Epilogue
Tommy Boy
Morning slides in soft, the way good things do when you don’t clutch at them. The house smells like coffee and baby soap, even though there isn’t a baby yet—just the pile of gifts the women tucked into my truck last night like they were fortifying us against every storm to come.
Jami’s in the middle of it all, cross-legged on the rug, hair thrown up, my old tee falling off one shoulder. She hums while she opens a bag with tissue paper the color of bubble gum.
“Okay,” she squeals, pulling out a tiny denim jacket with a stitched patch: Little Hellion. She laughs so hard she cries a little. “Doll is out of control.”
“Doll is restrained,” I explain, biting toast over the sink. “That’s the smallest patch you’ll ever see her order. And my mom will be even worse when the baby gets here.”
She holds the jacket up in front of her belly and squints at me, mock-serious. “Size check.”
“Perfect. Baby will grow into the attitude.”
She grins and moves to the next thing. A mobile made of leather stars and thin chains.
A book of lullabies that actually play as you turn the pages with my mom’s handwriting in the front: For nights that stretch long—sing anyway.
A stack of onesies folded like peace treaties.
A handmade quilt done in red and black to drown out some of this pink.
“God, Tommy,” she whispers, fingertips tracing a line of thread. “I didn’t know people did this for one another. I didn’t know people would do this for me.”
“They do,” I say, because my voice won’t do anything fancier without breaking. “They will. For a long time.”
We go slow. We read the cards. We fold each thing careful like it’s a promise, not a present.
I put batteries in a sound machine. She organizes pacifiers by color.
We’re not ready in any official sense and won’t be for a while.
Still, the pile shrinks, the nursery corner grows, and something in my chest eases like a bolt finally finding the right thread.
I catch myself staring at her ring while she works, the way the morning light keeps finding it like it’s hungry. It’s been back on her finger barely a week, and every time I notice it there my ribs feel wider.
She sees me looking and waggles her fingers. “You staring at your good decision?”
“Best I ever made,” I remark with pride. “Twice.”
She rolls her eyes and reaches for a small white box hidden in the corner. “What’s this?”
“From me.” I cross the room and sit behind her on the rug, my back against the couch, her shoulders easing into my chest like they remember the space. “Open it.”
Inside is a framed photo—grainy, printed from my phone. A beach morning. She’s laughing into the wind with one hand on her belly and the other holding up her ring, sunlight throwing sparks off the band. I had the word burned into the frame, small and plain: beauty.
Her breath catches. She doesn’t say anything for a long second. Then she turns and climbs into my lap the way you do when a dam inside you breaks in the cleanest way. “You’re going to ruin my mascara,” she mutters against my throat.
“Occupational hazard,” I mutter, kissing the top of her head.
We sit like that until the coffee goes lukewarm and the house fills with that particular quiet that only comes after laughter.
She finally pulls away and leans the frame on the mantel, centered between a seashell we found and a photo of my old man grinning like he invented sunrise while holding my mom close against him.
“When did you do that?” she asks.
“Yesterday. Had Red run it to the frame shop while I pretended I was very busy with extremely important club things.”
“Criminal mastermind,” she teases. Then her face goes soft in that way I’m still learning to trust: the way that says I’m still here. “Tommy?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“I don’t want to wait.”
“For?”
“Forever,” she states, so simply it empties my lungs. “We keep saying it. Let’s choose it. Now.”
My heart drops and then lifts like a bike cresting the perfect hill. “You’re sure? We can do the courthouse. The beach. The clubhouse. Hell, I’ll marry you at the Waffle House if that’s where you want to be when forever starts.”
She laughs, wiping her eyes. “Backyard,” she says. “Our backyard. One week from today. Simple. Our people. Vows we actually mean.”
“Deal,” I reply, because I am ready. “I’ll make calls.”
“And I’ll… figure out how to be a bride without getting hives.”
“You already are,” I say. “No dress required. But get one if you want because I don’t know that I can manage the vows if you’re in front of me naked.”
She sighs like a woman who’s learning that joy takes up space and she’s allowed to take it. “Okay. One week.”
One week isn’t a lot of time to plan a wedding. One week isn’t any time at all if you’re the kind of person who wants calligraphed place cards and rented chandeliers. But we’ve never been those people. We’re the ‘call the people who show up and let the rest fall where it may’ people.
Turns out, when you love a club, the club loves you back loud.
The week becomes a blur.
BW, on my porch, measuring distances with his eyes.
“You want the arbor there. Light comes through that gap right as the sun drops.” He draws a quick map on a napkin like a battlefield schematic and then texts Doll.
Fifteen minutes later, she sends a photo of an immaculate boho arch she “happened to have in a storage unit.” She also sends twelve exclamation points and a string of hearts.
Kylee, my brother Red’s ol’ lady and Kristin who is with Pretty Boy arrive with clipboards, a smile, and the kind of energy that turns chaos into choreography.
“Let me be useful,” Kylee says, and I’m smart enough not to argue.
Suddenly there are chairs being borrowed from everywhere—clubhouse, church, neighbors who think love is a holiday and loan chairs accordingly.
Pretty Boy volunteers lighting because of course he does. The man can wire a stage by instinct. That night my backyard glows with a hundred little bulbs strung from the big oak to the fence line, as if the stars forgot their job and gave it to us for a while.
Crunch shows up with plywood and paint. “I’m making a sign,” he explains, unapologetic. By sundown he’s propped a board by the gate that reads in big, brushed letters:
From Brutal to Beauty — J + T
He doesn’t look at me when I see it, he just cups the back of my head the way big brothers do when the thing they’re giving you is too soft to look at openly.
Jenni and Jami vanish for an afternoon and come back smelling like a florist shop and a bag from dress boutique.
I don’t see the dress because I like having reasons to forget how to speak, but I see the way Jami floats around the kitchen afterward, fingertips grazing the counter like life somehow finally fits her skin. That’s all I need to know.
Tripp handles permits we don’t strictly need and asks favors in the polite, threatening way presidents do when they want no trouble from neighbors who forget we pay their bills with our construction jobs.
The man puts his name on anything that might cost us stress and tells me my only job is to breathe and not run.
I think about running exactly zero times.
At night, when the planning quiets, Jami and I lie on the porch couch under a blanket that smells like every ride we ever took.
We talk about vows. What to say, what not to promise.
She wants to keep it real. No fairy tale, no lies.
I want the same, but in my head “real” is a four-letter word that’s plain and simple.
We land on something in the middle: promises you make with your boots on.
“You’re going to cry,” she warns me at least twice.
I tell her she’s projecting. She says we’ll see. We both laugh.
Every morning she marks another X on the calendar with a little heart in the corner. Every mark looks less like counting down and more like gearing up.
Somewhere in the middle of all of it, I take the old lawn mower out back and pretend the stripes matter.
They don’t. What matters is the way the air smells at five p.m. when the sun turns our fence into a line of gold.
What matters is the sound she makes when she tries on those little white sandals and decides bare feet are braver.
The day arrives like it’s been coming our whole lives.
I wake before the alarm. The sky is a brilliant mix of color. The house is still. For a minute I just listen to the quiet and memorize it. If peace had a sound, it would be this: soft breath through a doorway you’re not afraid to open.
Jami’s in the kitchen already when I get there, hair braided, a robe tied loose around her. She’s holding the sonogram in one hand and my coffee mug in the other like both are sacred.
“Nervous?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says. “You?”
“Like I’m about to jump off a cliff with my eyes open.”
She smiles. “That’s your kink.”
“Only when the cliff’s you.”
She rolls her eyes and kisses my cheek, then shoves me toward the hall. “Go shower. You missed a spot shaving.”
By noon the backyard is a small, temporary village.
Chairs face the oak tree, ribbons flicker, lights nap lazy between branches waiting to glow.
There’s a table along the fence line with iced tea, lemonade, and a bottle of sparkling water for the post-ceremony toasts.
Doll’s at the center of it all like a queen bee directing traffic.
She looks at me when I step outside and claps her hands once.
“Well look at you,” she takes note. “Thomas Oleander in a suit. Somebody call Tonka to read me my last rights because certainly I’m getting ready to go to Heaven. You wouldn’t even wear a suit for your Mom and I when we offered to pay you to do it for the damn prom.”
“It’s dress pants and a white shirt, Doll,” I say. “Don’t get dramatic.”
She grins. “Honey, it’s me. I’m gonna be dramatic.”