I exhaled softly and then laughed. “Wow. This—This was not how I expected our lunch to go, but I have to say I am very pleasantly surprised.”
“I am too,” she said.
“So—just so I get this right. You want to… socialize with me. Again.”
“I do,” she said. “I want to spend time with you, and I think two smart people like ourselves can find a way to make this work so that Will never has to find out. Not unless we decide to tell him one day.”
I laughed. Obviously, she was joking.
“Absolutely,” I then said. “I think we are more than capable of doing that.”
Man, this is great! She wants a casual fling, no strings attached sex!
“You know, if I had known that this was what you wanted sooner, we could’ve gone without all those days that we didn’t really talk to each other.”
She sighed. “Those days were not very fun. I missed talking to you.”
“I did too,” I said. “Among other things.”
She smiled but before she could say anything in response, our waiter came around with a basket full of bread. Once we were alone again, I didn’t know how to go back to our previous conversation, so I ended up just striking up a new one. I asked her if she had met any other nannies at Will’s school that day, and soon we were chatting casually as if we hadn’t just made a pact to start being friends with benefits not two minutes ago.
Our food came, we ate and laughed, and on the drive home, she had me drop her off at the school so she could catch up on some reading while she waited for Will to be let out. I pulled up to the curb and watched her as she got out of the car and walked away. She turned around at the door and waved at me, and I nearly jumped out of the car and ran after her. I wanted to kiss her so badly. But then she disappeared inside and I was forced to drive away.
It was okay though, because I would be seeing her again real soon.
Maybe even that very same night!
ChapterThirteen
STEPHANIE
Ihad a spring in my step for the rest of that day.
While Will was shopping for a cellphone he liked, I was standing off to the side, bobbing my head to the music and generally just feeling as light as air. That evening, I made Will his favorite—chicken nuggets and fries—and we shared a meal together while he told me how the rest of his first day of school went. He was starting sixth grade, the last year before he went into middle school, and he reminded me a lot of myself when I was that age. He liked school, enjoyed learning new things, and he was the kid in class who reminded the teacher when he or she forgot to assign homework.
I knew this, because he told me.
“When the bell rang,” he said, dipping his last chicken nugget into ketchup. “My teacher said we could go, but then I told her that she didn’t give us our homework sheets yet, so then she handed them to us on our way out. A couple kids gave me mean looks, but if she didn’t give them to us today, that would probably just mean we’d have to do twoassignments tomorrow.”
I nodded. “That’s a very astute observation. I probably would’ve done the same thing if I were you.”
He laughed. “Not my dad,” he said. “Did you know he once convinced a teacher not to give his class a test one day? He loves telling that story. He was the hero of the grade for the rest of the year.”
“That sounds like something your dad would do,” I said, smiling. “By the way, did he say when he would be home tonight?”
“He’ll probably stay at the office late,” Will said. “Since he took the morning off to go to school with me.”
Darn.
“I guess it’s just you and me then,” I said. “You have a movie or show you want to watch once you finish up your homework?”
“I think I might just read,” he said. “If that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay!”
We finished eating and cleaned up, then Will ran upstairs to get started on his schoolwork and I took out my phone and called Gina. She picked up and I took the phone call in my bedroom. “Hey,” she said. “I was just about to call you.”
“Really?”