I made a judgment call. Her voice was completely unrepentant. What did he want? He told her. All of it.
The new division, the three cities, the team leadership, and then the last part. He wants to bring you in as design lead. It would be both of us building the division together. The silence that followed was different from other silences. It had texture.
He could almost feel her processing it in real time. The same way she processed things in meetings thoroughly without rushing, accounting for everything that she started. Big, he said really big. I know. How do you feel about it?
I don't know yet. How do you feel? I don't know yet either. A pause. Are we actually doing this?
Are we the people who build things together professionally? And also she stopped. Is that too much overlap? Is that going to already do it? He said, we've been doing it for 2 years.
We're good at it. We argue. We argue. Well, there's a difference. He paused.
The beam is still standing. She laughed short, surprised. The beam is going to be your reference point for everything now, isn't it? It's a good beam. It really is.
She got quiet again. Ethan, if we do this both things, the professional and the She searched for the word. The personal, he supplied. The personal. If we do both, I need you to know that I'm not going to disappear into it.
I'm not going to make myself smaller to make it work. I've done that. Her voice was steady. I won't do it again. I would never ask you to, he said.