Page 63 of Doughn't Let Me Go

“I guess.”

“Am I that bad?”

He leans toward me. He’s too close. Way too close.

But I don’t step away.

“Because from what I recall, you think I’m pretty damn good.”

In bed.

The words go unsaid.

But the change in my breathing doesn’t go unnoticed.

His pupils dilate. I step back.

There. That’s what I need: space.

“You’re okay.”

I move until I’m resting against the island, reaching across it for my coffee because I need something to do with my hands before I do something stupid like touch him again.

Why the hell did I do that?

I bring the mug to my lips, and he watches me the entire time.

“Do you always make the same kind of pancakes?” I ask, desperate for a distraction.

He doesn’t answer right away, just stares. His mouth opens, then closes, like he wants to say something but he’s thinking better of it.

Finally, “No. I like to mix it up. Sometimes we go old school and just do plain pancakes, and sometimes it’s a little wilder, like today. But, no matter what, we do it.”

“And your travel schedule?”

We talked about this yesterday, his upcoming schedule when summer ends. He’ll be flying back to go into his company’s office in California at least once a month.

Luckily, he doesn’t do a lot of traveling for work, but this once-or twice-a-month setup is a compromise he made when he decided to uproot his life.

It’s the reason he wanted a live-in nanny, and why he’s paying me such a ridiculous amount. There will be times when he’s gone for several days and I essentially have to step in as a parent.

“I’m always home on Wednesdays. I made sure my schedule allows for it.”

I smile at that. His dedication to his daughter is admirable.

If my mother had been half as dedicated to me as Porter is to his daughter, I’d have had a way better life.

But that’s not what I had.

You’d think I grew up poor because my mother couldn’t hold a job or something, but that wasn’t the case. She always had a job. She had to if she wanted to support her shopping addiction.

She got a paycheck all right; she just never spent it on the things she should have, essentials like rent, food, utilities. Instead it all went to trivial things. The trendiest purses. Those heels she only ever wears at the dingy dive bar where she meets her latest husband. Dresses she’ll sit around the house crying in when she gets divorced…again.

My mother was dedicated all right.

Just not to me.

She was dedicated to shopping and relationships with men who never really loved her back.

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