She’s going through a window phase and that’s all she’ll sketch. Windows looking out onto oceans or a backyard filled with flowers and trees. Windows in houses that look old and lived in and comfortable.

Before this it was streets. Before that it was clouds and skylines. Before that it was him.

Sometimes when he leaves for the day, he’ll stop by her desk and see if she’s thrown out any sketches. He’ll take the ones he finds home and pretend. Pretend that it isn’t a little weird that he goes through her trash can after she’s left. Pretend that someday he can give her a house like that with a window like that and a yard like that.

While Michael goes on about diversity and being color blind, she’s got a half finished window on her notepad. He looks over at it briefly. He can tell by the way she’s done the shadows that it’s late evening and it’s summer. He likes the way her wrist looks when she’s doing the shading on a drawing. He smiles a little to himself and notices her looking at him.

“It’s good,” he whispers.

“Thanks.”

She tears the sheet from her pad and hands it to him.

“Oh. You don’t have to-”

“No, take it.”

He doesn't say that he’s got about ten at home. He just takes it from her hand, thankful to have one that isn’t crumpled up. He folds it into quarters neatly and puts it in his pocket.

A few minutes later, he hears her whisper something quietly under her breath. Something that sounds to him like, “Someday, right?”

He looks over and she’s falling asleep, her eyes halfway closed and her head swinging back and forth.

Her heads hits his shoulder and she turns so her cheek is warm against his shirt. He smiles slowly and closes his eyes, thinking: Someday.