What had she gotten herself into?
She was going to lose her job, too. She would be jobless, homeless, and only possibly have a boyfriend if Matt didn't change his mind and go back to his wife, who would more than likely just forgive him and go back to ignoring him.
Well, hell. What a mess she had gotten herself into.
Julie finally got around to listening to Jack's voicemail, but it was nothing too winning. He just said he was home, he was sorry about everything, and he told her to give him a call. He ended it by telling her he loved her.
Julie didn't feel bad about cheating on Jack. Not even a little bit. She didn't love him and she didn't believe he loved her, either.
By the time Matt got home, she was confident that she had gone over every possibility of what could come of their night together. She was secretly afraid that her "nothing" theory would prove true, that he would come home wallowing in remorse and tell her he had made a terrible mistake.
She would really feel like crap if she only got to be his mistake.
But when he came walking through the door and the smile he gave her was warm and inviting, she felt herself expel a sigh of relief.
"Hey," she said, shifting Anna on her knee.
"Hey," he said with an intimate smile, making her warm all over. Then after setting the plastic bag he was holding down on a counter, he came over and sat down on the couch, leaning in and giving Anna a hug, putting his hand on Julie's thigh in the process and giving her a little squeeze.
She felt a funny little flip in the vicinity of her stomach and her smile widened.
"How are my girls?" he asked.
Something about being referred to as one of "his girls" also seemed to excite her stomach, as it did another flip.
"Well," she said, trying to think of her job, "this little girl here decided her nap only needed to be ten minutes long today," Julie stated, raising her eyebrows at Anna, who just smiled back at her.
"Good," he said. "She'll be going to bed soon then," he said, looking up at Julie with some of that lust, longing and attraction in his eyes.
"Very soon, I think," Julie said coyly.
"Do you have to leave?"
Not wanting to think about that, Julie shook her head. "Nope, not yet."
"Good," he said simply, removing his hand from her thigh and standing up. "I brought dinner."
"Yummy," Julie said, standing up and putting Anna on her hip. "Anything she'll eat, or should I fix her something?"
"I doubt she'll eat any of this, why don't you just get her some Cheerios or some cheese and crackers," Matt suggested.
Julie hauled Anna over to the cupboard where they picked out her dinner, then she got her situated at her high chair, but Anna was already starting to get crabby, squealing and throwing her Cheerios on the ground.
"Hey, that's not nice," Julie said, getting, leaning down to pick up her mess. "You eat those."
Anna frowned and let out a shriek, hitting the Cheerios on her tray.
"Ignore Miss Crabby Pants," Matt advised. "Eat your dinner, then we'll put her to bed."
"Yes, sir," Julie said a touch mockingly, smiling across the table.
They finished their Chinese in record time, and while Julie was finishing hers, Matt already had Anna scooped up and on her way to bed.
Julie took it upon herself to clear the table while Matt put Anna to bed, throwing away the garbage, cleaning up Anna's mess, wiping off the high chair and putting what was left of her milk back in the fridge.
While she wiped everything down her thoughts strayed back to his simple question, "Do you have to leave?"
Where would she go when she left? Back to Jack's, yes, but not back to his bed, so where would she actually go? She had carefully avoided talking to him at all that day, but she realized that by sleeping with Matt, she was completely screwed, because she would have nowhere to live and no job probably within about a week. Maybe if she didn't tell Jack, if she just went back and acted like nothing had happened… But Matt seemed to think she was going to be sleeping with him again, so if she did…