Priya cornered her the next morning by waiting outside Aria's classroom door and fell into step beside her the second she walked out.

"He defended you," Priya said.

"Good morning to you too."

"Aria, he defended you. In front of Sneha's whole group. Publicly."

"He was clarifying a fact." Aria replied.

"He was—" Priya stopped walking. Grabbed her arm. "okay listen to me. I have watched Zayan Rathore for one full year, he doesn't clarify facts of peoples and he minds his own business."

"So?"

"So he involved himself, for you. That's not nothing."

Aria kept walking.

"It was nothing Priya."

"Your eye is twitching."

"It is NOT—"

"LEFT one. Right now."

Aria walked faster.

She spent the whole morning trying not to think about it. Which meant she thought about it constantly. The way he'd said it "He didn't try to switch" like it mattered to him that people had the right information about her.

Like she mattered.

Stop, she told herself.

Stop it right now.

She have to go to the studio at seven.

He was already there, Of course.

They worked in silence for a while and that was terrifying.

"You're distracted," he said without looking up.

"I'm not."

"You've redrawn that same line four times."

She looked at her paper.

She had.

Four times. Exactly the same line. Exactly the same place.

She put her pencil down.

Stared at the paper.

"Why didn't you try to switch?" she asked.

The pencil stopped moving.

Silence.

Not awkward but he was figuring out what to do with it.

"Because you're good," he said.

"There are other good people."

"Not like you."

She looked at him. He was already looking at her.

"You see things fast," he said. "The east elevation and the passive cooling. Well you catch things other people miss and you say them without waiting for permission." He paused. "I didn't want to lose that."

Aria looked back at her paper.

Her heart was doing that thing again.

The unnamed thing.

"That's very logical," she said.

"I'm a logical person."

"I know."

Silence.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

She looked up. "Okay."

"Why do you always wait?"

She frowned. "Wait for what?"

"Before you speak, before you correct something and before you say what you already know is right." He looked at her properly. "You hesitate alot every time, like you're expecting someone to tell you you're wrong before you even say anything."

The studio felt very quiet suddenly.

"I don't do that."

"You do."

"Zayan—"

"Aria."

Just her name, that's all . But it made her stop completely.

"Whoever made you feel like your gut wasn't enough," he said. "That was their problem. Not yours."

She didn't say anything.

Couldn't.

Because nobody had ever said that to her before.

He just said it and looked back at his sketchbook .

Aria looked at her paper.

Her throat felt tight in a way she didn't know what to do with.

"We should get back to work," she said.

"Yeah," he agreed.

They did.

But something was different now.

She knew it and she was almost sure that he knew it too and neither of them said a single word about it.

She didn't name it.

Not yet.

But she stopped pretending it was nothing.