Page 4 of Worst Nanny Ever
“I don’t know,” I mutter, feeling defeated.
“You didn’t say no!”
He sounds so excited that I’m positive he won’t be going back to sleep. He’ll probably wander around the house again, knocking things over. Watching TV. Waking up the neighbors.
“Good night, Ollie,” I say, leaning forward to hug him.
He’s wooden in my arms, but he doesn’t pull away.
“I want you here, kid. I’m glad you’re here.”
Not true. Also not a lie.
“Okay,” he says. Which is better than if he’d told me I was full of BS, I guess.
I go back to my room, feeling beyond exhausted.
Which is when it occurs to me…
I can’t bring him to the show tomorrow. So, if Winnie is planning on ghosting me?—
Oh, what am I talking about? Ollie made it clear he drove her off, so yeah, I have to assume she’s gone for good. Which means I might really have to get in touch with Hannah. I’ve burned every nanny bridge I’ve come to.
CHAPTER TWO
HANNAH
Being unemployed is fantastic. Seriously! I get to do whatever I want, whenever I want. Today, I’m doing special event makeup for Tallulah, who’s getting hitched to two dudes who run a goat farm.
Yes, she’s marrying both of them. (Well, symbolically.)
Tallulah used to come to Big Catch—the brewery where I worked as the evening floor manager—to buy the occasional keg for events at the goat farm. Goat yoga with microbrews is their big moneymaker. We got to talking, and I mentioned that I was a professionally trained makeup artist. So she reached out to me a few weeks ago and offered me a trade: all the goat milk soap and cheese I could possibly want in exchange for doing her bridal makeup.
I’m lactose intolerant and iffy about goat soap, but you can bet your butt I said yes. I mean, I hadquestions.
For one, why would a woman bother getting symbolically married to two men? Isn’t one man enough of a burden?
It looks like I’m about to get my big chance to interrogate her, because event makeup takes time, and we just finished cleansing and moisturizing her face in one ofthe bathrooms in thedelightfulcottage on the goat farm. The farm is between Asheville and Black Mountain, and it looks like it was plucked out of one of those German cautionary fairy tales my dad used to read to us, where someone always loses a hand or an eye. It’s especially lovely at this time of year, with the leaves on its many trees turning gold and orange and red. Even the bathroom is delightful. There’s a deep copper tub and plenty of room for a chair in front of the sink and mirror, which is making my job a lot easier.
“Sooo,” I say as I start to apply primer on her smooth cheeks. “Isn’t it a bit hard to juggle two men? Men areso…” I make a face to indicate I don’t even have words for them.
“Oh, they’re both lovely,” Tallulah replies with a pitying look. “Very in touch with their emotional selves. I love them, and they love each other. There’s a lot of hate in the world, but there’s so much love to go around.”
I have to snort. Literally have to.
“Sorry,” I say, continuing with the application. “I was just thinking about my ex, Jonah. He had plenty of love to go around too. He was seeing four of us at the same time, but none of us knew.”
“Really?” she asks hungrily. So at least I’m not the only nosy bitch in the house. (I say this with the utmost respect.)
“Yeah, but we flipped the script,” I tell her. “Three of us got together, and we became best friends, becausescrewhim. We hang out all the time.”
I feel a warm fondness bloom in my chest whenever I talk about Sophie and Briar. They’d walked into my life at a time when I’d needed a friend, badly. I found two. Losing Jonah had barely been a blip on my radar.
“What about the fourth woman?” Tallulah asks, souring me on her the slightest bit.
“She doesn’t seem too interested in our girl gang.” I pause todot some color corrector beneath her eyes. “But I haven’t given up. I reached out to her again last week.”
Truthfully: Idon’tgive up. I’ve been compared unfavorably to a bulldog by more than one person. When I was a kid, my father drilled ano one left behindphilosophy into my brothers and me, and it’s stayed with me.
