by J. J. Bella
Questions for another time, I told myself.
Now, the issue was how to take care of the work I needed to get done while still spending time with Olivia. I could hire a babysitter other nights, but tonight, that wasn't an option; not only would it be impossible on such short notice, I was determined to have at least one quality evening with my own daughter during our week together.
The image of Mia flashed in my mind. Perhaps she'd be able to handle the work? It wasn't anything that I needed to do personally- mostly just organizing my calendar and getting the production schedule for this project into a rough outline. I mean it was what she was being paid for.
I decided to do it. But before I could make the call, a knock sounded at my door. I got up eagerly; it'd been too long since I'd seen Olivia. Reaching the front door I threw it open, and there she was.
"Daddy!" she said, dropping her little bag and throwing her arms around me.
"There's my girl!" I said, placing my hand on the back of her head.
The building employee who'd seen her up brought in the rest of her bags, and after slipping him a tip he was off, the door shut behind him. I brought Olivia's things to her bedroom, and soon after we were seated at a small table near one of the windows, the city outside a backdrop to our conversation about all that was going on in school. Olivia was looking as adorable as ever- her blond hair had been styled in a little bob, and she was wearing a shirt-and-pants outfit decorated with cartoon cats.
"They have me in second grade now," she said, her tiny hands wrapped around the big glass of chocolate milk that I'd made for her.
"Really?" I asked. "Who made that decision?"
"Mommy. And the school. They said that I was going too fast in first grade and getting bored. It was true; the work was sooo easy."
I smiled at this. I would've preferred to have been consulted by her mother about such matters, but more than that I was happy to see that she was having such success in school. She was a very smart, capable girl, and I could already see a bright future taking shape in front of her. Olivia went on about all that had been going on in her life, from her piano lessons, to her various outings with friends, to what she'd been watching on Netflix. I listened to it all with rapt attention.
After a time, however, I realized that I couldn't put off the phone call that I needed to make any longer.
"Minnie," I said, calling her by her nickname. "Daddy needs to make a phone call. I'll be back in a minute."
"OK," she said, grabbing a nearby iPad and not wasting any time getting online.
I went back to my office, pulled up Mia's number, and gave her a call.
"Hello?" she said, her voice making it clear that she wasn't sure who was calling.
"Mia, this is Liam."
"Oh, hi," she said, her voice thin. "What's u- I mean, what's going on?"
I allowed myself a smirk. Sure, it was a little amusing watching us both try to figure out this strange situation, but the awkwardness would need to be broken sooner or later, and I was certain that I needed to be the one to do it.
"Are you free this evening?" I asked.
"I think so, I mean, yes," she said.
"Good. I have work that needs to be done tonight, and my daughter is in for the evening. So, I'll have need of you."
"Daughter?" she asked.
Oh, right, I remembered. She wouldn't be aware of that little detail.
"That's right. I know this is last-minute, but I'll do my best to make sure that you're notified of things of this nature with more warning."
"Oh, sure. I mean it's no problem."
Good, I thought. Last thing I need right now is a complainer.
"Send me your address," I said. "I'll have someone come get you."
"OK, sounds good."
With that, I hung up. A text with her address, which was somewhere in Astoria, soon followed. I made the call for my chauffeur to come get here. Once she arrived, my evening with Olivia could begin.
"What sounds good to you, little lady?" I asked, mussing Olivia's hair as I sat back down at the table.
"Umm, Grand Szechuan!" she said referring to one of her favorite restaurants.
"Sound good to me."
"I want an eggroll, and some soup, and some General's chicken, and maybe another eggroll."
"Be careful," I said. "You eat too many eggrolls, and you might turn into one."
"Nu-uh!" she said, scrunching her face as she spoke.
Without missing a beat, she returned to the topic of what had been going on in her life, and I was, just as before, eager to hear every last detail. A half-hour flew by, and our conversation was only interrupted by another chime from the intercom.
Mia was here.
I told the front desk to send her up.
"Who's that?" asked Olivia.
"Her name is Miss Hunter. She's my assistant for the next movie that I'm working on."
"Oh," said Olivia.
A gentle knock sounded at the door, and I moved to open it. Once I did, I was greeted with the sight of Mia, her figure small in the large frame of the door, a leather bag dangling from her shoulder.
"Um, hi," she said, her eyes flicking past me to my apartment. "Oh, wow."
"Please come in," I said, stepping aside and gesturing into my apartment.
Mia didn't say a word, instead entering the apartment with slow steps, her gaze moving from place to place. I was proud of my apartment, sure, but I sometimes forgot what an…effect it could have on those who didn't live in similar circumstances. Especially someone on Mia's pay grade. I could imagine easily the Queens three-story walk-up that she shared with two other girls. She'd be lucky to have a hundred-square-foot bedroom to herself, and here she was walking into a West Village penthouse.
"Nice place," she said, her shoes echoing on the wood floor.
"Thank you," I said, taking her bag.
"Daddy, who's that?" asked Olivia, walking to my side.
"This is Miss Mia, the girl I told you about. She's going to be helping me with some work tonight."
"Does that mean we're not going to dinner?" Olivia asked.
"Um, no," said Mia. "I'm going to be staying here while you two go out."
"Oh, good," said Olivia.
"Minnie, be polite," I said, gesturing to Mia.
"Oh, hi, nice to meet you," she said, sticking out her hand.
"Nice to meet you too, um, Minnie," said Mia, taking Olivia's hand and shaking it gently.
"My name's not Minnie," said Olivia. "Only Daddy calls me that. I'm Olivia."
"Then, um, nice to meet you, Olivia," said Mia, her face reddening.
"Go ahead and play with your iPad," I said to Olivia. "I'm going to show Mia the work for tonight, and then we can go."
Before I finished my sentence Olivia was already back at the table, her iPad in front of her, her face aglow with soft blue light.
"Come this way," I said to Mia, leading her down the hallway leading to my office.
We walked on, Mia still in shock from both the apartment and meeting my daughter; I'd be impressed if she were able to form a coherent sentence. I opened the door to my office and directed Mia inside.
"First of all, thank you for coming on such short notice. I know this is a little unorthodox, but I rarely get to see my daughter."
"It's fine," said Mia. "I was just sitting at home bored anyway. I…just didn't know you had a daughter."
The first mention of our previous history, I thought. Bound to happen sooner or later.
"She's from my marriage."
"Marriage?" asked Mia, her oak-colored eyes going wide.
"Yes," I said. "But we can talk about all that later. For now, what I want you to do is going through my schedule for the next few months, getting everything in order…"
I told her what I needed, about how to transfer my rough notes of how the next few months are shaping up to look like into something a little more organized. She seemed to pick up on everything with ease.
&nb
sp; This is an extremely useful situation, having her here, I thought.
The gears of my mind began to turn. But I put aside such thoughts for now.
"This look like something you can handle?" I asked.
"Oh, definitely," she said, sitting down at my desk and looking over the notes.
"Great," I said. "While you're here, help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Even the booze. Especially the booze."
A small smile crossed Mia's lips as she looked over the notes. Despite it being years since I'd seen her, her smile seemed to take me back in time, to a life I'd all but put behind me.
"There's a spreadsheet titled ‘restaurants' on the desktop," I said, reaching over Mia and typing in my password. "They all have my information on file, so feel free to call them up and order anything you'd like."
"Sure," said Mia.
"OK then," I said. "I'll be going. Call me if you need anything."
Mia was already hard at work transferring my notes to the computer. She'd always been a diligent girl. I'd somehow managed to give her a taste of the slacker life when we'd been dating, and it clearly didn't take. As I stepped out of the room, I shuddered as I thought of myself back then, thinking about how much time I'd wasted partying, drinking, and sleeping around. Maybe if things were different back then, my relationship with Mia might've gone differently. But there was no use in thinking about such things.
"Ready?" asked Olivia?
"Let's do it. But leave the iPad here."
With that, we were off. Olivia and I had a wonderful night out. First, we took a walk through Central Park, where she continued to inform me, down the minutest detail, of just what I'd missed since the last week we'd had together. She told me that Amy, my ex and her mother, had been dating someone new, some agent from one of the many talent agencies in the city. Normally, I would be happy to hear this, but I knew that Amy had, whether through choice or not, a hard time keeping men around. Three months seemed to be her limit before they were gone, replaced with a new well-to-do guy. I hated this; I wanted Olivia to have some stability in her life, and a constant rotation of men was not at all conducive to this. I'd considered asking Amy if she'd rather just give me custody of Olivia, but with my work schedule being what it was, I just didn't have the time to be a single father. And I had no intention of leaving her with a nanny all day.
We had some sugared nuts from one of the carts in Central Park, so Olivia and I's appetite was set aside for a time. We decided to go see a movie before dinner –the latest Disney thing- and by the time the movie was out we were both famished. A quick ride down to West Side later and we were at Grand Szechuan, a plate of steaming rice and General's chicken in front of us. When we finished, I checked my phone and saw that it was half past nine; just about time for me to get Olivia home and in bed. I called for my chauffeur, and soon we were back home. Olivia had been nodding off in the car, and I quickly got her dressed and in bed once we arrived home.
Once she was tucked in, I headed to the office. Opening the door with a knock, I saw that Mia was still hard at work, the only difference being my notes were now in a neat pile and a few empty containers of sushi delivery were in the trash by the desk.
"I ate at your desk; I hope you don't mind," said Mia, not taking her eyes off the screen. "I've been kind of in the zone, and I didn't want to take too long of a break."
That's what I like to hear, I thought.
"Not at all," I said. "How's the work going?"
"Good," she said. "Just about another hour and I'll be done."
"Well," I said, "I think I can take things over from here; probably about time for you to be getting home."
"Actually, I can just finish things up here, if that's not a problem. I have kind of a system going on."
Even better, I thought.
"Sure. And why don't you just go ahead and stay here tonight? I have plenty of spare bedrooms."
Mia turned away from the screen.
"Um, if that's OK with you, it's OK with me."
"I wouldn't have suggested it if it weren't. Go ahead and take the third door on the right when you leave the office. It should be ready to go, and I'll leave some sleeping clothes in there for you."
"Sounds good," she said, turning her attention back to her work.
I was more than pleased with this. Not only was she plugging away at things, she didn't seem to have any issues moving her home life around to accommodate work. Even staying here for the night didn't seem to be a problem for her. Leaving the office, I headed to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of wine. Drink in hand, I stepped out onto the balcony, the evening lights of the city aglow.
Mia was going to make a wonderful assistant. Well, assuming that our history didn't rear its head and make things awkward for us. But that could be a bridge what we'd cross at a later time, should we even encounter it. I couldn't help but find myself thinking about how nice it was to have her here, doing the work that needed to be done while I spent time with Olivia. Sure, I'd need to be doing my own work most of the time, but still…
I let the idea marinate in my mind as I finished my glass of wine before heading to bed. I had a strange dream that night, and when I awoke in the morning, all I could remember about it was walking through Central Park with Olivia…and Mia. Getting out of bed, shook the strange dream from my mind. I showered and dressed, and when I entered the kitchen, I was greeted with a sight that was odd, but most welcome: Olivia and Mia were seated at the kitchen bar, a bowl of cereal in front of them both, the two girls laughing and playing some game on Olivia's iPad.
"Good morning," I said to them both.
"Morning," said Mia.
"Morning, Daddy!" said Olivia, beaming at me with a big, adorable smile.
"You're up early, Minnie," I said to Olivia.
"I woke up early and heard Miss Hunter up, so I decided to get up too. She's nice! She made me breakfast."
"Well, I poured her some cereal," said Mia.
"Hey, breakfast is breakfast," I said. "Minnie, why don't you go get dressed and ready for school."
"Aw!" she said. "I want to play more with Miss Hunter!"
"I told you, silly lady, you can call me Miss Mia," said Mia, giving Olivia a playful poke to the side.
"I want to play more with Miss Mia!"
"Maybe some other time," I said.
With a huff, Olivia set down her iPad and went off to get ready.
"There's coffee if you want it," Mia said, picking up the iPad and pulling up some news site.
"I do, thanks," I said, heading over to the coffee pot and pouring myself a cup.
"Listen," I said. "I did some thinking, I have a proposal, if you're interested in hearing it."
Mia looked up at me from the iPad, her eyebrows crinkled in confusion. I could only what she thought I had in mind.
"What do you think about you moving in here?"
8
I just about spit out my cereal.
"Move in?" I asked.
"Not as a permanent situation, of course," said Liam, standing there all casual, as though he'd asked something out of the ordinary.
"Well, I figured that much," I said.
"Think about it," Liam said. "We're going to be attached at the hip until this project's finished. Last night was a little different because Olivia's here, but there're going to be plenty of nights when we're working together like this. It just makes sense for you to stay here."
I mean, he was right- my job was to be his personal assistant for the duration of this production. Still, it seemed so…unorthodox, and that wasn't even taking into consideration our history.
"But…what about my other place?"
"Don't worry about it," Liam said. "I'll cover your rent. Hell, if you even want to move into your own place when this is all taken care of, I can help you out with that. Consider it a bonus."
My jaw dropped slightly at this. New York wasn't the cheapest place in the world, to put it lightly, and the majority of my paycheck aft
er taxes went to my tiny room in Astoria. And here was Liam, offering to cover the costs like it was nothing.
"Think about it; you can save your money while you're here, and then you'll have your own place afterward. Not to mention the commute."
He had me there. Getting from Astoria to Midtown every day was quite the pain in the ass- the less said about New York subways, the better. It was a perfectly sensible arrangement, but something about it seemed strange. Living with my ex who I hadn't seen in six years, who was now kind-of my boss? But it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.
"How about this," said Liam, "just think about it today. Take your time. At the end of the day, we can revisit the issue. And if you want to go forward with this little…arrangement, I can have your things sent here by the end of the day. But no pressure- if you want to stay at your place, that's fine with me; I just think that this would be easier for both of us."
He made a strong case, and I could see the business skills that he'd been developing coming out.
"OK, I'll think about it," I said.
"Great," said Liam, a smile forming on his face.
I'd be lying if I said that the whole time that Liam and I had been talking I wasn't distracted by just how goddamn good-looking he was. He was dressed in a crisp, white dress shirt, the fabric fitting his torso perfectly. The top button was undone, giving a hint of the sculpted pecs beneath. He'd always been in good shape, but it was clear that over the last few years he'd been giving his body the same serious attention and diligence that he'd been applying to his career. Liam's golden hair was wet and tussled, a few thick strands draping over his mile-high cheekbones. The smile at the end just killed me; he could've probably asked me to walk around the rim of a volcano and I would've done it.