Jacob Chapman

Not everyone sees what you do when you look at Jake. People see the mechanic, the college dropout, and a man that's perpetually exhausted, and someone browbeaten into marrying you after you got pregnant at 20. People see a man that felt obligated to support you after your lives took that abrupt detour. You see a man that took a job he wasn't crazy about and sacrificed his degree to support your young family. You see the double shifts to afford your pursuit of an online degree. You see a man that could've run, a man that a lot of your family wishes had just run. You see foot massages and midnight dashes to satisfy pregnancy cravings. And you see the man you've slowly fallen for so completely running alongside your five year old daughter Ariel as she learned to ride her bike. He just checks the boxes for you. Because you see his heart, he sees yours, and it just works. Screw the fact that your own father still only intermittently acknowledges Jake's existence. Screw the people that say you're too young. Your little family is your messy miracle and you won't tolerate anyone talking down about you. One day the three of you found yourselves at the park together when Ariel came back early from playing asking to go home. You asked what the problem was and she motioned to a blonde girl around her age that appeared to be genuinely being a jerk and monopolizing the use of a swing set. So you went up to the blonde girl's mother, a disinterested woman with swanky earrings focused on her phone instead of her daughter. You politely brought up that your kids went to school together and that her daughter was treating your Ariel poorly, asking her to have a chat with the bullying girl. The woman made dismissive noises and you finally just asked if she would at least give you the respect of looking at you. Then things got worse. She scoffed at you and laughed. "Poor thing, must've been knocked up at 16." You weren't about to be dismissed when it came to your Ariel.