night, a few years passed before I saw Grayson again. I’d done my best to forget the part of my life when I’d been completely obsessed with him. Instead, I focused on my goal: becoming a licensed architect. I was in the second year of my architecture program and I was already in love with the field.

  Then, one day, I glanced up from writing “Guest Lecture Series - #3” in my spiral notebook and saw him standing at the front of my college lecture hall.

  I didn’t believe it was him at first. He looked different than he had before: all grown up in a navy blue suit, complete with linked cuffs and shined shoes. His rich brown hair had grown out a little on top, but it was styled back, highlighting his strong bone structure. His red tie fell perfectly down the center of his broad chest and his hands were clenched into fists by his sides as his eyes locked with mine. Oh, it was him all right. He’d given me that same exact stare the last time I’d seen him.

  I did my best to pay attention during his lecture. The class was absolutely silent as he spoke. The girls all leaned in to hear each syllable he uttered, while the guys tried to dissect how he was able to captivate a room with zero effort at all.

  After weighing the pros and cons, I’d worked up the courage to talk to him after class. It’d been a few years since I’d last seen him and I felt like I’d grown up a lot in that time. I wasn’t Brooklyn’s little sister. I was Cammie Heart, architecture student. (I mean, I’d traded my sports bras in for the real thing, and I knew how to style my hair properly. How could he resist me?)

  So, after the lecture I joined the line behind the other students—all conspicuously female—who wanted to have a chance to speak with him. I craned my ears to hear him speak to each one of them. He was quick, but polite. He offered them real advice and encouraged them to apply for summer internships at his firm.

  The line continued to move until I was one person away from getting to talk to him. I knew he saw me standing in line behind the girl he was chatting with, but just before they finished talking, he smiled down at her and gestured for her to lead the way out of the classroom. I was left standing there like a fool as I watched them leave. He had his hand on her lower back and his gaze focused on the door. A part of me wanted to yell after him, but I knew it was futile. To Grayson Cole, I was as good as a ghost. He might have humored me around Brooklyn, but whatever politeness he’d once shown me was long gone.

  From that point forward, I attempted to block Grayson from my mind. I did my best to ignore him whenever we saw each other, and he did the same. We had an unspoken agreement to pretend the other person didn’t exist.

  That is… until a few days ago—the day of my college graduation. I’d just arrived at the restaurant for my celebratory brunch when I saw Grayson waiting for me on the sidewalk, wearing his classic navy suit. I was shocked to see him—I hadn’t invited him to my graduation, obviously. Yet, there he stood, turning heads on the sidewalk and forcing my heart to kick into overdrive.

  “Could I speak with you for a moment, Cameron?” he’d asked, ignoring the other four people in my group altogether.

  I froze with his confident gaze on me. Actual conversation was against our unspoken rules. I couldn’t recall him ever asking to speak with me privately.

  Despite my nerves, I agreed and once we were alone, he stepped forward and presented an offer I couldn’t refuse: an interview at his firm, Cole Designs. The exchange was brief—he turned back to his car as soon as I’d accepted—but the fact remained: he’d gone out of his way to offer me an interview.

  So tomorrow morning, I’d sit across from him with every bit of confidence I could muster, all the while wondering how he could hate me so much yet still consider hiring me.

  Chapter Two

  The dynamics of an architecture firm harken back to the stone ages. No, really. Over my morning coffee, I browsed the employee section of the Cole Designs website. Out of fifty-five employees, there were thirteen females. Of those thirteen females, seven were in the interior design department, three of them were in the accounting department, two were in reception, and yep—you guessed it—there was ONE female architect in the entire firm. Her name was Gina and she was an older looking woman with graying hair and a flat smile. According to her profile, she’d been with the company since it was founded a few years back.

  I’m sure the disparity in gender wasn’t by design, but due to the fact that architecture (or rather, solving differential equations for systems of cantilevered beams) doesn’t excite most young girls. Even in my graduating class of one hundred students, there were only fifteen females. I’d known all along that I was entering a world dominated by men. I’d even had one asshole professor ask me if I honestly thought I’d be able to delegate orders to general contractors or supervise rowdy construction workers. I’d walked out of his classroom without gracing him with an answer, fighting away the urge to flip him the bird. Six weeks later, I received my final grade and it was the highest one in the class. “How ’bout them apples?” - Matt Damon.

  I smiled at the memory and closed my laptop with a newfound sense of resolve. There was less than an hour and a half until my interview, just enough time to prepare and get across town.

  …

  As I sat in the back of a cab on the way to the interview, I attempted to snap a photo of my dress to send to Brooklyn. It was hard to get the right angle, but she’d get the idea.

  Cammie: Does this scream “Confident, worldly architect?”

  Brooklyn: It screams “I could out-design your flat ass any day. So give me this job with a signing bonus.”

  Cammie: Ha. With the sleep I got last night, I'd settle for a signing latte.

  I didn’t get the chance to read her response because we were already pulling up in front of the Sterling Bank Building. I’d never actually ventured inside of it before, but it was one of the tallest office buildings in downtown Los Angeles and I’d seen it countless times. Its black metal frame paired with its imposing shiny black glass gave the building an industrial, masculine feel. Even the heavy doors served to intimidate guests as they entered the pristine lobby.

  I paused just outside of the front doors and took a deep breath, trying to get my bearings. I was twenty minutes early for my interview. My outfit was still wrinkle-free and fit like a glove. My pad folio was filled with extra copies of my resume and reference letters, and I’d rehearsed every question that Grayson Cole could possibly ask:

  Greatest weakness? My inability to settle for anything less than what I deserve. I’m stubborn and persistent.

  The honest answer? My inability to overcome my schoolgirl crush on you even though you’re a self-righteous ass.

  I would NOT be giving him the honest answer.

  I reached f
or my phone to check the suite number of Cole Designs just as a businessman yammering into his cell phone, bumped into me from behind. I lost my balance and in a matter of two seconds, my pad folio went flying across the concrete and I had to think fast to catch myself on my hands and knees. The asphalt rushed to meet me and I hissed as my kneecaps caught the brunt of my weight. The sound of ripping tights was the icing on the cake.

  “Watch where you're going,” the man snapped, not even bothering to help me up or apologize for bumping into me. “Jesus. No, I’m still here,” he barked into his phone. “Go on.”

  I ground my teeth together as I pushed to sit up on my heels, and then I reached to collect the papers that had slipped out of my pad folio. Once I’d stuffed them back inside, I stood and flinched at the feeling of blood running down my tights. I had nothing to clean it off with and my tights were already stained down to my shin.

  Awesome.

  I straightened my dress as best as I could and assessed the damage. Other than the small amount of blood, there were two giant holes in my tights directly over my kneecaps. I knew the fabric would continue to split as I walked, but my dress would look too sexy without the added cover the tights afforded me. I was early, but not early enough to run home and change. My only option was to trash the tights and pray no one noticed my short hem and skinned kneecaps. I’d have to distract the interview panel with my sparkling personality if I had any hope of making it out of there with a job.

  With my chin held high, I pushed through the front door of the building just in time to see the rude man step onto one of the elevators. He turned and I caught a better sight of him. He was middle-aged with thinning hair and a greasy forehead. His beady eyes narrowed when he spotted me across the lobby, as if he were angry with me for the accident out front. The audacity.

  I purposely waited until he was long gone before I made my way over to the elevator bank. While I waited for the next elevator to arrive, I pulled out my phone and checked the confirmation email from an assistant at Cole Designs.

  “Cole Designs, #1160”

  It seemed easy enough. I took the elevator up to the eleventh floor, slipped off my tights without flashing the security camera, shoved them into my purse and then watched the numbers change above my head. This was it. Cole Designs was the premier design firm in Los Angeles and I had one shot at landing a job there. I just had to prove to Grayson Cole that I was a capable architect. MORE than capable according to most of my professors, but their letters of recommendation probably wouldn’t be enough to sway Grayson Cole. No, I’d have to really impress him during my interview.

  The elevator doors slid open and I stepped out onto the eleventh floor with a confident smile and a walk that belonged on a runway. (Y’know, a runway that didn’t mind bloody kneecaps.) The elevator opened up to a small waiting room with a petite blonde sitting behind a mahogany desk. She was facing away from me, chatting with another employee. I didn’t recognize either of them from the employee section of the Cole Designs website, but I couldn’t really see their faces.

  “No. Seriously, the teenager swore that she’d never been sexually active,” the employee whispered, much louder than she probably intended.

  “Was her mom in the exam room with you guys?” the receptionist asked.

  “Yes! That’s why she didn’t want to tell us the truth.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We figured out what was causing the problem. She had like ten condoms stuck up there!”

  “No!” the receptionist gasped.

  “I swear.”

  What the hell had I walked in on? I cleared my throat as they continued their private conversation. The moment the receptionist noticed my presence, she swiveled in her chair and smiled wide, trying to cover up the fact that she’d just been gossiping in front of me.

  “I’m so sorry! What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Cameron Heart. I’m here for an—”

  “I don’t see your name on the schedule,” the receptionist cut me off with a frown.

  “Oh, um, I received an emai—”

  She stood, cutting me off again, and shoved a clipboard at me so that the sharp metal clip jabbed into my stomach.

  “Just fill this out and give it back to me. Do you have any pain? Any UTI symptoms?”

  I narrowed my eyes, trying to figure out why those questions were relevant in any way. Then I glanced down at the paperwork. A few questions jumped out at me right away:

  “What’s your sexual orientation?”

  “Are you currently taking birth control?”

  “What was the last day of your menstrual cycle?”

  I blanched. Nope. No. Oh dear god, I was not in the right office. I dropped the clipboard onto her desk and bolted toward a side door off the main waiting room. Once I was outside, I glanced back to read the placard that I’d missed on my way in.

  “Dr. Donald Fitzpatrick, OB/GYN #1160”

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  I reopened the email from Grayson’s receptionist, cursing myself for reading the suite number wrong. But when it opened, I found the same number staring back at me: #1160. What the hell? Was this a joke? I groaned and pulled up the Cole Designs website. At the very bottom of the black screen, it listed the firm’s address and suite number: #2160. NOT #1160! I was ten floors short of the Cole Designs offices.

  I took the stairs up two at a time, not bothering to go back through the doctor’s waiting room to call for an elevator. The rage I felt toward Grayson’s receptionist was boiling up inside of me and I used it to fuel me up the ten flights of stairs.

  By the time I’d reached the correct floor, I was breathing far heavier than I should have been. Sweat was collecting under my arms. The cuts on my knees hadn’t started to scab over yet, and blood was still trickling down my knees. In a matter of ten minutes, I’d gone from put together professional to homicidal hobo lady.

  I stared at the placard for Cole Designs as I collected my hair in one hand and fanned my neck with the other. Most of it had fallen down from my updo, but there wasn’t much I could do about it without a mirror. A quick glance at my phone informed me that I was a minute away from being late, and although I wanted to run home crying, I knew I had to pull the door open and face my interview head on. I gave myself three seconds to calm my heart rate before pulling open the door and walking into the Cole Designs lobby.

  It felt like I was walking into my own personal version of hell, but I pushed the feeling aside and forced my feet to move forward, one after the other. The moment I crossed through the threshold, chaos erupted before me. There were at least twenty applicants sitting in the waiting room. They filled every possible chair, and even overflowed onto the floor. Like me, they all had pad folios. Unlike me, they all looked cool, calm, and collected, save for the skinny boy in the far corner, who was talking to himself and rocking back and forth. He might have been even more nervous than I was.

  I turned toward the reception desk, ready to explain my tardiness, only to find a frazzled woman shoving everything from her desk drawer into a cheap cardboard box.

  “Smug, no good—” she mumbled beneath her breath as I stepped closer, unsure if I was meant to check-in with her or stay far, far away. Up until a moment before, I was ready to growl at her for sending me the wrong information, but now it looked like she might have been having an even worse day than I was.

  “Excuse me,” I spoke, trying to get her attention as quietly as possible. She had a pencil shoved into the messy bun atop her head. Sugar—or some other white substance—coated the top of her cardigan, and her red lipstick was smeared across her teeth. When she looked up, she gave me a plastic smile and aimed the stapler she had clutched in her hand right at me.

  “I’d love to help you out,” she said. Her tone insinuated otherwise. “It’s just that I am no longer employed by this company or by its prick boss.”

  My mouth fell open while my brain tried desperately to catch up. I was about to ask for clarif
ication when a new woman stepped out of the door behind the reception desk. She had a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. She was beautiful in a non-threatening sort of way, like a chic French girl. Her skin was a rich dark brown and her eyes shown just a few shades lighter.

  When she caught sight of the receptionist in the midst of a public meltdown, her eyes widened and she quickly tried to reign in the situation.

  “Kelly! That’s enough,” the woman said, putting her hands on Kelly’s shoulders. “Here, just let me…” The new woman tried to gently pry the stapler from Kelly’s hand, presumably to keep Kelly from firing it off at me.

  “Beatrice! THAT’S MY STAPLER! It’s not company property and neither am I so get your damn hands off of me!” Kelly sassed, as she tried to keep Beatrice from clawing the stapler out of her hands.

  Just when I thought an actual brawl was about to break out, Kelly paused.

  “No wait,” Kelly said, huffing from the exertion of fighting Beatrice off. “Actually, the staples aren’t mine. So here, have them.” Kelly then proceeded to punch every single staple out onto her desk as Beatrice and the rest of my fellow applicants looked on. Each staple hit the desk with a soft clap. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was supposed to do, so I just stood there. Was this whole office building full of crazy people?

  When the stapler was empty (and no longer in danger of going off in one of my eyes), Kelly went back to packing her things and Beatrice turned to me with a bright smile. She clearly had practice in dealing with crazy.

  “Hello. I’m Beatrice, Grayson’s personal assistant. Interviews haven’t started yet so you can take a seat with the other applicants and then we’ll begin shortly.”

  She was attempting to salvage the situation as best as possible, but her smile was tight and I knew she was mentally cursing her job.