I Hired My Best Friend's Sister, But What She Did To Me At A Pool Party Changed Everything

Mark rang while I was red-penning a misaligned elevation.
“Do me a solid, mate—interview Clara. She’s between things and she’s, well, brilliant.”

I grunted, because “brilliant” from Mark usually meant can spell her own name. But he had once pulled me out of a Galway bog at 3 a.m.; debts like that don’t expire.

She arrived Tuesday at ten-thirty, twenty-three minutes early. I was still locking the bike and caught her unfiltered: white shirt tucked into denim, hair yanked back like an afterthought, eyes the flat grey of cast concrete—nothing like Mark’s sloppy cheer. She extended her hand before I managed to wipe the graphite from mine.

“Clara Gallagher. Thank you for the time.”

Her grip was dry, deliberate. I felt inspected, not greeted.

Inside, the office was one converted Georgian room smelling of laser-printer toner and last night’s curry. I slid her CV across the desk: half a page, two summer internships, no degree finished.

She didn’t apologise for it. “University slowed me down,” she said. “Buildings don’t live in lecture halls.”

I asked why ceiling heights in social housing mattered. She answered with a calculation of air volume per occupant and the psychological radius of personal space, citing a Dutch study I’d skimmed and forgotten. While she spoke she rotated the model on my screen without permission, isolating the kitchen wing and mirroring it so the morning light fell three minutes earlier into the courtyard. The fix was elegant, obvious only after you saw it. My pulse gave an irritating hop.

I should have ended it there—thanked her, filed the form, told Mark she wasn’t the right fit. Instead I heard myself outlining the probationary salary, the coffee-making rota, the fact we worked Saturdays when clients panicked. Each clause was a test; she absorbed them like specifications.

When I stood, she did too, an inch closer than standard. A faint chlorine smell clung to her skin, as if she’d swum here. The distance was thin enough for me to notice the small triangle of sweat darkening her collar and then to notice myself noticing.

“I can start Monday,” she said.

I told her I’d be in touch, my voice suddenly formal, the way it got in school before a fight. She smiled—not grateful, not flirtatious, but certain—and walked out, sneakers silent on the stripped pine.

The door clicked. The office felt rearranged, though nothing had moved except the cursor still blinking inside her mirrored kitchen. I sat, pressed my thumbs against the desk edge until the skin whitened, and understood, with perfect clarity, that I had just opened a door I would spend the next months trying to close.

Monday morning she arrived with a canvas tote full of colour-coded folders and a steel travel mug that clinked against the door handle. Before I finished hanging my jacket she was already kneeling beside the plan chest, sliding drawers open, lifting tracing paper by the corners as though the sheets were contagious.

“Your filing is alphabetical by project name,” she called without turning. “That breaks the minute a client re-brands.”

I told her to leave it. She didn’t. By coffee time the timber library was rearranged by density, oak on the left, balsa on the right, each block labelled in her small block capitals. My system—chronological by supplier, the one I’d used since buying the practice—sat in a recycling box leaking glue samples.

I summoned her in at four, closed the door, kept my hands flat on the desk so they wouldn’t curl into fists.

“Clara, you were hired to assist, not redecorate. Put everything back.”

She stood, arms loose at her sides, chin lifted just enough to bare the tender skin under her jaw. A pulse beat there, steady.

“Efficiency isn’t decoration,” she said. “You lose ten minutes a day hunting for the correct plywood. That’s forty hours a year—an entire week of labour you bill at two hundred euro an hour.”

The calculation was accurate; I hated her for it. My voice stayed low.

“This office runs on precedents. I need to know where things were in 2019 without thinking.”

“Then you’ll never know where they could be in 2024.”

Silence stretched, thick as the plaster samples she’d stacked. I felt the heat rise up my neck, the same heat that preceded shouting, or something worse. She didn’t blink. For an instant the room narrowed to the space between her mouth and mine, the possibility of shutting her up with either cruelty or contact. I chose the former.

“Fix it tonight or don’t come back tomorrow.”

She nodded once, not submission—acceptance of terms. When she turned, her shoulder brushed the hanging lamp, setting the bulb swinging so that shadows slid across the walls like blueprints being rolled and unrolled. The door shut quietly; the click sounded like a timer starting.

The building fell quiet at seven-thirty when the letting agent next door slammed their communal front door. After that the only sounds were the radiator ticking and, every few minutes, the fridge in the kitchenette coughing into life. I kept my head over the Henderson drawings, red-lining the stair core that refused to fit within the seventeen-metre footprint. Nothing worked: the treads either ate the corridor width or left a residual triangle too small for a cupboard. I had sketched six iterations and hated all of them.

Across the room Clara’s mouse clicked, a soft metronome. She had said nothing since six, when I told her she could leave if she wanted. She had only shrugged and opened a new file. Now her screen glowed blue on her face, highlighting the faint shine of concentration above her eyebrows. I tried not to look.

At ten-fifteen I dropped my pen. The plastic rolled, stopped against the metal rim of the lamp. I kneaded the bridge of my nose, feeling the ache spread down into my shoulders. The drawing swam. I was deciding whether to admit defeat when she stood, bare feet silent on the boards, and placed a single sheet on my desk.

“Rotate the core ninety degrees,” she said. No preamble, no apology for speaking after hours. “Split the landing, put the storage under the half-flight. You gain two hundred millimetres and the corridor breathes.”

I stared. The solution was drawn in clean graphite: one straight flight, a quarter-turn, a niche for coats. The dimensions were correct, the headroom compliant. I had been trying to solve the wrong problem for three hours; she had changed the question and answered it in four lines.

“It’s live-load bearing,” I muttered, testing the excuse.

“Two hundred mil steel plate in the party wall. Already checked the structural regs.” She tapped the margin where she had pencilled the load path. Her nail was bitten, ink smudged on the cuticle.

I picked up my pen, added the plate, felt the drawing settle into place like a bolt sliding home. The stair fitted. The corridor widened. The residual triangle became a seat with a window. I could see the client signing off, the contractor relieved. I should have felt triumph; instead I felt the slow thud of something shifting inside my chest.

“Good,” I said, the word insufficient. I meant thank you, meant sorry, meant how did you see that when I couldn’t. None of it arrived.

She leaned one hip against the desk, arms folded, watching me finish the note. Her shirt had pulled free on one side, revealing a strip of skin and the waistband of her skirt. A freckle sat just above the elastic, small, round, impossible to ignore. The radiator clanked and we both stayed still, as if movement might break the new, fragile filament stretched between us.

I capped the pen. The drawing was done. The office smelled of toner and the orange she had eaten earlier. I became aware of my own breathing, of hers. She didn’t step back.

“Thursday deadline met,” she said, voice lower than during the day, almost conversational. “We could invoice the variation.”

“We could,” I answered, and heard the husk in my throat. I looked at her mouth, then made myself look at the wall behind. The lamp buzzed. Somewhere below, a car door slammed.

She straightened, gathered her mug, her notes. “I’ll save the file,” she offered, already turning. The moment thinned, ready to snap. I nodded, not trusting my voice, and listened to her walk away, the soft click of the mouse starting up again like a second heartbeat in the room.

The next morning she was at her desk before I arrived, sleeves rolled, measuring a section through the stair with a metal ruler. She didn’t look up when I hung my jacket, but I saw the line of her neck, the way the stray hairs at her temple caught the lamp. I told myself it was poor posture, nothing more, and opened emails.

By lunch I had assigned her the full Henderson interior package: finishes, fittings, the bathroom layouts I usually guarded. She took the folder without gloating, only asked which supplier had the quickest Italian quarry. I heard her on the phone an hour later, accent flattening into the efficient cadence I used with contractors, and felt an unwilling tug of pride.

Mark rang while I was red-lining a detail. His voice arrived first, bright as a football chant. “She still breathing? Haven’t scared her off?”

I watched her stand, stretch, reach for the sample box on the high shelf. The hem of her shirt lifted; the freckle I had catalogued last night appeared again, then vanished. She hooked down the oak swatches, unaware of being observed.

“She’s fine,” I said.

“Knew you’d click. Brain like a laser, that one.”

Click. I pressed the pen too hard; the nib split ink across the brick elevation. “She works hard.”

“And you’re not too hard on her? Remember you can be…intense.”

Clara turned, caught me looking. She didn’t smile, only held the gaze until my pulse stumbled. I swivelled my chair so the monitor blocked her.

“I treat her like any employee,” I told Mark.

“Good man. Drinks soon—my shout.”

He hung up. The office felt smaller, air thinner. I scrolled without reading, conscious of her moving behind me, the soft shuffle of tracing paper, the click of her calculator. Every sound mapped her location the way a bat registers walls.

At four she placed a stack of finish schedules on my desk. Each cell was filled, costs cross-checked to the cent. I ran my thumb down the column; the paper still held warmth from her hand.

“Good work,” I managed.

She nodded, but didn’t leave. For three seconds we stayed like that, the desk a neutral territory. I could smell soap, graphite, something citrus. My brain offered an image: her wrist turning under water the night of the pool party, droplets sliding toward her elbow. I shoved it away.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Not unless you want it.”

The sentence hung, ambiguous, until she turned back to her screen. I watched her sit, tuck the escaped hair behind her ear, and bend to the drawing. The curve of her spine made a clean arc against the grey chair. I forced myself to look at my own plans, but the lines kept rearranging into the shape of her shoulder, the small hollow above her collarbone where sweat had collected last Thursday.

Outside, clouds moved, dimming the room. Neither of us reached for the light. We worked in the half-dark, the silence between us no longer hostile, just watchful, like two animals who have agreed not to run but haven’t decided who will move first.

The clients arrived at ten, three of them in matching navy suits, folders clutched like shields. I laid out the boards, talked through the massing, the setbacks, the roof terrace. They nodded, asked polite questions, then the woman in the middle—sharp bob, sharper voice—unclipped a document and slid it across the table.

“Council says the rear wall can’t exceed nine metres. Your drawing shows ten-four.”

My stomach dropped. I remembered the email, Clara confirming she’d updated the zoning summary after the January amendment. I’d trusted the checkmark, hadn’t opened the attachment again. The room waited.

I heard myself say, “You’re right, we’ll revise and reissue by tomorrow.” Apologies followed, my hand steady on the trace as I red-lined the terrace away. The meeting ended early, handshakes limp. They left smelling of doubt.

When the door shut I stayed at the table, staring at the black slash that had just cost us five grand in redesign fees and probably the commission. Footsteps approached, stopped. Clara’s reflection appeared in the glossy laminate, blurred at the edges.

“That was my fault,” she said. No preamble, no hedge. “Thank you for not throwing me under the bus.”

I turned. She was holding the offending printout, thumb covering the small box she’d forgotten to update. Her cheeks were flushed but her eyes stayed on mine, unflinching.

“You should have checked,” I said, voice flat.

“I know. I will next time.”

The simplicity of it disarmed me more than any excuse. She wasn’t asking for absolution, wasn’t offering one of those corporate half-apologies that taste like cardboard. Just ownership, clean and painful.

I noticed her fingers trembling slightly against the paper, the same fingers that had sketched the stair fix, that tapped numbers into spreadsheets all night. A tiny cut crossed her knuckle—paper, probably—edges raw. Without thinking I reached out, brushed the drop of blood away with my thumb. The contact lasted a second, maybe less, but the shock of warmth travelled up my arm like static.

She drew a breath, held it. I became aware of the conference room’s glass walls, the corridor beyond empty, lights dimmed for lunch hour. My hand dropped.

“Go get a bandage,” I muttered.

“It’s nothing.” She folded the paper, crease sharp. “I’ll stay late, redo the schedules.”

I wanted to tell her not to, that I’d already carved the error into my own tally sheet, that protecting her felt necessary and stupid at once. Instead I said, “Fine. Bring them to me before you leave.”

She nodded, turned. At the doorway she paused, spoke without looking back. “I hate that I let you down.” Then she was gone, footsteps receding, leaving the faint scent of cedar soap and ink.

I sat alone with the revised drawing, the line of the shortened wall now obedient inside its legal box. The room smelled of toner and the mint I’d crushed between my teeth. My pulse still hadn’t settled; it beat against the inside of my ribs like something asking to be let out.

We started ordering dinner together most nights, because it was easier than pretending we weren’t both still there at nine. She’d lean over the partition and say, “Thai?” and I’d grunt approval without looking up. Within a week the delivery guy knew to climb the stairs and knock once. We ate at the drafting table, cartons between the trace paper, steam clouding the ink.

One evening she asked what music I wanted. I told her anything that wasn’t the radio in the elevator. She laughed—sharp, surprised—and plugged her phone into the small speaker she’d brought from home. Low indie guitar filled the room, the kind I hadn’t listened to since university. I made some dismissive comment about pretentious lyrics. She rolled her eyes and queued a track that had come out the year I turned twenty-one. I remembered being drunk on cheap lager in a student flat, kissing a girl who wore the same lemon shampoo I now smelled every day across the office.

We talked about professors. I admitted I’d slept through Structures twice a week. She told me her History of Design tutor wore white gloves to handle Le Corbusier prints and once gave her aD for suggesting he was overrated. “I still think he’s overrated,” she said, mouth half-full of noodles. A drop of sauce clung to her lower lip. I looked at the wall while she wiped it away.

Another night I described the time Mark and I tried to build a raft from wine crates and docked ourselves in the canal at three a.m. Gardaí lights, soaking jeans, his mother on the bank with a face like thunder. Clara laughed so hard she choked on a spring roll. The sound was loud, unguarded, nothing like the polite huff she gave clients. It punched straight through my ribcage and kept going. My chest tightened; I put a hand there as if I could steady the thud.

When her laughter tapered she was still smiling, eyes watery, cheeks flushed under the desk lamp. Strands of hair had pulled free of her knot, sticking to her neck. Without thinking I reached to tuck one behind her ear. My knuckles grazed her skin—warm, slightly damp from the heat of the food. She went still. So did I. The speaker clicked to the next song, slow drums, a man’s voice confessing something broken.

I realised the ache in my gut wasn’t irritation or even guilt. It was want, plain and simple, stripped of every professional excuse I’d repeated since the day she walked in. The knowledge arrived fully formed, terrifying in its clarity: I wanted her mouth, her laugh, the small freckle on her waistband I kept remembering. And I wanted them tonight, on the cluttered desk, rules and friendships be damned.

Her eyes searched my face. Neither of us moved. The gap between our chairs was maybe a foot, but it felt like a ledge I was already leaning over, waiting for gravity to decide.