Page 11 of Boss's Baby Surprise

“No, I wanted to show you that.” I gestured to the buildings we could see more comfortably from where we stood than if we had stopped by their front doors. We stood about halfway over the river on the bridge. “It’s the juxtaposition of classical revival next to something some people consider the very definition of modern architecture.”

I gestured with my right hand again. “London House, more specifically, the cupola on the roof. It’s one of my favorite little gems hidden in the city.”

“Have you ever been up there?”

“I’ve been to the bar, but the cupola is pretty exclusive and in high demand for things like wedding photos and proposals. Every time I’m there, it’s closed for a private event,” I said.

“Maybe you should reserve it for yourself?” he suggested.

I looked over at him. His head was tipped back as he looked at the roof line. It was just enough to show off the slope of his neck and the bump of his Adam’s apple. Dark beard stubble covered the edges of his sharp jaw and neck. I could have stared at him for hours.

I decided that a tour of my favorite view in Chicago would have required handing him a mirror. It wasn’t fair how good-looking he was. It felt almost cruel for him to be so funny, nice, and flirty around me.

It took me a long moment of staring at my own reflection in his sunglasses before I clued in that he was looking at me and no longer glancing up at the building.

I cleared my throat and glanced away. “And of course, One Illinois Center,” I said as I gestured at the other building.

“Interesting,” Kyle said.

“What?”

“That in the midst of your pointing out your love for the revival temples, you also include this one. Now I’m wondering, what is your aesthetic for these choices?”

I grimaced. “Romance versus expectation?”

He returned his gaze back up to the skyscraper. “Okay. Tell me more about expectations.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “I’m an architecture student in Chicago. I’m supposed to be enamored with modernism and ‘form follows function.’”

“Bauhaus, good,” he muttered and nodded.

“Beauty in simplicity, machinery, speed for speed.”

“You might be confusing some Futurist concepts in there, but okay.” He kept nodding.

I let out a sigh. “Look, I get it. When this style showed up on the scene, it was hot and new, and if I spent my entire life beinginundated with the over-the-top ginger-breading of Victorian architecture, I might get giddy looking at the clean lines and functionality of brutalism. You said earlier not to overthink and to show you what I liked and not worry whether you were going to judge me, right?”

He nodded.

“It’s a very unpopular opinion to have, and even more so in this field. I’d be laughed out of some classes for not aspiring to be as lean and clean as Mies van der Rohe. But I’ve grown up with the cheap knock-offs of modern architecture that have bastardized the concepts from something sleek and sexy in design to boring and uninteresting because why bother having visual interest when it just needs to have a door, some interior space, and a roof? I understand the importance of the design of this building, its designer, and its place in time. I can understand that and still find it to be architecturally uninteresting.”

“Even in context?” Kyle asked.

“Which context? Nineteen thirty-eight Germany? This would have been unimaginable. Nineteen sixties Chicago, the latestnewest, a feat of engineering and design. Here, now? It's a big glass box.”

I pointed at the four glass and concrete buildings next to it. “So are those.” I pointed back to the cupola on top of London House. “And that building has an ancient temple on top of it.”

I watched him as he stared at the buildings for a while longer. I knew he had seen them a million times before. He had to have studied them. Hell, he might even be in the school of thought that form follows function was the basis of his designs. He ran his hand over his jaw.

“And the fifth one?” he asked.

I looked around to reorient myself. Looking up at the tops of the buildings had me twisted around. We headed north on Michigan Avenue and then turned west on Superior. I kept walking for blocks, taking sips of my water as we went. We passed apartment buildings and hotels, and then I stopped in front of a small mustard colored row house wedged between apartment high-rises.

Kyle started laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“I should have figured you would have picked this place.”

---