Page 34 of After the Siren
‘Thanks.’
‘You gonna tell me why you wanted to pull the alarm?’
‘No,’ Theo said, the horror of explaining his family to Jake overcoming his manners.
Jake just laughed. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll make something up.’
‘What?’
‘I’m just gonna assume it was something really dramatic.’
‘Like what?’
‘I’m not gonna tell you.’ There was a muted woof through the phone and Jake said, ‘Alright, alright ... Sorry, Plugger was pissed I stopped patting him.’
Needing to be the centre of attention was clearly a Cunningham family trait.
‘So, it worked?’ Jake asked, shifting to scratch Plugger’s belly with his other foot. The dog wriggled happily, and Jake was definitely going to have to de-grass-seed him before they went inside.
‘It did. I told everyone that it was probably something important about the team.’
‘Yeah, super-important team business.’ Jake considered his options. ‘Like, maybe if I don’t call all my teammates on Christmas then our whole season is cursed.’
Stavs snorted.
‘Or ... hmm ... I needed to discuss the theme of our New Year’s party with you. Because if we don’t get the theme right —’
‘The whole season is cursed?’
‘Got it.’
‘Or you could be discussing tactics with me?’
‘Nah.’ Jake said. ‘I’m not the strategy guy. We need Xen on the phone for that.’
‘I mean, my family don’t know that.’
‘Yeah, but I don’t wanna have to pretend to be talking game strategy to you. You’ll judge.’
‘Who says I’m not judging already?’
Plugger barked, because he liked to get involved in conversations.
‘Is that Plugger?’ Stavs asked.
‘Yeah, wanna see?’
Stavs did want to see, so Jake switched to a video call and got Plugger into the frame. That was never difficult – it was usually more difficult to keep Plugger’s nose more than two centimetres away from the camera.
‘He’s just like you,’ Stavs said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘No sense of personal space.’
Jake dodged a barrage of licks directed at his mouth. He loved Plugger, but there was a lot of drool, and Pluggerreallyneeded one of his doggie toothbrush chews.
‘Hey, I don’t slobber on my teammates.’
