Squealing when she saw her favorite uncle, I got up and walked over to her with my arms out. “There’s my girl!”
Kids had always been anomalies to me, but the second Jamie was born something had just clicked inside me. Dahlia and Madix’s son Shaw, and Tate and Lily’s daughter Rebel had just made it click even more. I can’t say I knew what I was doing, but I understood more than I thought I would and could do a hell of a lot more than I thought I’d be able to do. I’d even babysat them by myself on occasions, so I was an uncle pro.
“Did you know that Levi has an issue with music from the Levi’s commercials?” Luna asked Lottie as she sat down beside her. “What was that song, Ariana? The one that we played all the time to piss him off?”
“Inside by Stiltskin?”
That was the beginning of twenty minutes of hell while they looked up which songs had been used in the commercials, going back as far as they could.
Jamie loved the Stiltskin song and was laughing and clapping with it, but whenever it was changed to something else, she’d start whining.
Standing up, I put her on my hip. “Ok, little traitor. We don’t listen to that song, it’s gross,” I told her, gagging to make a point. She didn’t look convinced, so sighing I started walking toward the den. “Wanna watch Tangled with me?”
Watching a kids' movie was like torture for me, but if it got me away from the hell they were putting me through? I’d watch them twenty-four hours a day.
Ever since I was little, I’d had the songs and even the brand itself thrown at me, so it was safe to say that I had a slight issue with it. People assume that it’s cool to have a famous brand with your name on it, I can confirm that it sure as shit wasn’t. And definitely not with my family.
CharlotteThe three of us watched him walk away, lecturing Jamie about why they didn’t listen to the gross songs.
As soon as he was out of sight, Ariana leaned in. “What did you find?”
Making sure he was definitely gone, I whispered, “I contacted Banshee’s breeder. They have two boys from their miniature litter still available to go home next week.”
“You’re getting two?” Luna asked looking shocked. “What if they turn out like Banshee?”
She had a point. Luna had two dogs, a big guard dog named Vlad, and a Daschund called Banshee, and he had that name for a reason – the dog howled and wailed more than Jamie did. Then there were Dahlia and Madix’s dogs, a Chihuahua called Bing, and a Great Malamute called Harambe. Lily and Tate also had two dogs, a Deerhound called Chew Barka, and a Labrador called Ozzy Pawsborne…
It was only Archer who had one dog, Bogey, whose breath could be used as a military weapon. So, really, it was best that there were two of them, and these two were brothers so they knew each other.
I just hoped they were normal, like normal dogs were – not like Townsend dogs tended to be. Out of all of the family’s dogs, I couldn’t confidently say that any of them could be classed as anywhere near ‘normal’. Then again, the names might be a good reason why.
Grabbing my hand, Ariana begged, “Just promise us you won’t let Lily name them.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
The woman had threatened to call her baby Felullah Consuela Trixibelle when she was pregnant. When you looked at it like that, the name Rebel Rowser was a dream.
“Ok, email him back and say you’ll take them. I’ll speak to Noah, and we’ll go and collect them next week,” Luna planned excitedly. “Shit, we need to get puppy stuff.”
And so began a new list in my notebook: PSP, aka Puppy Shit Planning. For the next hour, we bought stuff online which was going to be delivered to Ariana’s house.
Did I forget to mention, she’d wanted a Daschund her whole life, but Levi had mixed her up with Luna and bought her Banshee instead. Ariana now had her beloved Daschy called Taser along with a Munchkin cat, so this was almost a form of revenge for her – getting Levi the dogs she always wanted, and got for someone else. Not that she was still bitter or anything.
“Now, we need to order the things for his actual Christmas presents,” she whispered, grinning evilly at me. “They’re in my eBay and Etsy carts.”
Moving so she was sitting between us, she showed us the items she’d mentioned when I’d said that I wanted to get Levi a dog a couple of days ago. Apparently he had a strange dislike for cats, in that he avoided them – and even went as far as to walk out of his way to avoid them – so it had to be a pet of the canine species.