Elias has me working as his personal little handyman now. He drags me to job sites, finding a perverse joy in dubbing me his “Little Drill Boy.” Ass. But I suppose it’s the least I can do for the sanctuary of his spare room.
The heavy cedar plank digs into my shoulder as I haul it up the ladder.
“Watch the angle, Calder,” Elias barks from the roof. “You’re drifting left.”
“I’ve got it,” I grunt, sweating through a five-dollar t-shirt.
I hoist the wood over the lip of the roof. Elias grabs it with hands that look like catcher’s mitts wrapped in leather. He secures it with a nail gun, thwack, thwack, thwack, a sound violent and utterly devoid of nuance.
I climb up and straddle the ridgeline.
We’re fixing a gazebo roof for a wealthy dentist in the suburbs. From here, five miles out, I can see the city skyline, a jagged silhouette of grey and blue against the afternoon sun.
I wipe sweat from my eyes with a forearm caked in sawdust.
“Water break,” Elias says, uncapping a thermos. He eyes me. “You’re staring at it again.”
“Staring at what?”
“The city. You look at it like an ex-girlfriend who owes you money.”
I look away, reaching for my own water bottle. My phone buzzes in my pocket. I shouldn’t check it, I’ve been trying to break the dopamine loop, but the vibration is insistent.
I pull it out. A Google Alert I forgot to turn off.
ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST: KEANE & ASSOCIATES UNVEILS THE SILVER THORN, A MASTERPIECE OF MODERN SUSTAINABILITY.
The thumbnail image is my design: the cantilevered steel, the glass atrium. It’s beautiful. It’s aggressive. It’s exactly what I envisioned.
And below the headline, in the subheading: Lead Architect Tabitha Moreno on the vision behind the year’s most anticipated build.
My name isn’t there.
A hollow, sour ache opens in the center of my chest. It isn’t heartbreak; it’s ego-death. I spent two years bleeding for that building. I missed anniversaries for that glass. I missed Margot for that steel. And now the world thinks Tabitha Moreno built it.
“Bad news?” Elias asks. He lights a cigarette, watching me too closely.
“No.” My voice comes out tight. “Just… news.”
I shove the phone back into my pocket, but the image is already burned into my retinas.
“You miss it,” Elias says. It isn’t a question.
“I don’t miss the hours,” I say, picking up a hammer. “I don’t miss the stress.”
“Bullshit,” Elias says cheerfully. “You miss being a god. Up there,” he points a calloused finger at the skyline, “you pointed a finger and things got built. Millions of dollars. People kissing your ass. Down here? You’re just a guy, sweating on a roof with an old man.”
I grip the hammer until my knuckles ache.
“I hate this,” I admit. The words tumble out before I can stop them. They taste like bile.
Elias raises a brow and lights a cigarette.
“I hate the quiet,” I say, and once I start, I can’t stop. “I hate that nobody knows who I am. I hate that I’m fixing a gazebo for a guy who thinks I’m stupid because I struggle with a drill,” Elias snorts. Like I said, ass. I continue, “I miss the adrenaline. I miss walking into a room and being the smartest person there. I miss the prestige.”
I look back at the city. It would be so easy to call Arthur. To apologize. To say I’ve come to my senses. He’d take me back. He needs me. I could have my name back on that building by Monday.
“So go back,” Elias says, blowing smoke into the wind. “Nobody’s keeping you here. You got the skills. Go be an architect.”
