I looked at a water stain on the ceiling. “Rental maybe.”
“Bigger bullshit.”
Nate, who had invited himself because minding his business caused him physical pain, leaned in from the hallway. “Is this where we all pretend he isn’t building a nest for Nurse Fire Eyes?”
I threw a broken cabinet knob at him.
He ducked, laughing, then regretted it because his shoulder still hated sudden movement.
The truth was, I didn’t know what I was building at first.
A house.
A future.
An apology too big to fit into words.
Maybe all three.
I didn’t tell Destiny.
Not directly.
But I asked her questions.
Too many.
“What do you think about green tile?” I asked one night while she sat cross-legged on my bare living room floor, eating Thai food from a carton.
“For what?”
“Kitchen.”
“Depends on the green.”
I showed her three samples.
She pointed with her chopsticks. “That one. The others look like hospital nausea.”
The next week: “Quartz or butcher block?”
“For you?”
“For a project.”
“Quartz. Easier to clean. But warm it up with wood shelves or it’ll look sterile.”
A few days later: “Native landscaping or low-maintenance turf?”
She gave me a look over her coffee. “If you put fake grass anywhere near the ocean, I’ll leave you.”
“Native it is.”
She told me she liked soft white walls, not cold white. Arched doorways. Old wood if it could be saved. Deep kitchen sinks. Bedroom windows that opened. A little patio with herbs, even though she had killed basil twice in Albuquerque and still blamed the pot. She liked turquoise tile when it was used carefully. Hated shiny black counters. Wanted a bathroom that felt like it belonged in a spa but not a hotel. She thought outdoor showers were romantic in theory and suspicious in practice because “bugs exist, Dylan.”
I wrote all of it down.
Every word.
