Number of caffeinated beverages you consumed throughout the day: Five. You try getting through a day of pretending to give a shit while entertainment journalists ask you the same questions over and over again. It’s sort of like answering these stupid sleep diary questions, except with lights and a high-definition camera in your face.
Number of alcoholic beverages you consumed throughout the day: One beer last night, and don’t try to tell me that’s why I couldn’t sleep.
How much time you spent exercising: None. Fired my trainer as soon as he asked me what happened to the hot nanny.
Your stress level before bedtime, on a scale from 1 to 5: Fuck this scale.
Your major cause of stress: I can’t let her go. And I can’t cancel out of the press junket today or the premiere tomorrow.
26
Shane
Margarita Vasquez has been a professional child caregiver for well over four decades. She has been our nanny for almost two days now. She enjoys cooking healthy meals, being organized, staying on schedule, reading quietly in her room when the kids are asleep, and she knows CPR. She speaks fluent English, but when either of the twins says or does something that she considers to be misbehavior—like request pocket snacks or insist that she sing a showtune or ask why flies like dog poop or why she isn’t married—she expresses something very rapidly in Spanish. I have no idea what, because the word si is never involved. This causes the twins to shut up and do whatever she wants them to do immediately, and then everyone gets on with their day. I respect and appreciate her and hope to never see her naked.
It’s not her fault that she is the living, breathing embodiment of Willa’s absence.
I’m sure that Summer and Lucky will like her eventually.
I’m pretty sure that they will stop staring at me like they’re waiting for me to have a nervous breakdown any minute now.
I know what a broken heart looks like.
I have always known how to act heartbroken.
I’ve played five different guys who’ve been crushed by the girl he’s in love with.
I’ve been the guy whose wife fell in love with someone else.
And part of me knew that if I gave my heart to Willa in the way that she deserves, I’d have to be willing to let her go if she still felt she needed to protect her own heart.
But for fuck’s sake… Missing Willa, wondering how she feels right now, and seeing how much my kids miss her—there’s an emptiness that no thirty-second montage that’s underscored by a contemporary sad love song could ever convey.
And I don’t want my kids to see me sad or worried or empty, even though I may not be as good of an actor as I thought I was.
Every day for more than five years, I’ve been living with the knowledge that I would do anything for my kids, even though I almost never feel like I’ve said the exact right thing or done enough. That’s just being a parent. But ever since I left Willa at the bottom of the stairs on Monday night, I have been thinking about the one thing I could have said that might have changed everything.
I tried calling Nico while I was driving home for dinner earlier, but I got his voice mail. A little while ago he sent a text, asking if I’d be home tonight. When I told him I would be, I didn’t hear back from him. I just want to get an idea of how things went for Willa today, but now it’s bedtime.
This is the third night in a row I’ve let the kids sleep with me—even though Margarita thinks I’m spoiling them. To be honest, after the press junket today, it feels good to be flanked by two people who aren’t going to ask me what it was like performing in front of a green screen or if I think Melissa McCarthy and I would make good detectives in real life too. When I come to the end of Miss Nelson is Missing, the three of us are silent for an awkward five seconds, as we’re all probably wishing that Margarita is just Willa in disguise, trying to teach us a lesson.
“Papa?”
“Yes, my child?”
“Can I be a matchmaker like Yente when I grow up?”
“Sure. If that’s what you want to be.”
“Can I be one now?”
“Not according to child labor laws. But you can pretend to be one, sure. You gotta go to sleep now, though.”
She sits up, claps and then rubs her hands together. “But Papa. Oh, Papa! Have I got a match for you! She’s pretty! She’s young! Actually, I don’t know how old she is. But she’s a nice girl! A good catch! Right? Right.”
I don’t know if it’s possible for me to love my daughter more than I do right now, but part of me is a little terrified that she wants to set me up with Abby’s mom.
Lucky sighs dramatically. “Do you think we waited long enough?”
“For what, buddy?”
“You said. Sometimes girls get weird and we have to wait. For them to be not weird again. Do you think we waited long enough for Willa?”
I turn to Summer. “Please tell me that’s who you’re talking about.”
“Duhhh! Knock knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Nobody! Because Willa is in New York!”
“Wow, that’s kind of dark, honey. Are you saying you want Willa and me to be together?”
“Duhhh! Oy vey, dummy!” She smacks her forehead with one hand. “You’re so sad and grumpy when she’s not around. You’re sarumpy. Such a man is this!”
“Diddle daidle deedle deedle daidle deedle deedle dum!”
And now both of my offspring are flat on their backs in a fit of giggles that’s shaking the mattress and forming words that make absolutely no sense to me. There’s a good chance none of us are going to get any sleep tonight, but at least we aren’t sarumpy anymore.
I guess now’s as good a time as any to have The Talk. “You know what that would mean, though? If Willa and I are a match? Like a couple? If she lives here, she’d be sleeping here with me at night. In this room. In this bed.”
“What if we want to sleep with you too? Can you get a bigger bed?”
“We’ll figure something out. But there will be times when Willa and I will be in here and the door will be closed. That means we need to be alone together for a while.”
Summer rolls her eyes. “Like when mommy and Landon close their door?”
“Exactly. Exactly like that.”
My kids simultaneously shrug their shoulders. Whatever. Mommy and Landon must have their door closed a lot.
“But it would mean Willa and I will be phoning and texting each other when we aren’t with each other.”
“What about when you are with each other?”
“We’re probably going to text each other when we’re in the same room sometimes too. We can’t seem to stop doing that.”
Summer scrunches up her entire face for a few seconds and then exhales and throws her hands up in the air. “Fine. Just pay attention to us at the dojo.”
“Deal.”
Lucky asks, “Can we Skyped her? Or is she still being weird?”
“I guess we can try Skyping her tomorrow. I’m not sure which one of us is being weird. I just don’t want you guys to get your hopes up about her moving back in with us. I mean, she loves you a lot, but she might have to move to New York for work.”
Summer rolls her eyes at me for the nine hundredth time in her life. “Yeah. We know she loves us. Do something to make her love you!”
“Oy vey. That’s harsh.”
All three of us are startled by the sound of the buzzer to the front gate. People don’t usually come by the house at night.
Summer bolts upright. “Maybe it’s Willa!”
“Unlikely. Maybe Margarita has a visitor.” While I slide down to the foot of the bed, the phone in my pocket vibrates. There’s a message from Nico: It’s me. Open up.
“It’s Uncle Nico.”
Summer jumps up on the bed. “I wanna see him!”
Lucky starts to climb out from under the covers. “I’m coming too then.”
“Both of you get back in bed right now and go to sleep, or I�
�ll send Margarita up.”
Their heads hit the pillows immediately, eyes shut tight. I don’t know… I kinda like this new nanny situation.
“Love you. Good talk. Nighty night.”
Margarita is by the front door, wearing pajamas and a robe, clutching an iPad to her chest and staring at the intercom. “Mr. Miller, I didn’t know which button to push.”
“I got it, Margarita. Sorry to disturb you. It’s a friend of mine.”
She nods and steps away, giving me the side eye. “Are the little ones asleep?”
“Almost.” When I turn on the front gate video, I see Nico holding up a six pack over his head, like John Cusack with a boom box in Say Anything. “You here to tell me you love me?” I say into the intercom. “Because you should have brought more beer.”
“Let me in, superstar. I haven’t got all night.”
I buzz him in and open the front door. I cannot believe he drove all the way out here and I didn’t even beg him. “Is everything okay?”
“I’m in the fucking Palisades at eight on a Wednesday night. What do you think?” He narrows his eyes at me. “Wow. You look like shit, bro. Good.”
“Did you expect to see sunshine shooting out of my ass? I’m a broken man. Also, keep your voice down—it’s bedtime.” I lead him to the kitchen, and he’s twisting open a bottle when I’m shutting the doors. “What’s up?”
He takes a pull of his beer and hands me one. “Remember that very special Valentine’s Day episode of That’s So Wizard?”
“‘The Love Potion Notion?’”
“Season Two.”
“‘Hocus Refocus?’”
“Yes. Jesus. It’s kind of a miracle either of us ever got laid.”
“Did you bring me a pair of magical glasses that will change the way I see the nerdy girl who has a crush on me? Because I don’t need them.”
“Okay wait, it was Season Three.”
“Ahh. ‘Prince Charmingest.’ You’re here to encourage me to fight for love. Thanks for not coming to punch me in the balls.”
“I would have if you didn’t already look like you’ve been doing it to yourself.”
“How is she?”
He shakes his head and stares at his beer bottle. “I’ve realized recently that she’s a better actor than I am. She’s been hiding how she felt about you ever since she was a kid. But I’ve never seen her so sad.”
Now I feel like I’ve been punched in the balls.
“I mean, she came around once it was time for her to leave for the airport.”
“Oh.” And now it feels like his combat boot is up my ass.
“She had a really good interview with the perfume people today, I guess. She said it went really well. She has until Friday afternoon to give them an answer.”
And a sucker punch to my heart. “They offered her the job?”
“Course they did. She’s a genius.”
“Yeah. Course she is. So she hasn’t given her an answer yet?”
“I can’t believe I’m about to say this out loud in real life, but did you tell her that you love her?”
“I told her we love her.”
“We, like you and the kids?”
“Yeah.”
“Dude.”
“Honestly, even if I’d told her I love her, I don’t think that would have been enough.”
“It would have been a good fucking start. I don’t want her to live in New York. I mean, I love it there, but I don’t want my sister to live there by herself. I don’t think she really wants to, but they made her a good offer. You need to make her a better one.”
My mind is racing. “Is she still in New York?”
“Yeah, she’s going to Grammie’s in the morning.”
As always, I have so much to do and very little time in which to do it.
Tonight, I’ve got one beer to drink, one friend to hug, one text to send, and one very important call to make.
And then four lives to change if I can just make it through tomorrow with no sleep.
REASONS WHY SHANE IS TOTALLY WRONG FOR ME AND IT WOULD NEVER WORK OUT FOR US
1. Margo.
2. His hair is better than mine, which is obviously unacceptable.
3. He can’t harmonize with me (or anyone else for that matter).
4. He’s way too generous in bed. Like we get it—you’re good at giving a girl an orgasm or twelve. Let her do a little work, yeesh.
5. Way too much time wasted staring into those blue eyes. Get a life, Willa. Read a book or something.
6. Too much time wasted staring at his hands. See above.
7. Obviously I’m allergic to his pheromones. Fuck you, science—it’s a thing.
8. His kids are too cute. Way too cute. Give your ovaries a break, Willa.
9. Margo. I mean, maybe she’s not all that terrible, and I can’t really blame her for anything. But still. Margo.
10. He forgot my name.
11. Every time he says my name, my uterus screams like it’s at an Elvis concert. This is no way to live.
12. Loving someone this much is terrifying.
Maybe I’m just a big baby.
Maybe everyone is this scared when they’re in love and nobody tells you.
I don’t know.
Fuck this list.
27
Willa
*Friday Morning*
I had decided to make that list while I was at the airport in LA on Tuesday. I’ve only ever tried to get over my feelings for Shane Miller, so I have no idea if it’s this hard to get over anyone else. But trying to get over Shane Miller is a joke. Especially now.
There aren’t any billboards in the part of town that he lives in and I don’t watch TV, so I had no idea what a big deal this upcoming Melissa McCarthy movie is. Driving to Nico’s place, I had passed two billboards and a bus that was advertising the movie. I don’t know why they felt the need to put his handsome smiling face on the poster—I mean, isn’t Melissa McCarthy a big enough star to sell a movie on her own? More billboards on the way to the airport, and then as soon as I finished writing up my list, I looked up and saw his beautiful face on the TV in the airport bar. Some daytime talk show.
If he were laughing and smiling like most talk show guests, I would have added that to the list. But he was barely keeping up appearances. He was still handsome, of course, but he looked tired. I ran to the bar and asked the guy to turn the volume up, but it was too late. It cut to commercial, and Shane’s segment was over.
I thought things would get easier once I left LA, but the in-flight movie was that damn action comedy that he starred in with John Cena. There was a huge digital screen advertising the new movie around the corner from my hotel in Times Square. And even if he weren’t in movies, it wouldn’t have mattered. Because I still see his face every time I close my eyes.
The good news is, I haven’t been able to sleep more than a few hours since I left his house. So my eyes have been open a lot. Always looking on the bright side. But I miss the twins just as much. I miss hearing their voices. I miss their little hands. There’s an emptiness inside, and I’m so afraid I won’t be able to fill it, but I also don’t feel right being so attached to them because they aren’t mine.
My talent and skills and work. My own family. These are the only things that are mine. I just need to focus on that.
The job interview was good. It actually felt good to be in a lab again, surrounded by other chemistry nerds who like to make things smell good. I mean, the job itself gives me no opportunities for creativity, but I can do my own thing on the weekends. And at night, if I’m not too tired. Manhattan gave me a headache, but I’m sure I’d get used to it eventually.
I’m at Grammie’s house now, and I haven’t heard from Shane since he sent me a text on Wednesday night, asking me not to accept the job until I’ve talked to him. But I haven’t talked to him. I told him that I only have until this afternoon to make my decision. I know how busy he is, but come on. Don’t leave a girl hanging.
I’m not calling him. If I haven’t heard from him by four o’clock, I’m accepting the job.
“Why are you shaking your head at me, young lady?” Grammie asks.
I realize my arms are crossed in front of my chest and I’m frowning.
“Nothing. I just can’t believe you won’t let me take you to the arboretum. It’s a beautiful day. Don’t you want me to take you anywhere? Somewhere in Detroit?”
“Well…” She smirks. “If we stay here, there’s less chance of you losing me.”
“Too soon, Grams.” Now I’m really frowning at her. “Too soon.”
We’re sitting in her living room, and the scent of my grandfather’s cherry vanilla tobacco smoke still permeates everything. It has mellowed a bit over the years, but it’s still here, stubborn and lovely. Kind of like my grandmother, although she’s not being very lovely at the moment. She’s just being a stubborn ass.
“Well, I’m only going to be here for a couple more days. What do you want to do? Should we visit Mom and Dad?”
“No, just calm down. I want to talk to you.”
“I am calm. You calm down.”
“You are not calm. You’re miserable.”
“Well, you’re not exactly helping to change that situation at the moment.”
“I just want to tell you that I was wrong.”
Ten words I never thought I’d hear this woman say. “Sorry, what?”
“You heard me.”
“Regarding?”
“This job. I don’t think you should take it.”
“Well, I don’t think I can afford not to. I mean, I can get a job waiting tables in LA until I’m making enough from my own sales, but that’ll just drive Nico nuts and he’ll be impossible to live with.”
“Then live with Shane.”
“You’re telling me to live with Shane? Dora Cruella Todd. You?”
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