“I know, I’m sorry,” I said. “But your dad and I were just talking and I got the idea to go book shopping, does that sound like fun?”
His face lit up. “Yes! Just give me five minutes, I’ll go get ready and get my book list.” He ran down the hall and back upstairs.
“Of course,” Matt said. “My son, the ten-year-old boy with a book list.”
“Consider yourself lucky,” I said. “The last family I babysat for, all the kids were really into wrestling. All they wanted to do was either watch wrestling, or re-enact what they’d just seen a wrestler do on TV. I can’t tell you how many trips to urgent care I made. Or how many lamps and vases those kids broke.”
“Hopefully they didn’t take the damages out of your pay,” Matt said.
“They did not,” I said. “Thank God.”
A somewhat awkward silence fell over the two of us, forcing me to take a long sip of my coffee just so I could have a built-in excuse for not saying anything.
“Now then, do you have any big plans for your first night off?” he asked.
“Not as of yet,” I said. “I will probably just stay in and have a quiet night to myself. If that’s okay, I mean.”
“Sure,” he said. “This is your house too.”
I felt my cheeks grow warm as he said this.
“I want you to feel at home here,” he went on. “Because otherwise this arrangement just won’t work.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “It’s really important to me that Will has some stability in his life, and after everything that happened with his mom… I just want you to stick around for a while, and that means that you need to feel totally comfortable living here, just like it was your own house, you know?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I understand. Thanks.”
“No need to thank me.” He picked up the newspaper that was sitting on the kitchen counter, still rolled up and kept in place with a rubber band. “This is what I hired you to do.” With that, he left the kitchen and went upstairs. I tried not to watch him walk away, but I ended up sneaking a glance. His shirt was pulled taut across his back, so I got a good look at his shoulder muscles.
Then I realized what I was doing—ogling my new boss, and Will’s dad—so I forced myself to look away and took my coffee with me back into my bedroom.
* * *
Will and I spent most of our morning book shopping, then we went to get lunch at a café not far from the last bookstore we hit, and by then, the rain had let up. We decided to take our food to go and we ate on a grassy field in a park overlooking the bay. With the sun out, the day was starting to warm up, and Will got settled in with one of his new books after he finished eating.
“It’s such a wonderful day,” I said. “I can’t believe the sky has brightened so much. This morning it was all dark gray and foreboding; now it looks like there’s never even been a cloud over our heads.”
Will smiled. “Yeah. It’s like that sometimes.” He went back to reading and I took the hint. He didn’t feel like chatting and that was fine with me. I took out a book that I had purchased for myself and started flipping through it absentmindedly. It was a kid’s book, listed on the back cover as being appropriate for ages 9-12. I read through the first couple of chapters, then flipped to the back to learn more about the author.
“Isn’t that a children’s book?” Will asked me shortly thereafter. He was squinting at the front cover.
“It sure is.”
“Why are you reading a kid’s book?”
I laughed. “Because I like them. Why areyoureading a kid’s book?”
“Because I’m a kid.”
I put the book down and raised a brow at him. “Tell me, do you like that book?”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. It’s not as good as this other series that we started last year in school. We were assigned the first one for school, then I made my dad buy me the next three. It was about this girl who becomes the youngest ever astronaut, and she meets aliens and travels to all these different planets and solar systems.”
“That sounds awesome.”
He grinned. “It is. You should read it.”