The Design(3)

He came to sit down on the chair beside the couch and turned toward me just as a popcorn kernel got lodged in my throat. I turned away and tried to pound my chest to get it out. Please, God, take me. This is the worst moment of my life.

“You okay?” he asked, drawing my attention back toward him. There was a hint of a smile hidden somewhere beneath his hard exterior.

The first time we’d met, I hadn’t seen his features up close. From my seat on the couch, every contour of his sculpted cheekbones, straight nose, and angular jaw were like my own personal siren call. Dark brows framed distant eyes—the sort of eyes that did a better job of keeping people out than letting them in. But it was his lips, his lips, that completely did me in. When those lips hitched into a suggestive half-smile, I realized I’d failed to respond to his question.

“I’m fine,” I muttered, my face enflamed with a blush that didn’t want to recede.

“Oh, Grayson. This is my baby sister, Cammie!” Brooklyn cooed, reaching over the back of the couch to grab my shoulders. “She’s a senior in high school this year.”

I’d never wanted to strangle my sister more than I did in that moment. Sure, I was wearing pajamas pants with baby sheep jumping around on them, but she didn’t need to drive home the point that I was practically a toddler in Grayson’s eyes.

His brow arched as he regarded me from his armchair and I inwardly groaned at what he was probably seeing. Had I brushed my hair or my teeth yet that day?

Before the situation could get any worse, I stood with my popcorn bowl and left the living room with a whispered grumble about needing to get my homework done. Brooklyn was probably seconds away from telling him that I’d wet the bed until I was six or that I’d only had my braces removed the year before; I was not going to stick around for that kind of mortification.

I locked myself in my room, pulled out my sketchbook, and started to draw Grayson on the first few pages. Every single detail of his appearance was still fresh in my mind and I didn’t want them to fade before I finished.

I sketched with my back against my bedroom door so that I could be sure to hear if Brooklyn was approaching my room. I’d have rather eaten my entire sketchbook than let her see the drawings I was working on.

Just as I was almost finished, I heard Grayson speak up in the living room, his deep voice penetrating my bedroom walls. He was talking about his job as an architect at a firm downtown. He explained to Brooklyn how he wanted to branch out on his own and design things without some failed architect-turned-manager constantly hovering over his shoulder. I sat there with my ear pressed to my door as he talked about what his firm would be like and the kind of buildings he wanted to design.

An architect.

At the time, my future career hadn’t been my top priority. I was too busy trying to grasp onto anything I could find easily: boys, partying, alcohol, drugs—none of which had succeeded in replacing what I had lost when my parents had died. I kept floating further and further away from my old life while Brooklyn tried desperately to reel me back in. Just three weeks before I’d told her that I didn’t want to graduate from high school knowing our parents wouldn’t be there to watch me walk across the stage. I didn’t want to move away to college knowing our parents wouldn’t be there to help me unload my car, so I’d pushed everything out of my mind.

It’d been incredibly easy.

Too easy.

Until that moment.

I remember sitting against that doorframe and daydreaming about becoming an architect, just like Grayson. I loved to draw. I had sketchbooks filled to the brim, and when I was younger I’d dreamed of going into a creative field. Was it too late?

I grabbed my laptop from my bed, slunk back down onto the floor, and researched architecture programs in Los Angeles for hours. My options were limited, but I still had time to make something happen before graduation.

I hadn’t realized it then, but that night was the first time I’d started to think about my future since the day my parents had passed away… and I had Grayson to thank for it.

For the next few months, I brushed off requests to party. I pushed aside the bad influences and locked myself in my school’s art room after the final bell rang each day. I had a portfolio to build and hardly any time to do it.

The next time I saw Grayson after he’d unknowingly changed my life was at Brooklyn’s twenty-second birthday party. I knew he’d be attending, so I’d tried to dress up my seventeen-year-old frame in a way that screamed “precocious chic”. I had too much make-up on and wore a dress that was fighting to cut off circulation to my lungs. I teetered along in high heels I had no business wearing.

When we arrived at the party, Grayson was already there with a gorgeous blonde girl hanging on his arm. She looked like she’d just stepped off the catwalk in Milan and as she smiled wide, pressing her palm to his chest, my hope deflated. I paused at the front entrance of the restaurant as every question I’d planned on asking him, every conversation starter that I’d brainstormed over the last few days slipped away along with my naive hope. I remember feeling so silly standing there in a dress that gapped around my hips where seductive curves should have been.

I’d done a stupid thing by putting my faith in an absolute stranger. For those last few months, since he’d first appeared in my life, I hadn’t done a single reckless thing. I’d made curfew, I hadn’t sneaked out at night, and I’d told my sister exactly where I’d be when I was going out. Grayson had been my reason for changing, but as I stood there and watched him with that woman, a beautiful woman his own age, I had a sudden yearning to do something crazy, to get out of my own head for a few hours.