Trevor
I woke up the next morning to a pounding headache and Bella sitting on my chest asking for peanut butter pancakes. Something flew into my room. A ball? A spaceship? Who knew at this point?
And then crying.
All the crying.
“He hit me with the ball!” Bella wailed and wrapped her arms around my neck. I just laid there staring up at the ceiling wondering how I was messing it up so horribly. Josie had a lot of faults, but at least she’d been a good stay-at-home mom, until she couldn’t handle the fact that I was touring for an entire year, leaving her in the dust.
Her words, not mine.
She left me the night of the Grammys.
I got a Grammy, and she walked out of my life because she was jealous.
I saw it for what it was.
Knew several Hollywood couples who said the very reason they never dated or married someone in the same industry was because you were always competing for roles, fame, Instagram followers.
I held on to Bella until she stopped crying.
“All better?” I asked in my raspy sleep-filled voice. I’d at least gotten five hours last night. I needed to lay some more tracks. Each of the guys had taken a much-needed break and decided to drop a solo album.
Our manager was thrilled.
Our agent was swimming in money.
And since I owned my own studio back in Malibu and now one in Seaside, I’d known it would be easy to do too, except now I wasn’t so sure.
What was I supposed to do? Take the kids with me on tour? They’d done a few cities with me last year, but I didn’t want to take them out of school.
With a deep breath, I heaved Bella into the air and threw my feet over the side of the bed, landing on a few misplaced Legos that had my eyes watering and curse words screaming inside my head. There was a reason they weren’t allowed in my room. Legos.
“Daddy hurt?” Bella cupped my face.
“A bit,” I lied. Son of a bitch, I was going to get rid of every last Lego in that house. “Just…give me a minute.”
“Your face is red,” she pointed out with a grin, damn her and those dimples. “Are you saying crap in your head?”
I had told her crap was a bad word that adults said when they were angry and that if she was really really angry, she could use it like her brothers.
Yes, the answer is yes; it has backfired one hundred percent.
“Boys!” I called downstairs while Malcom and Eric chased each other around the island in the kitchen. “Get the pancake mix out!”
They grumbled.
More things were thrown.
Chaos. I lived in absolute chaos.
Exhausted, even though my day was just starting, I carried Bella down the stairs and started in on the pancakes, all the while staring at the clock with relief. Five hours. In five hours, the new nanny would be here.
Fingers crossed the twins didn’t set her on fire.
And maybe she’d braid Bella’s hair again.
My gut clenched.
I’d felt like a complete idiot staring at the pretty barista with my jaw hanging to the floor. She’d wrangled in my kids faster than I did. They reacted to her in a way I hadn’t seen in a really long time.
It had been such a relief that for a minute all I could do was stare. She had flawless, makeup-free skin, and her hair was in this adorable ponytail poking out of a Met’s hat. I couldn’t tell if she was in her early twenties or late. Maybe all the Botox I’d been exposed to in LA was messing with my head. I hated guessing ages because I was almost always wrong. Look at the ex.
“Dad?” Eric interrupted my thoughts.
“Yeah, buddy?” I snapped out of it and grabbed a mixing bowl.
“You’re smiling awful big over pancakes.”
Little shit. I stared him down and winked. “That’s because I’m adding chocolate chips!”
“Hooray!” Bella squealed in delight while Malcom and Eric gave each other high fives then grabbed their iPads and sat at the breakfast bar.
Coffee.
Would it be wrong to train my children how to make me coffee so that I at least had a cup waiting when I woke up to multiple screams, tears, and flying objects?
I heaved a sigh. It would probably have seven Legos and a booger.
At this point, I would take it all and say God bless you every one.
I grabbed a pod for the Keurig, yawned, and made myself a cup while Bella tried mixing the batter. She had more outside the bowl than inside, but she liked to stir.
She started helping cook when she was two.
And couldn’t say stir to save her life, which only meant I stared at her like an idiot until she grabbed a spoon. “Sway sway sway!”
That was her word for stir.
It was a conundrum.
At least she was helpful while her brothers literally watched other children play with toys on YouTube.
Something was very wrong with people in this world if that was a thing. I watched one episode of a guy singing Best Friend Best Friend while opening candy and nearly called the police.
Because if that doesn’t scream pedophile, than I really don’t know what does.
Coffee brewed, and pan on, I grabbed the bowl from Bella and started to pour out the pancakes.
I felt slightly guilty when I eyed the clock again.
My fingers twitched with the need to play out my frustration on the drums, with the need to write music and send it to the guys to see if it was good enough. And on top of that, I had band AD2 coming in at the end of the week to lay two tracks.
Technically, they lived here only during the summer months, but now that Alec, the older brother, had a kid with another one on the way, they were thinking about staying permanently because of schools.
My plate was full.
And I was ready to offer the new nanny a million dollars plus benefits if she’d just clean up the Legos.
That was when you knew you were at your limit—when you would pay a complete stranger to pick up the hazardous toys sprinkled around your house like miniature bombs ready to go off.
“ERIC!” Malcom screamed. “STOP TOUCHING ME!”
I chugged my coffee, burning my tongue in the process, and eyed the clock again. Five hours, I could last five hours. Right?