Page 27 of My Only

“Plus, I don’t need a step stool.” She gestured at one of the kitchen chairs. “I could just use that… like I did earlier. Like I always did when I lived alone.”

My smile vanished. “Hell nah.” I stood from my seat, rounding the island to get to her. “If I had seen you standing on that chair, I would’ve stopped you. I’m not having my woman climbing on furniture to reach shelves.”

Ayla watched me approach, her lips twitching like she wanted to argue, but didn’t.

I stopped in front of her, reaching up easily and grabbing the dried basil off the shelf.

I handed it to her.

“Baby, I swear,” I warned, “I better not see you standing on things to reach for stuff.”

“Or what?” She grinned. “What are you going to do?”

“What am I—” I closed the space between us, backing her up against the counter. “You wanna fuck around and find out?”

She dropped her head back laughing while playfully pushing me back.

I joined her at the counter a moment later, chopping vegetables while she stirred the sweet Thai chili sauce.

Together, we moved in rhythm, a quiet dance in our brand-new kitchen.

“Can you pass the peas?” Ayla asked, standing over the stove.

I grinned. “Like we used to do?”

She turned, instantly bursting into laughter.

Her laugh was infectious, and I couldn’t help joining in.

I handed her the peas, and we kept working in easy silence—until she started humming.

I knew the tune right away.

It was the song from that Thanksgiving episode on Martin—the same one I’d just brought up. A play on that J.B.’s joint, “Pass the Peas.”

Her humming turned into singing, and before I knew it, we were both singing out loud, voices bouncing off the bare walls.

We were loud, off-key, and laughing so hard we could barely breathe.

We probably sounded ridiculous to the neighbors.

But I didn’t care.

Because this? This was home.

And I was there in that moment, but also somewhere else.

Watching Ayla, my wife, in the home that had once been nothing more than a sketch.

A dream from architecture camp decades ago.

Back then, my instructor had asked us to design houses for the future.

And on a whim, I had said, “I want to design a house for my future wife.”

It had been just an idea.

A fantasy.