Brallie Metropolis AU | In This Together

Chapter 94 | 10 out of 10

Brandon swiped the black pen across the calendar, marking the day in April his and Callie's lives changed. Then he thought there were a lot of days like that for them. Neither of them could pinpoint just one great day. But the day their children was born was pretty amazing.

Brandon had just poured himself a cup of coffee and was starting the batter for pancakes. Em and Colleen were getting their favorite breakfast meal for their double digits. He set aside the mix to wait for the females of the household to flood into the kitchen. Brandon sat down at the counter and opened his laptop that was there. He open the screen to see his emails pop up, only being disappointed by  the first one he clicks on. Just as he was going to continue thrifted through the other couple emails that had come through, Callie came down the few stairs with a smile. The opposite of what he wanted to do right now.

"Hey B," she perked, ready to celebrate the day. She walked over to him, only to lay a kiss on his cheek. "Whatcha lookin' at?" Callie asked as she went around the counter top and to the refrigerator to get out the jug of orange juice.

"Nothing," he sighed, closing the laptop down. "So what's the plan for the day?" Brandon wondered what the final decision was for he girls' tenth birthday party. He didn't prefer to be involved in the decision making for this day. Both him and Callie wanted to leave it solely up to them. "Em changes her mind every five minutes."

"Uh...well, Em wants a princess makeover and Colleen wants a pool party. So I told them we could do both since we got that pool heater," she enlightened as she grabbed four glasses from the cabinet. "And a few girls are staying the night for Em and Colleen's first sleepover.

"Okay," Brandon scratched his head and thought he should start the pancakes about now because he could hear the water run upstairs. That was a clear indication that one of the two girls was awake. "I just think we..." His voice faded away as he reached under the compartment at the bottom of the oven for a pan.

"We what?"

"We shouldn't give Em and Colleen everything they want just because we have some money." Brandon began to pool the pancake mix into the now heated pan to create circles of mixture. "We need to set boundaries. They need to work and get what they earn." Callie was taken back by his random frustrations, and as a matter of fact, so was Brandon. He knew why he was upset, but he didn't know what that had to do with their 10-year-old daughters going into child labor.

"Excuse me?" Her head inched backwards into her shoulder. "It's their birthday. They don't have to 'earn' a party. Why are you being like this? They're 10."

"I don't know," he sighed heavily, letting his shoulders drop back down to a relaxed position. "I'm sorry I'm just mad."

"At what?" Callie's voice squeaked, still resentful for the inappropriate outburst. "Our daughters are 10 today. We're having a party. What's going on?" Brandon shrugged again, going across the kitchen space to grab a spatula out of a drawer as soon as he saw predominant bubbles forming in the pan.

"My agent emailed me today and said that Australia pulled out of the offer." Brandon had received one of the biggest opportunities he could get...to preform at the Sydney Opera House in Australia next year. It was just in the works, nothing was set in stone, but his fancy, overpaid new agent said the offer was likely to go in a good direction.

"I'm sorry," Callie breathed. "I know you were really excited." She lightly rubbed his back with one hand as he flipped the golden cakes. "Did they say why?"

"They decided to make a deal with someone else, someone with more credentials than me."

"Well who's better than the Brandon Foster," she smirked, trying to lighten the mood. She only got a little grin from him. "Was anything even really in motion, yet?"

"No, not really. It was just the thought of it, you know?"

"Yeah, but I know something great will happen. Next time, though, just tell me the truth instead of passive-aggressively addressing it."

"Deal," he laughed, leaning down to her cheek to place a kiss. "So how many little girls are gonna be at our house today?"

Brandon went on to knock out two stacks of pancakes while Callie explained the day to him. Em and Colleen's friends were gonna be at the house around two in the afternoon. The private manicurists are coming around three and then she predicted they would start swimming around four-thirty or five. Dinner would be around 6:45, then after that it would be time to shower, pop in a movie, and let the girls chat and fall asleep.

Colleen and Em came downstairs not to long after Callie enlightened Brandon about the party. They had the table already set and pancakes set around plates with a smiley face whipped cream topping on the girls' breakfast. There were also bowls of blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries scattered in between them all.

After the family of four had cleaned up the kitchen, Em and Colleen raced off to clean up their rooms to make space for the slumber party. About an hour later, fellow nine and 10-year-olds began arriving at the door with a parent, all of them ecstatic by the capacity of their house.

All of Colleen and Em's friends were just as energetic as they were and took a little while to settle down from the excitement. It ended up being perfect because by the time they were all ready to be pampered like princesses, the private manicurists arrived and set up a station for all 10 girls in the living room.

Brandon and Callie took the opportunity of the down-time to go upstairs to the bedrooms and layout blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags to everyone could get a good night's rest, as well as pump up the air mattresses. The entire house is covered in beautiful, dark hard wood floors and no amount of fabric could make that work. Even though their rooms were larger than the average kids room, there was no way all 10 girls would sleep comfortably in one room, let alone all the air mattresses to fit. They worried that would cause problems though, like more girls would want to sleep one room rather than the other. To make everyone happy though and avoid conflict, they grabbed all the things they had just laid out on the floors and moved it to the master bedroom.  

Callie and Brandon had bought six queen sized air mattresses and ended up only using five in the set up. They decided to have a slumber party of their own. They blew up the final one, laying it out in whatever room they were in, which happened to be Em's room because Colleen's room was occupying the guests overnight bags. By the time they had transferred their blankets to the air mattress, the girls' nails were dry and they were all running up the stairs to get the swimming suits on.

"Mom! Dad!" Colleen ran over to them in Em's room while everyone was sifting through their bags and taking turns changing in the bathroom. "This is the best birthday ever!" She had wrapped her arms around their hips, giving them a surprise hug.

"Happy birthday, sweetie," Callie told with a smile while she bent down to give her head before sending her off to her room to meet up with her friends.

"Best birthday ever," Brandon repeated, curling his arm over her shoulder once we stood up again.

"What an accomplishment."

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A/N- I'm embarrassed how long it's been...but at last! Finals are O-V-E-R! YES YES YES! I hope you all enjoyed this short little chapter! Thank you so much for reading! Be prepared for some smut next chapter!! I promise there is much drama in store for the future! XOXO