Page 46 of The Perfect Mistake

We head back to our spot. Willa plops next to her brother, who has his head buried in the popcorn bucket. Isabel follows suit next to them, folding down with all the grace of a professional ballerina.

Looking at her, I just know that those women were thinking only one thing, and it had been clear in their eyes as they moved from Isabel to me. And I hate that there’s a kernel of truth in their assumptions.

Hate myself for being so cliché.

Even if it’s hard to admit it to myself. Because yeah, I’d accepted her beauty. I’d admitted to myself that she’s interesting and kind. Our interactions over the years, brief and far in between as they were, had always been charged with enigmatic energy. Feeling her dark eyes resting on me. Evaluating. Seeing. Even when it was for just five minutes in Connie’s apartment.

It had been a reluctant but clear truth in my mind that, had things been different, in another universe, without my marriage and our age difference… I would have asked her out.

But the fact that she’s now living in my apartment, and that I want… fuck, the things I want are depraved. Unseemly. She’d quit on the spot if she knew what my mind had conjured up in the last few days. What I’d been close to doing the other night, on that couch, with her TV show on in the background.

“Daddy,” Sam says. He looks up at me with a little frown. “Sit down.”

“Right.” I sink between him and Willa and try to make myself comfortable against the pillows. I grab the heavy blanket and drape it over us. From her spot next to Sam, Isabel helps. Soon, the four of us are covered, legs all smooshed closely together.

More families settle around us, getting comfortable, chatting softly.

Willa and Sam are munching on popcorn.

I glance over at Isabel. “Hey.”

She shakes her head. Her eyes are a bit too cheery. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I shouldn’t have…”

“You told them the truth,” she says. “Whatever they might think, we both know it’s not the case.”

My stomach feels like a lead stone. “We do,” I say. But my fantasies say otherwise. Fantasies I should not be having. Of her, and her hair spread out on the bed beside me, feeling like silk in my hands. Of holding Isabel tightly against me, not a single stitch of fabric in our way.

Her smile is warm before she looks over at the screen.

I don’t deserve any of those smiles.

The movie starts to play. It’s animated, something I vaguely remember hearing about a few years ago. I wrap my arm around Willa and she rests her head against my shoulder.

“This was a good idea, honey,” I murmur in her ear.

She sighs and snuggles closer. On my other side, Sam is munching away, his eyes glued to the screen. I do a double-take when I see that his free hand is resting on top of the blanket, and it’s clutching Isabel’s.

Oh.

That’s a good sign. My children are getting along with a nanny. Finally. But the selfish, depraved part of me that had imagined Isabel and me together has an entirely different response. Why this particular nanny?

It would be easier if she wasn’t getting along with my kids. Then, I could—

I shut the thought down. It’s not as easy as it should be, but I manage. I have plenty of experience with it. Emotions get in the way. I’ve always known that. Seen it, even, first hand. My father was a mess after Mom passed. But he pulled himself together, and he did it for the good of both Contron and our family.

I have to continue doing the same.

My kids last through about a third of the movie before their attention wanes. For Willa, it’s the beckoning eyes of Dora. She disappears toward someone else’s pillows, murmuring beneath the string lights and having a thumbs war with her best friend. Sam continues to struggle valiantly, switching spots to sit next to me, but he only makes it until the middle of the movie before his heavy eyelids win the war. He falls asleep.

Leaving the two of us sitting next to one another in the near dark.

“I understand what you meant,” she says in a hushed tone. “About wanting a chaperone.”

I glance at her. The flickering lights warm her olive skin, and the shadows make her brown eyes look even darker. “They were unusually ferocious tonight.”

“Everyone looked at you when we arrived.”

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