Page 27 of On His Mind

“Let me know when you start at the Whitmores.”

“I will.”

The call ends. She hangs up first, the way she always does, and the yoga video starts playing — the instructor exhaling out of the pose, telling me in her warm recorded voice to notice how my body feels. I turn it off. I don’t want to notice how my body feels right now. I roll the mat up and put it in its corner, and then I drink my lemon water standing at the counter. I tie my hair up, so it won’t get wet in the shower. When I get out, I wipe the fog off the mirror with the side of my hand and look at the mark Theo left just above my collarbone. It’s finally faded to the color of a thumbprint on fruit, yellow-green at the edges, and it should be gone by now, but it isn’t. I tilt my chin and look at it, wishing he hadn’t kissed me there. Then I grab my body oil, the good one that smells expensive, and apply it all over my body.

I step into my black stockings, the plaid skirt I set out last night, and a tank tucked in, a cardigan over it, two pins to keep my hair off my face, and lastly, the ruby gloss I’ve worn on every first day since I was fifteen because it makes me feel good. I love my rituals.

My first class is Movements of Architecture, and I know it’ll be an easy A within ten minutes of the class. The lecture hall is mostly strangers. A few faces I recognize from last year, nobody I’d call a friend, and I take a seat in the middle where I can seeeverything. The professor puts up a slide of a Roman aqueduct and starts talking about how the buildings we still love are the ones that solved a human problem and made it beautiful on the way.

I take the manila folder out of my bag and sign the internship papers in the dark with the professor’s voice going on about permanence and stone. It takes four seconds to sign. I slide the folder back into my bag, open my notebook, and pretend I’ve been listening the whole time.

Then I have Architectural Drawing I, and everything in me lights up. We go straight to the boards, no syllabus, no icebreaker, just paper and pencil. Line weight. How a heavy line comes forward and a light one falls back, how you can build depth on a flat page with nothing but pressure and patience. My hand knows this easily. When the professor calls time, I’ve filled three pages to turn in before I leave.

There’s a supply list waiting on the professor’s desk when class lets out. I fold it into my bag and plan to buy it all after I drop off the folder. I feel good, walking out into the sun.

The Whitmore Design Group takes up two floors of a converted warehouse downtown, and I hate that I love it the second I walk in.

The bones of the old building are left exposed on purpose — riveted steel columns, brick sandblasted back to its raw color, ductwork run bare across a ceiling twenty feet up. Everything they added is quiet and expensive. There are long white drafting tables, dual monitors glowing on each one, a wall of material samples arranged like art — stone, walnut, brushed brass, a dozen concretes in a dozen grays. Scale models sit under glass by the windows, whole neighborhoods shrunk to the size of a coffee table, and I want to lean over every one of them.

“Hi.” The woman at the front desk is already smiling. Julia, her nameplate says. “How can I help you?”

“I’m here for Mr. Whitmore.”

She smiles. “One second.”

She dials, and before I’ve finished looking at the models, Oliver comes around the corner in a shirt with the sleeves rolled, no tie, like a man who owns his time.

“Penelope. Hello.”

“Hi,” I say, not expecting to see him. I thought I’d be working more with his father. I inhale and hold out the folder. “I’m accepting the offer.”

“Good.” He takes it, hands it to Julia without looking at her, and then he looks at me instead — a slow, easy pass, head to hem. “Do you have a moment?”

“Just a minute. I didn’t plan for traffic, and I have an afternoon class.”

“Did you give us your schedule?”

“I did.”

“Good.” He’s already walking. “Right this way.”

The tour of the place is short. His office is in the back, glass-walled, a real drafting table beside the desk like he still draws. And then the corner, near the good windows, where an empty desk sits clean and waiting.

“That’s where the interns work,” he says.

I picture myself at it before I can help it. Morning light off the river, models under glass, my name on a badge in this beautiful, reasonable building. I picture wanting to be here.

“I like it,” I say.

“I already have work for you.” He opens a drawer and hands me a set of plans. “Read over this house layout, apply the marked changes, add your dimensions, and check that every door swing matches the plan. Then a lot I need researched — zoning, accessibility, parking. It’s all in there.” He says it lightly, the way you’d ask someone to grab coffee. “Get it back to me tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.” I take the plans. “Yes. Of course.”

“Julia will sort your schedule. We’ll have it done for you when you come in.” He smiles. “Welcome, Penelope.”

I thank him, and I mean it. He’s charming. The work is real. My mother would be so pleased. Every single part of this is good and standing in the elevator on the way down with a stranger’s house in my hands, I can’t figure out why my chest is tight.

I have Building Systems I back on campus in forty minutes. I make it with two to spare.