Which was why, for the first time in, well, ever, Fallon and I were having a date night.
We'd tossed two-hundred bucks worth of snacks and pizza on the counter, double-checked that the fire detectors were working—long story that involved Reed and an asinine idea to camp inside the house—and asked several of the club members and girls to drop by randomly over the next several hours, then made our way to the door with my final warning to the kids about not calling us.
"If Reed gets brain damage from jumping off of the fridge or something, I can't be held responsible," Max insisted, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Oh, honey, don't be silly," I said, ruffling her hair because she hated it. "He probably already has brain damage. Alright. I know it is a pipe dream, but be good!" I called, grabbing Fallon, and shoving him out the door. "We did it. We actually did it."
"Don't get too excited," Fallon said, smirking. "We haven't even left the premises yet."
But then we did.
See, we didn't have any grand nights out on the town planned.
I owned a bar. I had plenty of nights 'on the town' when I needed to work.
We just wanted some silence.
So we took ourselves to the store where we'd once been young and cool enough to fuck in the dressing room. We picked out comfy PJs and snacks, then we walked to the giant clearance bin of DVDs, grasped hands, and stuck them in. Whatever movies we ended up grabbing were the ones we were taking back to the hotel room we'd rented.
Then that was what we did.
We got into comfy pajamas. We ate our favorite snacks without the kids sneaking in and stealing them from us. And we watched a couple mostly shitty movies.
Then we did the grown-up thing.
And we fucked on really nice sheets in a fancy-ass hotel room while ignoring the flood of text updates from our children.
"Anything we need to worry about?" Fallon asked after, head on my chest as I scrolled through the texts.
"Someone has a bloody nose. Someone is crying. Oh, we need a new coffee table."
"Again? It's like the WWE in that house, I swear," Fallon said, angling his head up to look at me, a sweet smile on his face. "Wouldn't have it any other way, though."
"Me either," I agreed, reaching down to muss his hair.
"Hey, babe?" Fallon called a little white later.
"Yeah?" I asked.
"I kind of miss the little assholes," he said, getting a chuckle out of me.
"Me too," I admitted.
"Wanna wrap this up, then go home to do some damage control?"
I wanted absolutely nothing more than to go home with him.
To our kids.
To our life we'd worked so hard for.
"Absolutely. But you're the one who has to wrestle the little one into the bath tonight."
"Didn't we catch Shaw trying to sneak a drink last week?" Fallon asked, collecting our stuff from around the room.
"Crap. Yeah. We were supposed to punish him for that," I said, grimacing, then noticing the way Fallon's eyes were dancing. "Oh. Oh, I like the way you think," I declared. "Shaw can get the bath-scratches tonight."
Were we the best parents in the world to pawn off the bathing of our youngest, half-feral child on our eldest child attempting to go through a rebellious stage? Nope. Not at all.
But we were okay with that.
"Hey babe," Fallon said a while later as we stood in the never-ending mess that was our living room, looking down at our sleeping children. Yeah, sure, one of them was sleeping on the dog bed, but we were just pretending to ignore that.
"Yeah?" I asked, giving up on trying to straighten the mess around them without waking them up.
"We made something pretty fucking awesome here," he said, giving me a smile, shaking his head a bit in wonder.
"Yeah," I agreed, moving toward him, letting him wrap me up in his arms. "We did."
"Thank fuck you were such a bitch, huh?" he asked, smirk devilish.
"And that you were into that kind of thing," I agreed.
"I say next week, we don't call, just drop them all off at their grandparents'," Fallon said.
"That seems fitting," I agreed.
They were the ones who started all of this, after all.