Page 100 of Fourplay & Fatalities

My husband just went to take a Xanax. Asa, Zane, Avi, and Felix. Breakfast at the house tomorrow morning at 8:00am.

Avi

8:00am? Show some compassion.

Felix

He’s right. Zaney’s gonna probably need a bit of R&R when we’re done with him. Can it be like 10ish? Call it brunch?

Aiden

9:00am. That’s my final offer. Refuse and I drive to your place tomorrow morning at sunrise. And I bring the children. All of them.

Asa

9:00am it is.

Aiden

I thought you’d see it my way. Don’t be fucking late. And stay off the goddamn internet.

Zane

The sex attic doesn’t have wifi anyway.

Aiden has left the chat

Adam

Great. Now Aiden’s doing the dramatic exits, too.

Archer

Someone is gonna make a pie chart or something though, right? I lost track somewhere around the thing with the thing.

August

On it.

Archer

Bless you.

Zane stood in the kitchen, nursing his iced coffee and staring blankly into a pan of scrambled eggs. The smell of bacon, butter, and maple syrup already clung to the warm morning air around him. Sunlight spilled through the windows over the sink, catching on appliances, water bottles, and the endless collection of kid-related clutter that seemed to multiply on the countertops overnight. He wasn’t really looking at the food. He was mentally running through his mile-long checklist of things he needed to get done that day.

He had to get the raw footage to his podcast editor. He needed to pick up Asa and Avi’s suits from the dry cleaners for one of Thomas’s many, many awards dinners. He had to get Oscar and West off to pre-school, then hit the grocery store across town to grab the very specific dessert Felix wanted to get for Jericho’s birthday party.

Oh, and he’d also promised Adam that he could borrow one of his books on crime scene investigation, so he’d have to drop that off, too. Noah would probably be annoyed that Zane was catering to his and Atticus’s need to play Angela Lansbury, but Zane thought their bonding was adorable.

“Ca’ I have ‘ore, ‘acon, Poppy,” Oscar said around a mouthful of food.

Zane turned to smile at the boy only to find his cheeks stuffed with food, making him look like an adorable little chipmunk. There was syrup on his chin, and somehow blueberry was on his forehead. Zane had long ago accepted that children wore breakfast instead of simply eating it. That was why they got dressed after breakfast now. It resulted in far fewer tears. Felix’s tears. He hated to see a designer outfit destroyed by food products.

“Sure, baby.” He looked at West sitting beside him. The boy was currently using his toddler knife to mangle the blueberry eyes out of one of his pancakes. The concentration on his face suggested the pancake was paying for a crime of some sort. “West, honey, do you want more, too?”

“No, thank you,” he said, too preoccupied with his project to even look up.

“Okay, well, we have to leave for school in an hour, and you still have to get dressed, so eat while you can ‘cause we’re out of Zee bars and Baba doesn’t like you eating them in the car anyway.”