44. Westbrook Lane #2
We fall into an easy rhythm, him sanding while I apply the render, both of us focused on making something better. We work until the sun starts dipping low, painting everything golden.
Somehow, between general chit chat we finish the porch, the steps are smooth and the render is perfect.
Dom stands back, hands on his hips, surveying our work.
“I think we did alright,” he says.
He puts a hand on my shoulder—tentative at first, then firmer when I don't pull away.
"You know, hope's not a bad place to start," he says. "It's what kept me going all those years. The hope that maybe it wasn't too late. That maybe you'd give me a chance. That maybe we could build something from the wreckage of what we lost."
"And now?"
"Now I'm standing on a porch after a hard days work with my son."
Something in my chest breaks open when he says the word son.
"Thanks for helping today," I say.
"Anytime." He squeezes my shoulder once more, then lets go. "And Nate? Don't wait as long as I did. Don't let fear steal more time than it already has."
After Dom leaves, I head inside the house.
There are still empty rooms I haven't figured out what to do with yet.
I tried furnishing the place a few months back, spent a weekend moving things around, stepping back to look at how it felt.
Only to realize I had no idea what I was going for.
Or maybe it just needed a woman's touch more than a man's—someone who could make it feel less like a house and more like a home.
I walk past the living room and stop.
There's something on the coffee table. A book.
I didn't put it there.
My stomach tightens as I move closer, trying to make sense of it. The only other person who has a key to this place is Nick, and he wouldn't just leave something here without telling me. Would he?
It's a copy of Peter Pan.
The cover is worn and soft in a way that only comes from being loved and read over and over. There's a small photograph tucked inside the front cover—Alfie and Gracie, young and smiling, standing in front of what I recognize as the original bookstore location before they expanded.
And beneath the photograph is a note in handwriting I'd recognize anywhere, even after all these years.
Alfie's.
My hands tremble as I pick it up, careful not to disturb the photograph.
Nathaniel,
Some boys never grow up because they don't want to.
Some grow up too fast because they have to.
And some... learn how to stay a little bit lost so they never forget how to fly.
Alfie
My eyes blur with tears I don't try to stop.
Alfie always saw things before the rest of us did. Always knew which words would land exactly when they were needed, like he'd been saving them up just for that moment. And somehow, even after he's gone, he's still doing it.
I sink onto the couch—the one piece of furniture in this entire house that I actually managed to choose and commit to—and hold the book like it might dissolve if I'm not careful enough.
The message underneath his words settles over me slowly.
The idea that growing up doesn't mean forgetting who you were. That you can carry both versions of yourself—the boy who believed in magic and impossible things, and the man who learned how to survive what came after. That you don't have to choose between them.
I think about the boy I used to be.
The one who believed some things were inevitable, that the universe had a plan and all you had to do was show up. The one who thought timing was just another word for faith, and if you wanted something badly enough, eventually it would find its way to you.
And then I think about the man I am now.
Steadier, maybe. Wiser in some ways, though that wisdom came at a cost I wouldn't wish on anyone. More careful about the risks I take and the hopes I let myself hold onto.
But still capable of wanting. Still capable of hoping, even when hope feels like the most dangerous thing I could allow myself. Still waiting for futures I'm not sure I'll get to live in, but can't quite stop imagining anyway.
Dom's words echo in my head: Don't let fear steal more time than it already has.
And maybe Alfie's saying the same thing, just in a different way. Maybe they're both telling me that staying a little bit lost—staying open to the possibility of magic, of things working out, of second chances—isn't the same as being stuck. It's just remembering how to fly.
I pull out my phone with hands that are still shaking slightly.
Open the message thread with Nora that's been silent since she left for LA weeks ago. Every day I've opened it, stared at it, wondered if I should say something. And every day I've closed it again without typing a word.
My heart pounds hard against my ribs.
I type a message, read it back, and immediately delete it because it sounds too desperate.
I type again—something casual, something that doesn't reveal how much I've been thinking about her—and delete that too because it feels dishonest.
Finally, I just write the truth:
Nate
There's something I need to show you when you come back.
I hit send before I can change my mind, before I can talk myself out of it or find a reason why this is a bad idea.
The message shows as delivered.
Then I sit in the house I made for us—for a future I'm still not sure we'll get to have—and I wait. Hold Alfie's book in my lap and the photograph of him and Gracie between my fingers, and I let myself believe, just for a moment, that maybe some things really are inevitable.
That maybe timing isn't just faith, maybe it's also patience.
And maybe, just maybe, I've been patient long enough.