You always know it's him before you even check your phone.

There's a rhythm to the way Allen calls—three rings, a pause, then another, like he's already half-regretting it. Like he's hoping you won't pick up, but also terrified you won't.

You stare at the screen anyway. Allen — Columbia Architecture Studio

Of course he's still in studio. He practically lives there—sleeping under drafting tables, smelling like coffee and graphite, sleeves rolled to the elbows like he's auditioning to be someone dependable. Minnesota boy manners wrapped around a mess of nerves and ambition. Tall enough to duck doorframes. Blue eyes that look soft until they don't. The kind of handsome that makes strangers forgive him before he's even apologized.

You answer on the fourth ring. You always do.

And the worst part — the part you'd never say out loud — is that you want to. It's not resignation when your finger finds the green button. It's something closer to relief. Like exhaling after holding your breath all week without realizing it.

He doesn't say hello right away. You hear shuffling, the echo of a huge room, maybe the hum of fluorescent lights. He's stalling again—breathing into the silence like he's trying to build courage out of thin air.

"Hey," he finally says, voice low, careful. Like he's handling glass.

Your whole body softens. That's the humiliating thing about it — one syllable, and you're already there. Already his. You hate how quickly it happens, how little effort it takes on his part, how much it doesn't matter.

You lean back against the wall, already feeling that familiar pull in your chest—the one you swore you were done with. The one that makes you soft when he sounds tired, when he sounds lonely, when he sounds like a boy instead of the guy who disappears for weeks and comes back with new stories and the same old apologies.

He starts talking about studio—about professors, about a critique that went badly, about how he hasn't slept in thirty hours. You listen, nodding even though he can't see you. You always listen. That's your specialty—absorbing his chaos, smoothing the edges, pretending you don't notice how easily he slips back into your life when things get hard.

You notice. You always notice. You just love him enough to let him think you don't.

That's the thing nobody tells you about loving someone who can't quite love you back — it doesn't feel like suffering, not always. Sometimes it feels like this: his voice in your ear, the night quiet around you, the small secret thrill of being the one he came back to. It feels like enough, right up until morning.

You know the rhythm of it by now—the late-night calls that land just when everything else in his life gets heavy, when deadlines stack up and conversations with other people fall flat, when he needs somewhere soft to put the parts of himself he doesn't show anyone else. And somehow, without ever agreeing to it, you became that place: familiar, steady, easy to return to, the voice he reaches for when the world feels too loud—close enough to keep, but never quite close enough to choose.

You've thought about what it would mean to be chosen by him. Really chosen — not just called, not just kept. You've imagined it more times than you'd like to admit. And the embarrassing truth is that even the imagining feels like too much to hope for, and also like the only thing you want.

He laughs suddenly, nervous, a little breathless. "You're the only one who gets it," he says.

And there it is. The line that hooks you every time.

Because here's what you'll never tell him: you know it's a hook. You can see it clearly, the way you can see the shape of a thing when you hold it up to the light. You know he's not lying exactly — he means it when he says it, in the way people mean things they haven't examined closely. But meaning it and choosing it are different. And he has never chosen.

You know this. You know this.