Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96284 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 481(@200wpm)___ 385(@250wpm)___ 321(@300wpm)
Eventually, we tossed our backpacks in the back of the SUV, and we were on our way.
“Do you need me to distract you?” I asked.
“That’s why I’m letting you drive.”
He didn’t mean that. He thought I was a wonderful driver.
He coughed and cleared his throat, then told me to take the next exit.
“There’s a Starbucks five minutes away from their house,” he told me, not for the first time. But I wasn’t going to some damn Starbucks after I’d dropped him off. Actually—I was driving over there to buy coffee, and then I was gonna park closer to Jake’s folks’ house and wait.
Once we were off the highway, industry and warehouses morphed into a residential area. Jake couldn’t get comfortable in his seat, no matter how many times he shifted and twisted.
“You’ve got this, Jake.” I put a hand on his leg. “Try to remember you’ve been putting your foot down more and more for the past eight years. You don’t fly out as soon as your mother complains, you don’t talk to them when they think it’s time.”
As far as I knew, they were down to a phone call a month, which Jake kept brief.
“No, but I’m always slingin’ shitty excuses,” he muttered. “I got work, Bear’s got a soccer game, I have to take Sam to the dentist, my battery’s low… I gotta man up and say I’m fuckin’ done. I don’t wanna come here again. It’s been almost two years since I flew out with Colin and Sam for a weekend, and it still feels like it was yesterday.”
I rubbed his leg, wishing I could be more helpful.
“How have they reacted to fewer calls and visits?” I asked. “Like, do they think something is wrong?”
He sighed and sort of shook his head, like he wasn’t entirely sure. “My folks aren’t what you would call solution-oriented. They’ll bitch and moan a little, but they won’t ask themselves why their son ain’t happy to visit. They haven’t done that with Haley either. They’ve chalked it up to her being unruly and part of that new generation that can’t spell tradition. In their eyes, she’s the one who doesn’t care about family.”
Ugh, yeah, we had a lot of those people. Sandra’s dad was similar, with a modern twist. He thought we should suck it up and stay together for the kids. He didn’t understand fuck-all about postpartum depression, nor how people needed to be happy in order to be the best parents. He was never gonna stop spoiling Sandra with money and lavish gifts, and he would never fully get her either. It was a pat-pat-pat on the head, here’s some money, and you’ll be fine.
I didn’t dare hope for a perfect outcome where Sandra was concerned, but for as long as she had her mom and she stayed in therapy, there was a chance.
“Left up here,” Jake said quietly.
I took a breath and felt a flutter of nerves tighten my stomach.
I love you, I love you, I love you, stay strong, I’ll be right here waiting for you.
I didn’t tell him that. He wouldn’t be receptive to it.
“Number eight.” He cleared his throat and nodded at a pale-yellow house that hadn’t seen an upgrade in decades. Soon as I pulled over, I sensed the generational shift on the street. The older residents and their plainish houses were being replaced by younger families with robot lawn mowers and fixer-upper attitudes.
I idled at the curb and grabbed his hand.
I had nothing to say that I hadn’t already told him, so I just squeezed his hand and offered a quick reminder. “Think about our kids in there, okay? You’d go berserk if anyone treated them the way your folks have treated you.”
He nodded with a dip of his chin. Mentally, he’d already left the SUV, and now the rest of him followed.
Fucking hell, I was gonna turn into a nervous wreck too.
Since his parents weren’t actually expecting him, I guessed there would be a moment of surprise and some mindless chitchat on his mom’s part. Jake would suffer through it on autopilot before he got down to business. In other words, I turned the car around and made my way to Starbucks, fairly sure nothing crucial would happen in the next ten or fifteen minutes.
I eyed the breakfast items on the menu but couldn’t stomach the thought of food right now, so I ordered a latte with a double shot of espresso before I headed back to Jake’s folks’ neighborhood.
I found a run-down playground just a street over, where I parked and resigned myself to wait.
Had Jake played here when he was little?
It had a decently sized lawn. Kids probably played soccer here when the weather allowed it. The swing set and the slide had seen better days, probably in the nineties. A kid’s bike missing a wheel was thrown in the sandbox.