Page 4 of Protecting the Boundary
He was, but at the beginning I liked that about him. His drive was attractive to me.
Changing the subject, I ask, “What do you want for dinner? I was thinking fajitas.”
“Sounds good to me.”
I push away from the car and head back inside to start cooking. As I stand in the kitchen I grew up in, I get a familiar, small pang in my chest. It’s moments like this—days like this—when I wish my mom was still alive. Would she have been glad I broke up with Cameron? Would she have tried to talk me out of dating him in the first place?
I love my dad. He’s my best friend and always has been because it was always just the two of us. But he wasn’t great with heavy emotion, and I wonder how different I’d be if I’d had a mom growing up. If my own hadn’t died due to complications in childbirth, or even if my dad had been able to move on and find someone else to fill that role for me. Would I feel as lost as I do now?
I push that thought aside and get to work making dinner because I can’t change the past, but I can make sure my dad eats. Whenever he’s tinkering, he gets so focused, he could spend a whole day out there and not realize he’s starving until he’s shaking and about to pass out.
While I prep the ingredients, I think about what jobs I could do over the next year until I figure outmy long-term plans. Most of my experience in high school was babysitting. In college, I worked in a café, but I’d rather not do customer service again. As I’m getting the peppers in the skillet, I remember my friend Amanda took an au pair job in France. She argued she was using her French minor so it was worthwhile. The idea of going abroad doesn’t hold a lot of appeal. I stayed in state for college because I like being close to my dad. I’m all he has and want to make sure I can still see him regularly no matter what job I choose. But I think she used an agency, and maybe that’ll be the fastest way to get my foot in the door for a steady job.
As the peppers cook, I send a quick DM to Amanda on social media.
Hey, hope you’re enjoying France! Question, did you say you worked with an agency to get your job?
I don’t expect her to respond right away, but then my phone vibrates with a message from her.
Amanda
Bonjour! Ya, I worked with Lacey Wilde at the Wilde Child Care Agency.
Do they only find au pairs? I’m looking for a nanny job, but would still like to stay in LA.
Amanda
Def reach out. I’ll email her and let her know I referred you. They work with elite clients in the LA area and internationally, so I bet they could find you a nanny job in a heartbeat.
We chat back and forth a little longer about her experience with her family in Paris and my recent breakup with Cameron while I finish cooking. But once the foodis done and I holler out to my dad, I grab my laptop and get to work researching nanny gigs and emailing Lacey Wilde.
For the first time in months, excitement courses through my veins. I have a goal in mind and a potential job opportunity that I’ll actually enjoy while I sort myself out.
It’s amazing how much can change in a day.
THREE
“And then the princess lived happily ever after.”
I hold open the last page of the latest fairy tale Kay’s obsessed with because I know she loves looking at the picture. She’s snuggled under her lavender comforter with daisies on it, her eyelids getting heavy with sleep. I brush her hair away from her face even as a pang stabs my heart.
She looks so much like Sydney.She has the same light brown skin tone and the same corkscrew curls. If it weren’t for Larissa teaching me how to do Kaylee’s hair, it would’ve been a disaster.
Some days I’m grateful she looks so much like her mother and will always have that connection to her. Other days it feels like being stabbed in the gut repeatedly.Not that I know what that actually feels like, but I imagine it’s about as painful as grief.
She gets a little furrow between her brows like she always gets when she’s got something on her mind. “What are you thinking about, Sweetie?”
“Are you going to be gone a lot again?”
Now my heart hurts for a completely different reason. “I’llbe gone about the same as last season, but you know I’ll always rush home to be with you, and Grammy’s already said she’ll bring you to a game if you want.”
She hasn’t been to many, but she always loves getting to watch my games, and she enjoys them more the older she gets.
Her face shutters and she burrows deeper under her covers. “Okay,” she whispers.
For all that she looks like her mother, she acts just like me. I shut down instead of facing hard feelings, and I wonder how much I’m screwing her up already, even when I try to do my best by her.
“You know I love you, right?”
