It happened on a Friday night.

They were the last two people in the studio. Again, this had become a pattern she'd stopped pretending to ignore.

The model was done. There was nothing left to work on tonight. And yet here they both were.

Neither of them mentioned that.

Zayan was sketching something that wasn't the project. She didn't ask what.

She was reading the same page for the fourth time.

At some point the rain started again. Heavy this time, loud against the windows, the kind that made the city disappear and the studio feel smaller. Closer.

Aria looked up from her book.

Zayan was already looking at her.

She didn't look away immediately. That was the first mistake.

He didn't look away either. That was the second.

Three seconds. No maybe four. Just looking at eachother. The lamp between them warm and quiet. Rain loud outside. Everything else very still.

Then she looked down at her book.

Her heart was doing the unnamed thing at full volume now.

"Stop,"she told herself.

"Stop.. stop... stop..."

"Can I show you something?" he said.

She looked up. "What?"

He turned his sketchbook around.

It was a building. Small, detailed, pencil lines careful and sure. Not a hotel or a glass tower. Something low and warm looking with lots of open space, courtyards.

It breathed. She could see it immediately. The whole thing just breathed.

"This is yours?" she said.

"First year, before anyone told me what I was supposed to be building."

She looked at it properly.

The proportions, the way light would move through it at different times of day, the way the courtyards would create natural airflow.

"This is really good Zayan."

Silence.

"I know," he said quietly.

"Why haven't you shown this to Professor Singh?"

"Because it's not what wins scholarships."

Aria looked at him.

"It should be," she said.

He looked back at her.

That thing again...

That kept happening between them and never got resolved and was getting harder to ignore every single time.

She should look away.

She knew she should look away.

She didn't.

"Aria," he said.

Just her name again but the way he said it sometimes that made it feel like more than a name.

"Don't," she said just as quiet.

He stopped.

Looked at her.

"Don't what?" he asked but his voice said he already knew.

She looked back at his sketchbook. At the building that breathed.

"We have a scholarship to win," she said.

"I know."

"And only one of us can win it."

"I know that too."

Silence.

"So we can't—" she stopped.

"I know," he said.

Just that "I know."

Like he'd been having the same conversation with himself for weeks.

Maybe he had.

Aria closed her book and packed her bag slowly.

At the door she stopped.

Didn't turn around.

"It's a really good building," she said.

A pause.

"Goodnight Aria," he said.

She walked out into the rain.

Stood there for a second, rain soaking into her hair, city loud again after the quiet of the studio.

Her heart hurt in a way she didn't have a name for.

She walked home.

Didn't look back.

Mostly she wished she had.