Who Wouldn't Want To Be Me

I woke up to a sore neck, and being almost too warm to breath. Looking around me saw Jordan’s arms wrapped around me, Parker nuzzled between us, and Marc had wrapped himself around me as well. Jared was laying across my legs; an arm wrapped around one leg, and the other around Eric, whose arms were around his youngest brother. And every single Staal was snoring lightly, the sound hardly audible, but definitely there; including Parker. I laid my head back on my pillow and yawned, not sure how to get out of my current predicament without waking at least two Staals, let alone all five of them.

“Hello?” I looked to my right, and saw Linda cautiously poking her head in the door. I managed a sleepy grin, and saw her holding back a laugh at the six of us piled onto one hotel bed.

“How’d you sleep?” she asked, and I couldn’t even shrug.

“Pretty good; my neck’s a little sore though,” I replied, and she shook her head.

“We wondered if you boys would all stay there or if you’d wake up,” she grinned.

“Well it’s not that it wasn’t comfy – and I didn’t want to wake Park up,” I explained, and then she saw her grandson curled into my side, his back to Jordan’s stomach where he laid between the two of us.

“He really loves you Cam; all he talked about the whole Skills competition was that his Uncle Cam was playing better than his daddy,” she giggled, and while I smiled I felt a little strange. I mean, I loved Parker and that he’d taken to me, but Eric felt a little pushed out of the picture with the way his son acted around me. He hadn’t said it out loud, but he didn’t have to – whenever Parker came running at me instead of sticking with his dad I saw Eric’s face fall slightly before trying to cover it up.

“He’s amazing, I just feel bad sometimes, I mean, I know it’s a little hard for Eric,” I offered, but she shook her head.

“Eric’s just not used to having to share his kids with anybody, that’s all. He’d go through the same thing when Parker starts school,” she sighed, and I chuckled. Parker was Eric’s whole world and it was amazing how good he was with his kids. I felt rude taking any time away from him with his kids.

“Still, I feel bad about it,” I said, and she just ruffled my hair before gently extracting Parker from the mess of bodies on the bed. He didn’t even stir, just turned into her body and continued snoring.

“Don’t, I’m just glad that he’s taken to you so well,” she insisted, and I shrugged, before trying to get myself off of the bed. All of the grips on me just tightened, and I had less room to move than before.

“Oh boy, I think I’m stuck,” I sighed, and she chuckled, sitting down on the other bed holding Parker.

“Well I’ll keep you company then,” she decided, and we chatted for probably a half an hour before Jared began to wake up.

“Huh?” he managed, before his head popped up and he realized what had happened.
“Oh man,” he groaned, trying to free himself similarly to how I had. I just grinned at him, and then chuckled.

“We’re both stuck,” I informed him, and seconds later he was laughing.

“Yeah, I think so. Oh, hi mom,” he said and she grinned at her youngest boy, before shushing him so as not to wake Parker up. It took nearly ten minutes for the two of us to detangle ourselves from the pile of limbs and brothers until we were both sitting on the other bed.

“Do you two want to come to our room? I got some Tim Horton’s for breakfast,” Linda suggested, and we both followed her to the room across the hall. Just as she said, there was coffee, hot chocolate and lots of Tim Horton’s was waiting for us.

“YES! Marc didn’t even get to eat all of the Boston Cream’s on me!” Jared cheered, grabbing one and digging in. I laughed, picking a cheese croissant out of the box and sitting down with my hot chocolate. It only took another fifteen minutes for Parker to wake up, and as soon as he’d wiped the sleep from his eyes he held his arms out to me.