I was still narrating audiobooks, but now I’d branched out into thrillers as well. The money was good, the work was steady, and with our jobs earning us a good salary, too, we were comfortable. While she was pregnant with the twins, Katy had given in and gotten rid of the Mini, replacing it with a black five door Mini Countryman this time that I could fit behind the wheel of and sit in without needing to angle my head so that it was up through the sunroof.
All of this was great and made for a happy family, but today for their second birthdays, Katy’s parents had bought them a piano, and my parents had bought them both guitars. Bracing for the onslaught of key hammering and manic guitar strumming, we’d smiled through the dread, only to be shocked to shit when – at the age of fucking two – they’d played a made up tune on the piano that made you want to listen to it repeatedly, then they’d strummed on the guitars and tried a few different cords. It had ended with Barker on the piano gently moving his fingers over the keys while Melody tried to keep tune on the guitar.
We’d all sat listening to them, only tearing our eyes away from the pair to glance at each other once, and when they’d finished, we’d all stood up and clapped – meaning it, not just because it was our duty.
“Your kids are so going to science camp,” Reid muttered to me out of the corner of his mouth, getting a glare from Katy who was standing with her arms around my waist.
“They’re going to music camp,” she corrected, more than likely wondering if there were any that accepted two-year-olds.
“You want your kids to go to band camp? Didn’t you ever watch American Pie?” he shot back, making the rest of our siblings who were all close to where we were snort.
“Yes I watched it, who didn’t? But there’s a difference between band camp and a Mozart or Beethoven retreat,” she snapped, putting her hands on her hips.
My brothers lived to wind her up. Over the years, we’d all become close, as had our siblings, and now they all acted like brothers and sisters – apart from Reid and Aura who steered clear of each other – so her reaction made his eyes light up.
Seeing that he was about to say something else, I held my hand up. “No. Not today, not about this.”
Sighing, he walked over to the piano and sat down to touch the keys, finally giving us the plinky plonky noises that we’d braced ourselves for from the twins. Walking up to him, Melody and Barker watched him playing with frowns on their faces as he grinned down at them.
“Look at Uncle Reid playing just like you two,” he chuckled, going back and hammering down on the keys now.
At the same time, the twins reached up and shut the fallboard that covered the keys down on his fingers, getting a shout of pain from him and high fives from the rest of their uncles and aunt.
Sighing, Katy leaned into my side smiling proudly at our children who walked away afterward shaking their heads and talking to each other.
Leaning down so that my head was resting on the top of hers, the sweet scent of her hair going up my nose, I asked, “Happy?”
“Yeah.”
“Me, too. I wouldn’t change this for the world.”
There was a long silence where I swear she hardly breathed, and then she finally broke it. “That’s a shame, because I’m pregnant again.”
I was never getting that fucking Dodge Viper.
But ask me if I cared.