Sunday Mornings

When James woke up that morning it was quiet. Too quite for his house at ten am on a Friday. He had slept through practice, it was an optional anyway, so he heaved himself out of bed and was surprised to find both dogs not in their bed on the floor. He slipped across the hall and into the bathroom, brushing his teeth and throwing on some deodorant before he walked back into the bedroom.

He got dressed; loose jeans and a t-shirt. He had long since lost the sweat pants and hoodie's attire. He shuffled downstairs as he pushed a hand through his hair and walked into the kitchen to find Taya eating cereal and entertaining Peyton while Jess cooked an actual breakfast at the stove.

Without even turning to look at him Taya informed him, "Morning sleeping beauty. I stocked your fridge, took your dogs for a walk and your mom called, she would like for you to call her back."

"You talked to my mom?" James asked, voice still groggy from the long sleep he had just woken from.

This time Taya turned to face him and she looked both slightly guilty and slightly afraid as she spoke, "I hope it's okay that I answered the phone."

James chuckled and assured her, "It's fine."

"Good. In that case, she talked my ear off about Peyton. She misses her more than she misses you." Taya stated with a grin.

Shaking his head in amusement before he turned to Jess and asked, "Whatcha making?"

"Pancakes for me, eggs and bacon for you." She informed him.

He wrapped her into a tight, but woefully uncomfortable hug as he told her, "You're my favorite sister."

Jess laughed, "For now."

Taya reminded him, "I took your dogs for a walk."

Before James could say anything Jess told her, "You're the one who stated you like the dogs more than you like James."

"Good point chicken little." Jess rolled her eyes.

James simply laughed. It was foreign to him. Sure, he had been laughing, but for some reason this laugh felt and sounded different. He couldn't quite put his finger on it and it was clear he wasn't the only one who had noticed when both Jess and Taya turned to face him with raised brows.

His cheeks flushed and he told them, "I remember this one time… I think Quinn and I had been together… god maybe three months. I had spent the night at your place, and I thought you guys were gone for the day, so I'm eating cereal naked in the kitchen and I hear you two arguing right outside the kitchen door."

"I do not recall this." Taya said.

He continued, "That's because out of sheer horror at the prospect of being caught naked in the kitchen by my girlfriend's sisters I hid in the pantry for an hour while you two argued."

Jess let out a loud laugh and Taya asked him, "And what, you just chilled in there until we were done?"

James nodded his head, "Yup. Then I snuck back upstairs and got dressed and pretended it never happened."

Jess couldn't help but joke, "Well now every time I go near the pantry I'm gonna get the image of you naked with a box of cereal in there."

"Sorry." James stated.

Taya grinned, "I'm not."

James' brow raised and Jess told her, "You're weird."

"No, I'm single and, since he's only my brother-in-law… you know..." Taya grinned over at James, and he laughed when she wiggled her eyebrows at him. She then looked up at the ceiling and said, "And just so we're clear Quentin, you don't get to go all Patrick Swayze on me for saying that, capeesh?"

Jess smiled over at Taya but it was James who said, "I mean really… if anyone could it would be Quinn."

"Ain't that the truth." Taya stated, leaning over her bowl of cereal to get closer to Peyton as she talked to her in baby talk, "Right Peyton? Say 'right my favorite aunt Taya.'"

Jess joked, "You'd be her favorite aunt Taya because you're her only aunt Taya."

James stifled his laughter when Taya narrowed her eyes and exclaimed, "Oh!"

Peyton threw her hands up in the air and mimicked Taya, "Oh!"

"Hey! Okay wait. Can you say 'Taya'?"

In an attempt to mimic her Peyton said, "Yay-a."

"Close enough." Taya stated with a shrug of her shoulders.

After dinner James took Peyton out into the backyard for a few minutes alone while Jess went for a run and Taya went for a nap. He sat down in the grass and sat her down between his legs and she turned to face him.

She pointed to his watch and asked, "Wat dat?"

"My watch." He told her.

Her tiny finger moved and pressed against his hand, "Wat dat?"

"My hand."

"Dat?" She asked as she pointed at him in general.

"I don't know. Who am I?" James asked her with a smile, but he knew she didn't understand him.

She was so talkative, even when it was only babbling. He knew he had cursed himself by saying she would be a big mouth like her mother. When Peyton had first really started talking he had been so concerned with how often she was doing it but both Riley and his mother assured him it was normal. That it would be like one day she said her first word and it seemed like the very next day she had eight other words in her vocabulary. James still wasn't used to the baby babble though.

She caught him off guard when she looked at him and said slowly, "Ma Ma."

James let out a breath of air and he picked her up, holding her against his chest as he said, "Dadda."

"No no no no." She said.

He cracked a smile, "We need to teach you some more words."

He set her back down and while she occupied herself with the grass below her James rested his elbows on his thighs and put his head in his hands. He took in a deep breath, as shaky as it was, and let it out slowly as he tried his best to keep his emotions in check.

He knew he was just lucky that up until now she had never said mama, or at least if she had he hadn't heard it. He knew it was likely that when she said it for the first tme around him it would hit him like a ton of bricks. He hadn't expected it to feel like this; like he couldn't get air into his lungs fast enough and his heart was hammering against his chest and it felt like at any second it would just explode right out. So he focused on breathing; in and out. Just the way his mother had done so many nights when he woke up sweating and in a full blown panic attack. In and out.

When his heart stopped hammering he opened his eyes and let out a laugh at the sight of Peyton, with her head poking between his arms, looking up at him. She giggled at the sound of his laugh and squawked when he lifted her high up into the air, dropped her slightly before catching her and continuing on.

It wasn't about him. He had to get up and deal with every day for her. She was the only important factor now.

- - -

"I'm letting you stay in my house and this is how you repay me?" James asked, trying desperately to keep a straight face as he walked out of the locker room to find Taya and Jess waiting for him.

Jess was holding Peyton, and they were both in their Neal jerseys but Taya was sporting a Weber jersey. She grinned at him, "He's just so much better looking."

"I agree." Riley said with an equally as wide grin.

James narrowed his eyes, "You guys are mean."

Riley shrugged at him, and told him, "You'll get over it."

James chuckled and he immediately reached out to take Peyton from Jess, holding her tightly against his torso as he kissed her cheek, her temple and then the top of her head and when he pulled away she looked up at him and pursed her lips so he leaned over and kissed her again. When he pulled back to find half of his teammates watching him in amusement he raised an eyebrow and asked them, "What?"

They all shrugged and Craig said, "That is still weird to see."

"What?" James asked curiously.

As Peyton got fussy he gently bounced her around and Craig motioned to him and told him, "That. You, with a kid. I don't know... it's weird."

James shrugged his shoulders and reminded him, "I have had one for a year."

"Yeah, and it's still just as weird to see you all Mr. Mom." Craig said with a shrug of his shoulders.

Riley told Craig, "Don't make him uncomfortable."

"Yeah, and if you're gonna make fun of anyone for being a Mr. Mom... you make fun of Shea." Kelly stated as she looked over at Shea, who had Noah balanced in one arm and Isla on the other, far too occupied with the both of them to even care to pay attention to the conversation going on around him.

When he looked up to find everyone watching him he asked, "What?"

Riley glanced at James, and she asked him, "Think you can find a babysitter tomorrow?"

"What for?" He asked, partially paying attention to her conversation but mostly he was looking down at Peyton as she babbled away to anyone who was listening.

"I thought we could go for lunch." Riley said, and it was the way that she said it; quiet and softly as if she didn't want anyone else to overhear that made James turn and look at her.

His brow raised but she didn't elaborate so he nodded his head and assured her, "Yeah, I can figure something out."

So Riley leaned over and tickled Peyton's stomach, giving her a soft kiss on the cheek as she giggled before she rubbed James' back gently and told him, "Alright, I'll see you tomorrow."

James turned and watched as she met up with Shea and they left the arena together with both kids asleep against Shea. He hiked Peyton up higher against him before turning to Jess and Taya and asking, "Ready?"

They nodded and followed him out to where he had parked, having gotten a ride from Riley to the game earlier that afternoon. James buckled Peyton into her car seat, kissed the top of her head and then climbed into the front seat. He made sure everyone was in, buckled up and ready to go before backing out of the parking space and heading home.

While Taya went and got settled in the guest room for an early night in and Jess went in search of something to eat in the kitchen James took Peyton upstairs to her room and he hoped and prayed that maybe, just maybe she would sleep through the night this time. The last four nights he had to get up at three or five in the morning and she wouldn't go down unless he brought her into his room and laid in bed with her. It was exhausting.

He had become somewhat of a pro at changing her, he put her into a pyjama set with Winnie the Pooh characters on the shirt and pants before he lifted her up and gave her a few kisses and then placed her in her crib. For a moment she looked up at him and looked as if she might start wailing right then and there, but then she scooted down in the crib and James took that as his moment to get away.

So he reached out and ran his palm down her stomach gently before he said, "Night Pey. I love you."

With that he grabbed the baby monitor from the changing table and pulled the door mostly closed, shutting the lights off. He turned the baby monitor on as he headed down the stairs, and his brow lifted when he found Jess sitting on the couch, both dogs on the floor at her feet, with a bag of popcorn in her lap.

He joked, "You better not be feeding that to my dogs."

She smiled at him and said, "Oops."

He dropped onto the couch next to her, setting the baby monitor on the coffee table as Jess surfed through a few channels in an attempt to find out what else was on. James asked her, "Can you find a sports channel, I want to see some scores from tonight?"

She nodded and handed him the remote, she didn't know Nashville's channels well enough to do that. So James did it, and once he got all of the relevant scores of the night he handed her the remote back and he relaxed into the couch. He glanced around the living room, noting that it was much tidier than usual, probably thanks to one of his two lovely house guests, and Jess caught him off guard by asking, "Do talk to mom and dad at all?"

James admitted, flushed and a little ashamed, "Not really."

The truth was he didn't know how to talk to Mark and Tina. James felt guilty almost every time he thought of them; guilty for asking Quinn to leave Pittsburgh for Nashville, guilty for taking her away from her family, and he felt really guilty for how it all ended. For some reason, in his mind, he was the bad guy because even when Quinn was sick and dying her family still didn't have her at home. He knew it was irrational, it had been Quinn's decision to come to Nashville, it had been her decision to stay in Nashville, and it had been her request that whether they chose to bury her and cremate her, she still stayed here with James and Peyton. But it didn't make it any less hard for James.

Jess surprised him when she told him, "When I mentioned visiting to them they were wondering if you might be okay with them coming out before Christmas or something, to see Pey."

James nodded his head, "They can come whenever. She's their grandkid."

Jess shot him a look, "They just wanted to make sure it would be okay with you, and that the timing would be right. I think they know that you're still trying to figure things out and they don't want to get in the way of that or make it worse."

"Just tell them to give me a call, really, they can visit whenever they want." Of course he didn't really mean that. Sure, he wouldn't mind for them to come visit but at the same time the idea of it scared him. He truthfully hadn't talked to either of them since the funeral, but James also knew the phone went both ways and they hadn't made any efforts to call him either. What they saw of Peyton was through Jess and Taya, and he knew that.

Truthfully James still wasn't over the fact that they had made absolutely no effort to come out to Nashville when they had brought Peyton home. They hadn't even met their first grandchild until they came out to visit a few months ago, when they came to stay for the last few weeks of Quinn's life. It had always bothered James, he had always seen it as Peyton not being as important because technically she was neither James nor Quinn's, biologically of course.

The day after James had called his parents to tell them about Peyton his mother was on a flight to Nashville and not even Quinn could pry poor Peyton out of her grasp for the week that she stayed. His father had gone so far as to get in touch with Riley and help out with a little get together for when he was able to come up with James' two youngest siblings. His mother had offered to come up and stay permanently when he called to tell her about Quinn, to help out with Peyton.

Those were things parents were supposed to do when they became grandparents.

James knew that loosing Quinn was hard on his in-laws, but the truth was, he wasn't sure he could ever really forgive them for not making a better effort to accept Peyton in their lives.

Jess didn't say anything, and James knew it was for the same reason he wasn't. They may have been her parents but he knew, from talking to Quinn, that it bothered Jess as well.

He had always gotten along with Taya more, probably because she was a little less proper and James felt more comfortable around that, because for so long he was so similar. But over the last year he had grown much closer to Jess, the two of them rarely went more than a day without even a text message back and forth.

He knew it had been hard for Taya when Quinn died, because for her entire life Quinn had been there but he also knew it was just as hard, maybe more so for Jess, because she was the oldest, she was the one who was supposed to take care of them. James, as the oldest of his siblings, could sympathize with that.

Jess turned to him and she told him, "Don't have any regrets or guilt for doing things the way Quinn wanted. Even the things she didn't tell you, it was entirely your choice James. Taya and I, we really appreciate that you included us and wanted our help with things but you had every right to make any decisions that you made. At the end of the day you and Peyton were the most important things in her life."