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One by one, I put them where Paul had placed them. Not perfectly. I don’t know his system, if he had one, but I remember the shape of the room when he was in it. The older Renny pieces together. The new pieces of me on the other side.

The unfinished painting goes back by the easel. My back finished, the world not.

I understand that more than I want to.

When I step back, the studio feels like a studio again.

“Not a guestroom.”

I leave the door open and go to the master bedroom.

The bed is made, mostly, because Paul made it this morning while I was in the shower. It isn’t hotel-perfect. The sheet still pulls a little loose on one side. A pillow sits crooked, dented where one of our heads had been.

I stand there trying to feel triumphant.

Congratulations, Clint DeLuca. You won a dead man’s bedroom.

I sit on the bed, then lie back.

I stare at the ceiling and try to picture myself alone here. My clothes in the drawers. My phone on the nightstand. My body sleeping in the middle of all this space because no one else is here to claim the other side.

I sit up too fast.

The room isn’t haunted exactly. I don’t believe in ghosts and all that bullshit. But it’s definitely not mine.

The kitchen. That’s where I belong. My hands need something to do.

I open the refrigerator. Leftovers—no. Something fresh.

I move to the nearest cabinet and find coffee, a bag of rice, and three kinds of salt because nothing is simple.

I need to make something. Anything. Food has rules. Heat does what heat does. Dough rises or it doesn’t. Cheese melts if you treat it right and burns if you act like a prick.

I open the refrigerator again, this time with purpose, and see the dough, wrapped tight and waiting.

Behind it, a bag of shredded mozzarella. A wedge of parmesan. Tomatoes. Basil. Pepperoni tucked in the drawer.

The pizza I never made for him.

Soon, I’d said.

I pull the dough out and set it on the counter, then the rest of it. One thing after another until the counter fills with the dinner I never made.

That’s what does it. Fucking pizza.

I grip the edge of the counter and bend over it, breath coming wrong. My throat tightens so hard it hurts.

I never got to see him take the first bite and pretend to be calm about it, then watch him close his eyes if it was good.

I never got to brag or feed him something that was mine before any of this started.

The first sound comes out ugly. I clamp my mouth shut, which makes it worse. The next one breaks through anyway, and then I’m crying over a lump of pizza dough.

The dough sits there, still waiting.

The house is mine, but the person I want to live in it with me is in the sky somewhere between here and Kentucky.

That’s the joke.