Falling for my Neighbor: A Virgin Babysitter and Single Dad Romance

by Lila Younger

  “Take care of her.”

  Isabelle

  “Ready?” Bailey asks, leaning against the lockers.

  “No,” I say truthfully. “In fact, why don’t you go and tell me what it says instead.”

  “You’re being dramatic,” she says, tossing her blonde ponytail behind her. “Come on. It won’t be so bad.”

  “Says the one who’s guaranteed to get the part of Belle,” I shoot back.

  “You were good,” Bailey replies. “Stop worrying over nothing.”

  With that, my new friend pulls my arm, dragging me over to the theatre where the cast list has been posted on the doors for the upcoming play Beauty and the Beast. It’s a three act adaptation, and I auditioned for the part of Babette two weeks ago.

  I honestly don’t know what came over me. When Bailey first mentioned the play, I shrugged it off as something that would be fun to see. But she told me that I had a good voice for theatre, and that I should come with her to try out.

  “It’ll be fun. What’s the worst that could happen?” she says.

  “You should go. You even look like Babette,” Tammy adds. “Delicate and pretty.”

  “Isn’t Babette supposed to be Lumiere’s girlfriend?” I ask, stalling. “I don’t know if I want to do that.”

  “But it’s not like you’ll have to kiss him or anything. That’s only for Belle and the Beast, and even then, it only looks like a kiss. Can you imagine the uproar from our parents if they actually tried to make two high schoolers kiss?!”

  I was all set to say no again, like I usually do, but then I remembered Wyatt’s words about doing what I wanted in school. I’d never participated in extracurricular before. Partly because I didn’t know if I’d be around long enough, and partly because I was always working. That wasn’t the case now. So I agreed to go with Bailey. I was curious about what it would be like.

  And it was fun! I didn’t think it would be. Even though I didn’t really know the script at all, having only watched the Disney film two years ago, the adaptation meant that I only had a few pages of lines. And it was so easy to remember them. I might be terrible with math formulas, but I had no trouble with the dialogue. At the end of it, I found myself hoping that I would get picked after all.

  Now though, I’m regretting going at all. I’m not sure I could face the disappointment. As if sensing my crumbling resolve, Bailey tightens her grip on my arm as she marches me through the busy halls.

  There’s already a small clump of people formed around the theatre’s doors. We walk up slowly, pushing our way to the front. I have to go on my tiptoes to see. The first names of course, were Belle and Beast, and I guessed correctly: Bailey got the part. I keep looking down through the names, down to Babette, which-

  “Oh my gosh!” I gasp. “I got it!”

  “So did I!” Bailey screams back. We hug each other.

  “This is going to be amazing!” she says. “We’ll have to practice together.”

  “Definitely,” I tell her.

  My spirits are soaring, my happiness literally exploding out of my chest. I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited for something ever. I feel like my life has been so small, so drab and so tightly focused on making it from month to month, from escaping the instability of my home life that I let everything else fall to the wayside. And now, with Wyatt, things are opening up. The possibilities feel absolutely endless. I actually feel like a teenager for once. The fact that I don’t have a lot of money doesn’t even faze Bailey and her friends. They seem to just be happy having me around for me. And that’s such a wonderful feeling.

  I wish I had Wyatt’s number so I could text him about this. It’s all thanks to his words that I took this chance. It’s all thanks to him for everything.

  “Come on,” Bailey says. “Let’s go get the play.”

  We head over to Mrs. Wenger’s classroom. She’s overseeing the production, but she’s also an art teacher, so she’s’ usually in a different wing of the Academy. Once we have our plays, we head over to Bailey’s house to practice. I only stay for a few hours, until it’s almost dinnertime. I want to get home so I can tell Wyatt the news.

  Bailey drops me off at home in her little blue Audi convertible. We’ve both got big grins on our faces, and we make excited plans for practicing every day after school. I’m so excited about my news that I don’t see the Cadillac parked in the driveway at first. It looks big and mean, the windows tinted to black. I frown. How strange. Who on earth would Wyatt know that-And then it hits me. The car isn’t from someone in Wyatt’s circle. It’s from my dad’s. I don’t know where the guy could be, so instead of heading through the front door, I circle around to the back door.

  I can hear an argument as soon as I enter, so I quietly close the sliding door and tiptoe closer to the living room.

  “I promise I’ll get it to you,” my dad says to his visitor. “Two days. I promise.”

  “One day,” the guy says. His voice sounds like gravel, and even though I can’t see him, I feel a chill down my spine. He means business.

  “One day then,” my dad says nervously.

  I hear plodding footsteps towards me and I panic. Are they coming this way? I don’t want to be here! I look around and spy the pantry. As quietly as I can, I make my way over, sliding into it. The door is open a crack, but I don’t have time to move it as I hear boots on the tile of the kitchen.

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  “Taking a little souvenir. Nice house like this would have a nice T.V. and I could really use an upgrade.” I hear him make his way into the den. He can’t take Wyatt’s T.V. How would my dad explain it? That thing probably costs thousands. “OLED huh? Just like I thought.”

  “Wait! You can’t take something like that,” my dad says, panicked.

  “Sure I can,” he says, and then his voice turns deadly. “I’d like to see you try and stop me.”

  I hold my breath, and I hear the man grunt as he picks up the T.V. and clomps out the door with it.

  “Remember, eighty thousand by tomorrow or else I’ll be back, and I won’t be happy.”

  My legs give out from under me. Eighty thousand???? My dad’s been gambling again, and he lost big this time. I hear the front door close, and fury rises up inside of me like a tidal wave. I get out of the pantry, and I see my dad’s shocked expression.

  “Izzy? What are you doing here?”

  “Forget about that, dad, who was that?” I have to work hard to keep my voice under control.

  “That was… nobody,” my dad says, eyes shifting away from me.

  Suddenly I’m tired. I’m so tired of all of it. Of him. He may be my father, but this man hasn’t deserved that title in a very long time, not when I’m the one who keeps us going, I’m the one who has to count every penny. I feel like I’m in an old wooden boat, bailing the water out of it with a bucket while my dad kicks new holes in it.

  “Bullshit!” I say to him, surprising both of us with my swearing. “You’ve been gambling again haven’t you? You’ve gone and-and thrown all the money away on horses and beer and god knows what else you do for fun while I break my back trying to keep CPS off our backs and a roof over our heads. Now that we’re in this cushy place you figure you don’t need to worry and you’ve blown it all. I know exactly what’s going to happen when Wyatt gets back. He’s going to kick us out. He’s an upstanding, respectable person in society. He doesn’t need thugs circling around his house, taking his stuff. I don’t even know how we’re ever going to pay him back for it.”

  I take a deep breath and my dad starts to open his mouth, but I hold up a hand.

  “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear any of it. Nothing you could possibly say could begin to fix this mess. We’re going to have to leave here,” I say. The words hit me, and I start to cry. Just when I’ve started to make friends. Just when I’ve started to really love my life again, to get excited for the future. Just when I’ve begun to wake up happy and re
laxed instead of stressed.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” I sob. “All of it. Was it worth it? Was it really worth my happiness dad?”

  He falls back, as if I’ve struck him, but I don’t care one bit. Not anymore. I can’t even stand to be in the same room as him. I push past him, tears blurring my vision and head out the door. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t stay here another minute.

  Wyatt

  Something’s wrong.

  The reaction is immediate, even though I’m not sure why as I walk through the door. Charlie trots forward to greet me as usual, so it’s not that. I pat his head absentmindedly, and then it comes to me. I don’t smell food. Usually Isabelle has something in the oven, be it cookies, or a pot roast, or whatever new thing she’s decided to try out. The fact that there’s nothing bothers me, a lot more than it should.

  “Isabelle?”

  Nothing. I try again.

  “Isabelle? … Jerry?”

  The only thing I hear is the sound of Charlie’s panting. I walk into the formal living room, and stop. I don’t see Jerry’s suitcase. The blanket he uses is still there, but nothing else is. I walk faster into the kitchen. No familiar figure stands in front of the stove. I open the sliding doors, but the yard is quiet, the only sound being the hum of the pool. Fear seizes my heart. Did they leave? Would Isabelle go without saying a word? I turn back into the house, taking the stairs two at a time up to the second floor.

  I pause, hand on her door. It would be wrong to go in, and I respect Isabelle’s privacy, but I have to know. I crack open the door, just enough to see that she’s still got her picture frame there. Good. She wouldn’t leave without something of sentimental value like that. The picture catches my eye. It’s a picture of a little baby girl on the lap of her mother. Isabelle’s mother. I still haven’t told her yet, and I resolve to do it, if only she’d come back. I close the door and slam a fist onto the wall. Why hadn’t I gotten her phone number? Because another thought’s occurred to me. What if whoever Jerry owed money to came around, maybe took them away?

  I head back downstairs, thinking maybe she’s just taking a nap in front of the T.V. or something, but there’s no sign of her. I sit down. I get back up. I sit down again. I pace. Her absence cuts to the bone, and I’m at a loss as to what I should do. Poor Charlie whines, just as much of a fucking mess as I am. I’m debating whether I’d even be taken seriously if I call the police when Charlie’s ears perk up and he trots towards the front door. I follow him. The lock is turning, and then there she is.

  Before I can stop myself, I’m scooping her into my arms, pulling her close to me, smelling the feminine floral scent of her hair. It takes every fiber of my being to pull back before it gets to be too much.

  “You’re home! I was so damn worried,” I tell her. “Don’t ever do that to me again. Don’t leave without telling me.”

  Isabelle’s gorgeous lips are slightly parted, her cheeks dusted in pink. I know that look, and I want to take advantage of it, but I can’t. Not yet.

  “I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

  “What happened?” I ask her. “Your dad’s things are gone. I thought for sure you were too.”

  Her eyes widen and she blows past me into the living room to see for herself, stopping short when she sees that her father’s things are indeed gone. Slowly she tells me what happened, apologizing the whole time.

  “I’ll pay you back for the T.V.,” she promises. “Not now, but I will.”

  I hadn’t even noticed that it was gone.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I tell her. “I don’t care about things. I’m just glad you’re still here. That you’re safe,” I tell her, cupping her cheeks in my hand and forcing her to look at me. “You hear me?”

  “So you don’t-You don’t want us to go?” she asks, almost wobbling with relief.

  “Never,” I tell her. And then I give her a grin. “I mean, poor Charlie. He’s gotten used to having you around to dote on him. I don’t think he’d ever recover from it.”

  She smiled a knowing smile.

  “Right, poor Charlie,” she says.

  I bring her to sit with me on the couch. I want to hold onto her, but I refrain. Now’s not the time, not the place, for that sort of thing. She’s still not eighteen, and with the way she feels about me… I don’t want to rush her into a decision she’s not yet ready to make.

  “I’ll take care of everything Isabelle. I’ll find your father, figure out what’s going on, and fix it. That’s a promise. You don’t have to worry about any of that stuff anymore, you hear? You’ve got me in your corner now.”

  She looks down at her hands, and I wonder if there are still tears. But when she looks up at me, it’s with a question.

  “How come you’re so nice to me, Wyatt?”

  I pause. The truth. Isabelle deserves to know the truth once and for all. I pause, wondering where to start. How much she knows about what happened to her mother. But then I realize that we could never have any kind of relationship built on a shaky foundation of half-truths.

  “Isabelle, how much do you know about the death of your mother?” I ask gently.

  The question throws her for a loop. I let her take the time she needs to gather her thoughts.

  “She died in a car accident when I was little,” she says at last. “My dad said that a drunk driver ran into her on the highway.”

  “Right. Well, that’s half the story,” I say. I take a deep breath, and start from the beginning.

  I had always been a troubled kid. My parents fought all the time, and hardly paid attention to me. I would lash out at school. When they divorced, I went with my mom. She promptly remarried another man who had a daughter almost seven years older than me. Emily was a great older sister, really motherly, and she tried her best to influence me. It’s because of her I even graduated high school, but I was still always in trouble. It was just too much fun. I couldn’t see anything wrong with it. My friends and I thought we were the shit, that we were invincible, and that nothing could happen.

  The night of Isabelle’s mother’s death, I was out at one of these warehouse parties. We had alcohol, drugs, random stuff given to us by a bunch of older people. We thought we were so fucking cool. Anyways, I had a bad reaction to the drugs, and I started freaking out. I called Emily, and she panicked. She didn’t know what to do. She was in college two states away. So she asked her best friend, Isabelle’s mother, to go and get me. So she did. That’s why she was out that night. That’s why she was on the highway when that truck driver lost control and ran into her. She didn’t stand a chance.

  I thought that I was in some crazy kind of hell when I was getting off the high of those drugs, but it was nothing compared to what happened after when I found out what happened. When I found out I was the reason a little girl lost her mother, a husband lost his wife. I gave up drinking and drugs that night. I’ve never touched that stuff since. I’ve dedicated everything I have to MADD, to drug prevention, everything I know of to help others to atone. I can’t ever bring her mother back to life, but I don’t know what else I could do.

  I pause there, letting the words sink in. I glance at Isabelle, but her hair’s slid in front of her face, blocking my view of her.

  “You have to believe me when I tell you that not a day goes by when I don’t regret it. I’ve tried to come, to apologize, but I know I don’t fucking deserve it. I caused the whole thing to happen. If I had just listened to Emily, if I had just thought of anyone but myself once in a while…”

  “So that’s why you’re doing this. That’s why you’re being so nice,” she says softly.

  I want to say there’s so much more to it than that, but I don’t.

  Isabelle nods, then looks up at me. She’s not angry like I thought she would be. She’s sad, and the ache in my chest intensifies. I want to hold her and push that sadness away for her. I clench my hands into tight fists in my lap.

  “I don�
�t blame you,” she says softly. “Even knowing the whole story. I know now why my dad was so angry, why he came to you because ‘you owed him’, but I don’t blame you. The one who caused my mother’s death was the drunk driver. If it was her, he would have hit someone else. I’ve wondered why you’re so alone, why you give up so much. It’s because you don’t think you deserve it, right? But I promise you, that’s not true. And I don’t hold you responsible for what happened to my mom. I know you blame yourself, and I want you to know, that whatever you think you need to do to make up for it, you have.”

  Her words are like a salve on an open wound, and the last of my fears about us disappear. I’m so fucking glad that this doesn’t change things between us, but even more than that, I think that I needed to hear from her that she didn’t think it was my fault, even if I’ll always hold myself responsible. But she’s right about the fact that I’ve denied myself happiness for so long because of what happened. And maybe she’s right about the fact that I’ve done enough to absolve myself at last.

  I turn towards Isabelle’s beautiful face. We’re inches apart, and everything’s so raw and open. I want to kiss her, I want to take her in my arms and connect with her. I can see the need she feels too in her eyes, and I lean in-Charlie nudges between us, whining. He places his paws squarely between us, and the whiff of dog breath pretty much kills the moment.

  “Oh! I forgot to feed Charlie,” she says with dismay. “Have you?”

  “No, I haven’t either. I came home, realized you weren’t there, and I got so worried I didn’t even think,” I say, reaching down and scratching the old dog behind his ear. I’m relieved I didn’t do it. If I even let myself have a taste of her, I’m not sure I could stop. “I’m sorry old buddy.”

  I get up quickly.

  “Come on,” I whistle, and Charlie jumps forward. Isabelle stands up quickly too, tucking her hair behind her ear.

  “I should get dinner going,” she says. “It’s probably all dry by now in the slow cooker.”