“Bye,” he gritted out, then spun around, stomped down the porch steps, got into his truck and drove off. He didn’t even close the front door.
The man finally spoke more than two words to me, and I got so flustered and nervous that I made a boob joke.
Nice, Ivy.
He also didn’t appreciate myThat’s what she saidjoke a couple days later. His mom was dropping off homemade banana bread she had just made that afternoon right as I was leaving. She handed it over to Wes, raving about how moist it was. To which I had absolutely no choice but to whisper, “That’s what she said.”
Thankfully, Wes was the only one who heard me, but he absolutely did not appreciate the joke. Since then, I’ve just been trying not to say stupid shit, hoping he’ll warm up to me eventually. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m headed for a swift kick in the ass, right out the door come next week.
Today is Friday, and Wes mentioned he doesn’t have any appointments this weekend, which means I’m not due back here until Monday. For some reason, that bums me out a little, but I shake it off because Delilah and I are having another fantastic day.
Yes, I like calling her by her full name. It's a beautiful name, and she doesn’t seem to mind. Plus it makes me feel a little closer to her.
“Hey girly, you want to eat lunch outside again?” I call out as I grab the tote bag hanging on the pantry door handle, and start loading up the food I just prepared for us.
“Yes!” she shouts, and I watch her gather up whatever she was playing with and stuff it in her mini backpack—fully equipped with wings and a spiked tail.
I stand ready and waiting for her by the front door as she collects one toy car, a couple of miniature horses, a book, a random business card she calls herphone, and a pink squishy ball. You know the ones that attract any and all kinds of debris? So naturally it’s smudged with dirt and covered in crumbs, but she loves it.
She zips up her bag, grabs her stuffed dragon, who I learned on day one is namedBurrito. Delilah seems to have an obsession with dragons, and it’s incredibly endearing. I’m not sure how it started, but out of all the things for a toddler to be obsessed with, I’d say dragons are a good one.
I know a few things about dragons, due to the amount of romantasy I’ve consumed. Yet it didn’t stop me from doing my own homework.
“Did you know that a group of dragon eggs is called a clutch?” I ask Delilah as we stroll hand in hand toward the pond.
We’ve had lunch out here a few times already this week, and it’s been really nice with the warmer weather.
“Really? That’s so cool!” She smiles up at me, mouth wide open, dimples deep.
It’s infectious.
Her freckles remind me of mine, sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, but those dimples? They’re what’s really to die for. I find myself absently wondering if she got them from her dad, and what he’d look like, that happy and smiling.
I’ve been thinking about Wes a lot more than I probably should. Every time I see him it feels like I’m going to crawl out of my skin, but in a very good way if you know what I mean. Which is bad.
Like, really bad.
I’ve been replaying our first meeting in my head over and over all week—how he looked like he’d rather be literally anywhere else, with his broody eyes and annoyingly handsome scowl. It was honestly kind of adorable. He was grumpy, sure, but in that hot, silent, mysterious kind of way. I should not be into my boss, especially one who can barely stand to look at me, but here we are.
He is my employer, and the last thing I need is to get fired from anotherjob, all because I couldn’t keep it in my pants. Maybe I just need to get laid. It’s been awhile. There was that one guy shortly after I moved totown, but it was so underwhelming I’m not sure if it even counts. Does it count if you don’t come?
I’ll ask Sophie.
I left Daniel just over two years ago, but we hadn’t even slept together for a long while before that. I knew in my bones he was being unfaithful, and I just couldn’t bring myself to be intimate with him once I suspected. Iknew. In retrospect, I absolutely knew. Still, I chose to look the other way and live in blissful ignorance for so long because it felt like he was all I had. We’d been together for five years, and I was terrified of change.
Losing both my parents in a tragic car accident at twenty-one shattered my world. I’m an only child, and never had any real extended family. My entire universe was taken away from me in a single night. Nothing could’ve prepared me to navigate that kind of loss. I was utterly lost—hurting and consumed with grief. So when I met Daniel in college just a few months after the tragedy that changed my life forever, I clung to him like a lifeline.
He was kind in the beginning, and I know I loved him back then. But after we graduated, everything changed,fast. He landed a job at his very wealthy father’s marketing firm, and that’s when things went downhill. He didn’t want me to work—always preaching his caveman mantra “Me provide for woman.”
I wanted to work. I wanted to teach. But my need to keep him happy outweighed everything else. He was the last person I had left in the entire world, and I couldn’t risk doing anything to mess that up. So I lethim pay for the fancy apartment in L.A., let him buy me the clothes he liked best, and let him mold me into the perfect, compliant accessory for his curated life. I’m not proud to say it, but I let him control essentially every part of me.
Then came the late nights. The “client dinners.” The silence that swallowed that hollow, empty apartment. The gaslighting—claiming I was paranoid, that I had no right to question him. And I believed him. Until I didn’t.
The final straw? A thong in the backseat of his BMW. The one heknewI was using to run errands. It was just there, lying on the seat, with no attempts of discretion. It was like a slap in the face.
That was the shift. The moment the fog lifted and I couldn’t unsee it anymore. It felt like I had come out of a dream I didn’t know I was in, and everything came into focus. I could suddenly hear my mom yelling at me towake up. And I listened.
I didn’t tell him I found the underwear. I kept them, waiting for the right moment. Everything was in Daniel's name, including my car, so I used the cash I had quietly hidden away over time and bought an old car I found on craigslist in Santa Monica. I paid the guy an extra few hundred dollars to keep it parked at his house until I needed it. In hindsight, the fact that I’d hidden cash at all should’ve made me question things.
