So sweet. And so much fun, seeing this from the other side. Thank you!

Just wanted to quickly tell you that I really liked this story. Thank you!

OMG OMG OMG OMG PLEASE! UPDATE AGAIN!

You posted a new chapter, so I had to go back to the beginning and re-read everything! I loved reading this the second time just as much as I did the first!

I did notice a couple things on my read through you might want to keep in mind if you ever go back and edit.

First is Zak's mindset about Ish and the olive trees. I want you to know that I've been living in Israel for four months now, so I do have some experience with what I'm about to say (and what I'm about to say is controversial, but keep in mind that I am trying to tell both sides). The rhetoric over land around the West Bank is pretty set in Israel.

The Israelis say "we bought this land during the Ottoman Empire/British Mandate/when the house standing on it had been empty for years, and when the Jordanians came and forced us off our land they let a Palestinian family steal it from us. We want it back."

The Palestinians say something very similar. "We bought this land during the Ottoman Empire/British Mandate/prior to Jews coming to Palestine/the Jordanian Kingdom gave it to us after the house had been uninhabited for a while, and then the IDF came and stole it from us/put a wall around it to keep us from it. We want it back."

That is not to say who is right or wrong in this situation, but I am trying to give you a bit of the mindset of Zak and Ish. Zak's family might or might not have known or cared who the olive trees belonged to, but child Zak would not have been upset that someone else's trees and livelihood were being destroyed because he would not know. Israeli schools inevitably teach the Israeli rhetoric, and Zak's parents would have emphasized those ideas at home. If you change his flinching to be for the environmental or aesthetic issues then his reaction when the trees come down would make much more sense.

Second is the whether Zak or Ish would be up on the wall in the first place. You mentioned the snipers from the Palestinian side of the wall. They are very real. Militant/radical Palestinians do exist and if they see a Jew near the wall they will attack. The IDF would also not be pleased to have anyone near the wall. There have been too many instances of Palestinians trying to destroy the wall for the army to allow someone to sit up there, no matter how old or for what reasons. Zak and Ish would be risking their lives to climb up on the wall.

Zak clearly has a very big heart, and whenever he learned about Ish's family owning the trees he would have been horrified by their destruction. But in the scene in chapter 16/15 you never once mention that Zak is Israeli. It's implied, but you never mention Israel or Israeli until the very end of the book. No matter how big his heart, Zak was raised by Israeli parents, he went through army service for three years after high school(or he found a way out of it, but that's very difficult), and all those nationalistic tendencies would be like blood in his veins.

A Jewish Israeli would never say: "It is still my fault. The fault of my family, my people." Israelis believe that it is the fault of the radical Palestinians who take up guns and bombs to kill Israelis (there is quite a bit of proof to support this, unlike what a lot of Western media says, but I won't go into it here), and in your story Zak's family destroy the olive trees because of Palestinians from the other side of the wall using the trees as cover for snipers.

Zak's big heart would show him how terrible for Ish's family destroying the olive groves was, but his upbringing would point more towards blaming the radicals with the guns first and his family for overreacting second.

Next is the Norwegian author who helped get Zak and Ish their scholarship. The last time I read your story the nationality meant nothing to me, but this time my roommate is Norwegian and he tells me horror stories about him getting knifed in high school because he is Jewish. Norway is one of the more anti-Semitic countries in the world and the reporter/author who saved Ish and Zak would have been there to use the olive grove story to blast Israel. I doubt very much that Zak's family would have allowed Zak to talk to someone who had it out for Israel.

I do think it's wonderful that someone from Norway was willing to help an Israeli, rather than get the scholarship for two Palestinians (because the rhetoric is that Israel has enough money to pay for their own citizens to go to college abroad while the Palestinians suffer in poverty, which isn't entirely true).

Please understand that I love reading this story and I just want to help you get some important facts right. Israelis are not remorseful, because everything they do is to ensure their survival in an environment surrounded by enemies who would would be quicker to emulate Hitler's genocide than talk about peace. Zak is clearly a special person and I do like him for it, but when it comes to Israel his attitude is a bit off. Israelis are nationalistic, arrogant, and rude (in a good way) as part of their culture and when those groves came down Zak would not have pointed the blame finger at himself first no matter how big his heart.

My last comment is on languages. Habibi and Haviv are used correctly, but I wanted to comment on the similarity of the two languages. If you look at the Hebrew spelling of Haviv, you can actually transliterate it two ways. The first is Haviv, but the second is Habib. The letter used in Hebrew to spell Haviv is a bet (het-bet-yud-bet), which can make a B or V sound depending on the Hebrew speaker. Habib in Arabic means beloved (Habibi is the use term for when speaking to a guy), but it also means the same in Hebrew! For two peoples with such differences, they really are so much the same.

Please don't take any of my comments to be attacking your story! I like it way too much to flame. I'm still hoping for a ten years in the future snapshot though. These quick chapters from Rick's point of view are lovely, but I want Caden or Avery to come home with their new boy on their arm, or Noah to go to college trying to figure out his sexuality. That's mostly just my overactive imagination, but I can hope, right?

Anyway, I hope enough reviews come in that you decide to post more! Thanks so much.

this is a great chapter. i love it. thank you.

how cute. : )

O more extra from Rick's point of view. I want more.

loved it .I kind of like revisiting the story from a different point of view .Rick was so unsure of himself ,you really did not notice it until the last couple you did from his pov.

I love how the chapter opens with the classic "sneaking out of bed from a one night stand" scene (slipping out of bed quietly, getting dressed), when it's really so much more than that. Not sure if you did it on purpose :)

I feel like we've been with these two for so long, when it wasn't really long at all (in their timeline). I'm sure they'll have a wonderful life together!

typos:

That different might have been the smarter route (different way, different something)

pales in comparison to kissing a man I was in love with (the man I am in love with)

a liability is winning Pete, (in)

yay im so glad you wrote another extra for this story and im very much excited for your next story :) the first chapter was very intriguing!

Very nice.

I think this is my favorite line:

Me. Rick Hartman, divorced father of three. Me, a guy who couldn't even get the courage to talk to him. Me, despite my insecurities, despite my faults and failings.

It really expresses Rick in his most basic, both fact wise and emotionally.

For some reason, FP didn't give me notifications for 190-193...

"but I'm going to get a crink in my neck if I stay at this angle." crick, unless it's a colloquial thing...

I will finish the rest tomorrow. Looking forward to it. :)

"What I beautiful way to wake up." a

"The shower stall is tiny and because three sides of it just curtains, we have to be careful not to get the floor wet." of it is just curtains?

I don't know why, but the sudden jump from his insecure thoughts to wondering why an inanimate object isn't doing something is really... charming. Adorable. I mean, I can totally relate because I do that often.

It's so easy to forget they haven't been together long.

I wonder what kind of music Elspeth listens to, unless it really is Tim's music. Though, it'd be interesting to know his music too.