“I know, love. Student loans will kill us all. But seriously, you are the best young architect they have. You can’t tell me that frat boy nephew of Mr. Tate’s has one ounce of your talent.”
I took a sip of coffee to hide my grimace at her accurate assessment of our most recent hire, Jason. “I don’t like to speak ill of people. Anyway, hurry up, glamor puss. I need to shower.”
She tutted before dabbing some gloss on her lips and giving herself a side-to-side preen in the mirror.
“You look great,” I said.
She came out the doorway and pointed at me. “And you’ll have your name on that masthead before long. But in the meantime, after you get this promotion, maybe we can all move to that new building by the marina and finally have a view.”
Our main picture window looked over a cobblestone alley and faced the brick side of the next row of homes. It was a beautiful brick wall as brick walls went. Antique, built hundreds of years ago, and adorned with earthquake medallions. But it was still a wall. A view could be nice.
I grinned. “Thanks for the pep rally. And I’m all for a view, but don’t sell me on a view of boats, you know how much I hate boats.”
Tabs closed the door to her bedroom but not before poking her head back out. “You hate being on a boat. Looking at boats is not the same thing.”
“Fine,” I conceded with a laugh.
I showered quickly, tying my hair out of the way, glad I’d had the foresight to wash and blow it out the day before.
Meredith, Tabitha, and I had moved in together after college. I’d still had a year of architecture grad school, but Tabitha was already earning a decent income from the agency she’d started out of her dorm room, and Meredith had just started at a small investment firm courtesy of her family connections. We’d lucked out when we’d found this apartment on the top floor of a converted row house in downtown Charleston. It was in the historic district. I loved the historic district. There were some of the best restaurants in the South on our doorstep, architecture to admire, and history to steep in. And girls’ night with some dancing and a couple of martinis was never more than a few steps away. But we were definitely cramped and still all sharing one bathroom. Almost four years later and the other two could afford more, but I’d been paying off student loans, with plans to then save every nickel in order to one day buy in as a partner at my firm. I was determined to be the youngest partner in the city. Before then though, I had a promotion and pay raise to negotiate. After that, I might consider moving.
I still worked at the same firm that had sponsored my architecture residency right out of college. Meredith and Tabitha had tried to get me to shop around. They said it was my aversion to change. But I called it being unfailingly loyal.
I finished up in the bathroom in record time and realized when I came out that Meredith still wasn’t up. She’d had bad cramps the night before, so she was probably exhausted. I poured a cup of coffee for her into an insulated camping mug, added her favorite vanilla creamer, and tiptoed into her room. She was a lump of pale pink duvet topped with streaky, dyed blonde hair poking out the top. I put the cup on her bedside table for when she woke up.
Within twenty minutes I’d done my makeup and run a flat iron over my waves to combat the Charleston humidity. I dressed in a navy pencil skirt, blue linen blouse, and stuffed my most comfortable pair of heels into my bag. I hated the archaic dress code at work that women had to wear skirts. It was ludicrous in this day and age. Especially when we went to job sites. But working at such a highly respected firm made me keep my mouth shut.
I took my bag and roll tubes full of my latest plans into the kitchen so I could make breakfast. The sun had finally come up, and golden rays of it slanted through the alley outside and through the window across our worn slip-covered sofa.
“Hey, let’s do a girls’ night tonight.” Tabitha looked over the top of her laptop. “I haven’t been out for ever. Invite