Avery
The glass never lied.
That was the first thing my mentor, Miriam Chen, taught me when I was twenty-two years old and stupid enough to think I already knew everything about architecture. "Glass doesn't hide, Avery. It reveals. Every joint, every seam, every flaw, the sun will find it, and the sun will show everyone exactly where you cut corners. So don't cut corners."
I thought about Miriam's words now as I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of my fourteenth-floor apartment, watching Seattle arrange itself beneath a sky the color of wet concrete. The Space Needle jabbed upward in the distance, a needle in a haystack of steel and glass and ambition. My reflection stared back at me; a woman in gray sweatpants and an oversized university sweatshirt, dark hair piled into a knot so tight it pulled at her temples, dark circles under eyes that had seen too much of this particular sunrise.
The glass revealed everything. And what it revealed was a woman who hadn't slept, who hadn't eaten properly in days, who was surviving on coffee and the kind of brittle energy that comes before a complete collapse.
I turned away from my own judgment.
The apartment was small but perfect
It was my first real purchase after the promotion, the first space that was entirely mine. I'd designed the layout myself, knocked down a wall to combine the living and dining areas, chosen every piece of furniture for line and proportion and the way the light would hit it at different times of day. A Noguchi coffee table. A sofa in deep navy blue. Shelves loaded with architecture books and design magazines and the occasional paperback thriller I'd never admit to reading.
It was supposed to be my sanctuary.
Lately, it felt like a cage.
My phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. I didn't need to look to know who it was. The buzzing had a rhythm to it now—impatient, insistent, the digital equivalent of tapping fingers on a table.
Avery. We need to talk about Saturday.
Avery. Did you see the email from the contractor?
Avery. Call me when you get this.
Avery. Why aren't you answering?
Derek.
I poured another cup of coffee instead of checking the messages. The mug was one I'd made in a pottery class I took during my "find yourself" phase after college—lopsided, glazed a terrible shade of green, absolutely hideous. I loved it because it was the one thing in my life that wasn't designed to be perfect.
Saturday.
Saturday was our five-year anniversary.
Five years since Derek showed up at a firm happy hour wearing a suit that cost more than my first month's rent and a smile that made me forget I'd sworn off finance bros forever. Five years of dinners and weekends and meeting each other's families. Five years of slowly, quietly, imperceptibly disappearing into the background of my own relationship.
I took a long drink of coffee and let the bitterness settle on my tongue.
The thing about designing buildings is that you learn to see structure. Load-bearing walls. Support beams. The hidden frameworks that keep everything from collapsing. For five years, I'd been pretending Derek and I had a solid foundation. But lately, I'd started noticing the cracks.
The way he looked at his phone when I talked about my work. The way his "jokes" about my ambition landed just slightly left of funny. The way he'd kissed me goodbye this morning—a brief, distracted press of lips that said I'm supposed to do this instead of I want to do this.
The way I hadn't felt disappointed.
That was the part that scared me most. Not the cracks themselves, but how little I cared about them anymore.
My laptop chimed a calendar reminder I'd set weeks ago. Hamptons trip: confirm reservations.
Right. The trip. Derek's idea of a romantic gesture: five days at a luxury resort in the Hamptons, timed to coincide with our anniversary. He'd presented it like a gift, like proof of his commitment, like I should be grateful he'd taken time away from his precious deals and his golf games and his "mentorship" of the new intern whose name he mentioned far too often.
Kelly.
That was her name. Kelly with the blonde hair and the laugh that carried across restaurants and the way she touched his arm when she made a point.
I was probably being paranoid. That's what Chloe would say. My best friend since college, the only person who'd tell me the truth even when I didn't want to hear it: You're projecting, Ave. Just because your parents' marriage imploded doesn't mean every relationship ends the same way.
But my parents' marriage hadn't imploded. It had eroded. Slowly, quietly, over years of polite distance and separate bedrooms and conversations that never went below the surface.
Sound familiar?
I shook the thought away and opened my laptop. The resort's confirmation page glowed on the screen—white buildings, blue water, infinity pools that looked photoshopped into existence. The Hamptons. Rich people playing at being richer people. Not my scene at all.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe five days away from Seattle, away from work, away from the familiar patterns we'd fallen into, maybe that would shake something loose. Maybe we'd remember why we started this in the first place.
Or maybe I'd finally admit what I'd been refusing to see for two years.
My phone buzzed again. This time, I picked it up.
Derek: Flight's at 6am Saturday. Don't be late.
Not I can't wait to be alone with you. Not This is going to be amazing. Just instructions. Just management.
Me: I'll be ready.
Three words. That's all I had left to give him.
I set the phone down and turned back to the window. The rain had started—Seattle's endless, gentle weep smearing the city into watercolor. Somewhere out there, buildings were rising. Structures taking shape. Architects solving problems with glass and steel and the weight of gravity.
And here I was, unable to solve the simplest problem of all: how to leave someone you stopped loving without admitting you'd been lying to yourself for years.
---
Eighteen Months Earlier
The hospital waiting room smelled like antiseptic and bad coffee and fear.
I sat in one of those impossible chairs designed to be uncomfortable, my mother's hand cold in mine, both of us staring at the door the doctor would eventually walk through. My father was somewhere behind that door, his heart doing things hearts shouldn't do, his body finally betraying him after sixty-three years of perfect health.
"He's going to be fine," my mother said. She'd said it seventeen times since we arrived. I'd stopped counting after twelve.
"I know."
"The doctors here are excellent."
"I know."
"He's strong."
I squeezed her hand. "Mom. It's okay."
She looked at me then, really looked, and for a moment I saw the woman behind the mother—the one who'd given up her own architectural career to raise me, who'd redirected all that creative energy into PTA meetings and school plays and making sure I had everything she didn't. She'd never complained. Not once. She'd simply... disappeared.
"I don't know what I'd do without him," she whispered.
I didn't have an answer. I still don't.
The doctor came through the door. My father would be fine. The surgery was a success. We cried, signed paperwork, made calls. Normal life resumed.
But I never forgot that moment, the look on her face, the terror in her eyes. The way love could look exactly like drowning.
---
The coffee was cold. I'd been standing at the window for an hour, lost in memories and the gray Seattle sky.
My laptop pinged again. This time it was work—a message from my assistant about the library project, the one that was supposed to be my masterpiece. Three years of design, two more of approvals and revisions and fighting with the city about budget. And now, finally, construction was about to begin.
Avery, Steel shipment delayed. Contractor wants to push groundbreaking. Call when you're in.
I typed back immediately: No delays. I'll handle the contractor. Tell him I'm coming down there myself if I have to.
Some problems I knew how to solve.
My phone buzzed one last time. Chloe's face appeared on the screen—a photo from our college graduation, both of us drunk and laughing and too young to know how complicated life would get.
"Tell me you're packed," she said by way of greeting.
"I'm packed."
"Liar."
"I will be packed. Eventually."
"Okay, first of all, your version of 'eventually' is everyone else's version of 'the night before with a panicked energy I don't understand.' Second of all, are you okay?"
I leaned against the kitchen counter. "Define okay."
"Breathing? Functioning? Not secretly planning to fake your own death to avoid a long weekend with a boyfriend you're pretty sure is cheating on you?"
"I'm not pretty sure he's cheating on me."
"Okay."
"I'm not."
"Okay."
"Chloe."
"I didn't say anything."
"You sighed. That was a judgment sigh."
"It was a supportive sigh. There's a difference." She paused, and I heard the clink of a wine glass on her end. "Listen, I'm not going to tell you what to do. You know how I feel about Derek. You've known for approximately three years. But here's the thing—this trip? It's either going to fix things or break them. And either way, you're going to be okay. You're Avery Collins. You design buildings that change skylines. You can handle one mediocre boyfriend in a fancy resort."
"I love you."
"I know. Now go pack. And text me if you need an emergency escape plan. I have a friend with a boat in Montauk."
"I don't want to know."
"You definitely don't want to know."
We hung up, and for the first time all day, I smiled.
Chloe was right. This trip would change things. Maybe that was exactly what I needed.
I just didn't know yet how much it would change. How completely my carefully constructed life would be dismantled. How the woman staring back at me from the window—tired, uncertain, trapped in a life that no longer fit—was about to become someone else entirely.
Someone who belonged to Dante Toriano.
Someone who would stop counting the days and start praying they'd never end.
But that was still in the future. For now, I had a suitcase to pack, a flight to catch, and a relationship to either save or bury.
I chose the green mug over the coffee, carried it to the sink, and started making a mental list of everything I needed to bring.
The glass in the window showed me one last thing before I turned away: a woman standing alone in her perfect apartment, surrounded by everything she'd built, and somehow, impossibly, owning none of it.
