by Lucia Jordan
The smirk in his face and the slight tilt in my head gave me an indication that he was talking about more than just tiny build planning.
“Wonderful!” Tim booms. “Coffee for everyone.”
I looked around but only saw the three of them, and there were thirty coffees.
“Lisa,” he said as he turned to his new assistant. “Can you please make sure that these coffees get delivered to all of the staff.”
“Sure,” she stammered. “But didn’t you want me to attend the—”
“Not necessary,” he interrupted as he pushed the coffee cart toward her, making sure to take three coffees of the top tier before handing it totally over.
I needed to wait for the cart to take back to the café, so I just stood there as I watched Lisa push all the coffees down the hall. I should have volunteered to help her in order to make the job go faster.
“Brooke,” Tim said as he waved for me to follow him and Max into the conference room. “Join us. We’re just about to have the initial build meeting.”
“Uh, I don’t work here anymore,” I said as I pointed to my café apron. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to do, but I was currently on the clock for the coffee shop, and I needed that cart back. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “We would still value your opinion.”
I looked over at Max, who smiled and tipped his head toward the conference room to try to coax me into coming. Since I had nothing better to do while I waited, I followed them in.
I sat down at the meeting table, and Tim laid out the plans for the tiny home community in Spokane. I had started on the project with them right before things had gone sideways between Tim and me, so I was already pretty familiar with most of it. But they had added a lot of design since the last time I had seen it. It was an impressive project, to say the least.
“What are your thoughts?” Tim said as he watched me look over the blueprints.
“It looks like you’ve already got it all laid out,” I said. “Looks great.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I want to know what your specific thoughts are. Tell me, if you were going to live inside one of these modular container homes, what would you want inside it?”
“Like design elements?” I asked.
“Yeah. I need to really get a feel for what people might want on the interior of the builds. Tell me what your likes and dislikes would be if you were going to purchase one yourself.”
“Well,” I said as I looked the designs over more closely. “I would want a lot of natural light and openings to the outside. Container homes can feel claustrophobic if there isn’t any natural light, so I’d have lots of glass windows and skylights, maybe even one of those fancy domed skylights that you created, Max.”
I saw Max scribbling doodles down on a notepad next to me. That was how his brain took notes, in doodle form instead of words.
“What else?” Tim asked.
“Umm, I would make the bed comfortable but also convertible. If you think about it, a queen size bed is big enough for most people and most couples, but it takes up a lot of room in a container home. So what if the bed were built into sections that you could pull out and easily lay down every night, but in the mornings, you could retract it to create a more open sitting space—kind of like a Murphy bed.”
“I like that,” Max mumbled as he sketched away.
“What color would you have the bedding be?” Tim asked.
“I don’t think my personal color choices would matter,” I said.
“Just tell me as an example.”
“I guess violet and like moss green. I would have the bedroom color scheme to reflect the entire space of the house.”
We talked back and forth between the three of us for long past the time that the coffee cart was returned. The assistant tried to come into the meeting, but Tim waved her away. She just left the cart by the door and wandered off to find something else to keep her busy until it was closing time. It was nice to be back and feel like I was working at my position here again. I loved this job and wished that things hadn’t gotten so complicated.
As if he could hear my thoughts, toward the end of the meeting, Tim asked me to return to the company.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said as Max watched on to see how this was going to play out.
“Please, Brooke,” Tim pleaded. “We need you here at Cubed. Your ideas and your help are valuable and needed here. I know you loved your job, and we want you back. Even if you decide not to return to me, at least return to the company. You can have the same position and everything. You can pick up right where you left off and jump onto the Spokane project with us.
“What about your new assistant?” I asked.
“She’s really pretty terrible at her job here,” Max laughed. “I hate to say that about anyone, but I just don’t think that girl is cut out to work for a big company. Are they hiring at the coffee shop?”
I laughed.
“Come on, what do you say?” Tim asked.
I wanted this job back. I wanted to be able to afford my own apartment again. I wanted to be able to work at a job that valued and used my talents instead of making lattes for grumpy downtown commuters. But if I came back to work at Cubed, then that would mean I would be spending each day alongside Tim, and I just didn’t know how I could do that. It was torture even just sitting here in this room with him now; I wanted to both kiss him and smack him simultaneously. I also felt bad just quitting on the barista job. It may have only been a coffee shop, but I owed Kate for it, and I didn’t want to bail on her. She was the one who stood by me through everything.
“Let me think about it for a night,” I said as I got up from the table to return the cart to the café before the manager thought I absconded with it.
“At least that’s not a no,” Tim smirked.
After I returned the cart to the coffee shop, Kate and I only had a few more minutes of our shift before hanging up our aprons to go home. I was surprised that the manager didn’t give me any trouble about being gone almost the entire day for one delivery, but she said that apparently, Tim had left such a giant gratuity on the bill that the manager would be happy for months.
When we got back to the apartment, both of us put on pajamas and curled up on the couch together to have some girl time. Nick wasn’t coming over tonight, so it was just the two of us, which was perfect. I wanted to talk to Kate and ask her what she thought about Tim’s offer.
“I think you should take it!” she said after I explained the situation.
“But what about my job at the coffee shop?” I asked.
“Screw that menial job. You know working at Cubed is an actual career, there’s no comparison.”
“But you got me that job, and I don’t want to just bail on it.”
“Oh, please,” Kate laughed. “The baristas are a dime a dozen. Not that I don’t love working with you every day, but you deserve a better job. So do I. I’m interviewing for a marketing position next week as well.”
“Really? That’s great!”
“Yeah, so honestly, Brooke, I think you should take your old job back. People would kill to have that job, and no matter what happens with you and Tim, I don’t think you should ruin your career over it. You might just need to suck it up buttercup and get to work!”
I laughed at how cute Kate was, even when she was profoundly serious. She was completely right. I needed to take my job back.
“Thanks, Kate,” I said as I gave her a big hug.
“Always,” she smiled. “Okay, now tell me about what’s going on with Tim.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I delivered the coffee, and the three of us talked about the Spokane project, and then he offered me my job back. That was all.”
“Yeah, but that’s not all. He cares about you, Brooke, a lot. I think you need to give him a break.”
I was about to say something in rebuttal to that idea, but Kate didn’t let me. She put her finger over my lips so that I didn’t give an answ
er tonight. Then she gave me another big hug and told me just to think about it for a day or two.
“You know what we need to do?” she said as she hopped up off the couch and over to the television cabinet. “We need to watch a movie. Just an old cult classic, vegging-out, girl’s night flick. Want to?”
“Hell yeah! I’ll go make the popcorn,” I said as I bounced off to the kitchen.
10
Chapter Seven (Tim)
I felt as though I was at least halfway successful since Brooke texted late last night and agreed to return to her job. I wanted to text her back a million things and ask when I could see her again outside of work, if ever at all, but I knew that it wasn’t the right time for me to push that. So instead, I just texted her back a simple. Wonderful, see you in the morning. And I left it at that. At least she would be returning to the office, even if she wasn’t yet returning to me.
Brooke laid out some pretty clear parameters outlining her agreement to return to the company. I was starting to wonder who the actual boss was. She said she would come back on a temporary basis to see how things went, which I translated to mean that she was feeling out to see if we could work in the same space together without things getting weird.
During the course of the week, Brooke and I worked alongside each other on the big Spokane project. Although I made sure to stay professional and reign in anything that could be misconstrued by her as anything less than a platonic work relationship, the sexual tension between the two of us was reared up at every turn. And it wasn’t just from me; it was emanating from Brooke as well. She would reach across the table for something and accidentally brush against me, and I could hear the tiny gasp that she would make. When we rode the elevator together, if we arrived or left work at the same time, it was impossible not to hear our labored breathing inside the enclosed container. I was trying so damn hard to resist her and wait for her to be ready to talk to me about our relationship again, but the fact that I could see the angst on her face, too, made it a million times more difficult.
As we got further and further into the project, Brooke was showing a real interest in the tiny homes that we were building. Her interest seemed to go beyond the marketing and design level that was a part of her job and encroached more into a personal appeal. I even heard her mention something to Max about wanting a container home for herself one day. That’s when I knew I had to take her to the mountains.
“Brooke,” I said as we were sitting in the meeting room together after Max had left for the day. Brook and I were finishing up some work on the publicity ads that we were going to launch on the company’s website after the project was completed. “I was wondering if you’d like to come to see my house.”
She looked up at me with a suspicious stare.
“I’ve already been to your apartment, Tim. We used to date, remember?”
I knew she was sarcastic, but she still had no idea what I was actually referring to.
“That apartment isn’t my house,” I said. “It’s just my downtown apartment that I keep for late nights at work so that I don’t need to drive to the mountains every day during the week.”
“You have a home in the mountains?” she asked as she lifted her head to look at me fully.
“Yes, and it’s actually an amazingly designed building. It’s made out of four of our modular container homes. Max helped me to design it. I’d really like you to see it and get your opinion about the design conversion. There’s no other house like it, and I thought that maybe I would incorporate a few of the aspects of the build into the Spokane project.”
I could see that she was really interested and wanted to see the house. I also noticed that she was hesitant about coming home with me.
“Look, I promise that it’s just to come to see the house. I won’t try to kiss you or touch you, and we don’t have to talk about anything but the design elements. You can follow me there in your car and leave whenever you want.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about your house while we were dating?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I didn’t think about it.”
There were a lot of things I didn’t think about while we were dating. In fact, there were a lot of things that I’d never thought about before now. I didn’t know why I didn’t feel the desire to show Brooke my house in the mountains and why now I wanted so badly for her to see it. It was like my priorities had shifted at some point when I wasn’t paying attention. I waited for her to answer, expecting her to say no and prematurely feeling bummed that she wouldn’t get to see what a marvelous design feat it was.
“Okay,” she said as she picked up her purse and keys.
“You’ll come?” I asked in surprise.
“Yeah. But just to see the house.”
11
*** (Tim Continued)
I was half afraid that Brooke was going to chicken out and bail on the drive before we even got there. I kept obsessively checking the rearview mirror to make sure she was still behind me and kept waiting for my messages to ding with a text from her saying that she had changed her mind and was going home. But as I pulled up to the house, she was still behind me.
I got out of my car and walked over to her. There was no driveway since the entire structure was literally built into the side of the mountains and nestled between their shoulders. It was all wilderness aside from the one spot of modern innovation that I had built within the landscape. There was no light pollution, no noise from the city—nothing but sky and trees and grassy, wild mountains.
“Wow,” Brooke slowly said as she got out of her car and looked around in a complete circle. “This is incredible.”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “I thought you would like it.”
“Come on,” I said as I went to reach for her hand to bring her up to the house. I stopped myself as soon as I did it, remembering the promise I made to her to be professional and withdrew my hand.
I led the way up to the house, and we stood in front of it for a minute as she marveled at the construction.
“Unbelievable,” she said. “You and Max did this?”
“I mean, yeah. We designed it, and we did a lot of the building ourselves, but of course, I also had a contracted crew to help.”
“Whose idea was it to stack the modular containers off-center of each other like that?” she asked.
“Mine.”
“And who’s idea was it to build it jutting out of the mountainside?”
“That was Max.”
“Amazing,” she remarked almost in a whisper. “The two of you make a truly impressive team.”
I agreed. Max and I did make a great team. The nagging voice in my head told me that Brooke and I made a great team, too, but I kept that sentiment to myself for now. I opened the front door, and we went inside.
The walls of the house—at least the ones that weren’t in the mountainside—were mostly made of glass, so there was nearly a full panoramic view of the mountains from anywhere in the house. Since it was already evening, the night sky was starting to appear in all its brilliance. I gave Brooke the complete tour of the converted home, showing her all of the unique design elements that Max and I invented and which of those components I thought might be good to pull ideas from for the Spokane project.
When I had finished showing her everything, I was getting ready to walk her back out to leave even though I really didn’t want her to. But then I stopped when I noticed that it didn’t look like she really wanted to leave, either. I went out on a limb, fully aware that the last time I did, it bit me in the ass but taking the chance again anyway.
“Do you want to stay for a drink?” I asked. “I have a pretty awesome bonfire outside that I can light up if you’d care to join me. No pressure, just offering.”
“Sure,” she said to my great surprise.
I walked over to the kitchen to snag a bottle of bourbon and a couple of glasses and asked Brooke to grab some of the blankets off the couch since it was chilly out. The
n we went outside to sit on the mountainside and have a drink beneath the stars.
I lit the bonfire as Brooke poured our glasses and laid out the blankets. The flames started to stretch up into the sky and let off a warm contrast to the chilly air that always sent my senses tingling. When I came back to sit down on the blankets with her, Brooke had her head tilted back to look at the stars in the sky. She handed me my glass, and we both took a sip that warmed us from the inside out.
“It’s so beautiful here,” she said in awe. “I can see almost every constellation. Cassiopeia is my favorite.”
“It’s that one there,” I pointed up into the sky at the star formation she was talking about.
“You know the constellations?” she said, sounding surprised.
I nodded.
“I think there are quite a few things that I don’t know about you,” she said. “Tell me something else that I don’t know.”
“Is this a test?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Okay, let’s see. I play the guitar,” I said.
“You do?”
“Yep. Only out here in the mountains, though. I like the way the acoustics here work, and I like how it sounds when there’s no one and nothing around but nature.”
“I would never have guessed that about you at all,” she said.
I noticed the corners of her mouth turn down into a slight frown. “What is it?” I asked. “You hate guitar?”
“No,” she laughed lightly before returning to a more serious expression again. “But I think that I may have been wrong about a whole lot of things.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You thought that I was just an arrogant, billionaire playboy, who liked to use women for sex and use the money for everything else.”
When she didn’t say anything, I continued, “You thought that you were dating a man who took advantage of his position as your boss to have a convenient relationship with his assistant. And then when another woman came along, let’s say in a limousine maybe, that he stopped paying attention to you because he had his eyes set on other pursuits that didn’t include you anymore.”