The Kids Grow Up by Trish Hanan (novel24 .TXT) 📖

/> “You rascal,” Harry retorted and they laughed. Then they kissed, hard and passionately and Harry glanced around and got that look in his purple eyes and Jake shivered.
“We got a nice comfortable bed at home and you want to do it on the beach?” he teased him. Harry shrugged and he ran his fingernails up the inside of Jake’s thigh causing him to tremble.
“I can wait until we get home if you can,” he said with his eyes half-closed and all slanty sexy. Jake growled and nuzzled his neck.
“I can’t wait, babe, I need you now,” he was practically snarling. Harry trembled and they raced for some trees and ripped each other’s clothes away. Harry handed him the lube.
“Hurry, Jake, I need to feel you inside of me,” he begged and fell to all fours. Jake’s eyes gleamed at the sight of that perfect ass in the moonlight and he quickly dropped to his knees and his hands parted the cheeks and Harry wiggled back in his hands.
“Oh, babe, I need to be inside you,” he whispered harshly and soon he was and they were moving in a dance they knew so well and they did so well. When they exploded Harry was on his knees and Jake’s hands were on him and he went all over the sand which made them laugh. Then they fell to the sand and kissed and held one another and the moonlight on their bodies looked so right. Jake’s strong body gleamed almost purple in the light and Harry’s hands gently caressed it. Jake trembled and he took and hand and kissed it.
“Oh, babe, I do love you,” he whispered and Harry smiled and put his head on Jake’s strong chest and sighed.
“Oh, honey, I love you so much,” he whispered back and they dozed for a few minutes. Then it got a little cold now that they weren’t moving around so they laughed and found they clothes and dusted the sand off each other and walked home.
“I’m going to have sand up the crack of my ass for a week now, but it was worth it,” Harry remarked and they both giggled.
March first they flew back to Edenville and everyone was excited about the upcoming Ten Year Anniversary of their arrival on the planet. They had arrived on March fourteen but they had awoken on March ninth and everyone thought they should have a party on both days. A Wake-up Party and an Arrival Party, both were planned and Harry was asked to give a speech telling the story of how he had waken up first and what he and his mothers had done on the Roosevelt before they had woken everyone else first. He got out his notebook from those days and peered over it to prepare his speech and Jake helped him. It had to be perfect.
They put off spring planting until after the celebration and everyone gathered in the main hall which was decorated with pictures that had been blown up in Kate’s printing store. They all showed the colonist getting ready for the trip, packing their clothes and shots of them onboard the Roosevelt and some pictures of the ship’s crew and even one of the sleeping pods they had all slept in for the voyage.
“My God, it’s a sleeping pod, where did you get that picture?” Max exclaimed when he saw it. Kate smiled.
“That’s from Henry’s camera, that’s the pod we slept in,” she informed him. Everyone gushed over it. And they laughed over the picture of Kathleen in those dorky blue sleep pajamas. She made a face.
“That fink DJ took this picture,” she said and glared at her brother who snickered. Steve hugged her.
“I thought you looked really cute in them when we woke you up, your hair was so pretty,” he told her. She grinned.
“Yeah, well, you thought that witch Gloria was pretty when you woke her up too,” she reminded him. He made a face and shuddered.
“Eew, don’t remind me,” Steve exclaimed and everyone laughed.
The saddest picture was the big one of the accident and everyone looked sad when they saw the ship sticking into the side of the Engineering section. Linda looked at it closely.
“Oh, look, you can see that poor crew man sticking half-in, half-out,” she stated and everyone had to look.
“That’s dreadful,” Kate remarked and everyone agreed it was.
“Well, you do know there’s nothing sticking out on the other side, don’t you?” Harry asked them casually and they all looked confused.
“What do you mean?” Carl asked. Harry shrugged.
“Organic matter can’t exist in a vacuum,” he informed them. “The part of him that was sucked out exploded into tiny bits and got scattered all over space.” They all looked appalled. His mother laughed.
“We all could have lived a lifetime without knowing that, Henry,” she told him and everyone laughed and agreed.
Then Harry took the stage and smiled down at everyone and began to speak.
“I was having the most lovely dream,” he began and they all smiled. “I was running through this field of high yellow-green grass when I came to the shores of this lake that had the bluest water I had ever seen before. In front of me were six high cliffs and from each cliff was a cascading waterfall. It was spectacular and all I wanted to do was swim in that lake but all I kept hearing was this annoying beep, beep, beep; noise that keeping ringing in my head. Eventually it woke me up and I opened my eyes and all I could see was white and that was really funny cuz how did all this white get into my bedroom?” Everyone laughed. Harry continued.
“I turned my head and saw my mother sleeping next to me and I thought that was really weird; when did she start sleeping with me?” he asked and everyone laughed again. “That’s when I realized that we were onboard the Federation Colonist Ship, the Eleanor Roosevelt and I was awake and that was wrong because that’s not supposed to happen. Then I realized that that annoying beep, beep sound was the ship’s emergency alarm and no one was answering it and that something seriously was wrong and I had to get up and wake my mothers and get help. So that’s what I did.” Everyone cheered and clapped.
Harry took them through the whole wakeup story as they had never heard it before. About worrying about the two-headed alien space spiders, to cutting their fingernails, to turning off the alarms and starting the vacuums and finding the three crew members dead in the lounge. He didn’t leave anything out and he didn’t spare his mother’s feelings, he said everything they did and said, almost to the last detail.
When he got to the point of waking up the Jackson’s he talked about falling in love with Jake from the moment he opened his eyes and he saw how beautiful they were and he said how their hands had sparked when they shook hands for the first time. Everyone thought that was so romantic and they laughed over Dr. Jackson saying he was an alien who was going to eat his son alive.
“You got one part right,” DJ quipped and they all laughed except for the Jackson’s who luckily didn’t get it. Kate frowned at DJ who just grinned.
Then Harry remembered in detail exactly who was wakened up next and they all piped in with their memories and soon everyone was standing up and sharing their personal story and this made the evening better than just one person doing it. All the little kids loved it and loved the pictures of the ship they had heard of but never seen and the places they had heard of but never seen. When it was over they all cheered and clapped and swore they would do this every five or ten years so they would never forget where they came from.
“You did great, babe,” Jake said and kissed him when Harry returned to their table. Harry kissed him back and kissed all of their children one by one making them giggle.
“I did fall in love with you the very minute you opened you eyes,” he informed him softly. Jake smiled and they kissed again. Violet rolled her eyes and took another sip of her martini. Those two were always kissing. Love at first sight my ass; she didn’t believe that for a minute. That Harry was full of shit.
As Harry stood around the drink table with Dr. George, he remarked on how well the colonist looked for ten years on the planet. The older man nodded.
“I know, I couldn’t believe it myself when I looked in the mirror to shave this morning. I was thirty-eight when we landed and I’m forty-eight now, I look almost the same,” he bragged. Harry grinned and put his arm around the other man’s shoulder.
“It must be all this healthy food and exercise you’re getting working the fields,” he teased him and they both laughed. Dr. George wagged his finger at him.
“Don’t fool yourself, a diet like we’ve been eating with no added preservatives and extra crap like the old diet we used to eat is better for us and we’ll all live longer,” he informed him. Harry grinned and spotted Jake looking around for him.
“Got to go, looks like my better half needs help,” he said and rushed back to the table. Jake smiled in relief when he saw him and handed him Daniel.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re back, I’ve got to potty, babe,” he said and rushed off leaving Harry to laugh at his choice of words. A few years ago he would have said he had to pee, but now it was potty. How cute they had become.
Spring planting came and Farm Four was finally settled in their field size. Theirs was the largest farm, out of the hundred and ninety-eight colonist that was on the planet, a hundred of them lived on Farm Four. But that was because all of the children had married and had children. When the other farm’s children got married and had children they expected their farm size to grow also. If the children stayed on the farm, Harry expected that the children would probably build their own farms and live on them but he kept that info to himself.
After the planting the kids went back to school and Harry was asked to teach a class on Ancient Earth History and Math and of course he accepted and added teaching to his busy schedule. Jake was proud of him and helped out and, of course, they had Fran to help so it was just a matter of adjusting the schedule around Harry’s teaching job. He was proud to do his part for the community and when his kids started school, it would be easier; he could just take them with him when he went.
When Violet heard about the teaching job she was pissed and said who cared what happened on some planet millions of miles away thousands of years ago but everyone was shocked by her attitude and told her how important it was for all humans to know where they came from and how they got from there to here. Harry had started to write a history book of their journey and asked them all for their piece of it and said he would