Epilogue
PORTER
Six months later, on a Tuesday evening in November, Hanson burned the chili.
I smelled it from the taproom, the sharp, acrid scent cutting through the usual warmth of malt and wood smoke.
By the time I got next door to the apartment, he was standing at the stove with a wooden spoon in one hand and a look of genuine bewilderment on his face, like the pot had personally betrayed him.
“I looked away for two minutes,” he said.
“You cannot be trusted with legumes.”
“I can direct four hundred aircraft a day, Porter.”
“Could, baby. Past tense. And chili isn’t air traffic.”
He pointed the spoon at me. “I will figure this out.”
“You’ve been saying that for three months.”
“And I will continue saying it until it’s true.”
I leaned against the doorframe and watched him scrape the bottom of the pot.
This man had spent twenty-five years making split-second decisions under pressure and was now applying that same energy to ground beef and kidney beans.
He’d gained weight since moving to Forestville, still lean, but healthy rather than worn out.
His face had filled out. His shoulders sat lower.
The freckles from the cruise had faded, but new ones would come next summer.
I intended to be there for every single one of them.
He’d given notice at LAX two weeks after the cruise.
I hadn’t been sure how we’d manage to merge our lives, but he’d made the decision for us.
I couldn’t move my brewery. He could move himself, and so he had.
He’d worked out his last month, packed up the apartment in El Segundo, and driven north with a car full of boxes and the small blue glass bowl from Cabo sitting on the passenger seat.
That bowl was on the kitchen windowsill now, catching the gray November light.
It hadn’t been seamless. There were hard days when Hanson’s body didn’t know what to do without the adrenaline, when the quiet of Forestville pressed in on him like a held breath and I could see the old restlessness flickering behind his eyes.
Days when he’d go still and distant in a way I recognized, and I’d have to remind myself that twenty-five years of armor didn’t come off in a season.
But he stayed. Every time, he stayed. And on the hard days, he’d find me in the taproom or the brew house, and he’d say, “I’m having a rough one,” and I’d say, “Okay,” and that was enough.
He was learning to name it instead of only managing it.
I was learning to let him have the space without assuming he was leaving.
We were building something. Slowly, deliberately, one day at a time.
Hanson abandoned the chili and opened the window to let the smoke out.
Cold air rushed in, and with it, pine and rain and the smell of Forestville in late autumn, wet earth and wood fires.
He stood at the window for a moment, breathing it in, and I watched the tension leave his back one vertebra at a time.
“I talked to a guy today,” he said, still facing the window. “About consulting work. FAA safety audits. It would be remote, mostly. Some travel, but not much.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s part-time. Low-stress. Well, low-stress compared to keeping planes from hitting each other.”
“That’s a low bar.”
He turned around and leaned against the counter. Those gray eyes, soft in the kitchen light, looking at me with an expression I was still getting used to—open, unguarded, home. “It would mean I’m contributing to the household. To us.”
“You do contribute.”
“I burned the chili.”
“You contribute in other ways.”
He almost smiled. “I want to build something here. With you. Not just exist in your life. I want to have my own thing.”
I crossed the kitchen and kissed him. Slow, unhurried, tasting coffee and smoke.
His hand came up to my jaw, fingers sliding into my beard the way they always did, and I felt him settle against me with that full-body exhale that still, six months in, made my chest ache with the simple miracle of it.
“Then build it,” I said against his mouth.
The sounds of the taproom filtered in from next door—glasses clinking, a burst of laughter, the muffled thump of the playlist I’d left running.
Tuesday nights were quiet at Holdfast. Locals mostly.
The regulars had absorbed Hanson into the fabric of the place with the easy, unsurprised acceptance of a small town that had known us both as kids.
Oh, you two finally figured it out? Good. About time.
Hanson pulled back and glanced at the ruined pot on the stove. “Pizza?”
“Pizza.”
He pulled out his phone to order, perched on the counter in my kitchen, in wool socks and a flannel shirt he’d stolen from my closet, frowning at a menu on his phone with the same concentration he’d once given a radar screen.
I thought about the boy I’d loved at twenty-one, the one who’d kissed me in the back of a truck on a logging road and trembled and couldn’t express his love aloud.
This was the same man. And he was completely different. And I loved both versions of him—the scared kid and the man who’d finally come home.
“Pepperoni?” he asked without looking up.
“Always.”
He placed the order, set down his phone, and looked at me. The same way I’d looked at him, I realized, cataloging, memorizing, marveling at the improbable, mundane, extraordinary fact of being here together on a Tuesday night.
“Hey, Porter.”
“Yeah.”
“I love you.”
I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around him, pulling him close. “I love you too. Always have, always will.”
Outside, the rain tapped against the window, cold air wrapping around us. I didn’t feel anything. I was in the arms of the man I loved. I was home.
Thank you for reading!