“Um,” she begins, squinching up her face. I feel the blood drain from mine. “That's not everything.” Oh. Of course it's not. That'd be too easy. “Also, I couldn't sleep so I was playing a game on your phone. I accidentally dropped it in the toilet.” There's a long pause here where I start to get nervous. “With some poop.”
Poop.
On my first night. And from the seven year old.
I think I'm in serious trouble.
The second I walk in the door, I wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. What's wrong with being a heartless dick again? Why didn't I leave that phone right where it was, take my time with Kitty's sweet ass?
Ah.
I miss home already.
“I don't want you to go!” Kinzie screeches, grabbing her mother's purse from the sofa table and throwing it as hard as she can across the room. “I want you to stay.” She stomps her feet like she's Godzilla on a rampage through Tokyo, throwing her body onto the couch with another wail that forces me to stuff my fingers in my ears.
“Oh thank God, you're here!” Mercedes says, dragging a suitcase up next to my feet. “We were afraid we were going to have to miss the flight.”
My brother breezes past me with barely a nod and disappears behind the minivan. Apparently, I'm driving them to the airport, so I can use their ugly ass car. It's 'safer' than my Geo, and Mercedes has promised me that she's got thirty channels of children's music on her Spotify account. The car's all set up to play that shit on repeat! Woo-fucking-hoo.
“You got most of my instructions over the phone, but I also left a list.” Mercedes points at the sofa table to something that looks more like a dossier than a list. I can feel my shirt sticking to my back with sweat, but I can guarantee it's not the weather. As usual, our sweet little hometown of Eureka, California is sixty-five degrees and cloudy. It's also sixty-five degrees and cloudy the other 364 days of the year, so I'm not surprised. “We can talk more about logistics on the way to the airport.”
“Fantastic,” I say, setting my bag down near the stairs. Well, I try to anyway. My brother's duplex is so small, that I kind of have to balance the bag on my own foot. “No school today?”
School.
Preschool and 2nd grade.
My two favorite things right now.
“We didn't have time to get them ready.”
Mercedes breezes over to a car seat that's sitting on the floor and lifts it up, handing it to me before I can protest. Inside is an alien creature of some sort, some weird ugly wrinkly thing they call a baby. I look down at it—at her—and try to smile.
The kid starts to scream.
“I hate you!” Kinzie screeches, sobbing and thrashing around on the couch. “I hate him!”
She points her finger at me and I bare my teeth, sending her into another fit of hysterics.
I can feel my heart pounding in my chest. I can't do this. I'm terrified. I'm so fucking terrified right now. I suck it up and take a deep breath.
“I kind of need to get my cat out of the car,” I say as Mercedes brushes past me, her wild curls slapping me in the face as she starts up the stairs again. The energy in this house is just … wow. I'm used to slow, lazy days in my condo, the constant gentle hum of the air conditioner, the soft sighs of beautiful women. This right here is frantic and messy, like standing in the middle of a mosh pit at a really intense rock show. I'm already about halfway certain that I'm going to get elbowed in the face—metaphorically or otherwise.
“Make sure you leave the cat downstairs,” Mercedes calls out. “The chihuahuas are up here in the bathroom.”
Fuck.
“What freaking chihuahuas?” I ask as my brother returns to the front door to grab his wife's suitcase. “You never said anything about chihuahuas. This was a kid sitting thing, not a dog sitting thing. I don't do dogs. Especially not little ones.”
“You like cats, right? Chihuahuas are basically cats.”
My brother glares at me, his red hair and beard giving him that sort of 'lumberjack' look that companies always put on the labels of syrup and pancakes and whatever. I miss Las Vegas. There are no fucking lumberjacks in Las Vegas. Hell, there aren't even any trees.
“Chihuahuas are not cats, Rob. Chihuahuas are smelly, annoying, ugly, yipping rat creatures. And it kind of freaks me out that you're just saying chihuahuas in the plural. How many of them do you have?”
“We have three,” Kinzie states proudly, apparently over her temper tantrum in some sort of miraculous mood shift. I'm confused. Ten seconds ago she was shouting that she hated me, and now she's sniffling and smiling and staring at me with squinty eyes. “Can I see your cat?”
“Um, sure.”
I don't know what to do with the baby, so I follow my brother outside and try to hand the car seat over. Thankfully, he takes it and starts strapping the kid in.
“Pay attention, so you know how to do this,” he barks, and I have to really clench my teeth to keep from screaming. When I said I hadn't slept in days, I meant it. Tack on a fourteen hour drive to the end of that? Not to mention the fact that I was so stressed-out I couldn't even get off before I left. Now I have blue balls, an aching back from the shitty seat in my car, and a pounding headache. I can't have my brother bossing me around right now. I dealt with that for years, and it's not gonna fly.
“I think I can figure out a fucking baby seat,” I snap and Kinzie gasps. Rob turns a look on me like I've never seen, nostrils flared and green eyes wide.
“Don't you dare use that language in front of my kids,” he snaps, waving his hand dismissively. “And don't just stand there. Do something productive.”
I flip him off behind his back and Kinzie gasps again. Holy mother of fucking shit. I'm not going to make it two days here, let alone two freaking weeks. Yeah, two weeks. Two weeks. Why, how, I got roped into this, I can't even remember. It's been a long drive.
Did you know that cats make shitty passengers on long road trips? Hubert yowled and screamed and attacked the bars on the cage. He even pissed on himself, despite the litter box I shoved into the kennel. Now I've got a hairless cat whose sweater is soaked in pee. Today really couldn't get any worse.
And then Mercedes wakes the twins up from their naps, just about at the same time I realize Kinzie has disappeared.
Ten seconds later, a herd of freaking chihuahuas comes yowling and skittering down the stairs.
I wonder what my face looks like in that moment.
If someone were to try and interpret it, I think it'd be: please fucking end me.
My crap day starts off much like my crap night ended.
First off, I have no phone. Don't ask how I got the waterlogged ruins of it out of the toilet; I don't want to talk about it. Second, I spent an hour looking for that damn dog and I never did find him. But that's okay because the shelter called at the crack of dawn this morning and said they'd picked him up last night. All I have to do is drive twenty minutes out of my way and pay a fine to pick him up.
“Okay,” I say as I pull over again and smooth out the directions I printed off the computer. I know, I know: nobody uses printed directions anymore. But my phone got fried with poop water last night, so GPS is kind of off the menu. “This shouldn't be too hard. I can figure this out.”
I glance up and wrinkle my face. I grew up in this town, but as soon as I graduated high school, I moved as far away as I could, settling in So Cal for school. Since I figured I'd never be back here, I sort of … obliterated any directional memories of this place.
I am so lost right now, I think as I look up and Bella starts to whine from the backseat.
“I'm gonna be late, Brooke,” she says, dropping the word 'auntie' altogether. “I hate being late.”
“Yeah, I got it, baby,” I say as I look around and stare at the quiet roads and the towering trees. I am so out of my element here. Somewhere in this dew drenched forest is Bella's school. It's a different one than I went to as a kid, so I have literally no clue where it is. Once I get her succ
essfully dropped off, I get to search for Grace's preschool and then I get to go to my first class at Humboldt State.
At this point, I'd settle for any one of those things going my way.
“It's not even that hard to get there,” Bella says snootily, a dramatic sigh interrupting the snores of her dozing sister. At least one of us is having a good time here. How much would a full-time babysitter cost? I wonder. A nanny? A governess? At this point, I'll take what I can get. Although I'm sure my new job at the strip club won't cover it. I'll be lucky if I can afford gas, the rent on my sister's house, and food for the kids.
My heart starts to flutter with panic, but I clamp down on it. One thing at a time.
I throw the directions on the passenger seat and pull back onto the road. With a little luck and some snippy directions from Bella, I manage to find the school, dropping her off with a narrow eyed attendant who looks about as pissed as the kid is at me for making her late.
With no time to worry about that, I head off in search of the preschool. That one's a lot easier to find … but waking Grace up from her nap?
Holy hell.
Grace screams when I gently nudge her awake, flailing around and burying her face in the puffy pink coat I dressed her in. When I try to unhook her from the car seat, the straps start to look like tangled snakes and I can't figure the damn thing out. By the time I manage to get her free, she's in a real mood, red-faced and screaming.
I rush her up to the front door and try to pass her into the arms of the teacher.
Only … she won't let go.
“Come on, Gracie, baby. Auntie Brooke has a finite population sampling class that she's going to be fifteen minutes late to.” The kid has no sympathy for me, tearing a button off my shirt as I pry her away from me. The teacher gives me a look, but I don't have time to spend talking to her this morning.
I race back to the car, my white button-up flapping in the center, flashing my pink lacy bra. I'm starting to think things can't get much worse when my heel snaps and I go flying onto the pavement.
Fuck.
That really hurt.
I am in way over my head here.
They're monsters. Fucking monsters. Even the baby.
“Listen, Kinzie,” I say as she hauls out and kicks me in the ankle. I grit my teeth, but I'm kind of busy here. I've got a fat chihuahua tucked under one arm and some old, gross toothless one under the other. One of the things my brother neglected to mention to me was that his dogs are ridiculously cat aggressive.
Sweet.
Now I've got Hubert trapped on top of the fridge, the twins in the backyard throwing mud clods at each other, and Kinzie screaming that she wants me to die.
This is gonna be a fan-fucking-tastic two weeks.
“Can you please take the dogs upstairs and put them back in the bathroom?” I ask as I try to hand her one of the disgusting smelly rat creatures. I miss my life so bad right now it hurts. The Strip, the hot sun, the sexy tourists, the smell of iodine at the shop. I make myself take a deep breath.
“They don't like being in the bathroom,” Kinzie says, crossing her arms over her chest as she glares up at me, brown eyes taking me in like she's not impressed. “Why is your skin all splotchy?” she asks. “And what happened to your hair?”
I roll my eyes, moving past her and up the stairs, tripping over toys as I struggle to make it to the bathroom at the top of the steps.
“Get in there, you nasty little rats.” I close the door and then run my inked fingers through my hair. If I can just get through this one weekend, then I'll have school to look forward to on Monday. That should be sick. How many hours do these monsters go for? I'll have to check Mercedes' dossier, I guess.
“Can I go play with my friends outside? I'm bored.”
I turn and find Kinzie hovering on the top step, looking at me like I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to her.
“Um.” I scratch the side of my head and try to remember the rules for that shit. Mercedes laid it all on pretty thick on our way to the airport. “Lemme check on that.”
She rolls her eyes and stomps into her room, slamming the door loud enough to shake the whole house—and wake the baby from her nap.
Fuckity fuck.
“I'm coming, I'm coming.” I move into my brother's room and look down at the weird wrinkly thing in its crib. Gross. Okay, so like, how do I pick this thing up? I tilt my head at the kid, using my tongue to play with my lip rings. People—much dumber people—do this kind of thing all the time. I should be able to figure this out. I slip my phone from my pocket and notice a text from Kitty. Huh. I don't remember giving her my number.
I programmed my digits into your phone when you were in the bathroom. You're a fucking asshole, Zayden.
I scroll down to the next message.
I'll be back in town next weekend. Want to meet up?
I feel my lips curl back in a grin and then cringe when the baby lets out a piercing wail. What is it with kids and yelling all the time? I feel like I'm gonna go deaf here.
“Okay, Google,” I tell my phone. “How do you hold a baby?”
I tap my foot and play with my lip rings while I scroll through some idiotproof pics. Huh. Okay. Looks easy enough; I can do this.
“Alright, kid,” I say as I tuck my messy inked fingers under the baby's warm body. “Let's do this thing.” I heft the screeching bundle up to my chest and cradle it under my chin, glancing down at the phone screen and breezing through the rest of the instructions. “Stay confident and calm, huh? Well, I got that shit in spades.”
“You said the S-word,” Kinzie chortles from behind me. “You have to put a dollar in the curse jar.” I glance down at the little monster with its brown curls in pigtails and its face all scrunched up. Some people might think it's cute, but to me, it looks like a pink-overall-wearing demon.
“Like hell I am,” I say as I sneak my phone back into my pocket and make my way toward the stairs. “Listen, kid, but I'm here as favor to your mom, alright? I'm not putting money in any curse jar. What are you guys trying for, the ultimate TV family cliché? Lemme guess … you've got a chore chart and a soccer team, huh?”
“You'll put money in the curse jar or I'll scream and I won't stop.”
I turn back at the landing, already trying to puzzle out if this baby in my arms is supposed to drink from a bottle or if I can order in takeout and give it a piece of cut up pizza or something.
“Be my guest, cupcake,” I say with a smug smirk. What I've gotta do right now is establish boundaries with these kids, let 'em know who's boss. I'm a twenty-nine year old man, and let's be honest: I've never had any trouble with women before. The kid might be, like, seven or whatever, but I can still charm the heck outta her.
But then I notice the smile curling across her lips and the hair on the back of my neck stands straight up.
“Challenge. Accepted.”
By the end of the day, I've already dropped twenty bucks into the jar.
This is gonna be a long ass two weeks.
By the middle of day two, I am so over all of this. Being trapped in this nine hundred square foot duplex with the pot growing neighbors that live next door is beyond the point of torture. How any sane human being—particularly one as smart and cool as Mercedes—could live through this is just … well, it's a fuckin' mystery, man.
“We don't like this song,” Kinzie says, speaking for her brothers as they scream and flail against their booster seats in the back of the minivan. I've taken the liberty of removing Mercedes' iPod and replacing it with my own. I'll die before admitting this, but I want the kids to think I'm cool, so I put on some metal-rock-screaming-loud-whatever music instead of my usual pop tracks. The band that's on right now, Indecency or whatever they're called, has some really angry dude yelling about pain and heartache.
“Don't care,” I say as I follow what few memories I have left of this place and head towards Sequoia Park. It's next to the zoo and a duck pond and all that other kid shit. I f
igure I can let the little bastards run around here, burn some energy, and then go home and spend a hot, sweaty night sexting with Kitty. There is, like, no privacy with this many kids around. I have no idea when I'm gonna find a private moment to, you know, spank it if I don't get them to fall asleep in their own beds. “I'm the grown-up, and I don't want to listen to the Barney soundtrack.”
“Ugh. You are so old,” Kinzie spits, and I swear to Christ, she sounds like she's sixteen, not seven. “Nobody watches Barney anymore. I like Monster High.”
“Great. Well, too bad. This is what we're listening to. Get over it.”
I breathe a sigh of relief when I see the swing sets and the redwood trees come into view. I cannot wait to get some space to myself. Do babies play at parks? Do I hold it? Leave it in its stroller?
At least I can spend a few hours away from those damn chihuahuas.
“Alright, guys,” I say, trying to be cheerful as I switch off the screaming man on the stereo. At least his yelling sounds melodic. The twins are like, well, like devils or something. I try to pretend that they don't kind of look like I did at that age. “You are going to go play on the slide or whatever, and Uncle Zay is going to play on his phone for a little while. Won't this be fun?”
I let myself out and then start trying to unload brats.
As soon as I set them on the ground, they explode like fireworks, running and screeching and mixing into the other running/screeching monsters in the wood chips. As soon as I get a good hundred feet from them, I'll be cool.
“Okay, Sadie. It's just you and me, I guess.” I get the stroller out and spend a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to wrestle it into position. “Are you fucking shitting me? It ain't goddamn rocket science.” I rake my fingers through my hair and glance up to find, like, a dozen moms staring at me. Half of them look like they want me to grab them around the waist and toss them in the back of the mini for a quick fuck; the other half look like they want to call the cops on me.
Bad Nanny (The Bad Nanny Trilogy #1) Page 2