Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“Oh,” Kola sighed. “And then she did the Hannah thing where she made everyone around her miserable.”
“She doesn’t do that,” I defended my daughter.
“Oh c’mon,” Kola groaned.
“She does do that,” Sam acknowledged. “Hannah has far more good qualities than bad, but we all know if she doesn’t get her way, she can be a real pill.”
“What?”
“Stop. You’ve seen her do it. She can be a control freak. If people don’t sit where she wants them at dinner or if the schedule at a party goes off the rails, she’s not great at managing her own expectations and she pouts. Or she leaves. Hannah doesn’t suffer in silence.”
That part was true. Hannah liked things a certain way, and God help you if you were the one who didn’t like her plan or worse, stick to it. For the most part, going along was in everyone’s best interest because Hannah did want people to be happy. It was easy to see her point of view because it made sense. But I could see where her ideas and what Jake and his family wanted to do had, perhaps, conflicted.
“We all know she’s great at coming to the rescue of others,” Kola continued, “of averting disaster, but if she wanted blue plates and you bought red—we all know she gets her hackles up and can be butt hurt for the whole night.”
That was valid.
“And so things went not as planned at Jake’s mom’s house?” I asked Sam.
“Apparently Hannah tried to help organize, and that came off as scolding,” my husband explained with a grimace.
“Oh no.”
“She offered to cook, but Jake’s mom, they’re big on having food delivered now, and everyone sort of does their own thing, and we all know how Hannah needs a schedule.”
Much like myself, Hannah needed to know, generally, when things were going to happen throughout her day. There was wiggle room for some change, but only in brackets of time. Like at dinner, she wasn’t about to not be at the table talking to all of us. She needed to stay on track.
“And then the days started to tick down and she wasn’t in a place she knew, and Jake, of course, wanted to visit with his family, so she was out, alone, in LA, and she had a good time because, as we know, she’s fearless, and she’s on FaceTime with David Chan constantly, and they talked a great deal.”
“While Jake was visiting with his family.”
“Yes.”
“And Hannah didn’t make any effort to sit with them?”
“Well, I guess they’re not a game-playing family, so it was more chatting and sitting around watching TV and Hannah got bored, and she could run, but she didn’t have any of her equipment there or her gym so…it just deteriorated.”
“Plus she wanted to come home,” I expressed to Sam.
“Plus that, yes.”
“And then she started harping on Jake about the plane tickets home,” Kola chimed in. “And Jake’s personality is, the more you push, the more he resists.”
“Right, so Hannah did what Hannah always does and called Aaron.”
“Aaron’s in Tokyo,” I informed my husband.
“But the plane was in LA, and like that would have mattered anyway,” he said with a shake of his head.
“Oh God,” I moaned, realizing what happened. “Hannah took the plane home without Jake.”
“Yeah, and I guess when Hannah was on the way out the door of Jake’s mother’s house, he told her they’d be home today and all she had to do was have some patience.”
“Which she has none of,” Kola said with a yawn.
“That’s not true,” I said defensively. “She’s very patient about––”
“She’s patient about her things, but not anyone else’s,” Sam clarified. “And she’s going to need to work on that, but Jake messed up.”
“How so?”
“He called her a selfish brat who he knew was too young to date.”
Kola gasped like he’d been shot. “Oh, that’s not good.”
“I see both sides,” Sam said in between bites of tamale. “Jake wanted time with his mom and sister, and I guess they have lots of new friends and a whole community of people for him to meet. Hannah should have been there to support her boyfriend and just make the best of the situation that sounds like it wasn’t all that bad.”
I nodded.
“On the other hand, why invite Hannah to go if he wasn’t going to spend any time with her? All he did was piss her off because how he said it would be was not at all what it was.”
“I think Jake’s having trouble with the whole David Chan thing.”
“Yeah, but all he did by ignoring her was give her more reasons to chat with David. She’s going to a luncheon with him tomorrow at his mother’s house.”
“Is Jake coming home?”
“Not until next week when class starts,” Sam informed us. “I got a text from him, and that’s what he said.”