Page 56 of Give & Take

“It’s okay,” I tell them, guilt splashing through me at how they’re guarding their reactions to protect me. They shouldn’t have to do that. “You can be excited to see your dad.”

They normally are. Mostly because their dad brings them ridiculous presents I beg him not to. He’s the definition of absent father who swoops in after weeks of radio silence with shiny new toys to buy their forgiveness.

But this time, their reactions are decidedly tempered. “Yay,” says Aurora. I almost laugh.

“Come on, Aurora,” Nova says, “let’s get dressed.”

I’m impressed at her initiative.

I glance at Raphael, considering what this means. I’d hoped Mike wouldn’t come to town at all this summer. He’d warned me things were busy with work when I’d asked him for help after the nanny quit. Now I wish I’d never said anything at all. What’s he going to say about my extremely attractive male nanny? Nothing good I’m sure.

I rub my temples. “I’d recommend making yourself scarce this weekend,” I tell Raphael, and not just to spare myself.

“I’ll make myself a leech if that would help you,” he says.

His expression is so earnest, and his words so unexpectedly funny to me, I laugh. But to my horror, right on the heels of that little release is a prickling in my nose.

I whip around and stuff my water bottle into my bag. I’ve been keeping my emotions in check for so long that the minute he says something nice to me, I feel like I want to cry.

I swallow the feeling down as he comes up close behind me. How is it I can feelhis presence as much as hear it?

“Lana?”

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll be fine.” I pull my backpack on, then wonder if the water bottle I just put in my bag is empty. Mike’s text is throwing me off. I let out a frustrated breath as I dig it out again. It’s half full. “We’ll all be fine.”

“Who are you trying to convince?”

I grit my teeth. “No one. The girls like being with him. Mostly.”

“Lana, I can be here,” he says, his voice so kind and soft I nearly tear up again. I keep my back to him, opening the bottle and bringing it to the sink.

“Seriously,” I say over the rush of water. “We’ll be fine. Just go have fun this weekend.”Without us.I shut off the tap, hesitate, then even though it feels like sour milk in my mouth, turn and say casually, “Maybe you could call that girl from the beach?”

Raphael’s eyebrows knit together.

I instantly want to suck the words back in.Fuck.

“Which girl?”

Which girl?I want to gape. Instead, I screw the lid on my water bottle. Over my humiliation. Because of course it’swhich girl. There have to be so many.

I feel so stupid. So naive to think all those nights he’s been out he’s what, at the library? He’s gone every weekend, too. Did I really think a man in the prime of his twenties who looks the way he does—who talks the way he does—would be a monk?

The more I dwell on it, the deeper I sink into mortification. It slips over my head now, like a winter wave, wet and cold.

I need to get out of here. “Never mind.”

But Raphael still looks like he’s trying to sort through his giant binder of women to figure out who I might be talking about. Because yes, I was talking about one. The only one I know of, because I’m an idiot.

I’m so deeply ashamed that I’m still hung up on that girl who was there when Aurora was throwing up donuts. She was so young and so pretty, and worst of all, she looked very nice and genuinely concerned about my daughter. I remember thinking, even through my panic and anger, that she was exactly the type of woman Raphaelshouldbe with.

Someone his own age.

“Oh,” Raphael says. “You mean Jenna, from the beach.” Because of course he fully reads my mind. I might as well have spelled it out for him. Described her, and then my seething, irrational jealousy.

Sweat slicks the inside of my sports bra. “No,” I say, making it worse.Yes. “I don’t know.” I jam the waterbottle in my bag and force myself to look at him. Might as well say it, since now it’s out there, and it’s the right thing to say. “I don’t want this job to keep you from living your life, Raphael.”

Raphael’s eyes examine me, his jaw doing this weird quirking thing. It’s like he’s trying to sort out what I’m really saying. Which is what? I don’t want you even looking at another woman.

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