August 2025 #3
Her eyes instantly filled, and he hefted the heavy tool belt up on his shoulder and gently put his hand on her cheek. She leaned into it, and he smiled.
“Gotta go, overnight job. I’ve got people waitin’ on me, and restoration of a historical house with pocket doors and cabinets is vital.”
“Yes,” she barely got out.
He turned then, came back to me, kissed my cheek, grabbed his lunch, and was almost to the door when Harper stopped him by calling his name.
Jake did what he’d done with Kola, and lifted his arm.
The difference was, Harper didn’t move, and honestly, I wasn’t certain he could.
He was breathing strangely, like Hannah had been, but more, almost like he was about to hyperventilate.
Jake stepped back, put the tool belt down, did the same with his lunchbox I’d packed, and then grinning crazily, opened his arms wide.
Harper stumbled forward before bolting across the room, reaching him and basically molding himself to his friend.
I realized then that they weren’t meant to be apart.
How many times over the years had I stuck my head into Kola’s room to find him playing a video game with Jake wedged beside him, asleep, with Harper wrapped around Jake, also passed out.
Always, they were like puppies in a warm pile.
All three. They had been in one another’s pockets since they were children, and this separation was the longest that had ever occurred.
Jake was doing the best, because he was staying crazy busy between work and home projects, and he basically fell into bed at night dead to the world.
On the few nights where he was with us, he watched TV with Sam, went to yoga with me, worked out with Sam, and walked Dobby with some very nice elderly women in our neighborhood who felt much safer with Jake along, with his height and muscles.
Now Harper was shaking and Jake was talking to him.
When they parted, Harper was nodding, and Jake was telling him some kind of story, and finally Harper started laughing.
Jake took off his sunglasses then, and the blue eyes were gleaming with happiness.
Deep breath in from Harper, and then out. It was good to see.
Hannah darted over then, and I saw her biting her lip as she looked at him.
Quick flashing smile for her before he replaced his sunglasses, picked up his stuff, and went out the front door. He closed it gently behind him as we heard someone honking.
“Who is that?” Finn asked.
“The guys on the crew with him,” Sam answered.
“So he’s not a server anymore?”
“Not for a while now,” Sam told him.
“Yeah,” Harper said, coming into the kitchen, sounding shaky. “He’s all certified now. I had no idea.”
Hannah came into the kitchen and sat down as Dane and Aja came in the back door with Gen and Robert. “He looks so good,” she murmured.
“He’s thinner,” Kola said.
“No,” Sam corrected his son. “He’s just using all my equipment in the basement every night, and he runs with me in the morning. It’s all muscle.”
“You just hugged him,” Harper muttered, flopping down in a chair. “You know he’s not thin. He felt strong. Good.”
“He didn’t hug me,” Hannah whispered.
“Because that would break his heart right open,” Kola told her. “He can’t do that.”
She nodded, and Sam slipped around the table to hug his girl. Hannah wrapped her arms around her father’s waist and then turned her face into his side so no one could see the tears.
Later, Harper and Kola were standing out on the back porch, and when I joined them, I noticed that Harper was smiling.
“You look better than earlier.”
He nodded. “It’s so weird. Because I love Hannah,” he said turning to me. “I do. You know I do.”
“Yes,” I assured him.
“But… I know what Jake’s footsteps sound like. I know the exact moment when, if he doesn’t cut his hair, it’s going to start to curl. I know the sound of his breathing, and I know exactly how he starts off talking about sentient robots and ends up on Quentin Tarantino movies.”
“Which he loves, by the way,” Kola threw in. “And K-dramas because of Hannah.”
“Who I love,” Harper repeated, making sure I knew that before turning to Kola in absolute misery. “But… I can’t anymore. I have to see him once a day, every day, for my mental health.”
“He’s the same,” I told them.
“He looked fine to me,” Kola muttered.
“He fills every single second of his time,” I told them. “And he’s working like a dog.”
“I miss him,” Kola murmured sadly, leaning over on the railing. “I need him to veg with. I can sit with him for hours and not say a word.”
“Exactly,” Harper agreed. “And it’s the same with you, but without him––”
“The energy’s off,” Kola said miserably and then turned to me. “Will he even come home? He seems pretty happy here with you guys.”
“Everyone’s happy with us,” I assured my son. “Your father and I are the best.”
His smile was huge. “It’s true.”
“If you think about it,” I began, “all of you have places to go if things don’t work out at home. Jake has to drive to his father or fly to his mother. I’m sure he thought, what am I going to do, which is why he was staying with friends when he first got back from Wisconsin.”
“But then he came over here,” Kola stated.
“Because his brain kicked in. He knows better. It just took him a minute to remember that, even though your father and I are your parents and Hannah’s parents, that we love him like he belongs to us.”
Kola nodded.
“You too,” I said to Harper. “I miss you when you’re not here, and so does the chief deputy. He doesn’t like the idea of seeing you less. Don’t make him resent Wick.”
Harper grinned at me. “No, sir, I won’t.”
I nodded even as I saw his face crumple. “Honey?”
“I want Jake to come home,” Harper said wistfully. “He was telling me how he hung out with some guys from school and that they could not follow his train of thought at all.”
“That’s the worst,” I told my son and one of his best friends.
“It is,” Kola mused. “You have to be with people who get you.”
“I don’t want him hanging out with other people,” Harper told Kola. “And that’s ridiculous and so fifth grade but—it’s how I feel.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I need him back,” Harper said with a sigh. “It’s like, I knew better than to let you break up the band when you were heading to California.”
Kola turned to him. “You guys told me you wanted to go.”
“We did. It was new, and it’s good to expand your horizons and all, but we also knew that me and Jake without you was not a good thing. That’s why Wick better not decide to take a job in New York after he gets his master’s.”
“You can’t go that far,” Kola told him. “I mean, you could. Of course you could. But you won’t, will you?”
Harper smiled at him. “No, I won’t. How could that ever work?”
Kola nodded and exhaled deeply, looking back out at the yard. “Thankfully, Finn is going to stay right here, because I can’t have him leaving me either.”
“Nobody’s leaving you,” Finn promised, walking up behind Kola and wrapping his arms around him.
Quick exhale from my son before he turned his head and kissed Finn’s cheek. “I need Jake home.”
“Me too,” Harper muttered.
“Oh, we know,” Wick said, reaching Harper and putting an arm around his shoulders. “Believe me, we know.”
Harper turned around fast, hands on Wick’s chest, staring into his eyes. “I don’t want you to be unhappy living here and not living your dream, so if you have to go to New York, we can do the long-distance thing and––”
“No,” Wick told him. “My dream job is going to be here. I’m actually going to be heading up the new urban anthropology department at Sutter in partnership with the Field Museum, and more importantly, you’re here, so…don’t worry about me leaving anymore.”
Harper searched his face. “You’re sure?”
He nodded. “My parents are thrilled, and so is my sister, which was a surprise.”
Deep sigh from Harper. “I would miss you if I was here and you were there, but I would do it, faithfully, and make it work because I can’t lose you. I don’t ever want to lose you.”
“I feel the same,” he said and wrapped Harper in his arms.
“Awwww,” Kola teased them.
“Knock it off. You’d be the same way if I had to go,” Finn told him.
“You just promised to never leave me!” Kola sounded both belligerent and defensive.
Finn’s laughter was good to hear.
Hannah, Aja, and I were sitting at the kitchen table talking over steaming cups of lemon balm tea, when my daughter announced that she was going to move home.
“Oh?”
She nodded. “I need to give Jake back to Kola and Harper. They’re both slowly slipping into a funk, and Finn and Wick told me to make it stop.”
I smiled at her.
“Maybe Jake would rather stay here,” Aja suggested.
She shook her head. “He loves Dad and Pa of course, but I know him, and being away from them is hard. Finn and Wick came along too late. Kola loves Finn, wants to marry him, but Jake is his touchstone. Same with Harper.”
I just listened to her.
“Jake keeps Kola grounded and not too up in his own head. Jake helps Harper decompress. They’re both a bit high-strung, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“We’ve noticed,” Aja told her with a smile. “I wish Gen had friends like that. Robert does, Smith and Kramer, those are his guys. And they haven’t been around as long as Kola’s had Harper and Jake, but it’s been a while.”
“Those are their first names? Smith and Kramer?”
Aja nodded.
“What are their last names?”
“Kramer…Sullivan and Smith Weir.”
“They sound like FBI agents.”
She shrugged.
Hannah took a shaky breath. “I don’t know what to do.”
Aja cleared her throat. “Have you and Jake talked at all?”
She nodded.
“And?” I pushed.
“He asked me if we broke up, would I go to a sperm bank, and he wasn’t being awful, he was posing it as a serious question, and when I said no, that’s not what I wanted, then he said, either way, a baby right now is off the table.”
“How do you feel about that?”