Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

2015

“Colin, do you need help?”

“No, I got it. It’s for my sister. I got it.”

I grinned and watched him balance the smoothie on top of the to-go box of mashed potatoes and cut-up meatballs and vegetables. The exciting cuisine of a one-year-old. Which I guessed was only half a joke because our food-truck family had stepped up. First with my son, now with Sam. At least eight of our favorite joints offered infant- and toddler-friendly options.

“Watch out, sweetheart.” I managed to step in between Colin and a dude who wasn’t watching where he was going. Only, he was about forty years old, and Colin wasn’t even five. “We’re almost there.”

It took a minute extra to get to our picnic table, but I never had the heart to take over when Colin wanted to carry the food for Sam. He was so protective and nurturing where she was concerned. It was always, “This is for my sister” and “That’s my baby sister.” A year after her birth, he was still so proud.

We arrived at our table in the strip of a tiny park area, where Jake had settled down after buying Colin’s food, along with drinks for us all.

“Dada, foo!” Cas complained, reaching for me from Jake’s lap.

“Daddy’s got food, champ.” Jake attached Cas’s bib.

“Lots of it.” I chimed in, itching to unload everything in my arms. “Let’s see. Tempura chicken sandwich for Daddy Jake, tacos for Daddy Roe, meatball mush and a smoothie for the princess, nachos and cheese curds for the table, and…”

“Chicken yassa and fish and chips for Bear and Casper,” Jake finished.

“Yassa!” Colin was a pig in shit. His absolute favorite dish was from the Senegalese truck run by two sisters who spoiled him rotten.

Sam babbled and reached for Jake, so he lifted her out of her stroller and onto his lap, right next to my boy. Cas and Sam shared a goofy grin, and I took a picture with my phone.

I fucking lived for this day. Thursday every week, if we weren’t off working somewhere, Jake and I brought our kids to Culver City. The family tradition lived on.

While Jake took care of the two little ones, Colin ended up next to me, and I helped him take the lid off his container.

“Remember it’s very hot.” I grabbed the little packet of lemon juice and poured it over his dish, then handed him a spork from Sam’s diaper bag.

He nodded impatiently and all but pushed away my hands. “I know—I eat from the sides first.”

I chuckled and threw a couple nachos into my mouth. Then I debated whether to offer Jake a hand, but he seemed to be on top of things. Cas leaned over his container of fish and chips and munched away, a pro at covering his face in ketchup.

“Bear, you wanna decide our spotlight tonight?” Jake asked. The king of multitasking, feeding his daughter with one hand, making sure neither kid fell off his lap, and popping cheese curds into his mouth.

“Issa and Linda!” Colin replied.

Jake and I smirked. Colin wanted to highlight Issa and Linda’s food truck every week. Lord knew they had plenty of visibility on our Instagram.

“I guess we can have more than one,” Jake settled for saying.

“Did Haley post the announcement yet?” I asked.

We had more to celebrate today than just the best day of the week.

“I’m gonna say yes without knowing for sure,” he replied, “because some woman walked up to me at Ralph’s today, asked for a selfie, and congratulated us on the nominations.”

Oh, and he lived to tell me about it? I was shocked. Jake still got so uncomfortable when we were recognized, which wasn’t rare these days.

“I’m proud of you, bro. You survived another selfie,” I said.

He smirked and scratched his eyebrow with his middle finger.

Nice.

“Dada, uhhh!” Cas stretched his arms to reach his juice box, so I moved it closer to him.

Once Sam was done and wanted to get back into her stroller, Jake could tuck into his own food. Our perfect sunset dinner continued with stretches of comfortable silence, Colin telling us about his kindergarten adventures, Cas demanding more ketchup, and minor shop talk.

Jake had missed the first of our two weekly meetings with Seth and Haley; the one today, he’d had some errands to run, so I filled him in. The two nominations for the News & Documentary Emmy Awards were obviously the biggest update all week, and I suspected we would ride that wave till fall. But we had the numbers too. Two million viewers and listeners per episode was a huge milestone, one we’d finally reached. Off Topic was doing well.

We were also getting ready to move into production for our upcoming documentary series, Currahee.

Unlike our previous projects, this one focused on people, and I was getting to know another side of Jake in the process. He’d always been a perfectionist with filming, but he was displaying a solemn dedication and obsessive focus to Currahee I hadn’t witnessed before. It almost made me worried.

For as well as I knew him, and for as much as I knew he confided in me, I believed he carried a lot on his shoulders that he shared with no one. And it was pouring out in his concentration and determination to make Currahee possibly our best production yet.

There’d be no comedy in Currahee. The word itself meant “stand alone,” and it’d been used in multiple ways, but maybe most famously as a motto for a branch of the Army during the Second World War. The entire series would center around our armed forces and first responders, and though we would capture what they did on the job too, the focus was on what happened afterward. After a soldier came home from war, after a police officer had been shot, after a paramedic had lost someone, after a firefighter had spent thirty years running in and out of burning buildings. After disaster, after mayday.

It’d been Jake’s idea. He’d come up with the name for the series too. He’d told me that after everything was over and done with, the danger had passed, the war had ended, that was when a first responder truly stood alone.

Abso-fucking-lutely, the investigative journalist in me had fired on all cylinders during his somber pitch—which, in reality, had just been Jake talking one night on the patio after a few beers. But the rest of me had been all in from the get, too. He’d shared some stories about friends who’d never gotten the help they needed. Veterans whose PTSD had won and either sent them to the nearest addiction or…worse. And I certainly had my fair share of similar stories.

I came from a family of first responders, after all. Then 9/11 had broken the trend and turned our younger generation—my generation—into soldiers. Into Marines. Basically, everyone except my sister and me. As the babies in the family, we’d been guilted out of it.

So this was going to be a heavy project for me as well, but considering I was so fucked in the head when it came to Jake fuckin’ Denver, I was studying him more than anything else.

* * *

This used to be my bedroom.

Simpler times.

It’d briefly been a guest room too, but now it was our office. I gathered my iPad, my notebook, and a few documents I’d printed out, and then left again. Jake was rummaging around in the only room that hadn’t changed much. The main suite he’d once shared with Colin, now a play area for the kids when we brought them to work.

The living room was gone too. It was our roundtable spot for meetings these days, unless we opted to sit on the patio. That was where I headed while Haley got the door to grab our food delivery.

Thursday meetings centered around results. Today, Friday, was about the weeks to come. And lunch. We couldn’t forget about lunch.

Seth had already taken his seat on the patio, so I sat down across from him.

Late July was hot as balls. I might throw myself in the pool after this.

Haley soon joined us with lunch from a nearby Thai place, and Jake followed suit shortly after, parking his ass next to me. He wanted half of my green curry, and I wanted half of his spicy shrimp soup.

“Did you find the coloring book?” Haley asked.

Jake shook his head. “It has to be at Nikki’s. I’ll call her later.”

I cocked my head, wondering if they were talking about Colin’s atlas coloring book. “The one with the maps and stuff? Check the compartments in the back seat of your truck. That’s where we found it last time.”

It looked like something dawned on him, as if he remembered, and he gave my knee a squeeze. “Thank you. I keep fucking forgetting. I think we brought it to dinner yesterday.”

That’s what I vaguely recalled too. Colin was all about coloring the places Daddy and Uncle Roe visited.

“Okay—shall we get started?” Haley suggested. “I’d like to get something out of the way before y’all discuss scheduling.”

Seth made a go-ahead motion as the rest of us grabbed our food.

“Mai and Jason’s grandfather is having surgery next week, so I won’t have her with me as much,” she continued. “In other words, if you’re bringing the kids here at some point, let me know in advance so I can watch them.”

Noted.

“I don’t technically have mine next week, so you’re good,” Jake said around a mouthful of food. Emphasis on technically. He and Nikki were flexible with their weeks. They met up for dinner here and there and frequently traded days if someone had a lot on their plate.

I could envy their situation sometimes, because they got along so well as co-parents, and not everything was about the children. Jake took Nikki into consideration, just like Nikki did for Jake. They didn’t split the holidays like most divorced parents did. If they didn’t celebrate together, they made sure to get the best of both worlds on the same day. Christmas breakfast here, Christmas dinner there, Easter brunch together, birthday party at Jake’s the day before, private birthday dinner the day of. They simply made shit work.

Seth and Haley took a couple minutes to discuss Mai and Jason’s schedule for next week. They were two of our recent additions at Condor Chicks. Jason Quan was a film editor we hoped would stay with us for years to come. Mai was his younger sister, a part-time student and Haley’s PA.

Jake, Seth, and I preferred to hire freelancers, partly for financial reasons, but if we stumbled across someone we wanted to work more with, we didn’t hesitate to expand. Besides, these days, we’d drown without extra help. Jake had his little editing squad, Seth had two guys, and I had a research assistant. We also had a contract with Martina Larsen, a filmmaker we’d initially worked with on Travel Back. She’d be with us for Currahee as well.

“…and on that note, I’m wondering about Yasmin’s progress on the Nomads YouTube continuation,” Haley told Jake. “Do we have a ballpark for release?”

I shoveled more food into my mouth and side-eyed Jake. Yasmin was one of his editors, the one in charge of our YouTube footage. Nomads had run for five successful seasons, and we were ready to move on. However, after thousands of viewers had reached out through social media, we’d come up with a compromise. We’d make it a private production for YouTube only, and we’d post an episode when time allowed. Starting with a series of bloopers and outtakes we hadn’t made public yet, using old footage. Like a warm-up.

“We were discussing November, right?” Jake asked me. “Three or four episodes before then?”

I inclined my head. “We’ll make the first one in San Diego.”

That was the upside to Nomads. The episodes didn’t require a fuck-ton of work, so we could essentially take an extra couple days in each location we had to go to anyway and create something there. And we had three weeks in San Diego coming up this fall.

“Okay, so…” Jake grew pensive. “San Diego in September, and then we’ll be on the East Coast much of October and November…”

Yeah, we could probably squeeze in a few sights between our interviews with veterans and first responders.

“Seth and I can sit down with Yasmin next week, then,” Haley decided. “It would be nice to map out the marketing for the fall soon. Which brings us to Travel Back—you have the last photo shoot for that on Wednesday at two.”

Jake and I nodded and jotted it down in our phones. Third and final season—we were done. Well, we would be once we’d suffered through another photo shoot. Our pretty faces would be everywhere.

“I need an answer about the talk show offer too,” Seth reminded us.

“We’re not doing a fucking talk show,” Jake said.

“Seriously,” I agreed. I didn’t care how lucrative it was. We weren’t interested.

Haley snorted a laugh. “There’s your answer.”

We appreciated Seth’s business brain, but Jake and I were firm on how we wanted to make money. We weren’t TV hosts or presenters. We didn’t wanna interview people in front of a live audience day in and day out. We wanted to be out there.

“All right.” Seth conceded. “Other than the photo shoot and Off Topic, what do you have next week? We had something on Monday, didn’t we, Jake?”

Jake and I shared a glance, and he nodded for me to answer.

“We gotta sit down with the film crew and set travel dates,” I replied. “Tuesday, if you’re not available on Monday.”

Jake nodded. “Seth and I are meeting with Ortiz. It’s gonna be a full day.”

Oh, right. They were gonna go through footage from Afghanistan and Iraq. We needed to cover ten minutes worth of conflict zones from the Middle East, preferably from around 2004, give or take, but it was gonna take hours to select the right events. Then we’d get our lawyer involved for securing the rights.

“In that case, I can start calling the people we’re interviewing to set dates,” I said. That would be a good Monday’s work.

Jake frowned but didn’t say anything, and then Haley jumped into footage she needed from us. The food truck recommendations were a continued crowd-pleaser on Instagram, and we were happy to deliver. As I’d learned yesterday, our followers had also enjoyed our new weekly interview on Off Topic, and the subsequent pictures we posted to promote that episode, and Haley requested more live takes, glimpses, that she could share all over.

It was gonna be a busy week, and yet, it was another calm before the storm. Once filming began, the majority of our other responsibilities were left in the dust.

After the meeting, Jake asked me to help him grab something from his house, so we excused ourselves and made our way out onto the street.

Another envy, I couldn’t lie. While I was stuck in a condo in Bel Air, Jake had bought a house four fucking doors down from our office. They were almost identical, with the exception that he had four bedrooms instead of three—and no pool. Which he didn’t need when we already had one, and frankly, he loved the extra space for his gardening. He’d built his kids a sandbox and installed a swing set.

For the record, a sweaty, shirtless Jake working a power drill and tools as he put together a playground for his children?

My fucking God. I had issues.

“I thought we agreed you wouldn’t bring work home with you,” I teased.

He chuckled and retrieved his keys. “I haven’t. I just wanted a minute alone—and I figured, I might as well return the Xbox.”

Eh. We hardly used it anymore.

“Well. You have me all to yourself.”

He smirked and side-eyed me.

If he could just stop being so motherfucking sexy, this would be much easier for me.

Unfortunately, he got serious as he unlocked the door and let me in. “It’s about New York,” he said, almost stumbling over one of Colin’s toy trucks. I loved that about Jake’s house. You could see kids lived here. “Are you sure it’s a good idea you lead that project?”

I felt my forehead wrinkle, and I followed him to the kitchen. “Uh, what else would I do?”

He grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge and handed me one. “I don’t know, the other four freakin’ cities we’re goin’ to?”

He’d fucking lost me. What was he talking about? We were interviewing the same kinds of people in each one—Philly, New York, San Diego, Chicago, and Boston. Paramedics, doctors, cops, firefighters, soldiers, and several family members of first responders too. What did it matter if…

Oh.

Because in New York, focus would automatically land on 9/11.

I rubbed my forehead.

Jake knew I got where he was going with this, and his gaze softened a bit. “It’s gonna be a lot of footage of when the towers came down. A lot of personal anecdotes and emotions from that day.”

I nodded once and leaned back against the kitchen island. He was right, of course, and it wasn’t like it’d gone unnoticed when we’d originally decided the cities. But I’d become good at compartmentalizing that particular time of my life. I reckoned most New Yorkers had done that. We sorta had to, because it’d been a day of complete mayhem, and then the grief that had followed…

I’d been fourteen years old, but some memories were as vivid as when Aunt Elsie had dragged me away from the news that day. I could still hear my uncle shout for her to turn off the damn TV. I could hear my cousins raging. Cullen, Angus, Greer, Ben, Kyle—my brother Francis… My sister sobbing. The phone ringing off the fucking hook.

That was kinda the same day my cousins had become extra brothers. From that moment on, my siblings and I had a new home. I’d woken up that morning, everything was gravy, we were ready for school, Mom made us breakfast, Pop was in a good mood, whistling to himself, passing Mom with a smack to her butt that made Francis and me groan in embarrassment, and then we were off. Mom hollered for us not to be late, and the distant, “I love you, you wackadoos!” as we ran down the street.

I set the water bottle on the kitchen island and exhaled heavily.

I remembered staring at the news, completely transfixed, counting the stories of the North Tower, trying to figure out what floor Mom was on—if she’d stood a chance. And how high up Dad and my uncle got. Only a single firefighter from their battalion had survived.

My parents had loved each other so damn hard.

Jake positioned himself next to me and draped an arm around my shoulders. Then he pressed his lips to the side of my head. “It’s ultimately up to you, but I don’t want you to torture yourself.”

I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath. I didn’t let the pain out of its box. My sorrow these days made itself known when I was with my boy. Certain moments when I thought, fuck, I really wish Mom and Dad could’ve met my son.

I would’ve allowed them to be smug after my teenage bullshit of swearing up and down I’d never have kids. Easy for me to say when I’d been sharing a room with my annoying brother. I’d changed my tune not too long after. Because family was where it was at. Family was everything. Including Jake and his runts. I loved them to pieces.

“I’m gonna do New York too.” I cleared my throat and glanced at him. It wasn’t often I got to be so close to him, so I savored the moment. “We’ll bring the kids and let my aunt feed us till we can’t walk. You and Francis can gang up on me because I don’t speak Jarhead.”

Jake smiled a little. “Sounds good to me, but if you change your mind…”

I nodded. I could step out for a break and let him take over.

“I’ll let Daddy Jake swoop in and save the day,” I promised.

Too much seriousness lingered in his eyes, despite the faint smirk. “I’m not gonna apologize for bein’ protective of you, Roe.”

Fuck you.

He couldn’t say that to me. If only he fucking knew how easily he reeled me in and ruined all my progress. The past two years, I’d actively tried to erect walls around myself, and he just knocked them down over and over.

I mustered a grin and put some distance between us, ’cause I sorely needed it. I played off the severity with a dumb joke, and I excused myself to go take a leak in the bathroom down the hall.

“Can you get my charger in my bedroom on the way back?” he asked. “I’m gonna unplug the Xbox and turn off the sprinklers in the backyard.”

“Sure thing.”

Distance, distance, distance.

Hell, I’d been in need of distance from Jake for longer than two years. He didn’t even know he was the person who’d made me realize I was bi. I’d had thoughts in the past, fleeting moments of maybe, possibly, and then I’d met this bastard.

The day he introduced me to Colin, the morning after he’d been born, that’d been the final nail in the coffin. I’d known. I’d felt it. I’d soaked up Jake’s unbridled happiness, mingled with worries and exhaustion, his murmured, “I can’t fucking believe I’m a dad,” and I’d become a lost cause.

Here we were, nearly five years later. I’d named my son after him. He’d named his daughter after me. We’d had one unforgettable night in Las Vegas right around the time Jake had been…I could only call it desperate. He’d been desperate, drunk off his ass, and scared to lose me. Man, had we crossed lines that night.

Luckily for me, he’d never appeared repulsed by what’d happened. If anything, he’d told me not to pull away. Our friendship was sacred to both of us.

I didn’t linger in the bathroom long. I didn’t actually need to take a leak. I washed my hands for no reason, and then I headed next door to his bedroom.

Mental note: buy more chargers. The ones we had at the house didn’t always connect.

I grabbed his charger from behind his nightstand, and I spotted a notebook next to the lamp. That was funny. I had one of those too. You never knew when an idea would strike. Sometimes, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I jotted down something random that didn’t always make sense in the light of day.

Hold up.

I frowned when I noticed the words Jake had scribbled on the notebook cover. Not on the dotted line in the white center box where you were supposed to, but in the upper corner where it was barely visible.

Therapy journal.

He went to therapy?

No fucking way.

Without thinking twice, I flipped it open and read the first entry.

Patricia thinks I should write down my feelings in a journal. What I feel is annoyed.

I grinned quickly, unsurely, fucking confused—was this happening? Jake? My Jake? In therapy? Where he had to use words? The entry was dated too. Christ, November 2013.

I shouldn’t read another damn word. This was a violation of his privacy. I should close the notebook right fucking now.

But…the next entry was right below the first one.

Dumbass homework, like I’m twelve years old again. I’m supposed to use three words I feel about Roe that I’m uncomfortable using/not ready to say out loud, which we will discuss during the next session.