January 2025 #3
“We had several classes together freshman year,” he told me. “It’s been so nice to reconnect, especially since she knows my mother, Maeve, and my sister, Gilly.”
“How do you all know each other?” I asked him.
“My mother chairs many fundraisers. She and Hannah met that way. And Gillian, Gilly, my sister, met Hannah when she went to Sutter to ask them to buy––” He turned to Hannah, squinting. “––what was it again?”
“To ask us to donate for the education wing of the Children’s History Museum,” she reminded him with a shake of her head.
“Yes, but you could have just donated, correct? You don’t have to actually attend the stupid thing, do you?”
“Yes. When you buy a table, you attend. Plus, there is probably a silent auction there.”
He groaned.
“You’re going to hell for not supporting your mother.”
He gave her a dismissive wave. “You cannot expect me to keep up with my mother’s causes, and especially not attend every ridiculous gala.”
“I’m gonna tell her that the next time I see her.”
“She won’t even be remotely surprised. Now what would you like to drink, dove?”
“An amaretto sour,” she said, grinning at him.
“I’ll be right back,” he replied, and turned to go, but then swung right back around. “My manners desert me when I’m around your daughter,” he confessed. “May I get you something from the bar, sir?”
“No, I’m good, thank you.”
“Either of you?” he asked Sandra and Thea.
“Yes,” Thea said quickly. “I’ll go with you.”
“Oh, how nice,” he said, smiling and then turning back to Hannah. “I want you to go with me to the Wrigley Spring whatever it is this year.”
“Spring Jubilee,” she told him. “And I’m fairly certain I’m chairing that event, so no. And besides, if I was going with anyone, it would be my boyfriend. I love to make him dress up. He thinks it’s torture.”
I did a slow pan to her, because she nearly cackled evilly at the end of her statement.
“What? It’s fun to put Jake in clothes that make him itch.”
“Terrible,” I commented.
“Dove, do you think keeping Jake around is a good idea?”
To my surprise, she laughed. “You love Jake,” she said flatly.
He grunted.
“And even more so, you like Kola.”
“Is there anyone who doesn’t like your brother?”
She crossed her arms and tipped her head as though she was deep in thought.
“Annoying creature,” he said, and turned to Thea. “Shall we?”
Once they left, Sandra turned to Hannah. “Is this dress Balenciaga?”
Hannah nodded. “Yes. It’s good because it dresses up or down. I had lots of pearls on earlier that I sent back to the vault.”
“The vault?”
“Yeah. It’s fancy jewelry I wear to events that would look stupid coming to a family party. I don’t need to be all decked out with my family.”
“No, you don’t,” Sandra agreed, smiling at her. “I think Thea has a bit of a crush on your friend Werner.”
“I hope not. He’s not a serious guy.”
“Why does he call you dove?”
“Because he called me love once and I said absolutely not. That’s for my family and my boyfriend, no one else.”
“So he settled on dove?” Sandra asked.
“Yep.”
“It’s very pretty.”
“It’s a bird,” Hannah reminded her.
“It seems like he wants to date you.”
“No,” Hannah said with a shake of her head. “Not really. And again, he’s not serious. I don’t have time for that.”
“But you’re young,” Sandra pointed out. “You should date lots of people and play the field. That’s what being your age is all about.”
Hannah smiled at her. “Conversely, you find out the guy who’s always been in your life and is you brother’s best friend is actually the one.”
“But, darling, you’re just a child. Like my Thea. She’s actually a few months older than you, and she’s dating lots of people. As I said, she’s got her eye on your friend Werner.”
Hannah shrugged. “I’ve got it bad for—oh, what’s happening?”
And I saw him then, George Hunt, her bodyguard and friend, the latter more important to Hannah, cutting through the crowd.
Sandra’s breath caught, and many women, and a few men, turned to watch him cross the room to Hannah.
“Hey,” she greeted him, and her voice did the thing it always did, that Jake hated, and got all breathy and soft. She utterly adored the man…
“You forgot something, dingus,” he muttered as soon as he reached her.
…until he spoke.
“I did not,” she snarled back at him.
“Hannah,” I scolded her.
“Did you hear him call me dingus?”
He pointed at her ear.
“Well, crap,” she grumbled, unclipping one emerald-pearl-and-diamond earring, then the other. She passed them to him. “I could have just taken them home.”
“Really?” His look clearly conveyed the question, are you stupid? “Could you?”
“Fine,” she said under her breath.
“And who is this?” Sandra asked, looking at George.
“This is my friend, George Hunt, who also happens to be my bodyguard. George, this is my aunt Sandra.”
He gave Sandra a smile but didn’t offer her his hand. I’d noted more and more that George, as a rule, was not much of a touchy-feely person.
“You have a bodyguard?”
“Yes, she does,” George answered for her, “which is especially important when wearing a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of stones in her ears.”
“I thought those were costume,” Sandra told her.
“Way too heavy to be costume,” George replied, pulling a black velvet square from the breast pocket of his suit.
He unfolded it to twice its size, and once he placed the earrings on his palm, showed them to Sandra.
“As you can tell, when looked at up close, it’s clear you’re looking at real stones. ”
“I—yes, I can,” she agreed.
Once he folded them up and replaced them in his breast pocket, he turned to me. “Always a pleasure, Mr. Harcourt-Kage.”
“Same with you, George, and you can just say Harcourt, I know both names are a mouthful.”
His smile did really dazzling things to his blue-black eyes.
“I expect you at our Christmas open house, as I know you’re leaving the day after to spend New Year’s instead with your family this year.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He turned to go, but Hannah stopped him, hand tight on his bicep.
His scowl was dark. Her smile lit up her face.
After a roll of his eyes, he bent and kissed her cheek. She was still glowing when he walked away.
“My goodness, that young man has a huge ring on his left hand.”
“There are actually two rings on his finger. They’re his wedding set. It’s because he married a doctor. Lots of money for diamonds and platinum.”
“What interesting people you have who inhabit your life.”
“I know,” Hannah agreed happily.
When Werner and Thea returned, it was clear that she looked dejected and he just wanted to talk to Hannah.
And they were just chatting, it wasn’t romantic, but still, he didn’t give Thea the time of day.
It turned out that Werner’s aunt and uncle were there, and he brought them over to meet me.
Later, in the kitchen, Sandra said that to her, that was amazing.
Sam and I were the only same-sex couple she knew, so to have Werner’s relatives have no reaction at all to meeting me other than interest, just as I had with them, was mind-blowing.
Sandy also didn’t understand what a Christmas open house was. Two days later, at my house, by three in the afternoon—she and Michael and the kids had arrived at one—she understood. There was no time that everyone sat down at a long table and ate. That was not what we did.
Food was out, buffet style, on the stove and counters in the kitchen.
There were paper plates, napkins, and you just made a loop and served yourself.
There were desserts that were out and others in the refrigerator.
But all the food was accessible. People popped in, visited, and left.
Some, like Dane and Aja and their sons, Robert and Gentry, stayed all day.
It was a lot for Sandra to see friends of Sam’s pop in with their wives, visit for a bit and then leave.
His parents came over and stayed; his sisters and their families came over and left soon after eating.
Sandra and Michael had no other plans, so they stayed as well.
She watched as Hannah, Kola, and Jake all helped me in the kitchen, pulling aluminum foil pans out of the oven and putting new ones in.
We served in those pans and off plastic platters.
At one point Sandra made the comment that perhaps she should get rid of all her fine china and her vintage serving ware like her tureen or her butter and pickle trays.
“Why would you do that?” Kola asked her as Finn took a cookie sheet full of rolls from him and Hannah passed him another that had to go in that same oven. “You have beautiful sit-down dinners, so you need all that stuff.”
“Yeah,” Hannah chimed in. “I enjoyed looking at all the different serving pieces. It felt elegant. This ain’t that.”
“Not at all,” I agreed. “We need to get people fed.”
She appreciated the words and decided to lend a hand instead of standing back and watching, which was a huge help.
It was nice to see her chatting with Aja and Dylan later on in the evening.
When Aaron and Duncan arrived, Aja introduced her to him.
She was a bit overwhelmed, but one did not meet a multibillionaire every day.
For his part, Aaron was the charming man that he was when on his best behavior.
Because of that, I knew that Sandra and Michael would not be getting an invitation to Aaron’s New Year’s Eve party in the sky.
He had to be comfortable enough to be himself if you were coming to his home.
“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.