He just texted me good morning. Is this normal?
I hit send, change his contact’s name, then sit here staring at the screen.
Instead, Deacon replies.
Deacon:
You good with that?
Me:
I am.
I send it, then immediately bury my face in my hands because I sent it too fast. My defenses are down. I blame the fact that I’ve not slept in four months, and Deacon Moretti makes me feel… something I haven’t ever felt before, and not just the sex, although yeah, I want that man more than I have ever wanted anyone, and that includes the years I now look back on and realize they scream daddy issues.
I could blame it on my hormones, but it’s more than that. The way he looks at me, eyes locked on mine, it doesn’t feel like we’re just body parts exchanging pleasantries; it’s more.
Seconds later, another message comes through, and I get that same feeling.
Deacon:
Good.
I set my phone facedown so I am not tempted to reply with “so good.”
“Are we still going to bring Paul some food and then take that walk?” Nalani asks, tightening her ponytail as she looks at the monitor. “After her nap, of course.”
I nod.
She looks at the notebook, “Wow, you’re an artist, Claudia.”
Nalani knocksonce out of manners, taps in the code, and pushes open the front door to the Puck Pad, and hurries in, “I have to pee.”
I step inside and look around much more thoroughly than I did when Deacon and I brought Paul back from the law offices. I didn’t go beyond the foyer, which was not the bachelor pad disaster I had expected. No stale air, gym-bag funk, pizza boxes pretending to be décor, like frat houses from the past. My undergrad years. Not even one pair of sneakers or skates smelling up the place. It’s truly their home.
The entryway is a wide but not deep foyer with this old brownstone charm that I have recently discovered is my version of my dreamhouse. More realistic than the Barbie ones I never got to have of my own. No, this style is the goal.
Paul’s brownstone, before it was made into apartments, had that classic nineteenth-century layout where the architecture wanted to show off a little. You would climb the stoop and enter on the parlor level, where the ceilings were soaring, and the rooms stretched long and elegant. In the pictures, there was a front parlor for receiving guests, a central stair hall, and a rear parlor that opened into what used to be a formal dining space and is now part of Paul’s apartment. Everything in the photos was arranged to impress people who cared about formality. The upper-floor bedrooms, long corridors.
I would guess his house, the Puck Pad, is the same age, but it’s different.
Nothing is chopped up here. The original structure is intact in a way Paul’s no longer is. You can feel it the second you step inside. The foyer is compact but generous enough to breathe. It opens directly into a full-width living and dining space with no partitions, because it was always meant to be one continuous area. No lost walls. No apartment scars. The proportion feels reconfigured.
The ceilings are a touch lower than Paul’s. The layout feels horizontal rather than vertical because of the walls that had been added. A straight shot from the entry to the rear windows and wide spaces on either side. The kitchen is tucked neatly to the right so you can still see into the rest of the space without it swallowing the room, whereas Paul’s original was in the back corner. Everything flows. Everything feels communal, as if it were built for people who live together rather than separately.
The molding here is simpler. The floors are original planks but less ornate than Paul’s restored ones. The windows are wide and square. It feels grounded. Practical. Warm in a way brownstones sometimes are not.
Where Paul’s brownstone tries to remember the life it had before renovations rearranged its identity, the Puck Pad never lost its original one. This place is the version of a brownstone that stayed whole. A structure that aged without getting spliced. Paul’s house carries the ghosts of a beautiful home. This house carries the confidence of never losing them.
I stand there, absorbing it, and I get why people fall in love with these buildings. Why historians protect them. They age like people do. Differently. With their own stories pressed into their beams and bricks.
And apparently, I have become someone who cares about that. My brain is halfway between Paul’s original home, allintact, and this one, when a voice cuts through my whole architectural dissertation.
“You okay, kid?”
I blink, snap out of my thoughts, and look over to see Paul leaning against the doorway that leads in from the hall. He has such kind eyes and a soft, steady expression. Never judgment, not scrutinized, he just makes you feel… checked on.
“Yeah. Sorry. I was just…” I gesture vaguely at the walls.
