Sketches

The Fabric store

The cat stone sat on Nolan’s desk, but its meaning had fundamentally shifted. No longer was it a monument to a clumsy lie or a dissonant variable needing resolution. Now, it was a trophy. A small, polished agate testament to the most illogical, rewarding impulse of his life. It sat beside his monitor, and now when his gaze drifted to it during a tedious conference call, it didn’t provoke unease, but a quiet, steady warmth that felt suspiciously like happiness.

Ben, of course, noticed the change immediately. He barged into Nolan’s office on Monday morning, a cardboard tray of coffee in hand, his eyes narrowing as he took in Nolan’s posture—less rigid than usual—and the faint, lingering softness around his eyes.

“Okay, out with it,” Ben said, plunking a coffee down on Nolan’s desk, narrowly missing a blueprint tube. “You have the look.”

Nolan didn’t glance up from his screen, The gears were turning in his mind and a smile was threatening to come out of his lips but he couldn't admit to Ben. after a while of silence, he maintained his composure them raised his head up.

“What look?” he asked innocently

“The look of a man who didn’t spend his weekend doing differential equations for fun. Something’s different. You’re… less scowly. It’s unsettling.”

Nolan took a slow sip of the coffee, buying time. He had no intention of divulging anything. The encounters with her felt like a fragile, private ecosystem, one that would not survive the blustery force of Ben’s interrogation. “I had a productive weekend. The structural calculations for the west wing are finally resolved.”

Ben snorted, a sound of pure disbelief. “Don’t give me that. Calculations don’t make a man look like that. This is a person thing. Did you… talk to someone? Voluntarily?”

Nolan remained silent, focusing on a particularly complex junction in his digital blueprint. His silence, as always, was a wall.

Ben’s eyes widened as they landed on the cat stone. “It’s the knick-knack, isn’t it? It’s cursed you. It’s given you feelings.” He leaned forward, his voice dripping with mock seriousness. “Tell me the truth. Did it come to life? Did it whisper secrets to you?”

“It’s a paperweight, Ben,” Nolan said, his voice flat. “And we have a meeting with the plumbing contractors in ten minutes.”

Ben sighed, defeated for now. “Fine. Keep your secrets, you sphinx. But this isn’t over.” He pointed a finger at the cat stone. “I’m watching you.”

The truth was, Nolan was happy, and the feeling was as disorienting as it was pleasant. It was a low-grade, persistent hum in the background of his consciousness, like the efficient purr of a well-maintained server. It didn’t interfere with his work; if anything, it seemed to sharpen it. The problematic stress-diagram for the library’s glass ceiling, which had been a tangled knot in his mind for days, suddenly resolved itself during a mid-morning break where he found himself thinking not about load distribution, but about the way her laugh lines had framed her eyes when she’d found his sprint so amusing.

He was, however, meticulously avoiding the park. The coincidence of their last two meetings felt like a finite resource, a streak of luck he was unwilling to test. He wouldn’t loiter. He wouldn’t engineer a meeting. If it happened again, it would be through the same inexplicable, cosmic chance that had governed their interactions thus far. To do otherwise felt… presumptuous. And desperate.

His mother, thankfully, was fully recovered, her voice on the phone that evening back to its usual, brisk tone, chiding him for worrying. “It was a cold, Nolan, not the plague. Your sister has been hovering like a hummingbird. Now you stop it too.”

The relief was palpable, lifting a weight he hadn’t fully acknowledged he was carrying. With that particular fortress wall secure, his mind felt freer to wander back to the park bench, to the sound of her voice, to the magnificent, fluid lines of her sketchbook.

A few days later, a need for a specific, acid-free archival paper for a presentation drawing forced him back to the one place he’d been avoiding: the general vicinity of Pen & Parchment. He completed his purchase with efficient speed, his body tense with a hope he refused to name. She wasn’t there. Of course she wasn’t. The disappointment was a small, sharp stone in his gut, a counterpoint to the triumphant cat on his desk. It was illogical. He knew her studio was elsewhere; she had no reason to be here on a random Wednesday afternoon.

He was walking back to his office, the flat portfolio of paper under his arm, when he passed a small, independent fabric store he’d never had cause to notice before. ‘Silk & Son,’ the gold-lettered sign read. On a whim, he detoured inside. The air was thick with the scent of dye and new cloth, a sensory overload of textures and colours that was the absolute antithesis of his own minimalist environment. He felt like an anthropologist on a new continent.

He wandered the aisles, his fingers, accustomed to the cool smoothness of a computer mouse or the grain of fine paper, brushing against bolts of rough tweed, slippery satin, and nubby linen. He didn’t understand the language of this place—the difference between chiffon and charmeuse, between crepe and taffeta. But he thought she would. He could imagine her here, moving through this chaos with purpose, her hands knowing the language of texture and drape. He stopped before a bolt of fabric that was the exact shade of liquid silver he remembered from her sketch. He reached out and touched it. It was cool and heavy, with a subtle, expensive sheen. Magnificent.

He left the store empty-handed, the sensory memory of the silver fabric imprinted on his mind. He hadn't seen her, but for a few moments, surrounded by the tools of her world, he felt closer to the enigma of her. It was a quiet, personal connection, one that Ben would have mercilessly teased him for, which was precisely why it was his to keep.