“How was work?” he asks, voice guarded against the weird virgin-stripper girl that tried to jump his bones this afternoon. No wonder he thinks I'm nuts. I feel nuts right now. And I can't believe I did what I did earlier.
“I got fired,” I whisper, lips brushing against the gross pilling gray fabric of the couch. Zay makes a sound under his breath and comes over to sit next to me, crossing his legs as he settles on the floor between the couch and the coffee table.
“Before or after?” he asks, his voice weird and tinny.
“Before,” I admit and there's a long pause before he sighs.
“I mean, that's kind of good, right?”
“If you like cold houses with no food and cars with no gas. If you like kissing your master's degree good-bye because you can't find a job that'll work around those hours. If you like having to move your sister's kids into a new city, a new town, just so you can have some hope of actually landing some work with a bachelor's in statistics.”
Zay smiles a little, his silver lip piercings catching the wan moonlight.
“When you put it like that,” he starts, but then he just shakes his head a little, reaching up to run his fingers through the thick hair on the left side of his head. I can still feel a tingle in my fingertips from when I touched it. “Do you know what I think?” he asks and I shake my head, cheek rubbing against the dog pee cushion.
Zay reaches out and pokes me in the center of my forehead with a tattooed finger.
“I think you got off lucky. Don't do something if it's going to break you like that. You've got a right to your own body, you know?”
“What else am I supposed to do?” I ask, trying not to cry again. The last thing this poor guy needs is to see me cry. Haven't I done that enough already? I mean, seriously. We really don't know each other at all. Honestly, if I was being straight with myself, I should wonder how I ever thought to leave him with the kids. Or how I'm totally cool with laying in a dark living room next to him.
He could be crazy. He could be a murderer. He could be … all sorts of things.
I should kick him out of my sister's house.
“I have no clue,” he says with a loose, exaggerated shrug, lifting up his palms for emphasis. “I've always been pretty shitty when it comes to adulting.”
“Adulting?”
“Yup. Adulting. The act of being a boring, tightwad with no personality and nothing to do but bitch.”
“That's adulting?” I ask with a raised brow. “I thought adulting was when you, you know, paid bills and took care of the kids and did what you had to do to survive?”
“Naw. Stop being so practical, Smarty-pants. Seriously. For somebody with a degree in math, you sure seem a little dumb.”
I smile, but it's a crooked, loose smile. It fades as soon as I see the dog pissing on the bricks of the fireplace. I should've left that fucking rat at the shelter.
“I'm sorry about your money,” I whisper, realizing that we've never actually agreed on a price. The thought gives me chills. “I'll get it to you as soon as I can.”
Zay sits there for a long while looking at me.
“Look, like I said, I don't exactly need the money right now, okay?” There's another long pause as he leans back against the coffee table. “All I'm doing for the next week and a half is watching these monsters.” Zayden jerks his head toward the stairs. “I mean, what are two more?”
I sit up suddenly and glance away, hair falling over my face. I sweep it back over my shoulder with a quick motion.
“What are you talking about?” I ask as I glance his way and try to take him in. He's still a Tattooed God, but … he looks a little human right now. “You'll be our nanny for free?”
“Why not? You can spend all day pounding the pavement, looking for another job or something.”
“Why would you do that?” I ask as I stare in his beautiful, pierced face. When he smiles, it's almost magical.
“Because … why the hell not?”
No more pretty girls.
Seriously. No more pretty girls ever.
Brooke takes her kids to school the next morning, and I manage to wrangle my monsters into their appropriate pens, but after that … I get back to my brother's place and flop down on the bed. The enormity of what I promised in the quiet dark last night is seriously pinching my nipples.
I just agreed to be a … a fucking nanny? I mean, who the fuck has a fucking nanny in this day and age? I mean, might as well have a larder and a chambermaid, too, huh?
So now, I get a mere four hours of alone time a day before I have to start picking up kids like pinballs, bouncing from one school to another in this weird awkward stretch of time between one and three. Why do they all have different times?! Why can't all the damn kids go to school at the same damn time? Maybe that's what nannies are for because I don't know how any normal human motherfucker gets around to all these places without Hermione's time-turner from Harry Potter.