The Design

by R.S. Grey

  “Yes! I loved that house.”

  He logged onto his email, pulled up the design, and walked me through the changes Mitch had sent over.

  Sitting on his lap as he worked at my computer ended up being the most fun date I’d had in a while. (I guess I couldn’t make fun of him for being a nerd. Talk about pot calling the kettle black.)

  When he was done sending Mitch a reply, I handed him his glass of wine and pulled out my cell phone.

  “Now, it’s my turn to teach you something,” I said as he swiveled in my desk chair to face me.

  He quirked a brow in interest and pulled me down to sit on his lap.

  “What are you going to teach me?” he asked, kissing my shoulder.

  “The art of a prank call.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  On Monday morning I had two missions to complete:

  1. Arrive early for a design meeting with Alan, Mark, and Peter to finalize our company’s design submission.

  2. Arrive twenty minutes before that meeting so I could complete my own submission.

  That morning, I’d put on a black silk blouse and black slacks in an attempt to look and feel like a badass ninja, but as I took the elevator up to the twentieth floor, my confidence began to wane.

  Two weeks ago, one week ago, hell, even twenty-four hours ago, the idea of submitting my own design had seemed like a good idea. Then I’d learned of the last requirement I needed to include with my design proposal. It was a requirement I hadn’t prepared for, and one I couldn’t quite justify in my mind. Each submission had to be accompanied with a signed letter from the CEO of the company, confirming the design entry and validating the work. Since the CEO of my company was Grayson… that meant, I needed his signature. Or at least one that looked like his.

  I’d tried to think of some way around it. At first, I thought of creating my own fake architecture firm so that I could leave Grayson and Cole Designs out of it completely, but I knew that wouldn’t work. If I truly wanted to proceed with my submission, I’d have to break into his office, find a piece of letterhead, and forge his signature. The thought didn’t sit well with me for obvious reasons. I would have never started my own design submission if I had known how far I would have had to drag Grayson into it with me.

  As the elevator continued to rise, I thought of all the ways that I was playing with fire. Submitting my own design and stealing company letterhead were both in violation of company policy. Those two things were bad enough, but paled in comparison to the idea of betraying Grayson.

  Was it truly that important for me to submit my own designs? I’d completed them and I knew they were really good. Why couldn’t that be enough?

  I couldn’t fully explain it. A part of me needed to submit my own design just so I could prove to Alan that I was capable of great work. Another part of me felt like I was rebelling against every “Alan” I’d had to deal with in the architecture world. In college, I’d been forced to watch my male classmates receive internships and design awards not because of their talent, but because they were part of the boys’ club. Misogynistic males ruled the design world and I was sick of sitting on the sidelines.

  When the elevator doors opened, I glanced down at the manila envelope in my hands. It held all the keys to a great design, and it was stamped, labeled, and ready to be sealed once I had the letterhead to add to it. I cringed at the idea of having to trash my design, especially when I knew I had a real chance of winning. On the other hand, if I chose to proceed I’d be jeopardizing everything Grayson and I had built in the last few weeks.

  I stepped into the office and stood for a moment, surveying the dark room. No one was there yet. My meeting with my table-mates wasn’t due to start for another twenty minutes, but Alan would probably arrive five minutes early, so I had to get a move on if I still wanted to find a piece of letterhead.

  I set my things down on my desk and did a quick run-through of the office, just to ensure there were no accountants or interior designers trying to get an early start to the day.

  The office was empty and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. If someone had been there, my decision would have been made up for me. Instead, I was alone with my options and still unsure of what I wanted to do.

  Either way, time was running out. If I wanted to proceed with the next part of my plan, I needed to do it now.

  My hands shook as my conscience warred with me to stop.

  If you break into his office, you’ll ruin his trust in you.

  If you break into his office, he’ll never forgive you.

  I couldn’t give up yet, though. My design was good and I wanted someone to recognize that. I moved toward Grayson’s door, slowly, and without real intent. I can still turn back at any time. Once I stood in front of it, I glanced over my shoulder and tried the door handle.

  Unlocked.

  I sighed; one less thing I’d have to feel guilty about. Was I technically even breaking in if the door was unlocked?

  “YES!” my conscience screamed at me.

  But maybe it was a sign that I was meant to proceed?

  My heart rate picked up as I slipped past his door. This is wrong. I’m a bad person. I tried my best to ignore the nagging thoughts in the back of my mind.

  I walked straight to his desk and pushed his heavy leather chair out of the way. His mahogany desk was annoyingly clean, which meant there were no stray pieces of letterhead waiting for me there.

  My gut told me that I was doing the wrong thing. Grayson meant more to me than this dumb submission. Right? But, at the same time, just because I got a piece of his letterhead, didn’t mean that I had to go through with the plan. I can still stop at any time. I’d get the piece of his letterhead and then decide.

  I checked my watch and then turned to his desk drawers. The top left drawer was completely filled with office supplies: pens, pencils, paperclips, and a stapler. I moved to the drawer beneath it but it was locked and so was the drawer at the very bottom. I cursed under my breath and shot to the other side of the desk. I could feel a cold sweat trickle down my neck and I knew my time was running out. If Alan decided to show up ten minutes early instead of five, he’d catch me red-handed.

  Grayson’s top right desk drawer was unlocked, but it was full of junk: stray business cars and rubber bands. I rifled through its contents to no avail.

  Shit. Shit. Shit. If I didn’t find a piece of his letterhead, the committee wouldn’t accept my design submission and I’d have snooped around his things in vain. I had to find at least one piece.

  I tried to pull open the second drawer on the right only to find that it was locked. The rest of the drawers were all locked as well, which meant I had to revert to plan B. I reached for the bobby pin I’d set down on top of his desk and finagled it into the small gap in the lock. Five seconds passed and it didn’t budge. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. I rotated the bobby pin in every direction and tried to shove it into the hole as far back as I possibly could. Nothing helped. Maybe lock-picking wasn’t quite as easy as it looked in the movies.

  I shoved my bobby pin back into my hair and mulled over every idea I could think of. Maybe he kept his stationery somewhere else? No. It would definitely be in one of his desk drawers. I sighed and pulled open the top right drawer again, looking for anything that could help me.

  I shoved aside the highlighters and drafting pencils, and then my fingers touched cold metal.

  A key.

  Without hesitation, I pulled it out and tried it on the drawer I’d just attempted to break into.

  It worked. The drawer slid open, and inside, waiting for me in a neat pile, was Grayson’s stationery. I squealed as I pushed aside two boxes of business cards so that I could reach the pristine stack of letterhead at the back of the drawer. The Cole Design logo was printed at the very top and beneath that, “Grayson Cole, CEO” was embossed in bold black lettering.

  I reached for one, then thought ahead and grabbed two. With my luck, I’d accidentally rip the first on
e or spill coffee on it and have to repeat the whole process over again.

  I’d done it. I had the letterhead and I could submit my design. I pushed the drawer closed again and it locked into place just as the phone on Grayson’s desk started to ring. The shrill sound made me jump out of my skin as it ricocheted off his office walls. It rang again, the piercing sound seeming to grow even louder. Without thinking, I reached out for the phone, and pressed the first button I could find.

  The ringing stopped and I stood frozen, unsure of what to do. Why had I touched it at all? I should have just let it ring!

  A second later, his voicemail began playing on speakerphone and Grayson’s voice surrounded me.

  “Hi, you’ve reached Grayson Cole. I’m not in the office at the moment so leave your name and number and I’ll give you a call when I get in. Thanks.”

  Hearing his voice made me feel a sharp pang of guilt for what I was doing. Grayson trusted me and how did I repay him? By breaking into his office and stealing company property.

  What was I doing? I had to get out of his office. I couldn’t go through with the plan. I couldn’t forge his signature.

  As I started to move, his voicemail cut off and then the person who’d called started to leave a message.

  “Hey Grayson. It’s Mitch. I have some things to discuss about—”

  I scrambled to end the message. I couldn’t listen to one of his client’s messages. I didn’t need anything else to feel guilty about. I reached for the phone and pressed down on the same button as before, hoping to cut off the voicemail. I needed to get out of there, but Mitch’s message wouldn’t go away. I kept pressing buttons, cursing under my breath, until finally, Mitch’s voice cut off.

  Get out. Get out. Get out. I repeated the phrase over and over again as I replaced the key and rolled his chair back to where it had been positioned before I’d moved it in the first place.

  “First saved message,” the voicemail began.

  “No! Crap!” I stammered.

  “Hey, Grayson. This is Frank from Whitmoor Apartments.”

  I reached to stop the message from playing, but paused with my hand midway over the desk.

  Whitmoor was my building.

  “We were able to install that security system you asked for on unit #450.”

  My unit.

  I could feel the color drain from my face as Frank continued on.

  “I’ll shoot the bill over to your email and I’ll include an invoice for that portion of the rent you requested.”

  What the hell?

  I reached for the phone and slammed my hand down onto every button until the message cut off. Truthfully, I wanted to rip the phone from the desk and chuck it across the room, but I refrained. Instead, I stood there in a daze, trying to replay the last few seconds in my mind. Maybe I hadn’t heard what I thought I’d heard.

  No, I definitely had.

  Why in the world was my landlord calling Grayson? How did he even know who Grayson was?

  As calmly as possible, I clutched the two pieces of Grayson’s letterhead in my palm and left his office. I glanced back once, ensuring everything was in its correct place, and then paused when my gaze landed on his phone.

  In a matter of two minutes, my world had flipped upside down.

  What the hell was Grayson doing installing a security system in my apartment without asking me? And what was Frank saying about my rent? Hannah and I split the rent 50/50 each month.

  None of it made sense and there was no time to try and decipher it. Alan, Mark, or Peter could walk in at any moment and I didn’t want them to see me standing in his office.

  I had a layer of sweat on the back of my neck, my heart was hammering against my ribcage, and my stomach was twisted into a tight, anxious ball. All morning I’d been unsure of whether or not I could proceed with my submission. But then I heard that message, and my world wasn’t so black and white anymore. That message had effectively made my decision for me. I was going to submit my design. For the next ten minutes, I operated like a robot. I shoved every emotion below the surface as I went about the motions I knew I had to do.

  I loaded the letterhead into the printer beneath Alan’s desk and pulled up the summary for my design proposal that I’d worked on over the weekend.

  Once it was printed on the letterhead, I took a deep breath and forged Grayson’s signature at the bottom of the page. There, in wet black ink, was visible proof that I was jeopardizing everything in my life by submitting my own design.

  Would Grayson forgive me if he ever found out?

  Would he ever find out?

  What did it matter, anyway? Grayson had his own secrets to worry about.

  Without another thought, I slipped the letterhead into the manila enveloper and sealed the top.

  Done. There’s no going back.

  By the time I made it back up to the twentieth floor after slipping the envelope into the building’s outgoing mail, I felt completely numb. I should have felt guilty, angry, sad, or at least somewhat regretful, but I couldn’t manage a single thing.

  I stepped into the office to find Alan, Mark, and Peter at their desks, chatting amiably. I watched Peter peel his satchel over his head and hang it on the back of his chair as Mark silently took his seat.

  They didn’t notice me at first, not until I was almost at my seat.

  “Hey Cammie. I was wondering if you’d left your stuff here last night,” Peter said, pointing to my purse on my desk.

  “Nah. I got here a few minutes ago and then ran down for some coffee.”

  Peter glanced down to my hands, which were clearly not holding a cup of coffee.

  “Drank it down there,” I explained, though I should have just shut my mouth.

  Peter nodded slowly and Alan turned to inspect me.

  “Morning,” I offered. He gave me a curt nod and took a seat.

  I was the last one to sit down and as soon as my butt hit the chair, Alan began to drone on and on about the company’s design submission.

  “We’re a little behind on our proposal and it needs to be in the mail by noon today,” Alan said, reaching into a desk drawer to pull out our design packet.

  I hid a smug smile. I’d done all of the design work on my own and I’d still managed to get it done, yet as a group, we were behind.

  “I want you each to set aside your morning work and focus on this. We need to have everything together by 11:30 am at the latest. They pick up the mail downstairs at noon and we don’t want to chance it.”

  We all agreed, and then Alan doled out tasks to each of us. Mark and Peter were both given actual design work but he put me on letterhead duty.

  “They want a summary of our submission. Just explain our design and give a general idea for the project,” Alan said, sweeping his hand to dismiss me to my work.

  I opened my laptop and opened a blank word document. I was more than prepared to write our summary considering I’d just finished writing one for myself.

  “And only go off of the things we discussed during our meetings. None of that other crap you tried to suggest,” Alan added with a clipped tone.

  I clenched my fists to keep from saying anything too disrespectful.

  Any small flame of regret that was burning inside of me was effectively squashed by his attitude.

  “Sure thing, Alan.”

  He glared at me from the corner of his eyes, but I was too busy typing bullshit to notice.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I obsessed about the message I’d heard on Grayson’s answering machine for the next twenty-four hours. I tried to convince myself I’d heard the wrong apartment name, the wrong apartment number, the wrong words altogether. I tried to convince myself it’d been part of an elaborate dream, but in the end, I knew what I’d heard, and I knew that Grayson and I had a relationship that was muddied with deceit and lies.

  I tried to pin Grayson down on Tuesday so that we could talk, but his schedule was jam-packed with design meetings. At 10:30 am,
he had a meeting with Mitch. That meeting overflowed into his 12:30 pm meeting with Serenity. I watched her pace back and forth in front of his office, expelling an exasperated huff every few minutes so that we’d all know just how much of her time he was wasting. Finally, at 1:00 pm, Grayson’s office door opened and I twisted my head to watch him say goodbye to Mitch and then turn to greet Serenity. He looked devastatingly handsome. His suit jacket was gone, probably hanging on the back of his chair. Everything else was quintessentially Grayson: shined shoes, cuffed shirt sleeves, gelled hair, straight tie, and killer smile. The killer smile was directed at me when he caught me staring up at him. My gut reaction was to smile back, and I did, before realizing how twisted our relationship had become in the last few days.

  There was very little to smile about.

  Did he have any idea that I’d broken into his office? Had I left anything out of place?

  “Sorry for the wait,” Grayson said to Serenity. “I have about thirty minutes before I’ve got to run to a job site.”

  “That’s fine.” She smiled. “You’ll approve these designs as you always do. I know exactly what you like,” she gushed. I rolled my eyes.

  Grayson offered her a curt nod and then ushered her into his office, leaving the door slightly ajar. It was a thoughtful gesture, but I had too much on my mind to care that he was alone with Serenity.

  “Cammie, I need you to stay late tonight. We’re behind on a few projects because of that design proposal,” Alan said, jarring my attention back to our table group.

  “I can stay late too if you need it,” Peter offered, meeting my eye.

  I gave him a small smile, inwardly cursing Alan to the pits of hell.

  “Fine,” Alan agreed before picking up his phone and dialing out.

  I stayed busy the rest of the day, nearly jumping out of my skin every time Grayson’s office door opened. Finally, around 3:00 pm, he bid farewell to Beatrice and left the office for a job site. My phone vibrated with a text message a few minutes later.