Lara came to her aunt's house to finish designs for an exhibition. In the yard, a carpenter named Amar repaired the old fence. He wore a faded T-shirt, worked quietly and did not stop to tell her how interesting her work was. At first, that irritated her. She was used to people asking where she exhibited.
One afternoon, the wind carried several sketches off the table. Amar caught them before they landed in the wet grass. He paused over one and observed that the shelf's proportions did not suit the space. Lara put the papers away, offended that he was right. The next day, she asked him how he would solve the corner anyway.
The conversation lasted until evening. He showed her two possibilities using scraps of wood, and she explained why a deliberately empty surface mattered to her. They laughed at her aunt's radio, which picked up only half a station. Lara felt the attraction before she could devise a respectable explanation for it.
Several days later, they went together to buy fittings. On the way back, they stopped beside the river. Amar asked whether he could kiss her. She said yes. It was a calm, brief kiss, without the excuse that the moment had carried them away. When they returned, Lara introduced him to her aunt as the tradesman who had helped her collect supplies.
Amar said nothing, but the next morning he kept their conversation focused on the fence. Lara tried to restore their closeness with a joke. He asked whether she was ashamed of him. She denied it too quickly, then mentioned that her friends misunderstood certain things. "What things?" he asked. He had no intention of guessing for her.
At a family lunch, her aunt explained that Amar ran a workshop and trained adult students. Lara felt relief, then immediately felt more ashamed of that relief than anything before it. Would what happened beside the river be worth less if he worked for someone else and owned no business? For the first time, she asked herself the question without an audience.
She found him in the workshop and apologized clearly, without mentioning her friends. She said she had tried to fit him into other people's expectations. Amar accepted the apology but did not immediately resume the romance. He suggested coffee in a few days. He wanted to know the person who would introduce him the same way in a yard and in a gallery.
At the exhibition opening, Lara met him at the door. She did not list his accomplishments to win over the company in advance. She said his name and that she was glad he had come. Later, they stood before the shelf whose corner they had solved together. Its empty space looked exactly as she had wanted.