Epilogue
My portrait hung dead center on the exhibition wall, a red “Best in Show” ribbon pinned to the corner of the frame.
I stood in front of it with my hands shoved deep in the pockets of my graduation gown.
The cap was crooked on my head because the bobby pins Hunter had given me were useless against my thick hair.
Evan stood beside me, close enough that our bodies touched through the polyester, his own gown unzipped to reveal the navy suit underneath.
“Still can’t believe Muldoon gave you top marks,” Evan said. His eyes moved over the drawing—over himself, rendered in charcoal and graphite, his face inches from mine on the page. “It’s good, Tommy. Really fucking good.”
I knew it was. That wasn’t ego—it was the first time in my life I’d made something and had zero urge to apologize for it.
Every line on that page was true. Muldoon had called it “the most emotionally honest piece I’ve seen from a student in fifteen years.
” I’d printed that email and taped it inside my sketchbook.
The sound of multiple pairs of shoes on the polished hallway floor made us both turn.
The team rounded the corner in a cluster of navy caps and gowns, Garcia leading the pack with his phone already raised. Thompson, Caldwell, Reed, and four others fanned out behind him, their voices bouncing off the high ceilings of the art wing.
“There it is!” Garcia stopped in front of the portrait, his phone dropping to his side. His mouth went slack. “Dude.”
Thompson crowded in next to him. “Holy shit, Jenkins.”
They stood there, a wall of athletes in graduation regalia, staring at my drawing in silence. The quiet lasted longer than I’d expected. These were guys who filled every second with noise—chirping, trash talk, bat cracks. The silence meant something.
Caldwell broke it first. He stepped closer, his head tilting as his eyes traced the composition. “I can feel the heat coming off the page. It’s intense.”
“It’s sexy as hell, is what it is,” Garcia said, finally recovering his voice. “I mean, I’m straight, but even I’m feeling something looking at this. The way your faces are that close together? The tension? Bro.”
Thompson nodded slowly, his arms crossed over his gown. “Who knew Brock was a toe-curler?”
“The way his trapezius connects to the deltoid. I’ve seen Brock shirtless in the locker room a thousand times, and Tommy nailed it,” Caldwell added.
“Appreciate that, Caldwell,” Evan said dryly.
“I’m serious!” Caldwell leaned in again. “And the expression on your face, Brock. It’s like the lights are on, but nobody’s home. Did you see God?”
“It’s definitely vulnerable,” Garcia supplied.
“Yeah. What he said.” Caldwell straightened up and gave me a nod of respect. “You’re talented, man. For real.”
The heat in my face was absurd. I’d spent four years on the periphery of this team, organizing bats and fetching ice, and now they were standing in front of my work and seeing me.
Reed had been quiet the entire time, which was unusual for a guy whose mouth ran faster than his legs.
He stood at the back of the group, his head cocked to one side, studying the portrait with narrowed eyes.
His gaze tracked slowly from top to bottom, lingering somewhere around the lower third of the composition.
“I’m just gonna say it,” Reed announced, stepping forward. “Since nobody else has the balls.”
“Reed—” Evan started.
“You captured his dick perfectly.” Reed pointed at Evan’s cock, dead center between us. “That right there is a Louisville Slugger, boys. And Tommy drew it to scale.”
The hallway exploded. Garcia doubled over. Thompson grabbed Caldwell’s shoulder for support. Evan dropped his face into his hand, his ears going red, but his shoulders were shaking with laughter.
“I’m being serious!” Reed was grinning, his hands spread wide. “As someone who has unfortunately seen Brock’s hog in the showers—flaccid and erect—that’s accurate.”
“I hate every single one of you,” Evan said through his fingers, but his voice was light, and when he looked at me, his eyes were creased at the corners.
I was laughing too hard to respond. My face was on fire, and my ribs ached. I loved these idiots more than I’d ever admit out loud.
The commotion was still dying down—Garcia wiping his eyes, Reed taking a bow—when the sound of heavy footsteps cut through the noise.
My father appeared at the end of the hallway, his frame filling the corridor in a charcoal suit I’d never seen before. His hair was combed back, his jaw freshly shaved, and beside him—close beside him, their shoulders nearly touching—was Petrie.
Petrie wore a navy blazer and khakis, his square jaw relaxed, his kind eyes already scanning the group with warmth. His hand hung at his side, centimeters from my father’s.
Spines went rigid. Grins were tucked away. The Pavlovian response to Coach Jenkins entering a room was powerful enough to override the effects of graduation day.
“At ease,” my father said, and the dry humor in his voice made a few of them exhale. He stopped in front of the portrait, his eyes moving over it with the same methodical focus he gave game film. Petrie stood beside him, his gaze soft and appreciative.
The silence stretched. My father’s throat moved with a hard swallow. “Good work, Thomas.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Finally got an iota of praise from the man. Of course, it had to be when he was examining a nude portrait of me and my boyfriend.
“I’ve known,” he said. “About you two.”
The hallway went dead silent. My lungs stopped working.
“Since the William & Mary series,” he continued. “Maybe before that, if I’m being honest with myself.”
Evan went rigid beside me. “Coach.”
My father held up a hand. The same gesture that silenced dugouts and film rooms. “I’m not angry. I never was.” He glanced at Petrie, and something passed between them—history and understanding. “I recognized it because I’ve lived it.”
Petrie’s hand moved, settling against the small of my father’s back, dangerously close to his ass.
“You see something in another person,” my father said quietly, his eyes on me, “and the whole world gets rearranged around it. You think you’re hiding it, but the people who’ve lived it can always tell.
” He shook his head. “I didn’t need to know the details.
I just needed to see what I see every morning when I’m with this one. ” He tilted his head toward Petrie.
“He’s not as oblivious as he acts,” Petrie said, smiling warmly.
My father huffed through his nose. Then he took in the team, who were standing frozen in various states of shock and pretending very hard to be invisible.
“Go find your seats,” he told them. “Ceremony’s in forty minutes.”
They scattered. Garcia grabbed Reed’s arm and hauled him down the hallway. Thompson and Caldwell followed, throwing glances over their shoulders. Within seconds, it was just the four of us and the portrait on the wall.
My father turned to Evan. “Give me a minute with my son.”
Evan nodded. His hand found my lower back, pressed once, then released. He stepped away, joining Petrie a few feet down the hall, where Petrie immediately said something that made Evan’s rigid posture soften.
My father jerked his head toward the exit. “Walk with me.”
We pushed through the art wing’s double doors and into the late morning sun. The campus was alive with families and graduates, clusters of gowns and mortarboards dotting the green lawns. My father walked beside me, his hands clasped behind his back, his stride unhurried for once.
We passed the library, the bench where I used to sketch between classes, and the path that led to the athletic complex. Neither of us spoke for a full minute. For once, the silence wasn’t uncomfortable.
“You know I’m proud of you,” he said finally.
“I know.”
“Good.” He cleared his throat. “Because I haven’t said it enough. I know that.”
“Dad, you don’t have to—”
“Let me talk, Thomas.” His voice was firm but not sharp. We turned down the brick path that circled the quad, the commencement tent visible in the distance, white and billowing. “I’ve been hard on you. Distant. I know how it appeared from your side.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. But it was on purpose.” He stopped walking and turned to face me.
His hazel eyes held steady on mine. “You’re about to go out into the world.
A world where I can’t be standing behind you, fixing things, smoothing paths.
You needed to learn how to stand on your own.
To trust your own judgment. To stop coming to me for permission to be who you are.
Every time I held back,” he continued, “every time I didn’t jump in or tell you what to do—that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done as a father.
Harder than any game I’ve ever coached. I wanted you to know that your spine was your own.
That when you stood up for yourself, or made a choice, or put something into the world”—he nodded back toward the art wing—“it came from you. Not from my approval.”
I swallowed hard. “I spent a long time thinking you didn’t care.”
“I know. And I’m sorry for that. But Thomas”—he placed his hand on my shoulder and held it there—“you’re graduating from college with the best piece in your class on that wall. You found someone who sees you. You did all of that without me holding your hand. That’s what I’ve always wanted for you.”
My eyes burned. I blinked hard and focused on the white tent in the distance until the emotions subsided. “You could have told me.”
“Would you have believed me? At eighteen? At twenty?” He squeezed my shoulder once. “You needed to live it first. Now you know it’s real because you built it yourself.”
I thought about the last four years. The cold silence in his office.
The logistical conversations that never quite became personal ones.
The hotel bathroom offer that had been, in its own way, the most intimate thing he’d ever said to me.
All of it reframed in the span of sixty seconds on a brick path.
“I’m not going to suddenly become a different man,” he said, dropping his hand. “I’m still going to be gruff. I’m still going to push. That’s who I am. But I need you to know that underneath all of it—every single time—I was rooting for you.”
“I know, Dad.” My voice came out rough. “I know now.”
He nodded once, and the tension around his eyes smoothed. His shoulders dropped. For the first time I could remember, my father appeared unshackled.
“Alright.” He turned back toward the way we’d come, and I fell into step beside him. “Let’s get you back to your boy.”
We walked in silence again, but it was the good kind. The kind that didn’t need filling.
Evan and Petrie were standing outside the art wing doors. Petrie was mid-sentence about something—his hands moving in that easy, animated way of his—and Evan was nodding along, his posture loose, his arms uncrossed. When he saw me, his whole body oriented toward mine.
My father walked straight up to Evan and stopped in front of him. Evan straightened, his chin lifting, old instincts kicking in.
“Brock, you take great care with him. You hear me?”
Evan met his gaze without flinching. “Yes, sir. I will.”
“I mean it.” My father held Evan’s gaze for another beat, something passing between them that didn’t need words. Then he extended his hand.
Evan shook it. Firm, brief, final.
My father stepped back, adjusted the lapel of his charcoal suit, and turned to Petrie. Without hesitation, without looking around to see who might be watching, he reached out and took Petrie’s hand in his.
Their fingers laced together. Petrie smiled, and they turned toward the commencement tent.
I watched them walk away. My father’s stocky frame and Petrie’s relaxed stride, their clasped hands swinging slightly between them. Two men who had spent years behind closed doors were now walking across an open campus on a sunny day without a single backward glance.
Evan’s arm settled across my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I leaned into him, the weight of his arm grounding me.
We walked toward the tent, Evan’s arm draped over my shoulders, my hand reaching up to grip his fingers where they hung near my collarbone.
Ahead of us, soon-to-be graduates streamed across the lawn in their caps and gowns—some posing for photos, some sprinting to find their seats, some crying into their parents’ arms.
Hunter appeared from behind the library, his sandy hair already messy. He spotted us and broke into a jog.
“There you are!” He skidded to a stop in front of us, slightly out of breath.
“I’ve been looking everywhere. Garcia said your dad showed up at the portrait, and it got intense.
Are you…” His eyes dropped to Evan’s arm around me, then back up to my face.
A grin split across his features. “Oh. You’re good. You’re very good.”
“We’re good,” I confirmed.
“Excellent. Fantastic. Love that for you both.” Hunter fell into step on my other side, bumping my shoulder with his.
“Now move your asses. They’re lining you guys up alphabetically in ten minutes, and I am not missing blowing an air horn for you, Tommy, because you were having a moment with your boyfriend. ”
The three of us crossed the lawn together. Evan’s arm, heavy and warm across my back. Hunter’s elbow knocking against mine every third step. When we reached the staging area, a woman with a clipboard was waiting for us.
Evan’s arm finally slid off my shoulders. “I’ll find you after.”
“I’ll be the one with the crooked cap, looking as handsome as ever.”
“I think you mean, as pretty as ever.” He planted a quick kiss on my lips and disappeared into the crowd.
I watched him go, with Hunter by my side, and realized that pretty never sounded as good as it did right now.