Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Claudia
Savannah is down for her first nap. I am sitting at Koa and Nalani’s island, surrounded by photo albums, with a notebook sketching out how I envision the first floor of Paul’s place coming back together so that it feels more like his and Patsy’s place used to, while still allowing for the second and third floors to remain apartments.
But that is for later, I remind myself as I sketch, paying particular attention to which walls have moved, having some knowledge from one of my foster fathers.
My phone lights up.
A message from an unknown number. An unknown number usually means Kyle. Or something waiting to drag me back into the version of my life I have busted my ass to get out of.
But then I read the text.
Unknown:
Good morning. Hope you two slept well.
I blink at the screen. Then blink again.
Out of all possible scenarios, this was not even in the top 100.
I type back before I can stop myself.
Me:
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 knocks once 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, all intact, 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.
He steps farther into the foyer, eyes scanning the space the same way mine just did, and I consider explaining, but he nods like he gets it. “You get quiet when your brain starts working.”
“That is a polite way to say I zone out and start mentally moving walls.”
He smiles, a small one but honest. “Nothing wrong with that. Just did not want you getting lost in a thought and forgetting this little one.”
“She’s good,” I say, looking down at Savannah now wide awake and smiling at him. “Just… seeing what this house used to be, and what it still is.”
He nods like he gets it completely. “Happens to all of us who live in these old places. They talk to you if you let them.”
I laugh softly. “Yeah. They have a lot to say.”
He tips his head toward the living area. “Come on in.”
I’ve been noticing that since he met us at the game, he seems stronger and stronger. He’s allowing himself to live outside of his memories and in the here and now. I am so happy he is.
Savannah starts gabbing as he heads to the island, which stops him. He turns and looks at her, then to me as I unbuckle her. “She misses you.”
“Feelings mutual, Savvy girl.” Paul chuckles. “Let me get sat down so I can hold her.”
Savvy girl. That nickname was ruined when Kyle called her that. I’ve asked Koa not to call her that, but when Paul does, I don’t feel irritated by it. Not that Koa said it in any sort of way it should have, but it was a fresh wound.
Savvy girl, I think I set the carrier down and unbuckle her.
Nalani enters from wherever the bathroom is and says, “Paul, wait until you see what she did this morning.”
Paul’s brows lift. “What did she do?”
Nalani plucks the… notebook from the diaper bag.
The notebook that I left on the counter, and before I can protest, she holds it up.
“Claudia made a drawing. An actual architectural sketch of how your first floor could look if you ever wanted to bring it closer to how it was before the apartment conversion.”
“It is not an architectural sketch; it is a doodle.” I shake my head, and Savannah laughs.
Paul gives me a look that is half-amused, half-touched as he sits and holds out his hands for Savvy girl. “You drew something for the hen house?”
Nalani answers as I set Savannah in his arms. “Not something. Several somethings. Walls. Trim. Where the original arch likely stood.”
I groan. “I was just drawing.”
Paul nods toward the notebook as he makes faces at Savannah, “Can I see it? Hold it up?”
Nalani beams at me, with a smug smile, I mutter under my breath, “Traitor.”
She opens it up and shows him the first page, keeping it far enough so Savannah’s grabby little hands can’t get to it.
He glances up after a minute. “Kid, this is good.” Nalani elbows me and gives me a look like, see? “Could set up a little office to the right for your clients.”
“My clients?” I ask.
“Bitty Costello and her friends, who need therapy to help them sort their feelings about,” he pauses and then chuckles. “I have no idea what women who have more money than they’ll ever spend have to complain about.”
“But if that’s your floor and—”
“I’d be happy with a bedroom overlooking the courtyard to watch Patsy’s girls.”
I laugh, “If the bottom floor were opened up, you couldn’t rent apartments and—”
“I don’t have to rent apartments, hell, you I don’t even need a kitchen, you girls keep bringing me more food than I’ll ever eat.”
When we returned home from a bit of shopping, I completely fell in love with Nalani and Koa’s relationship.
Why, aside from the obvious? Because through the French doors, facing the riverside, was a hen house, and yes, Paul’s girls.
Her first call was to Koa, of course. Then she called Paul, he already knew, “Otherwise the big guy would be all over the internet.
Kid was worried about the headlines, “Brooklyn Bears hot shit left guard, KOK caught stealing chicks.”
I’m pretty sure that made me adore him even more.
Sofie came to watch the Colorado game, but Noelle wasn’t able to; she’s short-staffed. So, of course, the conversations went from the game, and how shitty Johnson played, and how the guys wouldn’t look so exhausted when Moretti was back, to all the ways Sofie wanted to ruin Laurens’ wedding.
“Can you even imagine her flowers?” Sofie gags.
Nalani narrows her eyes. “You mean Lauren’s floral arrangements.”
“Correct,” Sofie says. “I am thinking Venus flytraps in the centerpieces. Symbolic.”
I laugh. “Symbolic of what, exactly?”
“Karma. Maybe it would chomp off her ring finger. Her dress splattered with her blood, the whole place would freak out, and not because of the blood itself, but the color. They’d know she was not born with blue blood.
” Sofie says without hesitation. “And she totally deserves it. She once told me my boots looked like something a toddler wore to stomp in mud.”
Nalani shrugs. “I mean, they kind of did.”
She throws a pillow at her. “They were cool as hell, Prada Monolith patent leather combat boots. But that’s not the point.”
From there, the ideas get worse. Or better. Depends on your definition.
Sofie taps her lip. “What if she has one of those bridesmaids’ choreographed dances when they come down the aisle, and the music skips. On purpose. And they keep doing the same move over and over again.”
Nalani snorts. “What music.”
Sofie waves a hand. “There is always music.”
I lean back on the couch, burping Savannah. “Sabotage by DJ.”
“Exactly,” Sofie says. “But subtle.”
Nothing Sofie has ever done is subtle.
“Or,” she continues, “we replace her unity candle with one of those trick birthday candles that keep lighting, it never goes out. She’d have a freaking meltdown.”
Nalani pauses mid-sip of her wine, eyes dancing with mischief. “No. Hear me out. What if it sparks? Like a firework.”
“And the cake explodes?” Sofie asks.
I blink. “Are you trying to make her go viral or get arrested?”
“Depends on the dress,” Sofie says. “I bet it’s awful.”
After Savannah has fallen asleep, I take her up and tuck her in, say her prayers, and head back down —baby monitor in hand— to rejoin them.
I love hockey, but truth be told, without Deacon playing, it’s just hockey. I haven’t even seen him on camera once.
The conversation with Nalani and Sofie about Laurens’ dress, however, keeps me in stitches.
By the third period, we are all laughing so hard that I cannot feel my stomach. The guys are on the road, exhausted, grinding, and here we are plotting to replace Lauren’s wedding cake with one shaped like a giant middle finger.
“Crabs in her garment bag?” Both Nalani’s and my jaws drop. “Kidding,” Sofie says. Then she whispers, “Not really.”
“She’s being such a pain in the ass about dress shopping for that snatch’s wedding.”
The night ends with a Bears win and a text message.
Deacon:
How was yours and the little one’s day?
I received another good morning text.
Deacon:
Morning Doc. You should know I dreamt about your tits last night, but not in a sexual way. They were behind bars. Or maybe it was me behind bars. Doesn’t matter. Your tits were in my dream last night.
I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face, and the giddy feeling from overtaking me.
Me:
Is that so?
Deacon:
I’m old enough to know they’re serving a bigger purpose than for me to fantasize about, but dream me apparently didn’t get the memo. You are stunning, Claudia, so I partially blame you as well. But enough about that, they’re strictly Savannah’s. How is she? Did you two get enough sleep?
Me:
We did good. You?
Deacon:
I’m always good Doc.
Me:
If you dare say so yourself.
I smile and figuratively pat myself on the back as I hit send
Deacon:
In six days, I can serve you a reminder if you need it.
Me:
Promises, promises.
I attempt to hit backspace, but end up sending that damn text.
Deacon:
I never break them.
Me:
Good to know.
Deacon:
And I promise I owe you an orgasm on Wednesday. In fact, I owe you multiples.