Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“That’s true,” Hannah agreed. “You do look happier in the pictures with us.”
“See?”
She tipped her head as she looked at him. “Why were you so sad?”
“I lost a friend of mine.”
“Oh no, I’m sorry,” she said, taking hold of his hand.
“Thank you, honey.”
“No, no, no,” Kola said, getting up, moving toward Chilly, who was next to the glass of bourbon I’d taken from Sam.
Chilly took one look at Kola and sent the highball glass right over the edge, watching as it fell into the grass.
“At least it didn’t break,” Hannah told her father.
“Yep. Everything’s fine. Nothing’s broken.”
The kids were thrilled when Sam wanted to take a ride on Jake’s swing.
“Ohmygod,” Hannah squeaked, watching Sam as he swung high, eyes closed, smiling. “He looks so happy.”
He certainly did.
“I’m so glad you got home to fix him,” Hannah said, sighing.
“I knew you would,” Kola assured me, leaning on the porch railing, petting Chilly. “You always do.”
And I always would. The man was mine, after all.
NOVEMBER 2020
Hello, all, welcome to the November edition of He Said, he said. I have to tell you that Halloween was a mixed bag this year. The first thing that happened when I woke up that morning was that on my way downstairs, I missed the last step and fell awkwardly into the middle of the living room. Since I didn’t want to hear, from anyone, about how klutzy I was, I told no one and simply hobbled to the kitchen for coffee. But that told me, instantly, what kind of day it was going to be. Flash forward to dusk, I was sitting beside a heartbroken Harper on the back stairs.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, even though I knew, watching him as he stared out across the lawn at Kola. He was standing with one of the girls from Hannah’s coven, and she had her arm around his waist and was leaning against him.
“He doesn’t think anything about it,” Harper grumbled miserably.
“What do you mean?”
He gestured at his best friend since kindergarten. “Look at that girl’s face. She’s all happy because she got up the courage to touch him, and now she’s close to him, thinking it means something, when to him it’s nothing.”
“You sound angry.”
“I am, at him,” he rasped bitterly, turning to look at me. “He lets everybody touch him.”
“Yes, he does,” I agreed, because Kola cared nothing about his personal space.
“He doesn’t think about it because he doesn’t care.”
“And you thought, like that girl does, that because he was allowing you close, he feels something more.”
“Yes,” he whispered roughly.
His heart was breaking, and it hurt to see. And I would have asked about Jeremy, who he’d been dating, but when he blew him off too many times in favor of Kola and Jake, that had quickly withered and died.
We were quiet for a few minutes, both of us looking at my son.
“We were at a party before all the Covid stuff happened,” Harper began, breaking the silence. “And there was a guy, and I remember his face when he walked into the living room, carrying two cups, and saw Jake sitting in Kola’s lap. And it was nothing to Kola, or Jake, just no room on the couch, and so Jake did what Jake always does when he sits on either one of us, but the guy had sat in Kola’s lap earlier and thought it meant something.”
“Just like you do when you touch him,” I said, turning back to my son’s friend.
He nodded.
“Perhaps just because he allows it, doesn’t mean you should.”
Harper looked back at Kola, who untangled himself from the girl to help his sister light the branches in the firepit that Jake had constructed earlier in the week. “You’re right. It just kills me that everybody else will get to be close to him except me.”
I put my hand on his shoulder, and when he looked at me, I saw that his eyes were swimming. “I don’t want it to become a situation where you can’t be over here anymore because it hurts too much to be around him. It’s selfish of me, but I don’t want the rest of us to lose you because you want something from Kola that he’s not prepared to give.”
He leaned fast and wrapped his arms around my neck and quietly wept into my shoulder. I really hoped we could keep Harper in our lives. I would miss him terribly if he went away.
A half hour later, I was in the kitchen making sandwiches, Duncan helping me and Aaron carry things out to the back deck for Kola’s Halloween party, when my ankle started to throb.
“Why’re you standing like a stork?” Duncan asked me, squinting.
“Are you sure you guys don’t want something to eat? I made an excellent chicken casserole, and I’ve got lots left.”
He smirked at me. “If it was so good, why is there a ton left?”