When the song finished, we dropped our hands and flopped back onto the sofa laughing and taking deep breaths.
“Feel a bit better, Sweetheart?” I panted.
“Yep, thanks Mum.” Her smile was genuine so I pulled her close for a hug.
Suddenly, we heard clapping from behind us and spun around to see Bryce and Nate standing at the elevator door, McDonald’s bags tucked under their arms. Nate was shaking his head and rolling his eyes while smiling and gently clapping—this performance was not a first for him to have witnessed.
Bryce, on the other hand, was clapping loudly with the biggest smile on his face. “Wow! I’ve just found the two newest members of our band.” He walked over and kissed my head from behind the sofa.
“Really? Can I really be in your band?” asked Charli, excitedly.
“Sure.”
“Oh. My. God! I’m so gonna go and practice now. Mum can I borrow your iPod?” She was bordering on hysterical excitement.
My eyes widened at her enthusiasm, so I grabbed her hands—holding them still from flapping about. “Yes, but you ‘so’ need to eat first.”
***
We sat together on the balcony eating our burgers and fries. The kids and Bryce cringed when I dunked my fries into the chocolate sundae—the sundae I had subtly threatened he not return home without. What? There is absolutely nothing wrong with potato deep-fried in oil, sprinkled with salt and covered with vanilla flavoured soft serve ice cream and hot chocolate sauce. I’m not seeing the problem here.
I popped another into my mouth and hummed.
Bryce smirked.
Nate rolled his eyes.
And Charli scoffed her Happy Meal down like a hungry little piggy, then grabbed my iPod and ran upstairs—she was bound to get indigestion.
For the next hour, all Bryce, Nate, and I could hear as we sat on the living room sofa trying to watch TV, was Charli’s voice intermittently coming in over the top of Rachel’s as she practiced singing more Glee songs in her room.
Nate’s body language suggested a high level of irritation as he endured it, occasionally screwing up his face while looking over his shoulder at his sister’s bedroom door. “Urgh,” he grumbled. “Now look what you’ve done.”
Bryce and I laughed. “Leave her alone, Nate. She’s learning to sing,” I said, willing his compassion to surface.
“She needs to learn faster.”
He huffed and walked into the man-cave, I’m guessing he went for the sanctuary of sound-proofed walls. Okay, maybe there is no compassion for his little sister’s singing abilities.
Turning to Bryce, who was comfortably seated next to me, gently trailing his fingers along my legs which he’d laid across his lap, I posed him a question. “You do realise you are going to have to let her sing a song with your band now? She will not forget your promise.”
“I know. I have every intention of letting her sing a song at one of our gigs. In fact, we have one coming up in a few months. She can do it then.”
I laughed. “You’re crazy. You might want to run it past the other members of Live Trepidation first.”
He scoffed. “I don’t run things past anybody...you know that.”
“You are such an arrogant fucker,” I teased him, while looking over the sofa to make sure neither of my kids heard what I had just said.
“Yep and proud of it.”
“Well, we’ll see how arrogant you are on the weekend when you have to deal with an entire house filled with Blaxlos. My family are not timid, you know. You might not be so arrogant then,” I warned with a secretive smile. He leaned over and pulled me onto his lap so that I was straddling him.
“Bryce, stop it. The kids could come back out here.” I tried to hop off but he held me there.
“You ‘Blaxlos’ don’t scare me. You’re putty in my hands.”
“Ha, you haven’t met my brother Jake, yet.” I pushed off him and got up, making my way to the toilet for probably the tenth time that day and looking over my shoulder at his still arrogant, albeit sexy face.
***
The morning of our trip to the farm, Bryce had all of a sudden become rather quiet and slightly anxious. For the most part of the morning he seemed to be lost in thought and distracted, to the point where I stopped asking him questions because I’d had to repeat them again when he didn’t answer me the first time. The kids had also been somewhat miserable, knowing their Dad was not joining us, instead spending the holiday with Claire and RJ.
On our way down to the basement carpark, I asked Bryce which car we were going to take. Again, he hadn’t been focused enough to answer me, only giving me a ‘huh?’. So when the elevator doors opened, I gently grabbed his wrist.