Thirty-Three

 

Six Minutes to Chaos

 

Lily had been awake for six minutes.

Six. That was all it took for Ari’s fragile sense of maybe today won’t be a disaster to collapse like a folding chair under bad weight distribution. She wasn’t even crying yet—just doing that soft, warning whimper she did before unleashing the apocalypse.

Six minutes felt personal. Like the universe had waited for her to relax—just a little. Ari used to think she was good under pressure. Turns out, pressure was easier when it didn’t wear footed pajamas and scream like it was summoning demons.

Forehead pressed to the refrigerator door, Ari closed her eyes and breathed out through her nose. She had exactly three sips of coffee in her body. Maybe four if she counted the one she’d spilled down her own shirt earlier and then licked off her thumb like a feral animal.

Six minutes.
God, she was so tired.
And not the pregnant kind of tired.

She’d been tired before. Tour tired. Jet-lagged tired. Cry-in-the-shower tired. This was different. This was the kind of tired that lived behind her eyes and made scheduling a full crew across three cities look like child’s play. The kind where blinking too long felt dangerous.

She couldn’t remember the last night she’d slept properly. Days? Maybe longer. Everything blurred together.

Monday. It was Monday. She kept reminding herself because time had lost meaning somewhere between the Uncasville encore and Lily deciding sleep was for amateurs. Heck, the MSG show was a complete memory erase. Monday meant packing for Chicago. Monday meant getting on a plane in a couple of hours. Monday meant she had to somehow look like a functioning adult in public again.

Functioning meant washed hair. Shirts without stains. Smiling at strangers like she hadn’t been awake all night bargaining with a baby. It meant pretending she hadn’t Googled at three a.m. whether roadie naps and teething naps counted differently.

Ari dragged a hand over her belly. And of course, this nugget decided to do gymnastics all night, right as Lily felt a twenty-minute power nap was all she needed. Between the two of them, she hadn’t had REM sleep since Thursday. With Gloria out the past four days handling a business emergency and not expected back until tomorrow’s show, the baby marathon had been entirely hers. And Jon’s.

She didn’t even remember falling asleep last night. One minute she’d been pacing the nursery floor, and the next she’d been woken by Jon gently shaking her shoulder, whispering, “Crash, what are you doing on the floor?”

Ari exhaled, the air leaving her in a slow, defeated sigh.

Nobody warned her that the word teething actually meant your baby will turn into a tiny, furious dragon who refuses sleep, food, and all laws of nature. Or maybe people had warned her and she’d been too optimistic.

She could admit she used to say things like, Lily sleeps so well.
Rookie mistake.
The universe heard that shit and said, Not anymore!

The whimper upstairs shifted to a squeal—high-pitched, offended, operatic. Ari pushed off the fridge and winced as her spine cracked all the way up. There was no part of her body that didn’t hurt. Even her hair hurt. Motherhood… always full of new discoveries.

As she trudged toward the stairs, she glanced at the clock. They had to leave for the airport in three hours. And what had she packed so far?

Not a damn thing.
Unless mentally planning counted.
Which it did not.

And yes… even in this mess, just glancing at Lily’s tiny socks reminded her why she’d tackle the impossible every day.

“Jon?” she called.

No answer.

Which meant he was probably unconscious somewhere, face down in a pillow, drooling and looking like the adorable fool she loved. Though he’d deny the drooling part until the day he died.

She didn’t want to wake him. He’d played two shows back-to-back, stumbled through their front door at almost two a.m. Sunday, and still dragged himself out of bed at five to handle Lily because she’d promised him the next night off.

Except… promises meant nothing to an eight-month-old tyrant.

The last thing she remembered was him humming to Lily at six a.m, exhausted and off-key but still showing up.

He deserved sleep.

She, on the other hand… was hanging on by one coffee-stained thread.

Ari climbed the stairs like she was heading into battle. Maybe she was. Lily’s door was half open, and when she stepped inside, her daughter was standing in the crib with wide, watery eyes, flushed cheeks, fists clenched. Poor Meatball looked just as sad as Lily—and half as exhausted as Ari.

Ari’s chest tightened at the sight. She hated that look, that betrayed, exhausted confusion, like Lily couldn’t understand why sleep kept abandoning her. Ari wished she could explain it, wished babies came with some early understanding of this will pass. Instead, she scooped her up and hoped love translated.

“Oh, Lilybug,” Ari murmured, burying her nose in the soft baby hair that somehow still smelled like heaven and oatmeal. “You barely slept two hours.”

Lily gurgled, then bit Ari’s shoulder. Hard.

“Ow,” Ari muttered. “Teeth. Right. Those little vampire fangs you’re growing.”

She bounced her gently, swaying, humming the same lullaby her father and grandmother had sung to her. A thousand times at least over the last few days. By now, she didn’t know what language she was singing in—switching from Italian to French, then whispering nonsense syllables. Lily didn’t care about accuracy.

Maybe that was the point. The song wasn’t about language or melody anymore. It was about soothing. About repetition. About being there even when she felt hollowed out. Her grandmother had sung her through storms she barely remembered. Now here she was, passing it down without even realizing it.

Her brain drifted back to everything that had happened over the last four days. Shows, production calls, sound checks, a million tiny fires to put out. And trying to finish two renovation projects. Each in two different countries.

Because apparently, she’d chosen chaos as a lifestyle.

Montreal was first. There was still time for the other, considering baby number two wasn’t due till July.

She’d had such a clear picture of how it was supposed to go. Jon walking into the loft, surprised, maybe a little stunned that she’d pulled something like this off in the short time since the last time they were there. His face lighting up when he saw what she’d had Lucky do for them.

The moment was going to be perfect.

Was being the operative word—if Lucky would just answer his damn phone.

He was busy. Good contractors always were. That wasn’t new. But the man had mastered the art of answering with the most unhelpful texts in the universe.

Everything’s good.

What the hell did that even mean?

Good-good? Fine-good? Catastrophic-but-he-didn’t-want-to-say good?

And this was her favorite: Check with Gordie. He has your answers.

Except Gordie never answered either.

It was like all the men involved in her surprise project had formed a secret brotherhood dedicated solely to driving her insane.

Jon’s face floated into her mind and the weird moment yesterday when she’d asked him if he’d heard from Lucky.

He’d been weird.

Aloof. Shrugging. Casual in that way Jon got when he was hiding something or pretending he hadn’t eaten the last cookie.

She would have pressed him, but she’d been too tired. Plus, Lily had spit up down her shirt right on cue, like she knew something Ari didn’t.

A door creaked softly behind her.

She turned and found Jon leaning in the doorway, hair a mess, shirt inside out, looking at her with bleary eyes and a soft, crooked smile.

“Trade you?” he whispered.

Ari hesitated, guilt tugging at her. He needed sleep. But so did she. And she had packing to finish. And Lucky to hunt down.

She exhaled. “Deal.”

He crossed the room, arms out, and she handed over Lily like she was passing him a ticking grenade.

For a fleeting moment, Ari let herself notice how lucky she was—not just to have Jon, but to have this little person who made all this crazy worth it.

Jon kissed their daughter’s cheek, then murmured, “Hey, Lilybug. You giving Mommy a hard time?”

Lily cooed.

Traitor.

Ari rubbed her face. “I need to finish packing, try Lucky again, and maybe cry a little in the shower. Not necessarily in that order, but probably.”

Jon smirked. “Go. I got her.”

She brushed her fingers over his arm as she passed him. Even exhausted, even half alive, he still felt like home. It scared her sometimes, how full her life was. Love made everything sharper. Higher highs. Lower lows. But she wouldn’t trade it. Not even on days like this.

In the hallway, Ari leaned her head against the wall for a moment and let out a long breath.

Less than three hours until they had to leave.

Four days of chaos behind her.

And a storm of emotions waiting to explode if she didn’t get her shit together soon.

But she would. Today. She had to. Because if she didn’t get her head straight, exhaustion was going to write this chapter for her.

And Ari preferred to stay the author of her own story. 

♱ ♱ ♱ ♱ ♱ ♱ ♱ ♱ ♱ ♱

The hotel lobby was quieter than a Sunday morning Latin Mass — hushed, reverent, almost holy. Exactly the kind of atmosphere Ari had been praying for. She felt half human, half ghost, and would’ve dropped to her knees in gratitude if her legs weren’t already jelly and her spine didn’t feel like it might fold in on itself if she bent too far.

The choreography kicked in automatically.

Jeanie volunteered to wrestle the luggage situation with the bellhop — brave woman — while Matt stalked off to collect their room keys. Cliff shepherded the rest of them toward the VIP elevators like a giant, earpiece-wearing version of Moses parting the sea.

Miraculously, Lily wasn’t screaming. Meatball wasn’t dragging anyone by the leash. Ari was fairly certain that counted as a double blessing and maybe even a small miracle.

Once Matt returned, keys in hand, they headed upstairs in blessed, carpeted silence.

Ari had barely reached the suite door before Matt was already looking at her with that same stupid grin Jon got when he was about to say something stupid. Or generous. Or both.

“I’m going to volunteer for something you can’t possibly refuse,” Matt announced, slipping into a surprisingly solid Marlon Brando impression.

Ari blinked, her brain lagging a half second behind the words. “What?”

Matt stretched, tree-trunk arms extending toward Lily. “I’ll take her. You two need a break. Trust me. I’ve got this.”

Jon, already halfway inside the suite, did a double take between his wife and his brother. “Sure,” he said, decisively — too decisively — scooping Lily right out of Ari’s arms before she could even form a rebuttal. “See ya in the morning.”

And just like that, a very confused Lily was deposited into Matt’s arms, blinking as if trying to figure out how the cast of characters had shifted so fast.

“You do know she’s teething, right?” Ari said, instinct kicking in even through the fog. “She hasn’t slept more than a few hours today.”

Matt shrugged, utterly unbothered. “Not like I haven’t been through this before. Plus,” he added with a grin, “the minibar has everything I need to survive.”

“Crash,” Jon murmured, gently nudging his wife further inside the suite, “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Someone mention a minibar?” Jeanie called from down the hall.

“Well, would you look at that,” Matt said, shifting Lily on his hip. “Reinforcements.”

Jeanie reached them, brows lifting. “What exactly am I reinforcing?”

“Me and you,” Matt declared, bouncing Lily once for emphasis, “are gonna tag-team Baby Tornado while the zombie twins catch some Z’s.”

“Earth to Crash,” Jon said, shooting her a look she recognized immediately. “You are not saying no.”

“Lucy, if it makes you feel better,” Cliff added from behind Jeanie, “I’ll stick close.”

Ari’s brain must really have been fried — blown like an overworked amp, all feedback and static where logic should’ve lived.

Of course she trusted her brother-in-law with her child. That was never in question. Matt knew babies. He’d survived this stage before. And Jeanie was solid, sharp, unflappable — the kind of woman who didn’t panic when chaos raised its voice.

Still.

Trust didn’t cancel exhaustion.

God, she needed to sleep.

Ari caught Jon’s eye and gave him a quick, exhausted grin — the kind that said thank you, I love you, and I am barely vertical all at once. Then she turned to Matt, pressing a hand briefly to his shoulder.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya,” she said, her voice rough but amused. “Tag — you’re it.”

“May the Force be with you,” Jon said, stepping further into the suite as the door swung closed behind them, sealing off the hallway like the final click of a lock on sanity.

“Hundred dollars says they don’t make it an hour,” Ari muttered, kicking off her shoes and abandoning them wherever they landed as she drifted toward the bedroom.

Jon snorted, already peeling off layers. “Sweetheart, we’re gonna be unconscious before Matt even makes it down the hall. If they need help, they’re screwed.”

Ari didn’t argue.

She was already halfway gone.