“She’s sleeping a little, right?” I asked. For a while, my sweet little niece had been keeping her parents up all night, every night. The doctor had told them it was purely developmental and there wasn’t anything wrong, but it hadn’t made their sleep deprivation any easier to deal with.

“Yeah,” Ani replied. “But it’s still not great, and I think it’s making Bram question if we should have any more.”

“What?” I sat up a little straighter on the couch. “That’s nuts.”

“I know that,” she said. “But we were doing all this paperwork to get certified to foster—you know, so we could hopefully adopt at some point? And now Bram is dragging his feet about it.”

“He’s just overwhelmed and exhausted,” I assured her. “You know Bram wants more kids. My idiot brother is kind of great at the whole dad thing.”

“Yeah.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “Who knew?”

“I did,” I said smugly. “I just wasn’t sure if he’d pull his head out long enough to realize it.”

“You have such a way with words,” Ani said drily. “Shit, Arie’s awake. I’ll text you later, okay?”

“Sounds good. Give my baby girl a big kiss from her favorite uncle.”

“I will. She loves kisses from Uncle Shane,” she said, referring to my sister Kate’s husband. Ani laughed just before the phone line went dead.

“I’m her favorite,” I snapped, knowing that she couldn’t even hear me.

I dropped my phone and cursed as I lifted the ice pack off my knee again. The skin was tight and looked like it was beginning to bruise. I dropped my feet to the floor and let out a loud groan as I pushed myself off the couch. Dammit, I really didn’t want to go to medical to get the thing looked at, but putting any weight on it was excruciating. I hobbled into the kitchen, threw the ice pack into the sink, and grabbed some ibuprofen out of a cabinet. I wished that our doctors handed out something stronger, but they rarely did, so I never had any good painkillers lying around the house.

After using my beer to wash down the pills, I made my way to the shower. I hadn’t even rinsed the dirt and stink off when I’d gotten home, because I’d been in such a hurry to ice my damn knee before it got any worse.

Getting old sucked. Who knew thirty was the new seventy?

By the time I climbed out, feeling more relaxed, I was also in more pain. My knee just continued to fucking swell.