I SAW YOU FIRST
Chapter Two: Tuesdays
The text arrived at two in the afternoon from a number Lily didn't recognize, and her pulse did something unprofessional before she'd even read it.
The Morrow Howell assignment came through on Thursday morning. James Harmon called her into his office, which was itself remarkable: James Harmon, founding partner of thirty years, had never once summoned her individually. He told her that Cross Meridian had requested she be assigned as lead junior associate on the historical restoration.
"Do you know Nathaniel Cross?" he said.
"I met him on Tuesday," she said.
James Harmon's face communicated almost nothing after three decades of practice, but something moved through it briefly, a small seismic flicker.
"He was specific," James said. "He named you."
"We spoke about the building. On the Meridian rooftop."
"He goes up there sometimes," James said, in the tone of a man who had long since stopped questioning a valuable client's particular habits. "The project is significant. Twelve years on our books without a restoration plan. If you move it forward, that's good for the firm." He looked at her over his glasses. "Presumably good for you too."
"Yes."
"I'll pair you with Patrick Chen."
"I'm Lily Chen."
"Not related," he said, without looking up, already moving to the next item on his desk as though the question had merely needed confirming.
"I know."
She left his office and stood in the corridor with the specific disorientation of someone who had just been given exactly what she wanted and was recalibrating around the fact that she'd gotten it, her hand pressed flat against the cool wall for a moment just to feel something solid. He named me, she thought. He went back and named me to James Harmon.
At her desk she did not look at her phone. There was no reason to expect a text. They had exchanged no contact information.
There was a text.
Unknown number: The coffering is there. We had someone in the building today. Your instinct was right.
She stared at it for a long moment, something warm unfurling under her ribs.
How did you get this number? she typed back.
Your firm's contact sheet. I apologize for the informality. I'll use proper channels for project communications.
This is proper channels, she sent, before she'd thought it through.
A pause. Then: Good.
She set the phone down and felt the word land somewhere low in her chest, warm and unreasonable. Good, he'd said, in the exact tone of a man getting the answer he wanted, and she found herself smiling at her monitor for no reason a colleague walking past could have named.
* * *
Tuesdays on the rooftop became a pattern, though not an arranged one. Neither of them made plans. He was there on Tuesdays because he was there on Tuesdays, and she was there because Tuesdays were her long days and the Burgundy was good and the view was what it was, and the fact that these two separate patterns produced regular overlap was something neither of them addressed directly, though Lily found herself choosing her outfit on Tuesday mornings with more care than she admitted to.
She found herself looking forward to those Tuesdays with an intensity that embarrassed her slightly, the way she caught herself redoing her hair in the office bathroom mirror at half past five, telling herself it had nothing to do with him and knowing it had everything to do with him.
By November she had visited the Morrow Howell twice with the project team and drafted the first phase of the restoration proposal. Nathaniel hadn't come to either site visit himself; he sent Helena, the Cross Meridian project manager, a capable and precise woman who communicated exclusively in comprehensive briefing documents. But he texted after each visit. Always about the building. Always specific. Lily found herself anticipating those texts in a way she didn't examine too closely, checking her phone between meetings with a small private thrill each time his name appeared.
What did you find in the lobby today?
The coffering extends further than visible, she wrote back. Northwest corner has intact plasterwork behind a service panel. The restorer will need access.
How do you know there's a service panel?
I looked at the original 1921 blueprints. On file at the city historical commission.
A long pause, and she imagined him reading it twice. You went to the historical commission?
The archive is public.
Another pause. Helena handles archive research.
I know. I went in my own time.
The longest pause yet. Then: Come to the rooftop tonight if you're free.
Her thumb hovered. It's Thursday, she typed, as if that settled anything.
I know.
She went.
* * *
He was there at seven, the rooftop quieter than any Tuesday, two distant tables the only company. The Burgundy was already waiting when she sat, ordered the moment she appeared, not an assumption so much as the version of assuming that worked because it arrived warm and immediate.
"The blueprints," he said.
"They're filed by year. Most people don't bother looking."
"You bothered."
"The building is interesting." She felt his gaze settle on her, the full weight of attention she'd been cataloguing since October, and her skin warmed under it despite the October chill off the terrace.
"You have a relationship with this building," he said.
"I sketched it for three months before I knew you owned it."
Something shifted across his face, a flicker of surprise he didn't trouble to hide. "Three months."
"Since August. The angle from this rooftop. And from the corner of Fifty-Third." She glanced across at the Morrow Howell. "There's something about the crown detail. The original architect, Bertram Fowler, 1921, had this thing about terminal ornament. Excessive by modern standards and exactly right by the logic of the building."
He said nothing, very still.
"It's in the restoration proposal," she said.
"It is. I read it this afternoon."
"Helena sent it?"
"She emails me everything. I read what interests me."
"And my proposal," she said.
"Interests me."
She looked down at the table, suddenly aware of how close he was sitting, how the candle between them caught the line of his jaw. "Nathaniel. The texting. After the site visits. What is that?"
He considered the question with the care he brought to everything. "Information. About the project."
"There are formal channels. Helena."
"Yes."
"So why text me directly?"
He held her gaze. "Because Helena sends reports. And you tell me about the service panel and the northwest corner as if the building is a text you're interpreting." A pause. "I find that more useful than reports."
"You find it more interesting," she said.
"Both."
"You're doing it again," she said. "Being honest about watching without making it alarming."
"I wasn't aware there was a technique. I'm being accurate."
"That's the technique."
Something considered moved behind his eyes, quieter than surprise. "Lily."
"Yes."
"I should tell you something."
"Tell me." Her heart had begun, quietly, to pick up its pace.
He looked at the Morrow Howell, its crown lit at this angle by the streetlights below. "I come to the rooftop on Tuesdays. I have for three years. My offices are on the thirty second floor. I go up when I need to see the city from outside rather than within." A pause. "Three weeks before we met, I came up on a Tuesday and you were here. In the corner. Sketching."
She went still, the glass stopped halfway to her mouth.
"I didn't speak to you," he said. "I went back to my table. But I noticed the angle you'd chosen. The Morrow Howell."
"Three weeks," she said.
"You were here three Tuesdays before I introduced myself. And each time I" he stopped. "I watched from across the terrace. I know how that sounds."
She studied him: the most direct person she had met in twenty-five years, telling her plainly that he had watched her for three Tuesdays before speaking, telling her because he believed she should know. No smoothing. No mitigation. Her pulse had gone unsteady somewhere in the middle of his sentence, and she found she did not want it to settle.
"Why did you speak on the fourth Tuesday?" she asked.
"Because I had watched the angle of your sketchbook for three weeks, and I understood you were drawing the Morrow Howell specifically, which meant you'd thought about it specifically, which meant you had something to say about it." His gaze didn't waver. "And I wanted to hear it."
"That is," she said slowly, "a significant amount of watching."
"Yes," he said. "I know."
She looked at the crown across the way, excessive and exactly right. "What do you want?"
He went very still. "Honesty requires," he started, stopped, began again. "The project, which is real, and which I value your input on. And" he held her gaze, "more than that."
"More than the project."
"Yes."
"We work together now."
"The project is with Harmon. I'm the client."
"You're the client who texted me about a service panel," she said, something warm and reckless rising in her chest.
"Yes. I'm aware."
"Nathaniel."
"Yes."
"I don't know what this is," she said. "What we're doing."
"Nor do I. Exactly."
"But?"
"But I watched you sketch for three Tuesdays and then one Tuesday I sat down, and tonight I asked you here on a Thursday, and I read your proposal this afternoon and texted you because I wanted to tell you it was good." A pause, something almost vulnerable crossing his features. "I don't usually want to tell people things."
She studied him, Nathaniel Cross, thirty-eight, who owned the Morrow Howell and the building they sat on and probably six others visible from this rooftop, who had texted her about a service panel and was here on a Thursday because he'd read her proposal and wanted to say it was good.
"Tell me," she said.
"It's very good. The coffering argument. The case for full crown restoration." He paused. "The language about terminal ornament. Where did you get that phrase?"
"Bertram Fowler's own commission notes. Also at the historical archive."
"You went twice."
"Yes."
"For a building you started sketching three months before you knew it was a professional project."
"Yes."
Something unguarded crossed his face. "Lily."
"Yes."
"Can I take you to dinner? Not the rooftop. Properly."
She looked out at the city, the crown, the Tuesday that had somehow become a Thursday. "Not tonight," she said, her pulse loud in her own ears.
"When?"
"Saturday. Give me until Saturday."
"Why Saturday?"
"Because I want to think."
He nodded, the specific controlled nod of a man deciding that waiting until Saturday was, in fact, acceptable.
"I'll text you," she said.
She gathered her sketchbook and went, and in the elevator she thought about three Tuesdays of watching and a Thursday text and a rooftop in October, about the building that belonged to him and the crown she had sketched before she knew. The elevator doors reflected her own face back at her, flushed, unmistakably pleased, and she did not bother composing it into something more professional before she reached the street.
She texted him on Saturday morning. Dinner. Seven.
His reply came instantly. I know a restaurant.
Of course you do.
I own the building.
Naturally.
Something that read, even in text, like the edge of a smile. Then: I'll see you at seven.
She looked at her phone for a long time, her whole body humming with a kind of anticipation she hadn't let herself feel in years, a warmth that started somewhere behind her ribs and spread slow and stubborn through the rest of her. He saw me first, he'd told her. Three Tuesdays before he introduced himself.
I saw you first, she thought. In August. The Morrow Howell from this angle.
He saw me.
I saw the building.
We saw each other through it.
That, she thought, seemed about right.
* * *