The Design

  “You going to be okay by yourself?” Peter asked, standing up from his desk and stretching his arms out above his head. It was Tuesday evening and he was about to bail on me. I couldn’t blame him. It was nearing 7:00 pm and if I was finished with my work, I’d be sprinting out of these fluorescent lights as fast as I could. What does sunlight feel like? I can’t recall.

  “Sure, yeah. You go on ahead. I just have a few more things to catch up on.” What a lie. I had at least another hour or two of work, which meant I’d be working by myself in the quiet office. Oh, wait. The custodial staff would be coming in soon, so at least I’d have them for company.

  “Don’t work too late,” Peter said with a gentle smile as he swung his leather satchel bag over his head and took off for the elevator. I watched him leave, wondering how I’d managed to pick the short straw out of all the new hires. No one else had to work late. Just that day, Hannah had invited me to yet another happy hour. I didn’t even bother accepting anymore. I knew I wouldn’t get the chance to leave.

  …

  Amount saved for Paris: $800 (it's amazing just how much you can save when you have no social life).

  Items I have: travel toothbrush and an international iPhone charger I found on Craigslist.

  Items I need: comfortable walking shoes…also sexy heels for going out.

  French phrases that I know: Quelle est votre baguette…which roughly translates to “How big is your baguette?” Which can serve a purpose inside of a French bakery and also in a French night club…

  The next morning, I strolled into the office with a smile on my face, clutching a bag of hot kolaches in front of my chest. I’d had plenty of time to stop at a bakery on the way in to work and I’d had the ingenious idea to ply Alan with baked goods on the off chance he felt like letting me leave at a decent hour that day.

  “Cammie get over here. You’re late,” Alan hollered as soon as I stepped off the elevator.

  I glanced down at my thin leather watch. I wasn’t late. I was ten minutes early. Most of the desks were still empty except for our little group. Peter, Mark, and Alan were all seated and staring up at me with varying degrees of annoyance: Peter, not annoyed at all. Mark, confused about my presence in general. (Were we sure that he wasn’t an alien?) Alan, pissed beyond belief for no good reason.

  I dropped the bag of kolaches onto my desk with a thud.

  “I’m not late,” I argued.

  “On Wednesdays, we arrive early to work on competition proposals,” Alan clarified as if it was the one hundredth time he’d gone over that procedure with me.

  “Well, no one told me that,” I replied.

  Alan ignored my protests and pushed a manila packet onto my desk. I took my seat, and for the next hour he described the project we would be working on for the next two months. It was a design competition for a municipal park in northern LA. The city had a vision for the park: they wanted a walking trail to line the perimeter of the land, an amphitheater on one side for a summer theater series, a splash pad for younger children, and a few basketball courts in the heart of the park. It would be a massive undertaking and they were opening the competition up to architecture firms throughout California. Alan, Peter, Mark, and I would be in charge of submitting the proposal for Cole Designs.

  My mind began to brim over with ideas as soon as I finished reading over the packet. This is why I wanted to be an architect. Community projects like this came around maybe once every ten years, and I was thrilled to get the chance to work on one. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that it wasn’t my place to offer input of any kind, save for taking notes while Alan shot out what he thought was design gold. It wasn’t.

  I tried to speak up about my ideas.

  “What about a small changing area near the splash pads, so that parents could put their children in swimsuits?”

  “That’d be an eyesore,” he replied.

  “What if we commissioned a mural for the back of the amphitheater stage so that we could showcase some LA artists?”

  “No. Graffiti shouldn’t be encouraged,” he argued.

  “What if we design modular booths that can provide options for local prostitutes and drug dealers?”…just kidding. I wasn’t brave enough to test Alan’s patience with that suggestion.

  After being shot down at every turn, I finally just sat quietly in my chair, sketching loose designs and pretending to listen to Alan’s crappy ideas.

  I was perfecting the crosshatching on an amphitheater sketch when a hand hit the back of my chair.

  “How are the designs coming along?” Grayson spoke from behind me, practically scaring me out of my skin. I jumped up off my seat and covered my notepad for fear that he’d realize I wasn’t paying attention to the meeting. Then I turned back to look up at him and caught a whiff of his spiced aftershave. His hand was still on my chair and his small smile told me he’d already seen my designs. I blushed and tried to close my notepad as discreetly as possible.

  “Great. The park design will have a clean aesthetic,” Alan offered with a buttery tone and a smile that showcased his yellowed canine teeth. Why the hell does a park need a “clean” aesthetic? It needed to be welcoming and functional.

  “Alright. I look forward to seeing some of the mock-ups. And Alan, make sure you’re getting input from everyone,” Grayson said before pushing off the back of my chair and heading toward his office. His aftershave lingered in the air for a few seconds and I discreetly glanced over my shoulder to watch him walking away. That day he was in a dark gray suit with a white shirt and deep red tie. The whole ensemble was admirably smooth.

  “That’s enough for today,” Alan snapped. “We’ll pick this back up again on Friday morning.”

  I wondered if it was hard for Alan to take orders from someone half his age and twice as successful.

  …

  Later that afternoon, I was watching Grayson walk back from the kitchen when he turned and started to head toward my desk. Oh shit, he saw me staring. LOOK BUSY, DUFUS. Every part of my body froze as our eyes locked, and then at once my heart started pounding and my lungs filled with air.

  “Cammie,” he spoke when he was a foot from my desk. “We need to head over to that residential project this afternoon. You can drive separately and meet me there at four o’clock. Sharp.”

  “Oh, um, okay.”

  Apparently my answer wasn’t convincing enough because he didn’t move to leave right away.

  “Do you remember where it is?” he asked, bending forward to take the pencil out of my hand so that he could jot down the address on a post-it note. Our fingers touched only briefly, but it was enough for me to lose all speech capabilities.

  “There’s the address in case you need it,” he said before heading back to his office. “Oh, and you might want to change your clothes,” he said, casting me one last glance over this shoulder. “You’ll be getting dirty.”

  Oh my dear god. I now needed to change my panties too. Thank you, Mr. Bossman.

  Obviously, after that little chat my concentration was shot to hell for the rest of the day. Finally, 3:30 rolled around and I told Alan I was leaving for the day. He’d heard Grayson instruct me to meet him at the site, but even still, the look on his face was absolutely priceless. He mumbled under his breath, but he didn’t argue as I gathered my stuff and waltzed out of the office, feeling fortunate to get to leave the office when the sun was still up. Whattup, Vitamin D.

  Once I was free from Alan’s overbearing gaze, I grabbed my phone and texted Brooklyn.

  Cammie: About to head to a job site with Grayson. Wish me luck.

  Brooklyn: I hope you get to meet so many hot construction workers.

  Cammie: Aww, thanks sister. I’ll be sure to hook-up with as many construction workers as possible.

  Brooklyn: That’s my girl.

  Cammie: Alan made me sharpen all of his drafting pencils today because apparently you need a master’s degree to operate a pencil sharpener.

  Brooklyn: He is
such a tool. Why don’t you tell Grayson about him?

  Cammie: I don’t know. Maybe I will eventually… I just want to prove Alan wrong. I love seeing his face every time I turn in the work he overloaded me with a day early.

  Brooklyn: Well, I’m prepared to make good on that threat to poison him. You just say the word.

  Cammie: Let’s lay off the poison threats. Jeez. We’ll both end up in jail.

  Brooklyn: That’d be fun. We could wear orange jumpsuits and I could entertain the prisoners like Johnny Cash did.

  Cammie: You sing teeny pop ballads…

  Brooklyn: Name one prisoner who wouldn’t enjoy a good pop song…

  Cammie: I don’t know any prisoners…

  Brooklyn: Exactly. #youlose

  I raced home to throw on a fitted tee and some worn jeans before meeting Grayson at the residential project. I couldn’t contain the excitement brimming over as I drove across town. I’d been thinking about the house a lot over the last few days and I was anxious to see how much the build had progressed since I’d last been there.

  Dirt-stained trucks lined the street when I arrived at the house. Construction workers were spread out everywhere. There must have been enough men to make up two or three crews, easily. I didn’t spot Grayson at first, so I made my way through the house, careful not to step on anything that could pierce the sole of my construction boots.

  “Cammie,” Grayson called once I arrived in the kitchen.

  I turned to see him standing next to two men. When he’d called my name, they both turned to watch me join them.

  “Hi,” I offered meekly, trying to figure out if I was meant to listen to their conversation or stay on the sidelines.

  “This is Cammie, an associate architect at my firm,” Grayson told the men. I turned to greet them. There was a hip guy with black dreadlocks and gauges. Next to him stood a lithe man with circular glasses that seemed to teeter precariously on the bridge of his nose.

  “Cammie, this is Jim and Patrick. They’re helping out with the electrical wiring for the house.”

  Jim, the guy with dreadlocks, stepped forward and shook my hand.

  “It’s good to see a woman on site, Cammie. How did you get roped into the architecture field? It’s not very glamorous work,” he said with a smile.

  The men turned to me and waited, and I realized they expected me to actually answer his question. Shit. Did they have to stare at me so attentively? It’s called iPhones, people. Get one and stop paying attention to real life.

  “Oh um, yes. Actually, it’s not very interesting,” I began, looking around at the construction workers who’d stopped to listen to my answer. I couldn’t pick apart anything but their random features: wide lips, frizzy hair, straight noses. My hands shook and I hid them behind my back, trying to hide the evidence of my nerves. “It was actually through a friend of my older sister.” I cleared my throat. “He was, uh, he was in graduate school for architecture when I first met him and I overheard him talking about his job. His passion was impossible to ignore.” I purposely stared anywhere except at Grayson. “And, um, yeah. Just hearing him talk about architecture is what made me fall in love.”

  Chapter Eleven

  With architecture. With architecture! Hearing him talk made me fall in love with architecture! I’d forgotten to add the ending to the sentence. Maybe it was a Freudian slip, or maybe it meant nothing at all. Either way, Grayson would have had to be a fool not to realize that he was the subject of my story. How many friends did Brooklyn have that happened to be architects? One. Grayson Cole.

  Did he have a clue how influential he’d been on my life? It felt so embarrassing to admit that I’d molded my entire future off of a conversation I’d overheard when I was in high school. Who does that? People who need to be on crazy pills, that’s who.

  “Well, we’re glad to have you, Cammie,” Jim said with a warm smile.

  I stood there silent as they continued to discuss whatever it was they’d been talking about before I’d arrived. I kept my gaze focused on my feet, trying not to feel like a royal idiot for admitting the truth to Grayson.

  A few minutes later, Grayson turned and motioned for me to follow him. I sighed and forced my feet to move. When we were out of sight of the others, Grayson turned and reached for my arm so he could pull me to the side of the hallway.

  His hand on my arm, just below the sleeve of my t-shirt, was enough to stop me in my tracks.

  “Was that story true?” he asked, staring down at me.

  “What story? Oh yeah, the one about Brooklyn's friend Chuck? He's a landscape architect, you probably don't know him.”

  Evasive sarcasm was my only hope.

  He shook his head, staring down at his feet—and then finally he looked up. His icy blue eyes were almost too much to handle.

  “I didn’t know I was the reason you fell into architecture,” he said.

  I didn’t fall into architecture, I fell into Grayson. The two happened to coincide.

  I shrugged, highly aware of the prying ears around us.

  “Well, I’m really glad you’re here. You’ll like this next part,” he said as he turned to head down the hallway.

  I pressed my lips together, concealing my megawatt smile. When he’d invited me to join him on the job site, it had seemed formal and scripted. But, when it was just the two of us in a deserted hallway, the words were real and their meaning was heavy, tangible… the game was definitely back on. I wanted Grayson Cole.

  …

  When we arrived at a small room near the back of the house, Grayson picked up a sledgehammer off the ground and handed it to me.

  “Here ya go,” he said with a cheeky smile.

  “What? Why do I need this?” I asked just as I caught the full weight of the tool. It was heavier than I thought possible.

  “The crew added sheetrock in here yesterday without my approval. The clients want to hang a massive mirror along that side wall so we need to add a layer of plywood before we put up the drywall.”

  “So you want me to demolish the wall?” I asked, my eyes practically glowing.

  He smirked. “Exactly.”

  He handed me a paper mask to wear so I wouldn’t get dust in my lungs and then left me to it. I thought he’d stay with me, but he had other things to attend to around the job site. For a while, the only sounds coming from the room were my hammer slamming through the drywall followed by my heavy breathing against the thin mask.

  Even without Grayson’s attention, I was enjoying the work. It felt oddly therapeutic to lay my hammer into the wall as hard as I could and then rip away entire sections of drywall in one go. There are only a few times in life when you’re given free rein to destroy something.

  “Everything good in here?” Grayson asked at the doorway, propping his hands up onto the doorframe.

  I nodded, preparing to sink my hammer into the wall again. He smiled at me with a twinkle in his eyes, probably because of how silly I looked with the face mask on. I was mid-swing when I caught sight of his dimple and completely lost track of what I was doing. My hammer made contact with the wall as well as the hidden reinforced beam that lay behind it. The shock of the hit ricocheted through the hammer and up my arm like a bolt of lightning.

  “Motherf—”

  I dropped the hammer and leaned forward, cradling my arm between my chest and thighs, willing the shock to dwindle away.

  Grayson’s hand hit the small of my back and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. My brain wasn’t sure which sensation to concentrate on: the fact that my arm was about to fall off or the warmth radiating from his touch. Meh, you can regrow arms right? Let’s focus on Grayson.

  “Damn, I bet that hurt,” he murmured, crouching down next to me. “Are you okay?”

  I kept my eyes shut and nodded my head once.

  “Yes, just embarrassed,” I offered through clenched teeth. Everyone knows to check the wall for studs—or random freaking support beams—before you lay a hammer into it. I appr
eciated the fact that Grayson didn’t try to correct me.

  “You distracted me.” Good, put the blame on him.

  He laughed under his breath and then he reached to tug my mask down off my mouth.

  “Repeat that,” he said.

  “You distracted me,” I repeated, not meeting his eye.

  “Ah, sorry about that.” He reached for my shoulder and ran his hand gently down my arm. “Let me see your arm.”

  My mother used to tell me that if I was ever experiencing pain I should touch or pinch another part of my body. It distracts the brain and tricks you into thinking the pain isn’t there anymore. When Grayson touched my arm, he didn’t just distract my brain, he hijacked it.

  I let him take my arm in his hands and watched as he slowly lifted it to check for any injuries. He’d never touched me before, save for a random handshake. He had large hands that were worn from manual labor and I was enamored by the callouses on his palm. He spread his hand over my bicep and I stood stock-still, wishing he’d let his fingers trail to other areas of my body.

  He studied me for a moment and then his lips spread into a private smile.

  “Looks like we’ll have to amputate.”

  “Ha ha, funny guy.”

  I pulled my arm back out of his grasp, just in case he was serious about wanting to chop it off.

  “Think you’re okay?” he asked, eyeing my arm.

  I shrugged, the pain already lessening to a dull ache. “I guess I probably just need one of those cookies I saw on the table on the way in.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “C’mon, I’ll show you the drafts for the design while you rest up, slugger.”

  I followed him through the house and out toward the front porch where a small card table was set up as a makeshift desk. Grayson walked me through the design of the house and even listened to a few of my comments and critiques. He lit up when he was talking about the house and about the family that would live in it once it was complete. As he spoke, I studied his features one at a time: his lips as they curved up into a smile, the creases beside his eyes that formed as he pointed to his favorite elements of the design.