Jasper nudged his arm.
“You had dinner. In fact you had your dinner and half of mine, because when I got up to get a drink, you got up on your hind legs like Scooby-Doo and helped yourself to my plate.”
Jasper lay his head on Levi’s thigh and gave him the “I’m starving to death as you speak” eyes.
“You know the vet told Mom you’ve got to lose some weight.”
At this, the dog huffed out a huge sigh and plopped to the floor, propping his face on Levi’s shoe so he would know if Levi moved so much as a single inch.
Tess appeared in the doorway wearing oversize plaid pj’s and crazy hair. She helped herself to Levi’s bed—aka the couch—and sighed more dramatically than Jasper.
Levi knew this trap. He’d grown up with this trap. So he just kept working on his laptop.
Jasper abandoned him to jump up on the couch, all ninety pounds of him crawling into Tess’s lap.
Another very loud sigh came from Tess as she scratched Jasper’s head.
Levi gave up and looked at her.
“I just spent the last ten minutes helping Peyton look for the cupcake she got from school.”
“And?”
“And . . . I ate it two hours ago.”
Levi laughed. “Isn’t it past her bedtime?”
“She got up to go potty. Then she wanted another story. And then she needed water. We were in the kitchen getting a cup of water when she noticed the cupcake was missing.”
Of course she would notice. Not much got by his niece. “I assume you lied your ass off.”
“Yeah.” She sighed again and hugged Jasper. “I’m a terrible person.”
“You’re not a terrible person. You’re a single mom on the edge.”
Tess burst into tears. “Oh my God, I’m a single mom! I don’t want to be a single mom! How did this happen to me?”
With a grimace, he got up from the desk and sat next to Tess.
Jasper, an equal opportunity hugger, crawled from Tess’s lap to Levi’s.
“It’s not your fault,” Levi told Tess. “Your husband is a big bag of dicks.”
She sniffed. “Yeah.” She stared up at the ceiling. “Today Peyton got mad at me when I wouldn’t let Jasper drive her home from day care, when her bath was ‘too wet,’ and when I wouldn’t buy her shoes like her friend Skylar. And please do note that there is no Skylar.”
He laughed. “Sounds about right.”
Tess sighed. “Not that I’d change a single thing about my precious girl, but sometimes her bedtime is my favorite time of the day. No, scratch that. Her falling asleep is my favorite time of day.”
“Hate to break it to you, but she probably never went to sleep tonight. She just pretends, and then she goes under the covers with a flashlight and reads.”
Tess smiled. “I know. She thinks reading past her bedtime is an act of rebellion. It hasn’t yet occurred to her that her flashlights never seem to run out of batteries.”
He smiled. “You’re a good mom, Tess.”
She blinked in surprise, looking unbearably touched. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks,” she whispered and cleared her throat. “And you’re a good uncle. I know she wakes you up every morning. I know she gets into your things and makes you have tea parties, and you never complain. I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you’re such a good male role model, when her dad can’t love her enough to do right by her.”