The Design

by R.S. Grey

  As soon as the heavy metal door closed behind us, he let go of my arm. We were standing on a small concrete platform with stairs leading to the floors above and below us. Out of the thirty-odd floors in the entire building, there wasn’t a single person using the stairwell. It was as private as we could get inside the building.

  “I didn’t invite Hannah anywhere. Are you clinically insane?”

  I reached up to slap him, but he caught my wrist two inches away from his cheek.

  “What in the world did I ever see in you?” I asked, yanking my wrist away from him.

  He growled and turned back toward the door, rubbing the back of his neck to calm his nerves, no doubt.

  “There’s an office happy hour Monday night. Everyone’s invited. Hannah must have overheard the conversation and embellished it. I don’t know what to tell you, but you’re acting like a child.”

  He didn’t invite Hannah?

  I’m acting like a child?

  I was still trying to connect the dots when Grayson moved toward me, so quickly that one second he was a few feet away from me on the platform and the next he was pressed against me, pushing me back against the wall and caging me in against the cold concrete.

  “I’m not dating any employees.” His breath hit my neck. “I'm not fucking any employees. But if I were… it wouldn’t be Hannah.”

  His lips touched my skin just beneath my ear, a sensitive spot that interrupted my breathing and forced me to squeeze my eyes closed.

  We paused there for a moment, on the precipice of something more. Just as I fluttered my eyes opened, prepared for him to walk away, his mouth collided with mine. The force of the kiss would have slammed my head into the wall had his free hand not reached up to cushion the blow. I gripped his arms, residual anger still burning inside of me. Then his hands found the hem of my skirt and my anger dissolved in an instant, replaced with an emotion equally as compelling: lust.

  I gripped his arms tighter, but that didn’t warn him away. His hand slipped beneath my skirt until he was touching the bare skin of my upper thigh.

  We were in the middle of an office building at the start of a busy work day. There might not have been anyone in the stairwell yet, but there would be soon. Grayson didn’t seem to care about that fact. His tongue slid past my lips as his hand pushed my skirt up higher. I was about to pull away, to warn him about us getting caught, when his finger skimmed the edge of my panties.

  My grip tightened on his arms, but there was no way to warn him of the consequences. My warnings couldn’t develop past fleeting thoughts. There was only Grayson. Grayson’s mouth as he gently bit down on my lower lip. Grayson’s hand as he gripped my hair, keeping me pressed back against the wall. Grayson’s finger as he stroked the hem of my panties.

  Instinctively, my leg wrapped up around his waist, easing his access. He moaned against my lips and then pulled back to watch me. For a moment, I kept my eyes squeezed shut, gripping onto the sensation of his touch, but then I opened them and my world lit on fire.

  Grayson was touching me, stroking me, in a stairwell in the middle of our office building. At any moment someone could walk out and spot us with my leg tangled around him and his hand hidden deep beneath layers of clothing.

  “Someone is going to walk out and see us,” I spoke through soft moans. I hardly got the sentence out before pleasure rattled my spine. I let my gaze settle on his stare and focused there as his touch grew harder and harder to ignore. He was enamored with me, with my body pressed against his.

  He bent low, circled his finger again, and then whispered in my ear. “Let them.”

  That’s not right. That’s not professional. I should have argued with him, but my mouth wouldn’t move. The words wouldn’t even form in my thoughts because, the truth was, as my body shook from an earth-shattering orgasm, I knew that I’d liked being with Grayson in a public place. The desire to be with him at that exact moment, where anyone could have interrupted us—it spiked my veins with adrenaline in a way that made it so easy to lose control.

  And he knew it.

  …

  Grayson walked back in first, leaving me with one last kiss on the lips. I straightened my clothes, leaned against the wall, and caught my breath in that stairwell for what felt like hours before finally stepping back into the office.

  “Morning, Cammie,” Peter offered with a small smile as I took my seat at my desk. I wondered if he could tell how shook up I was. Is there any redness from where Grayson’s hands gripped my neck a few minutes earlier?

  “Hey,” I murmured, taking my seat and forcing myself to look down at my desk rather than peeking back at Grayson’s office.

  “Did you hear about the office happy hour on Monday? I think we’re meeting at O’ Keefe’s right after work,” he said.

  I blushed and nodded, keeping my head down so he couldn’t see my cheeks. “I’ll be there.”

  …

  “Do you have a sexy top I can wear for a work happy hour?” I asked as I scanned through Brooklyn’s clothing later that night.

  “Why would you want a sexy top for a work happy hour? Have I raised you to get ahead by using your body? You aren’t secretly humping Alan are you?” Brooklyn asked, coming up to stand alongside me and help me hunt for a top.

  “Ew. No. I just want something that makes me feel good. Like a nice blouse I could wear underneath a blazer.”

  She didn’t need to know that the top was meant specifically for Grayson.

  “Guys! The stir-fry is almost done,” Jason yelled from the kitchen.

  “Sounds good, babe!” Brooklyn replied.

  Oh, blech.

  “Tell me again how you managed to land a cute rock star who also happens to cook?” I asked Brooklyn. Just then, I spotted a slinky cream top with crisscrossed spaghetti straps. The back was low cut, but the front was fairly conservative. It was perfect considering I’d have a blazer on in the office all day.

  “You can thank LuAnne for the cooking part. She made sure to teach him a few recipes before he left Montana.”

  LuAnne was Jason’s housekeeper back at his ranch in Middle of Nowhere, Montana. She kept everything in order for Jason while he was in LA with Brooklyn. Technically, LA was where Jason called home, but I knew he and Brooklyn both longed to go back to Montana. The ranch was where the two of them first fell in love. The ranch had served as a catalyst for their relationship and their collaboration as musicians.

  “How about this top?” I asked, pulling out the one I’d spotted and letting it fall against me so that Brooklyn could see how it’d look when I put it on.

  “It’s perfect,” she said with a clap. “Now, c’mon. Let’s go eat.”

  I took the blouse out into the living room with me so that I wouldn’t forget it. Once it was draped along the back of the couch, I followed Brooklyn into the kitchen and cracked up when I spotted Jason. His apron was completely covered in what looked to be soy sauce, and there was definitely a small piece of broccoli stuck in his hair. Clearly, LuAnne was not finished teaching him the art of cooking.

  Brooklyn knocked the piece of broccoli off before reaching on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek.

  “When do you think you’ll go back to Montana?” I asked them. “I’m sure LuLu misses you guys.”

  Jason paused cooking and shot Brooklyn a sharp glance.

  “You haven’t told her, Brooklyn?” he asked.

  I turned in time to see my sister trying to mouth something to him.

  “Told me what?” I asked, glancing between the two of them. “What are you guys keeping from me?”

  Brooklyn sighed and shot me a “please don’t kill me” smile as she clasped her hands in front of her chest.

  “We are actually heading back in two weeks.” Her puppy dog eyes weren’t enough to cover up that shocker.

  “Are you serious? For how long?”

  Jason left the stove to join Brooklyn. He wrapped his arm around her waist and brought her in close.

  “Not
for too long, Cammie. It’s just that Brooklyn goes on tour in a few months and we have to have the album finalized before she leaves. Montana is the best place for us to focus on our music.”

  Jason. Beautiful rock star Jason with broccoli in his hair. I couldn’t be mad at him.

  My sister? Now, she I could be mad at.

  “How could you not have told me before now?”

  She blanched. “We just finalized the details earlier this week. I know you have so much going on right now and I didn’t want to add anything to your plate before I knew what was happening.”

  For a second I thought about arguing with her or maybe forcing her to stay with me in LA, but then I realized that I couldn’t truly be mad at her. I had this giant secret brewing behind the scenes. A secret that was MUCH worse than her going to write in Montana with her boyfriend.

  Brooklyn had no clue that I wanted to go to Paris and if I had any hope of her continuing to speak to me after I hopped on that international flight, then I knew I needed to cut her some slack about heading to Montana. Y’know, lead by example and all that.

  “You know what? Fine, you can go,” I said before pointing to where I’d set her blouse down. “But, I’m keeping that shirt.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was impossible to concentrate at work on Monday. I’d had an entire weekend to recreate, dissect, downplay, and fantasize about what had happened between Grayson and me in the stairwell. I hadn’t spoken with him since that day, but happy hour was just a few short hours away and we’d definitely face each other then. I could hardly wait. I worked through lunch, ensuring that every single task Alan put on my desk would be completed by 4:59 pm at the latest. I didn’t have time to worry about Grayson’s whereabouts in the office if I hoped to leave work on time. I even caught the scent of his aftershave a few times but I resisted the temptation to turn around. Instead, I kept my face down and pressed on, finalizing sketches and handing them off to Alan with lightning speed.

  As the office clock struck 4:50 pm, I initialed the final sketches Alan had requested for the day and smiled. All done. I straightened up my desk, packed up my things, and signed out of my computer. My excitement was starting to brim over and I knew that Peter could tell. He’d shot me curious glances all day, but I just shrugged them off, feigning random cheerfulness. Was it a crime to love your job?

  “All done?” Peter asked with a bemused smile.

  I stuck my tongue out at him. “Some of us know how to get our work done,” I joked.

  Alan perked up and glanced over at my desk. I expected a “good job” or at least a nod in my direction. Instead, he raised his brow and reached for a crate beneath his desk.

  “I’m glad you finished. These sketches you completed a few days ago are all off. The measurements you used weren’t correct. I need you to redo them and have them ready for me in the morning.”

  He dropped the crate onto my desk with a thud and my mouth dropped.

  No. No, he couldn’t possibly do that to me.

  “You gave me the measurements I was supposed to use. I double checked each sketch,” I argued, reaching for the paper at the very top of the stack, more than sure of myself.

  Alan rolled his eyes. “Yes, but the measurements changed. We just got word from the engineering team. So change it. The new stats are written on a post-it note in there.”

  He motioned to the crate and then turned back to his work, leaving me to my own personal hell. I stared in disbelief at the sketches that would keep me at the office well past the end of happy hour. I should have known Alan would find some way to screw up my plans. After all, making me miserable was his number one goal in life.

  “Can’t she do them tomorrow, Alan? We have that work happy hour at five,” Peter spoke up.

  I shot him an appreciative smile.

  “Happy hour? Are you kidding me, Peter? These sketches take precedence over getting drunk. You of all people should realize that.”

  Peter chewed on his bottom lip, fighting with himself over whether to speak up or drop the subject all together. I decided to step in before he took the fall for me.

  “It’s fine. I’ll get them done, Alan.”

  And I would. I cared about this job and I cared about impressing Alan too much to worry about some happy hour. So what if Hannah would get a chance to hangout with Grayson while I was tethered to my desk? So what if they would laugh and have a good time while I worked on dumb sketches that didn’t even matter?

  So what?

  That’s the mantra I kept repeating to myself as I watched Peter and the rest of the architects pack up for the day. Hannah and her table-mates chatted as they stood and collected their things. I caught a glimpse of her outfit before she left: a tight black dress she’d hidden beneath a loose jacket all day.

  I sighed as I turned back to my work, spreading the sketches out in front of me so I could count how many more I had to go through.

  “Want me to stay with you? We could hammer them out pretty quickly together,” Peter offered with a timid smile that told me he really hoped I would say no.

  “Nah, you go on ahead. Have a beer for me,” I said with the biggest smile I could muster.

  …

  My phone buzzed on my desk just as I’d finished up the first half of the sketches.

  Hannah: OMG. Having so much fun! Where are you? We just did an office shot!

  Before I could stop it, the image of Grayson taking a body shot off Hannah played out in my mind with HD clarity.

  Was he there with her? He wasn’t in his office but I hadn’t seen him leave either.

  My phone buzzed again and I glanced down to see another text from Hannah. This time she’d attached a selfie of her holding up a shot to her mouth, ready to down it.

  “Fuck,” I murmured under my breath.

  I glanced back down to my pile of sketches. I had so much work left to do, but all I wanted to do was leave.

  Alan’s phone rang, jarring my attention toward his desk. I hated the fact that he’d stayed late with me. If he wasn’t there, I’d have already left and just come back to the office at the butt crack of dawn to finish the sketches.

  “What do you want, Suzie?” he barked into the phone.

  Whelp, good to know he’s pleasant to everyone in his life.

  “Are you kidding? You expect me to help you with the kids whenever it’s convenient for you?”

  I stayed stock-still as he continued yelling at the person on the other end of the line.

  “No,” he argued. “You claimed full custody so you could keep them from me. I’m not going to help you out now.”

  Oh jeez. Alan was nothing but a shrewd asshole to me, but from what it sounded like, he was dealing with quite a lot at home. I should have known something was going on with him. No one is as rude as he was for no reason.

  “Dammit, Suzie. Fine. I’m on my way.”

  He slammed his phone back onto his desk and shoved his chair back.

  I peered hesitantly up at him, confused about how to proceed.

  “Do you, um, do you want me to finish up that stuff for you too?” I asked, pointing to the papers on his desk.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head.

  “No. It’s fine. Just head home.”

  He sounded completely defeated and I hated it. It was easy to deal with asshole Alan. I could silently curse him in my head and move on with my life, but this sad, depressed version of Alan? It was unchartered territory.

  “Okay, well. Goodnight,” I said, offering him a timid smile.

  He ignored me, already en route to the elevators.

  As soon as he was gone, I reached for my phone and shot Hannah a text.

  Cammie: I’m on my way! Save me a shot!

  I stood up and slipped my nude heels back on, then pulled off my blazer. On the way down in the elevator, I touched up my makeup and let my hair down from a clip so that it framed my face and brushed against my bare back.

  I couldn’t wait t
o see Grayson’s face when I walked into the bar.

  …

  Just as I’d suspected, Pat O’ Keefe’s was just a few blocks away from Cole Designs. Its location paired with their happy hour specials (which were long gone by the time I got there at 8:00 pm) drew in a young urbanite crowd. I was making my way along the bar when a group of rowdy men wearing football jerseys sitting atop bar stools threw their arms up and erupted in cheers. The largest guy of them all nearly knocked my head off while he was celebrating but I ducked out of way just in time.

  “Oh shit!” the man said, spinning around to face me. His brows instantly rose in interest. “Ah! I’m sorry about that. Let me buy you a drink,” he said, reaching out for my hand. His friends all catcalled and it was clear that they were all three sheets to the wind. I smiled good-naturedly and kept right on walking. I’d already lost enough time with Grayson as it was.

  As I made my way farther into the bar, I finally spotted Peter’s wild red hair near a row of dartboards in the back. He was in a sea of architects from our firm. Thirty to forty people were crammed together. Drinks were sloshing and laughter drowned out the rock music playing in the background. My blouse—sans blazer—warranted a few lingering gazes as I stepped up to the group, but I brushed it off. They’re shoulders people, everyone has them.

  “CAMMIE!” Hannah yelled over the crowd.

  I turned to find her with the other new hires, Christoph and Nathan, who I’d hardly managed to speak to since starting the job. When I joined the group they both squinted as if trying to place me. Oh my god, they didn’t even remember me.

  “Cammie,” I said, holding my hand to my chest, reminding them of my name. They both visibly relaxed when I saved them from awkwardly having to pretend to know me.

  “Let’s take a shot,” Hannah said, reaching out for my hand so she could drag me closer to the bar.

  A shot sounded like a terrible idea, but I didn’t want to be a party pooper, especially since it was a miracle that I was at happy hour to begin with. I let Hannah drag me through the crowd and I trailed after her, all the while spinning my head to find Grayson. He was there somewhere. He said he would be. I wanted to ask Hannah about it, but saying his name to her seemed like a bad omen. Especially since she’d lied—or “embellished”—the fact that he’d invited her here.