"I want to learn more," Devin says. "Jason said he'd teach me while you're doing whatever you do in the garage."
"I fix things."
"You sit on that stool and pretend to fix things while actually reading."
"I'm a complex person."
"You're a nerd who likes grease smells." He steals a bite of pasta off my plate. "Is this what it's like? Having people teach you things?"
The echo of something. I've heard him say this before, or almost. The wonder of being taught. The newness of someone taking time.
"Yeah," I say. "This is what it's like."
"It's good."
"Yeah. It is."
He leans into me. I put my arm around him. The plate balances on my other knee and we eat the rest of the cacio e pepe together in the garage, passing the fork back and forth, and it's not a restaurant and it's not a date and it's just a Wednesday and it's perfect.
* * *
Thursday morning. Knox calls me to the back lot.
The five acres look different than they did a month ago. The scrub brush is cleared. The ground is graded, drainage trenched, utility lines laid. Two concrete foundations sit dark against the dirt. Rectangles, precise, the beginning of something.
"Framing starts Monday," Knox says. He's got blueprints under his arm and the look he gets when he's building something. Focused, certain, the alpha channeled into creation instead of control. "Dave's crew will be here at seven."
"How long for the first two?"
"Three months if the weather holds. Vaughn and Robin. Jason and Ash." He unrolls the plans on the tailgate of his truck. "Then three, four, and five go up simultaneously. Another two months."
I look at the blueprint for house five. Two bedrooms, one bath, open living area. The revision Dave sent on Monday has the changes: built-in bookshelves on both walls of the second bedroom, a reading nook with a window seat in the living area.
"Bookshelves look good," Knox says.
"Yeah."
"He know yet?"
"About the house? He knows it exists. He knows it's for me. He hasn't seen the bookshelves."
"The reading nook?"
"No."
Knox nods. He doesn't push. That's not how Knox operates. He builds things and makes space and waits for his people to fill them.
"A couple weeks until his apartment," I say.
"And then?"
"And then he lives in his apartment. On his own. For as long as he needs."
"And the house?"
"The house will be here when he's ready."
Knox folds the blueprints. Looks out at the foundations, the trenched earth, the bare trees along the property line. The five acres that have been his since before any of us came, the land he bought with the bar, the space he always said was for the pride.