Nathaniel pulls back first, a soft laugh brushing my lips as he murmurs, “We’ve arrived, baby.”
I blink, breathless, and glance out the tinted windows.
This isn’t Central Park Tower.
I look back at him, confusion written plainly on my face.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he says, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth.
His hands come to my waist as he guides me off his lap, helping me settle back into the seat. Then he steps out of the car, straightening to his full height before leaning in again, palm open. I take his hand, and he helps me out onto the street. The air feels expectant, charged, as if the night itself is holding its breath along with me.
Nathaniel steers me along the sidewalk with a hand at my back, and only then does it click where we are.
Greenwich Village.
The streets here are hushed and residential, the kind of elegance that reveals itself at night—recessed doorways, stone steps worn smooth with age, windows glowing behind drawn curtains. Confusion pricks sharper with every step. Why here, so close to midnight? When he must be exhausted, when home lies in the opposite direction?
We walk past stately, picture-perfect townhouses that look lifted from a postcard. I let him lead me, trusting him even as my thoughts race, trying to make sense of this detour.
He slows in front of one townhouse and turns to face me.
“Why are we here?” I ask, searching his face. “I thought you wanted to take me home?”
Instead of answering, he gives my hand a small tug and leads me up the stone steps. The door is black lacquered and the iron railings are polished to a soft sheen. It’s achingly familiar—the symmetry of the windows, the way it sits so self-assured among the others. And then the memory hits me, sudden and vivid.
It’s that house.
The one we walked past five years ago. The one I’d looked at a second too long. The one I’d idly fantasized about living in one day, without thinking about how or when—only that it was with him.
My breath catches.
“We’re home, baby,” Nathaniel announces.
My heart is lodged in my throat. Is he saying what I think he’s saying? Could it really?—
He pulls a keyring from his pocket and I’m barely breathing as he unlocks the door. It opens onto a pristine entryway, and I step inside behind him with shaky legs. The lights are already on, the floors clear, the walls clean in a way that signals a fresh start rather than absence.
Whatever life once moved through this place has been neatly cleared away, leaving behind a space that feels like it’s just waiting to be lived in.
Nathaniel bought this house for us.
All this time, he remembered the way I looked at this house and carried it with him…for years.Emotion swells, too fast, too full, and I’m rendered speechless.
I feel him wrap an arm around my shoulders. He presses a kiss to the side of my head.
“Take a look around, baby.”
I move deeper into the house, taking it in as I go. My mind starts filling in gaps without asking permission—visualizing furniture where it doesn’t yet exist, imagining where light would fall in the morning or how evenings would naturally gather… The slow accumulation of ordinary days with the person I love most.
What moves me isn’t the grandiosity of the gesture but the intention behind it. The fact that he remembered a fleeting moment that passed between us and held onto it, faithfully, until he could make it real.
Then, an unexpected sound grabs my attention—a high-pitched bark, small but earnest.
I whip around just in time to find a tiny black-and-white French bulldog puppy waddling toward us on unsteady legs, its round belly swinging with each step. A red ribbon is tied around its middle, bright against its soft fur. It snorts, pauses as if gathering itself, then toddles forward again until it settles right in the center of the foyer and looks up at me, wide-eyed and hopeful.
“Oh my god,” I breathe, dropping to my knees with a choked laugh that soon dissolves into tears.
I scoop the puppy into my arms and it snuggles immediately against my chest, warm and impossibly sweet. I’m laughing andcrying at the same time, cooing nonsense to it, already certain of one thing: this is the most perfect creature I have ever seen.
