"You're saying what you need to say about the cantilever. You're not saying why you're really here."
I looked away first. That was the problem with Finn. He'd always been able to hold a silence longer than I could.
"I'm here because I needed a second opinion," I said. "That's all."
"Okay."
"It's not a crisis, Finn."
"I didn't say it was."
I pulled the drawings back toward me, rolling them carefully. "I should go. I have a meeting at eleven."
"With Callum?"
"With a client."
He nodded and didn't push. That was the other thing about Finn. He knew when to stop.
I packed my bag and he walked me to the door. The coffee was still warm in my stomach. The morning light had shifted, throwing longer shadows across the drafting tables. I could smell the ink and the wood and something else, something that reminded me of late nights in the architecture building back when we were both twenty-one and convinced we were going to change the shape of the world.
"You remember the Cantilever Competition?" I asked, my hand on the doorframe.
"Junior year. You almost won."
"We almost won. You and I were a team."
"We were a good team." He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. "You did the structural work. Callum did the talking. That was the pattern, wasn't it?
"Callum always did the talking."
"He's still talking."
The words hung there. I didn't answer them. I didn't have to.
"You were the best designer in that program," Finn said. "Everyone knew it. Callum knew it. I don't think you ever believed it."
"I believed it."
"Then why do you look surprised every time someone treats you like you are?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it. That was the second time this morning I'd almost laughed and didn't.
"I'm not surprised," I said. "I'm out of practice."
Finn's expression didn't change, but something behind his eyes did. A flicker. Recognition.
"You should come by more often," he said. "I mean it. If you need a second opinion. If you need someone who reads the drawings instead of the room."
"I'll think about it."
"That's not a yes."
"It's not a no either."
He smiled then. A real one, small and quick. "With you it never is."
I stepped into the hallway and the door closed behind me with a soft click. The stairs were cool and dim after the brightness of the studio. I took them slowly, one at a time, and I thought about the cantilever and the tension rods and the beam pockets. I thought about Finn's hand moving across my drawing, adding something instead of erasing it.
