Clare was the lead interior designer. Ethan was the structural engineer of record. They would need to work closely, which his project manager had said in a way that's suggested she was bracing for conflict cuz apparently Clare had a reputation for challenging structural decisions she didn't agree with. His project manager was not wrong. The first time they argued, it was over a loadbearing wall on the third floor that Clare wanted to remove in favor of an open community room.
Ethan had explained with what he considered admirable patience that the wall was loadbearing for a reason, and that the reason was physics. Clare had explained with what she clearly considered equal patience, that physics could be solved if he'd look at the alternative support solutions she'd attached to the email he apparently hadn't read. He'd read the email. The solutions were good. He'd told her so and something in her expression had changed.
Like she'd expected to keep arguing and was momentarily recalibrating. And then she'd said, "Okay, let's talk through implementation." And they'd spent 2 and 1/2 hours at a whiteboard going back and forth. And somewhere in the middle of it, Ethan had realized he was genuinely enjoying himself, not performing enjoyment, not going through professional motions. enjoying it. He went home that night and told Mrs.
Delgado, who was still there when he got in late, that he'd had a good day at work. She'd looked at him for a long moment. Mijjo, she'd said, "That is the first time you have said that in 8 months. He hadn't known what to do with that." So, he'd gone to check on Lily and told himself it didn't mean anything, but it kept happening.
Clare argued with him about sightelines, and he found himself looking forward to the argument. She showed up at his office with site photos and ended up staying 40 minutes past what was necessary. Uh talking about the families who would actually live in the building they were designing, what the space would mean to them. And Ethan caught himself thinking this is what I went into this field for, which was a thought he hadn't had in a long time. She remembered that he took his coffee black with one sugar, not because she was trying to impress him, but because she'd noticed it once and filed it away the way she filed away every detail about the people around her, which was one of the things he came to understand was just how Clare operated.
She paid attention to the building, to the people, to him, not to Lily's dad, not to the widowerower from the third floor, which was how he sometimes heard himself described at the office. Not cruy, just factually. The way you might describe someone by a defining characteristic to Ethan. She would ask him how he was doing, not how Lily was, not how the project was going, how he was doing, and she'd wait for a real answer, not the reflexive fine that he'd mastered giving everyone else. And something about the waiting made it harder to lie.
I'm tired, he'd said once and immediately felt exposed because men like him didn't say things like that. Of course you are, she'd said simply. You're carrying everything. She hadn't offered advice. Hadn't suggested therapy or self-care or any of the other well-meaning things people said.
She'd just said it like it was a fact she'd observed and wanted him to know she'd seen. He hadn't forgotten that. What he'd done instead was build a careful, precise, well-maintained distance because Clare Bennett was 32 years old and brilliant and funny and alive in a way that made rooms feel more populated and she deserved someone without a story. Someone who could take her to dinner on a Friday without calculating if Mrs. Delgato was available.
Someone who wouldn't need her to understand that he still kept Sarah's reading glasses in the nightstand drawer because he wasn't ready to move them. Someone without 4 years of grief sitting in his chest like concrete. She deserved better than a man who was mostly scar tissue pretending to be whole. That was what he told himself. He'd told himself this for 2 years. sitting in that bar with Clare's weight warm and slight against his legs and the noise of Friday night all around them.
A e Ethan turned over the same logic he always turned to. He picked it up, examined it, tried to make it fit the moment. It didn't fit the moment because she'd seen the empty seat and she hadn't taken it. And that meant something he was too honest with himself alone. at 35 with no one watching to pretend he didn't understand. Marcus was telling another story.