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“Oscar punched a kid, then bid him namaste?” she asked, picturing the scene and nearly losing it.
Landon nodded, his eyes watering.
“Yeah, Sebastian said Oscar had to balance his chi-chis, or something like that. And to balance his chis-chis he had to do a nice thing like telling Tucker to go eat hay. Then Sebastian started talking about the universe and bings and bangs.”
“Yin and yang,” Landon supplied, brushing a tear from his cheek as he harnessed Herculean strength not to laugh at Aria’s earnest yet off-the-wall commentary. She had to hand it to him. He was doing a remarkable job. She, on the other hand, tittered on the edge of a complete giggle explosion. She pressed her hand to her mouth to hold back the tidal wave of laughter threatening to break through.
“That’s what I said, Uncle Landy, bing and bang,” Aria corrected—incorrectly—dishing out a dash of hilarious side-eye. “So I just nodded at Sebastian because if people want to eat hay, they should eat hay. Goats eat hay, and they like it. Anyway, Phoebe kept looking at Sebastian like he was a hot dog she wanted to eat, and then Tucker ran away, and we decided to hang upside-down from the monkey bars for the rest of recess.”
This kid was something else.
And this Aria, Phoebe, Oscar, and Sebastian foursome were a force to be reckoned with.
The last thing she wanted to do was laugh at the kid. She met Landon’s gaze as they worked to keep their expressions neutral. A cocoon of sweet cotton candy silliness engulfed the room, intoxicating in its beautiful absurdity.
She cleared her throat, intent on keeping a straight face. “I should probably call Charlotte and see if Oscar got in trouble.”
“It’s taken care of,” Landon replied, his hold-back-the-giggles face smoothing into a relaxed, self-assured expression. “I saw Mitch and Charlotte at pickup. We talked with the teacher. After recess, the boys worked it out with her, and this Tucker kid apologized to Aria.”
She sat back. “Look at you, navigating parenthood like a pro.”
“It’s unclehood, Aunt Harper,” the pint-sized amateur linguist corrected. “He’s my uncle Landon, and you’re my aunt Harper. So, your thing is aunthood,” she added with a resolute nod.
And despite aunthood not being a real word, she wasn’t about to correct the kid.
“But then,” Aria continued, her brow crinkling as she brought the drama, “it got serious.”
“What happened?”
“We had a class meeting. That’s just school words for having a big talk about being respectful and kind,” Aria explained. “My teacher says we have things we’re good at, and we have things we’re working on. She says you have to be brave and work on the hard stuff even if it makes you grumpy or if it makes you want to give up. Then I raised my hand and said I bet we have brave muscles, and I bet they’re in our heart because being brave must come from there. And then I thought some more and raised my hand again and said that everybody’s brave muscles must be a little different. My teacher nodded her head a whole bunch and said she thought I was right, and then she said it would be a boring world if we were all the same and that working on the hard stuff gives us a chance to grow into who we’re supposed to be. Then Phoebe tapped my arm and showed me the cookie she had hidden in her pocket, and I don’t remember what anybody said after that.”
“A bravery muscle in your heart, huh? I like that,” she answered as Aria yawned.
The child rubbed her eyes. “Tucker can make his brave muscles strong to stop acting like a…” She kicked her foot three times, most likely kicking out the syllables in douche nozzle. “And I’m going to use my brave muscles when I sing a song for Lolo and Lala,” she added and sank into her pillow. “I think I’m done talking now,” she murmured as her head lolled to the side.
“Sweet dreams, Aria,” she whispered and smoothed the girl’s dark hair.
“Sing to me before you go,” the child mumbled.
“What song would you like?” Landon asked, fixing her covers.
She yawned again. “I want you and Harper to sing the song about Penny’s sisters sucking eggs.”
Oh, sweet Jesus.
“You want us to sing a duet?” Landon asked as he turned off the little lamp on the bedside table.
“No, I want you and Harper to sing a song at the same time together.”
Even half-conscious, she was a little spitfire.
But how were they supposed to sing a song that was meant to be…well, screeched?
She tapped the bed as an idea for a workaround popped into her head. “We could sing it to the tune of Row, Row, Row Your Boat to make it a little less…”
“Psychotic?” Landon supplied.
“Gentler,” she countered. “I’ll go high. You can go low.”
“We know you can go high,” he murmured, biting back what had to be grin number three thousand of the night.
She took a page out of Aria’s playbook, followed Aria’s lead, and shot the man a healthy dose of stink eye, then tapped her foot and set the tempo.
What happened next was nothing short of mind-blowing.
