“So,” Skye says, wiping his fingers on the napkin, “I’ve been looking at programs.”
Grayson blinks. “You’ve already looked into it?”
Skye gives him a dry look. “Obviously. Rio helped me.”
“Right. Sorry. Stupid question.”
“Yes.”
Grayson laughs. “Ruthless. Okay, show me.”
Skye reaches into the basket and pulls out a slim tablet. Of course, he came prepared. Three schools are already open, side-by-side. None of them in Nashville, sadly, and every one with the best reputation.
“I wanted your opinion on faculty strength,” Skye says. “And whether I should add an art therapy track, even though I think most of them are a little too feelings-forward in the language.”
Grayson stares at the screen, then at his son.
“Don’t tell me, you have a spreadsheet?”
Skye’s mouth twitches. “Duh.”
Goddess, Grayson loves him.
They spend the next twenty minutes going over programs, accreditation, placement rates, extracurriculars, and how much nonsense exists in academic brochures. Skye has already ranked them according to logic that Grayson can follow only because Skye has laid it out so cleanly. It is not a child asking permission. It is a capable man inviting someone he trusts into a decision that matters.
By the time the warning bell rings for afternoon classes, Grayson feels wrung out in the best way. But his soul is overflowing.
Skye repacks the basket neatly, stacking containers smallest to largest, tablet last.
“So?” he asks.
“So,” Grayson says, standing with him, “you will be excellent at this.”
Skye rolls his eyes. “That wasn’t the question.”
“No, I know.” Grayson steps closer and straightens the collar of Skye’s overshirt, because he can and because after all these years, he still can’t quite help himself. “My actual answer is that teaching is not too small for you. It’s big enough to build a life around. And if it matters to you, then it matters. End of discussion.”
Skye goes still for a second, taking it in. Then he nods once. “Okay.”
It is such a simple word. Such an ordinary one. But Grayson hears everything inside it anyway: relief, resolve, the quiet settling of one path into place over all the others.
At the door, Skye pauses and looks back at the room. At the students’ work drying on the racks. At the pottery, the sketches, the mural Grayson is pouring his heart and soul into for The Plain spread in ribbons of light and pigment across fourteen feet of plaster wall.
“You really do love this place,” he says.
Grayson follows his gaze and smiles. “I do.” He hadn’t always, but now he can say it with everything he is, that all the things they’d been through had been leading him here, so he can do what he was born to do.
Skye nods, as if that confirms what he needed to hear. “Good.”
“For what?”
“For the record.” One shoulder lifts. “I think people should only teach if they love it.”
Grayson laughs. “I agree.”
Skye opens the door, letting the familiar swell of hallway noise pour in around them.
“Hei-Hei?”
