Pablo’s apartment was quiet in an honest way.
There was no sound except the hum of the refrigerator and his own footsteps, echoing too clearly against the floor.
The room wasn’t messy, but it didn’t feel alive either.
The desk was neat.
The books were in order.
Architectural sketches were pinned to the wall, some of their edges already yellowing.
He set his keys on the table, took off his jacket, and stood there for a long moment, doing nothing.
Like someone who had just come home from a place that was too crowded—when in reality, he had spent most of the day in silence.
Pablo stared at an unfinished sketch.
The lines were firm, confident, but the center was left blank.
He knew exactly why he had stopped there.
Every time he tried to continue, his mind went to the same place.
To something that had collapsed.
He sat down, opened his laptop, then closed it again.
Picked up his phone and stared at the still-lit screen.
Blair’s name was there.
No new messages.
He didn’t plan to send anything.
He just needed to know the name was still there.
Sometimes, that was enough.
His thoughts drifted to home.
To the dining room that was always too tidy.
To his father, sitting with a straight back, his voice always sounding like a decision.
To his mother, placing plates carefully, as if even the smallest sound might trigger something no one wanted to open.
“Your father is a doctor,” a sentence he had heard since childhood.
Not as information, but as a demand.
Pablo let out a long breath.
He stood and opened the window slightly.
Cold, clean night air slipped in.
From the upper floor, Amsterdam looked calm, the canal shimmering faintly in the distance.
His phone vibrated.
Mom.
He stared at the name for a long moment before answering.
“Have you eaten?” his mother asked, as she always did.
Not entirely a lie.
“Are you coming home this weekend?”
He hesitated.
“I don’t know yet.”
There was a small pause on the other end.
He could picture his mother nodding slowly.
“Taylor asked about you,” she said.
“She wants to show you her art grades.”
Pablo smiled without realizing it.
“She still likes drawing?”
“She does.
She says she wants to be an architect.
Like her brother.”
Pablo swallowed.
“Mom…”
“It’s okay,” his mother cut in gently.
“I didn’t say anything to your father.”
The conversation ended there.
There were many things that could have been said, but they both knew the limits.
After the call ended, Pablo stayed by the window for a while longer before finally returning to his desk.
He pulled an old sketch from the drawer.
The paper was wrinkled, its corners bent.
It was a drawing of an old building—not a campus design, not a college assignment.
His childhood home.
Pablo remembered that day with details that never faded.
Heavy rain.
Damp walls.
The faint sound of a crack that was first ignored, until part of the floor collapsed, making the house no longer safe to live in.
No one was seriously hurt.
But something changed.
His father stopped seeing buildings as spaces.
He began seeing them as failures.
And Pablo, still a teenager at the time, learned that collapse wasn’t always about buildings.
Sometimes, it was about trust.
Pablo closed his eyes.
He had never told this story to anyone.
Not to friends.
Not to lecturers.
Not to Blair.
The name appeared again, uninvited.
He remembered the way Blair sat quietly in the coffee shop, never forcing conversation, never filling pauses with empty words.
The way Blair listened, as if silence itself were a form of care.
Pablo opened his phone.
Typed.
I’m a bit off today.
Sorry for leaving so suddenly earlier.
He stopped.
Deleted it.
Typed again.
Sometimes I need time to gather myself.
He sent the message before he could change his mind.
A few minutes passed.
A reply came.
I understand.
Not everything has to be explained right now.
Pablo stared at the screen for a long moment.
A sense of relief settled in—one he hadn’t realized he was looking for.
He returned to his desk and reopened the empty sketch.
Slowly, he drew a new line.
Not perfect.
But there was a small courage in it.
The night grew deeper.
In the small apartment, Pablo worked without music, without distractions.
Only the sound of pencil against paper and his own breathing.
For the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel like he was running away.
He was just… pausing.
And in the middle of that silence, Pablo realized something that made him stay still a little longer.
Maybe he wasn’t afraid of the future after all.
Maybe he was only afraid of someone seeing how fragile the foundation he had built truly was.
And somehow, thinking about Blair made that fear feel slightly more bearable.