The Design (5 page)

“I’m not sure, but I got Grayson to agree to come out with us,” Brooklyn replied.

“You did what?!” I asked, almost dropping my phone to the floor mid-shout. “Why would you do that?”

“Because, Cammie, we’re celebrating your new job and he’s the reason you have the new job in the first place. He hired you! What’s with the dramatic response? I thought it’d be good for you to see him outside of work, y’know, have a chance to talk to him one-on-one.”

I groaned.

“Do I want to know how you convinced him?” I asked, propping the phone between my shoulder and my head so that I could fold my favorite Harry Potter sweater. It had a giant “H” knit onto the front and it was supposed to be a replica of the one Mrs. Weasley gave Harry his first year at Hogwarts. It served as a barometer for friend-making: if you got the reference, we could be besties.

“I just asked him nicely, said I’d pick him up, and threatened to end our friendship if he said no. There might have also been a Snapchat of knives. Whatever. I swear his automatic response to anything in life is no, so I just had to convince him to say yes this time.”

“Oh god, Brooklyn. You’re insane. Listen, I gotta go. Hannah and I are apartment searching tomorrow after work and I’ve got to finish packing up my dorm.”

Brooklyn hummed across the line. “Who is this Hannah? Can you even trust her? You just met her.”

“Gah, Brook, you’re such a mom. I wish you and Jason would spawn some baby musicians already so you’d have someone else to worry about all the time.”

“Okay… but still, why don’t you just move in with me?”

I rolled my eyes. “Two reasons. One, you only have one bedroom and I’m not sleeping between you and Jason. Two, I can’t bring home guys to your condo. That’s just gross.” I left out the third reason: the need to separate my life from hers, but I knew she wouldn’t take that answer well.

“Oh! So you’re planning on bringing guys home all the time?”

I shrugged, though she couldn’t see it. “Not plural. Just one guy.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she replied.

I had no clue
.

We said our goodbyes and confirmed dinner for Friday. I dropped my phone onto my nightstand and propped my hands on my hips, wondering how I’d find the time to pack, search for a new apartment, impress my new coworkers,
and
figure out how to seduce Grayson… all in four days.

Chapter Five

Amount saved for Paris
: $122

Items I have
: a printed travel checklist of all the things I needed to get.
Hey, that counts as being productive.

Items I need
: everything on my printed travel checklist.

French phrases that I know
: Bonjour, mon nom est Cammie. Je suis américain et votre accent est sexy… which I think translates into “Hello, my name is Cammie. I’m American and your accent is sexy.”

Tuesday morning, I followed Beatrice to my assigned desk for my first real day of work. I carried a small box with me filled with notebooks, my favorite drafting pencil, and a photo of Brooklyn and I when we were kids. It was just enough personalization to ensure that I’d remember which of the array of nearly identical desks was mine.

We passed through the center of the main room and arrived at a cluster of four rectangular desks closest to the back wall of offices. The corner desk was empty and waiting for me. As I neared the desk grouping, I realized that if I leaned back in my chair, I’d have a clear view into Grayson’s office, which also meant, that at any given time, he’d have a clear view of me.

“This will be your team, Cammie,” Beatrice said with a distracted smile before wandering off and leaving me with my new tablemates. The man sitting across from the empty desk smiled up at me. His wild red beard was so outgrown that it nearly covered his neck.

He shot his hand out and smiled wider.

“I’m Peter, the person you’ll be staring at for the foreseeable future.” His tone was playful and I found myself smiling for the first time since walking into the office that morning.

Sitting next to Peter, diagonal from my desk, was a rail thin man with a terrible comb over—most of his balding head was visible through his stringy black hair. His mustard yellow shirt assaulted my eyes and he didn’t even bother glancing up from his work.

“That’s Mark,” Peter filled in with an apologetic smile.

I nodded and turned my gaze to the final man, and then I paled. It was the rude man from other morning, the one who’d bumped into me on the sidewalk and then kept right on walking as I crawled around to pick up my spilled papers.
What were the odds?

When he turned to look up at me, I expected some sign of recognition, but instead I was on the receiving end of a bored glance.

“I’m Alan, the senior associate assigned to you. I supervise you, Peter, and Mark. I don’t exactly have time to train you, but you have an education, so I expect you to keep up. We’re finishing up the final stages of a residential project and then we’ll begin designs for a competition the firm will be entering in a few weeks.”

After saying his name, he’d turned back to flip through papers on his desk, licking his thumb and using it to pry the papers away from one another.

“What’d you say your name was?” he asked, opening a drawer on his desk and pulling out a straight edge.

“Cammie,” I answered, glancing over to Peter to see what he thought of Alan. He shrugged and gave me a half frown.

“Candy, I need you to stop hovering over my desk. Either take your seat or move somewhere else,” Alan snapped at me.

I didn’t even think. I turned back and corrected him. “My name is Cammie. Not Candy.”

Without a word, he picked up his phone and dialed out, continuing to flip through papers.

How could someone be so rude?

“Cammie, how about I show you where the coffeemaker is?” Peter asked, smoothing a hand over his red beard.

He tilted his head toward the kitchen and stood and I followed after him. It’s not like I had a choice. I could have either gone with Peter to the kitchen or stared at Mark’s comb over while Alan shot me death glares.

In the kitchen, Peter turned on the company’s industrial-sized coffeemaker and then he held up two different flavor pouches. “Do you prefer ‘French Vanilla’ or ‘My New Boss Is a Giant Asshole’?”

His joke caught me so off guard that I couldn’t contain my laughter. Peter smiled and held up the two flavors. “Just kidding, French Vanilla is really your only choice. I took the last of the ‘Donut Shop’ flavor earlier this week.”

“Thanks. French Vanilla is fine.”

He nodded and dropped the pouch in before pressing start.

In that moment I decided Peter was someone I could trust. Also, I just really wanted to tell someone about my incident with Alan.

“I’ve actually kind of met Alan before. The other day, before my interview, Alan bumped into me down on the sidewalk and I fell and ripped my tights. I had to crawl around to pick up all of my stuff, all while he yelled at me for being in the way. But I don’t even think he recognized me this morning.”

Peter didn’t seem surprised by my confession.

“When I started here last year, Mark wouldn’t talk to me and Alan made me nearly cry every day.” He paused and lowered his voice for the next part. “A lot of us think he killed a temp once.”

“What?! Are you serious?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly. I think the guy just found permanent work elsewhere. He sent me a LinkedIn request last week. The point is, at the time it seemed equally plausible that Alan could have offed him.

“So did it get better?” I asked, just as the machine finished sputtering out the last of my coffee.

“I hate to say it, but not really,” Peter said with a sad smile. “The work is great, but Mark still rarely speaks. I’m pretty sure he has some kind of social anxiety disorder or something. And Alan is, well… it’s no mistake that his name is so close to “anal”. He’s meticulous and rude, so I just keep my head down and do my work.”

I nodded. “Well, now I’m here, so you don’t have to keep your head down,” I said with a smile. Peter wasn’t the type of person I usually found myself around. His beard was awesome, but probably warned most people away from him. He was tall and had the build of a rugby player, but as I followed him back to our desks, I found myself relieved to have him at my desk cluster on my first day.

However, as soon as we arrived back at our seats, my optimism was squashed.

“First rule, Candy,” Alan began, “when you get up and make yourself a cup of coffee, you bring me back a cup as well.”

Peter coughed under his breath and I tried to fight back the urge to dump my coffee out onto Alan’s hideous green shirt.

Dump it on him. Do it. Do it.

I sighed and shoved down my inner devil. There’d be plenty of time to dump coffee on Alan.

“Right. Okay. I’ll get right on that.”

And I did. I made him a cup of coffee with grounds I found in the trash, spit in it, and then gave it back to him with the sweetest smile I could muster. I might have to endure him for the next few months, but I would not take his bullshit lying down.

…

Alan kept me busy with mundane tasks until lunchtime arrived, at which point he shoved back from his desk and announced he’d be back in twenty minutes. We were expected to be back at our desks when he returned.

“I guess that rules out going somewhere for lunch,” I said, glancing toward Peter.

He frowned. “Ah, yeah. I’ve learned to just bring my lunch. I guess you’ll know for tomorrow. Do you want to share mine?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Nah, you go eat. I’m going to try and find my friend.”

I tried to find Hannah to see if she needed something to eat as well, but she’d headed out with the rest of her table-mates. Apparently, their senior associate liked to get to know his new team members by treating everyone to lunch on the first day.
How was that for fair?

Cursing my luck, I ran down to the bottom floor of the building, trying to recall whether or not there was a cafe. When I arrived, I found a room full of vending machines.
Awesome
. I unzipped my coin purse and retrieved enough change to purchase a bag of Cheez-Its and a Nature Valley bar.
That’d keep me full for all of… thirty minutes
.

By the time I made it back up to the office, my lunch break was already half way over. I was prepared to just eat at my desk, but then I noticed that for the first time all day, Grayson’s door was open.

I paused a few feet from my desk and leaned back to peer through the slim opening. Grayson was standing in front of his desk talking to a woman. I narrowed my eyes, studying the back of her slender frame, which she’d stuffed into a barely-there bandage dress. She wasn’t someone I recognized from our tour through the office, but I couldn’t see her face so there was no way to be sure.

“Are you okay?” Peter asked from his desk, clearly confused about my snooping.

I shook my head clear of jealous thoughts and turned to my desk to eat.

“Oh, yeah, I’m fine, just finding my way around,” I said, dropping my vending machine snacks onto my desk. I wasn’t sure if Peter was the type to question my interest in Grayson, so I tried to seem uninterested in my new discovery as I tore through my Cheez-Its.

Who the hell is that woman?

I lasted all of two seconds eating at my desk before my curiosity won out. I had to know who the mystery woman was and I knew exactly how I could find out: Beatrice. She was flipping through a magazine at her desk, quietly taking bites of a salad.
Beatrice was the answer
. She’d know who the woman in his office was, and she’d know to keep quiet about my snooping.
It was girl code 101
.

I dropped my snacks and stood so I could casually stroll over to her desk.

“Hi Beatrice, how’s your day going?” I asked with a wide smile.

She glanced up at me with a touch of curiosity.

“Pretty good. What about you?” she asked, flipping past another page of her magazine, this time landing on the “Look at celebrities… they’re just like us” section. I caught a glimpse of Brooklyn and Jason taking up nearly half of the page with a picture of them walking on a hike and bike trail. He was pulling a leaf out of her hair, which was apparently newsworthy.

Who was I kidding? I needed to cut to the chase
.

“Is Grayson in a meeting right now? I was going to ask him something.”

“No, actually,” Beatrice replied. “He’s with a lunch date.”

My hand instinctively tightened on the edge of her desk.
A date?
During a workday? Who does that? As if on cue, I heard a giggle from the inside of Grayson’s office. I glanced over to see his shadow loom in the doorway and then his figure cut into view. His mouth tipped into a frown when he saw me standing there but he made no attempt to talk to me. Our eyes met as he reached for the door handle and it wasn’t until he slammed it in my face that I forced myself to look away.

“Does he do that often?” I asked, trying to get the image of how incredibly hot he’d just looked out of my head.
Newsflash: he’s not looking hot for you. He’s on a DATE!

Beatrice tapped her finger on the magazine as she thought over my question. “Maybe once every few months. Not really that often. And to be honest, the girl he has in there now is a total bitch. Every time she calls to talk to him, she speaks to me like I’m the help until I connect her through.”

“Why doesn’t he just give her his direct line?” I asked.

Beatrice laughed. “He never gives anyone his direct line.”

I nodded.
Good
. Maybe my plan wasn’t completely spoiled after all. The girl couldn’t mean that much to him if he didn’t even give her his extension. I decided she was merely a distraction, but then I heard another one of her giggles and my thin layer of resolve began to crack.

Oh, gross. Who even giggles these days?

I whipped around, grabbed the processed snacks from my desk, and headed to the employee kitchen. There’s no way I’d be able to finish my lunch with the sound of their annoying lunch date.

I had two choices: I could give up my little crush on Grayson, just move on, and forget about the idea of being with him, OR I could make sure that I was dressed to kill during our dinner on Friday and put up a real fight.

I liked option two far more. After all, I wasn’t a quitter.

Still, I couldn’t get over what I’d just seen. It was so smug of him to rub his lunch date right in my face. I decided to give Brooklyn a call so I could vent, but I got her voicemail instead, so I left a heated message, jumping right to the point.

“Why does Grayson have to be so infuriating? He’s so smug, like he knows he’s torturing me—”

“Sweetie, you do realize you’re speaking out loud, right?”

My hand flew to my mouth when I heard someone speak behind me. I hadn’t seen anyone when I first walked in, but sure enough, when I turned around slowly, there was a tall blonde woman standing near the back counter. I tried to think if I’d said anything incriminating in the last thirty seconds.
Yes
.
Everything you’d said was incriminating, you idiot.