Epilogue - Hunter

SUMMER

"Brady's boyfriend is the life of the party." Hunter looked out on his backyard, filled with people and food and booze, his eyes tracking Cole, the man Brady brought back with him to Minnesota for part of the summer. He was rockstar beautiful in all black and was telling a story with his hands for a rapt audience as Brady looked at him like he was made of gold. Cole had even baked a cake for Sydney's graduation, the ostensible reason they were all there, a heart-shaped and intensely decorated frilly thing that Syd had nearly cried over when she'd seen it. He'd even baked gluten-free cupcakes for Weston.

"That's a sentence no one in human history has ever said before," Jonathan said, laughing. For a man Hunter used to rarely see smile, he got a lot of smiles in these days.

A lot had changed in a year. Hunter became a homeowner. He fell in love. He had an awful fight with the most important person in his life. He healed that relationship.

Syd graduated and found someone awesome to love, who loved her back and was on board with Syd wanting to be in Minnesota again, after Maeve graduated the following spring. Syd and Jonathan were developing a business plan for designing custom rainwater harvesting systems in the city, and Hunter was enjoying seeing something light the two of them up after they had both been in a bit of a funk.

Brady started dating a man, which Syd loved, because she said it made them all "belong to the same club." The closest Hunter would ever get to having siblings was proximity to siblings, and he loved being proximal to these siblings.

And then Quinny. No one wanted to see their best friend heartbroken. No one wanted their favorite person to suffer a zombie-like level of depression. But seeing how happy Weston made him now helped Hunter realize how long it had been since he'd seen Quinn this bright. For the last few years with Lee, he'd been duller.

Now, Quinn was across from Hunter on the nice deck furniture Brady had bought them the summer before, lying with his head in Weston's lap as Weston played with his hair and talked to Maeve about the year they still had left before they graduated, and how an ASMR streamer they both watched just got a new dog.

Nancy and Mike pulled their Outback into the driveway, finally back with the sandwiches they'd ordered weeks before but the sub shop had forgotten about.

"I'm going to go help with that," Jonathan said, giving Hunter a kiss on the cheek before he stood up and jogged over to his parents. Hunter would never tire of that firstborn energy. Quinn saw the cheek kiss and gave him a knowing, giddy little smile. For a long time, Hunter had felt guilty talking to Quinn about Jonny, but Quinn never made it awkward. He gave Hunter space to be giddy, and while they didn't talk about sex anymore, Quinn was insightful and considerate when Hunter wanted to talk about other aspects of their relationship. It was also a relief to Hunter that he liked Weston so much. After years of forcing himself to like Lee, it was so nice that spending time with Weston was a joy.

Things weren't pure bliss. The worst school year of his life just wrapped up, and he was taking another summer off and applying for jobs, both teaching and non-education positions, because staying at his school wasn't a viable option. He loved teaching and had his fingers crossed for a job at a school interested in making sure teachers had resources and reasonable class sizes. But he was also applying to Costco.

But his house was good, his relationships were good. He was still going to grief counseling to work out his weird feelings about his dad dying. It had been an incredibly rough year. But it had also been one of the best years of his life.

With the Griffin family home sold, the duplex had become the default spot for the Griffin family—his family—to gather. The people who made his life full and beautiful had taught him what family was. Jonathan hadn't put a ring on it yet, but it was only a matter of time. There was no rush. Neither of them was going anywhere. They were home.

***

Thank you for reading Fixer Upper! If you'd like to read Syd's epilogue five years later, you can find it here, and if you skipped New Development and missed the bonus story Pinky Swear, you can read about teenage Hunter's first Christmas with the Griffins here!