Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 78466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 314(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
“Diapers,” I cackled, waggling my eyebrows.
“Oh dear God,” she groaned.
“I’ll get you a jogging stroller so you can keep up with the millennials.”
She flipped me off as I dissolved again, and her husband struck the Superman pose.
Of course she’d been worried, but there were so many women having babies later in life that I told her to get over it. Plus, she knew that she and Robert already made pretty kids. Keisha was not only stunning, but scary smart.
She appreciated that even as she had to get up and run to the bathroom. Morning sickness didn’t look like fun.
So we had Keisha, as baby Brandon was going to be an Independence Day baby, which meant that sleeping in was not an option. There needed to be structure for five teenagers, and of course, food. I was thankfully surprised to find my son in the kitchen starting French toast while Jake and Harper, his best friends since kindergarten or first grade, flanked him. Harper was frying bacon, and Jake was swirling what looked like an omelet in a pan, ready to flip it. Not wanting to watch, I stumbled to the Keurig to hunt for the strongest stuff I had.
“Check this out, Mr. Harcourt,” Jake said as he flipped the omelet. It landed all over my stove, which was impressive, since he hit all six gas burners.
“Awww, man,” Harper groaned. “I wanted that.”
“It’ll still be good,” Jake assured him with his infectious grin. “Just messy.”
Jake was the optimist, Harper the realist, and my son fell somewhere between the two. So later when I told them we had to leave at that very moment or we’d be late and would never get a spot on the grass at Promontory Point, no one was worried about it.
“We can just go somewhere else,” Jake was quick to offer, still playing Call of Duty with Harper and Kola, all of them with headsets on, one PS4 hooked up to Kola’s TV, the second hooked up to mine and Sam’s that my son had carried down from our bedroom. Of course, not one of them turned around to look at me.
“Uncle Aaron said we could go on his yacht with him and Uncle Duncan,” Hannah chimed in.
“No,” I put the kibosh on that. “It just needs to be simple.”
The whole day, all my attempts at a nap were thwarted, and then one by one, Sam’s folks, his brother, his sisters, everyone bailed on me, and finally the man himself, saying that he would be late but would join us wherever we went to see fireworks, as he’d taken a change of clothes with him.
“Just meet us back at home,” I snapped.
“You’re tired,” he said flatly. “So am I. Knock it off.”
I hung up so I didn’t say anything else, because I already felt crappy for taking my annoyance and frustration out on him.
I got everyone moving and headed downtown with each of the kids taking turns telling me where we shouldn’t go. It was my mistake; the point was to make a plan and stick to it. Asking for suggestions—that way lay madness.
We ended up at Navy Pier right before they closed it off and stood there with everyone else and watched the explosions over our heads. That all went off without a hitch, but when we were walking back to the car, I stepped off the curb so a woman with a stroller could get by me, and when I smiled at her, and she smiled back, I lost track of where I was going.
I plowed into the side of a man standing in a circle of others, smoking, and made him drop his cigarette on his foot.
“The hell are you doing?!” he bellowed, and then squinted, which is never a good sign. God knows who I reminded him of—or what.
“I’m so sorry,” I apologized, trying to soothe him. “I didn’t even see you.”
“I know guys like you,” he muttered, “just lost my job to another hipster motherfucker.”
Oh no.
I thought about protesting the hipster label, but I could tell he was beyond having a discussion with me. I apologized again before moving to skirt around him, but he caught my bicep, shoved me back against a parked car, and hit me. And I knew, logically, that he was drunk, angry, tired, probably in the same mood I was, and he’d just lost his job as he’d said, but the only thing that ran through my head at that moment was that he hit me in front of my kids.
I had not been struck in years, but still, I remembered, and he was so much bigger than me that it felt, for a moment, like he broke my jaw.
“Pa!” Hannah shrieked, and then Kola was there, shoving the guy back, or trying to, as the barrel-chested man had many pounds on my boy.