Foundation
"She's the architect overseeing a project in Stratford. He's the Somali foreman who doesn't trust blueprints—trusts his hands instead. Their professional clashes turn personal when they're stuck on site during a storm."
"These blueprints are wrong."
I look up from my plans. The foreman—Faisal, I've learned—is standing in my site office doorway, covered in cement dust.
"They're not wrong. They're what you're building."
"Then what we're building is wrong." He drops the papers on my desk. "The load-bearing wall is in the wrong place."
"According to who?"
"According to thirty years of my father's experience, passed to me." He crosses his arms. "But what would I know? I'm just the guy who actually builds things."
We clash every day.
He thinks I'm an academic who's never gotten her hands dirty. I think he's a traditionalist who doesn't trust education.
We're both wrong.
We're both too stubborn to admit it.
"The wall needs to move," he says again in week three.
"The wall is fine."
"The wall is going to crack in five years."
"Then we'll revisit in five years."
"I won't be here in five years." He leans on my desk. "But you'll think about me every time that crack appears."
The storm comes without warning.
Everyone evacuates except us—stuck in the site office while rain pounds the temporary roof.
"This is your fault," I say.
"How is weather my fault?"
"If you'd agreed with the blueprints, we'd have finished early."
"If you'd listened to me, we'd have built something that lasts." He sits on the floor, back against the wall. "But what do I know."
We wait.
Hours of rain. Hours of tension. Hours of being stuck with someone I'm supposed to hate.
"Why did you become an architect?" he asks eventually.
"Because I wanted to build things that matter."
"So did I." He looks at me. "Different paths. Same destination."
"I don't think we're at the same destination."
"We're stuck in the same room." He almost smiles. "Close enough."
Something shifts.
Between the thunder and the silence, between his stubbornness and mine, something changes.
"The wall," I say finally. "Show me what you mean."
"Now?"
"We're stuck here anyway." I grab my drawings. "Show me."
He shows me.
In the dim light of the site office, with rain pounding outside, he explains what he sees that I missed. Experience that blueprints can't capture.
"You're right," I admit when he finishes.
"What was that?"
"You're right. The wall needs to move."
He stares at me. "I didn't think you'd ever say that."
"I didn't think you'd ever explain it properly." I sit back. "Maybe we should have talked like this weeks ago."
"Maybe we needed a storm."
The storm breaks something between us.
Or builds something. Hard to tell.
"I'm sorry," he says. "For being difficult."
"I'm sorry too." I meet his eyes. "For not listening."
"Does this mean you'll listen now?"
"It means I'll try." I move closer. "What else should I hear?"
"That I've been fighting with you because I didn't know how to talk to you." He touches my face. "That you're the most frustrating, brilliant woman I've ever met."
"That's either a compliment or an insult."
"It's the truth." He kisses me.
We make love on the site office floor.
While the storm rages outside. While the building waits for us to finish fighting.
"This is unprofessional—"
"This is inevitable." He pushes into me. "We've been building to this for weeks."
The project finishes.
On time. Under budget. The wall in the right place—a compromise neither of us planned.
"What happens now?" he asks on the final day.
"We build something else."
"Together?"
"Isn't that what we've been doing?" I take his hand. "Construction is collaboration. So is this."
We build a life.
Different skills. Same foundation.
"I love you," he says years later, in a house we designed together.
"I love you too." I lean against him. "Even when you're right."
"Especially when I'm right."
We laugh.
And keep building.
Together.