Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91461 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“The sky part is because we’re having it in our penthouse,” he explained later to me and Aja, waggling his eyebrows over how clever he was.
She squinted at him. I shook my head.
“What?”
“We’ve been to your home,” Aja reminded him. “Most of us here have. You can leave the in-the-sky part off of the invitations you send out.”
“I’m not sending out invitations,” he told her, turning away so he could edit whatever it was he was hitting our inboxes with.
When we received them an hour later, he had doubled down with the sky theme and there were lots of digitally created fireworks. I was fairly certain he’d made them himself, so I was quick to answer back that of course we would come.
Kola went to Finn’s mother’s house with him for a few hours, but they were both back in time to see Wick and Harper, and Harper’s family. It was always good to see them. George and Kurt showed up, and Hannah made sure to take them to see Sandra.
“I noticed your husband’s rings when I met him at my Christmas party,” she told Kurt. “The diamonds are beautiful.”
“Well, so is he, so it had to be done. Plus, I don’t want anyone to miss that he’s taken.”
“That’s very romantic.”
Kurt smiled at her. “You don’t fall in love every day, now do you?”
“No,” she agreed. “You really don’t.”
On her way out much later in the evening, Sandra said that even though a Christmas open house was both fun and interesting, it would give her hives to ever host one. And I understood. They weren’t for everyone.
On Saturday, we got an addendum on the New Year’s Eve party where it was changed to a New Year’s Day dinner at Aaron and Duncan’s. He then sent a group text, and the note said he hadn’t been thinking. Who was going to stay up until the stroke of midnight anyway? Certainly not any of us. Dinner at a more palatable hour seemed a better idea. Everyone responded to him on chat.
Dylan: I was wondering about that. I thought maybe we’d all be doing lines of cocaine to stay up and ring in the new year.
Chris: I haven’t used cocaine since 1992.
Aja: I tried to do a line once, but I sneezed instead and that was it for me. The people I was with were NOT pleased.
Dane: I’m utterly scandalized.
Aja: Are you, Mr. Opium?
Dane: One time. And everyone was doing it.
Me: You laughed when you said that, didn’t you?
Dane: Perhaps.
Aaron: I’m sorry. You’ll have us believe that everyone was doing opium? In what century was this?
Dane: In the mid-nineties when I was in college.
Sam: I think this was a movie you watched about the French Foreign Legion.
Dane: It was not. I had laudanum, and it wasn’t terrible.
Sam: And yet you stopped after how many tries?
Dane: Just the one.
Sam: As I suspected.
Dane: I don’t much like ever being not in control. Plus it makes you sleepy.
Sam: Which would be of no help with staying up on New Year’s Eve.
Dane: Correct.
Duncan: You can all thank me for this, and I will accept bourbon as payment.
Aaron: I’ll get you whatever you want, darling.
Dane: None of that.
Sam: Gross.
Aja: Get a room.
Dylan: Awww. I want to be called darling and get whatever I want.
Chris: Darling, I’m making you a fried egg sandwich for lunch.
Dylan: Oooooh. I’m excited about that.
Aaron: Now who’s gross, Sam?
Sam: Still you.
I will say that this year on New Year’s Eve, I made it to right around ten and made Sam get under the covers as he was dozing watching something on Netflix. It was a fitting end to a bit of an up-and-down year. When I cuddled up to my husband before the end of the old year, knowing I’d wake up in the new one, I made sure to kiss him soundly.
“I love you very much,” I whispered to him.
“And I love you back,” he rumbled, even as his eyes stayed closed.
Nothing better than that.
Hope you all have a great rest of January. Why it always feels so long is beyond me. Maybe it’s all the dark cloudy days. Anyway, I’ll see you all in February.
FEBRUARY 2025
Hello, all, and welcome to He Said, he said, February 2025.
Since we’re all living through surreal times, I just want you to know that I will keep bringing you the happenings of the people I love to give you a bit of a reprieve each month. In this month’s installment I begin with Valentine’s Day and what I observed, starting with…the removal of the light fixture.
I gasped, “Hannah.”
My husband yelled, “Hannah!”
And my sister-in-law, Aja Harcourt, asked drolly, “What in the name of Cirque de Soleil is happening right now?”
“Stop that,” Hannah ordered her aunt. “Don’t make me laugh.”
The concerned reactions were pulled from each of us because Wick, who was the biggest—not tallest, but with the heaviest muscle and massive shoulders and thighs—was the base. Literally, Wick was the lowest man on the totem pole, holding Jake on his shoulders, and Jake, in turn, had both hands gripped around Hannah’s ankles as she stood on his own broad shoulders and tightened what looked like a multi-pronged hook in the ceiling of their living room where previously there had been a lighting fixture. I knew that the industrial-looking abomination had been there because I’d seen it when they moved in.